Halation

Linus felt now the weight of his years as he
 Tried to remember his first visit to his grandfather's workspace
 He couldn't clearly recall the excitement,
 Or the danger, or the fear of being caught
 There was only the vaguely familiar sensation
 That he had been here before
 And the long hallway that stretched out before him
 Leading to the door of the studio
 Somehow seemed as if it were
 A road he had glimpsed only once before
 And in some fevered state
 What little recollections of his grandfather Linus had,
 The brief and unsettling visits
 That hushed and angry voices disembodied
 And shut away beyond door, blanket, pillow, and lid,
 Were colored by the memories of his long discarded gifts
 Grandfather's constructions
 Simian simulations
 Puzzling mechanical contraptions
 Were meant in earnest to be his friend, companion, and confidant,
 To a youth misplaced among others.
 Linus knew nothing of his grandfather as extropian.
 Nothing of uploading consciousness
 Nothing of enhanced, augmented sentients.
 But the old man knew
 His grandson shared with him the same insatiable curiosity,
 And the typical interrogatives of those destined to seek the answers
 It was with this knowledge
 That Linus' grandfather had left this place.
 And with the same assurance
 That Linus would stumble across what had been set in motion.
 It would take years, the old man knew,
 But time it self was now irrelevant
 Indeed, the years it took were heavy on Linus
 He sat now failing to remember exactly why he was here now
 Alone in his grandfather's dim and silent studio
 Then as if on cue, something clicked. It all came back
 Rushing at him in scattered and disconnected impressions
 Cranial jags
 Anthropomorphic representations of raw electronic data
 And the unfiltered fears of a small child
 From this silence then
 In a voice from, but not of, himself
 Linus spoke out to the empty room
 "I am Apparatus. Let me show you what I have seen."
 Falling prey to the general inertia of the day,
 The first mark is always the hardest to make
 The first crack in that safe silence
 I can't bring myself to disturb
 A silence that tends to overwhelm mostly
 There are words, questions, above me
 Glowing in the detritus stirred up by the day's events
 They swirl like leaves, complaining against the fog
 Circling around me like debris in a whirlwind
 Each a willing perpetrator in abrasive mists,
 And I choke on the dust
 Out of nowhere, out of boundless grace and blessings
 Forgotten some chemical shift, they settle around me in a halo
 A slow-motion melancholy that descends without apology
 Overwhelming and infinite
 In a pool of hope, I am face down, awake to every ripple
 Every disturbance and distortion
 Every intrusion
 The dead leaves leave like memory and speech
 Fallen from infinite branches of possibility
 They're simply roots and leaves hold me under,
 Looping in hypnotic array
 "Things change." she told me
 Then to settle sideways and decelerate
 With fleeting vapors of happiness,
 Perceived grace,
 Or accidental joy
 "I am on the brink of everything."
 Or so my speck of thought goes
 It bleeds over, in and between, and dictates action
 Within this singularity of conception is a vacuum of thought,
 Or a sinkhole of naiveté?
 Shame filled and broken down I cannot hide,
 But I'm carried from imagined whispers
 Or made up gasps,
 To a place of all forgetfulness
 The wood cracks beneath my feet
 Though in timid steps devoid of caution
 The boards speak to me in broken language:
 "Go on. No one else will see." But... I have seen
 And to that which gives me strength unfold all my worry
 Unfettered,
 Random,
 Run-on sprawl of consciousness contaminates the page
 Corrupting utterly my thread-bare comprehension
 Nothing but virus now,
 Not even a chance to engage myself in anything more
 Than imaginary conversations with my own kind
 And the only thing that keeps me warm
 Is the hum and glow of my machines
 Too many words in the space between my eyes
 None lasting long enough to register,
 But long enough to decipher
 Their brother-and-sister images corrupt my memory
 Leaking profusely and flashing blind
 A momentary distraction,
 Virulent
 Nervous,
 Showing me those who call themselves friends
 Not as I assume them to be,
 But as they truly are
 Showing me horrors of faded persons,
 Where mobios(?) of infinite grace were not enough
 And where we once stood smiling unhindered,
 Now beaten down, un-looked for
 Showing me multiple infinite facets
 Showing me the transmutations of supposed angels,
 Or beings that were once girls
 One single moment of clarity,
 Everything distilled into one unspeakable singularity
 Even as it crumbles under me,
 Under the weight of your breath
 So too, a fragile apparatus of affection
 Desire
 Lust
 Protection
 Perseverance
 Forbearance
 Under the weight of your indifference is strained,
 But not broken
 Bent, but hold still
 Bruised, but smiling
 Silent, but (intelligible)