"No. We were both women. Of course we'd have a lot in common?"
- @HalimedeMF 11 April 2025 on Twitter replying to Kanye West

_________________________________________________________________________

My hands are moving red and green balls up and down in the air and I am trying not to think about the numbers on the bill for that ‘great meal’ we had earlier, nor am I trying to think about those numbers in relation to the numbers in my bank account and how readily she paid for and suggested we go here in the first place. And I am definitely not trying to think of the fact that she’s naked too, and holding her phone at an angle that tells me that she’s only probably not filming this. She’s smiling the way I would if I was though.

“Wait, that’s messed up, there’s no way that’s real?” Aliyah mutters to herself, flicking her finger on her screen a bit more passionately than before as her attention is very pointedly directed at something other than me. 

“What can’t be real?” I ask, the brief lapse of concentration already enough for me to almost fumble one of my balls onto the floor.

“Oh there’s just thi-Holly you’ve heard of the MS movement before right?” she asks, brief sound clips I can barely make out coming from the side of her room as she keeps flicking through something.

“No? Is that like, a political thing or?” she gives me a weird look, but waves it off. 

“Right, I forgot that you’ve been living under a rock. They’re this… Weird art movement that’s gotten big recently? They’re all about pushing the boundaries and imagining a world free from the weight of our past, they come up with things like… performance art meals, abstract literature, and I think one of them got shot a year or two ago because he hired some professional thieves to fake a heist with the museum’s help but one of the guests pulled out a real gun and decided to be a hero.” 

“What?” my hands slip and one ball follows a few others down to the bed.

“Yeah they’re all like that, intense. Anyway I was scrolling through the map and apparently one of them called uhh, the High Visionary is running this massive event at a quarry out of all places that’s uncovered ‘the archeological discovery of the century’ apparently. I mean it’s probably bullshit, that’s usually how it goes for them, but it’s not too far from here if we rent a car? And I kind of want to check it out.”

“‘The archeological discovery of the century’? What did they dig up an old helmet one of our great great great great grandparents wore before the oxygen set in or something?” I take a seat, wipe a bit of sweat from my brow as if I’ve been working, and sip down a bit of water.

“I wish, no they’re saying that they found proof of aliens or something, I mean look at it,” she flips over her phone to show me and I can barely make out what looks to be a photograph of a person’s helmeted head sculpted out of largely indigo colored metal with bronze weirdly shaped horns, a massive yellowish crystal on its forehead, red almost glass looking eyes, and a feminine lower face made out of grey metal with blue lips. Fairly interesting stuff, and then I realize that it’s supposed to be the size of a small building.

“Whoa, did they build that thing? That must have cost a small fortune.”

“Probably, but you know how it is, it’s supposed to be ‘one of many artifacts’ they dug out from the quarry, and I can’t help but wonder what it’s all for you know? Like what their deal is with this one,” she flicks through a few more images, most of them are of the head allegedly at different points of its excavation but there’s a few that’s just random articles of mostly smashed up jewelry that I guess you’re supposed to find at a digsite like this?

“You know what, sure I wouldn’t mind checking it out with you, you said we could just drive there right?”

She looks back down at her phone, and smiles, “Uh, yeah definitely, it’s only a… Hey you did remember to get your driver’s license right?”

_________________________________________________________________________

It’s a distraction, all of it. The heat of the crowd, the too thin tent cover barely shielding us from the three suns, the humidity of the still warm air blown to and fro by the large and eerily silent fans, the fact that I have been awake for almost 7 whole hours straight and know that we walked past a comfy enough row of bunkbeds getting here that I spied past the window of what I am damn sure is the one air conditioned building here for miles and miles. 

But there are slides changing on a piece of white cloth in front of me. A woman wearing an opaque replica fishbowl astronaut helmet (and appropriately enough for the weather, not much else save for a vest and loose pants) connects the dots (figuratively) between the ruins near Jupiter with the recent discoveries in this quarry as the remnants of a long lost human civilization (a speech or person important enough to herald nap disturbing applause and cheers upon leaving and entering the stage). In the corner of my eye I can see glimpses of Aliyah artfully panning the camera we brought that let us bluff about being real press™ to follow the first speaker’s every movement across the stage without missing a damn beat (she of course, got to sleep on the way here).

I can’t speak (for fear of disturbing her’s or any other stream), I can’t stand up to leave (because I’m sitting too far in the front to not seem like I’m making a statement), and I can’t remember how I got here to begin with (I remember driving the car over, I’m struggling to remember what she said that made me think this was a good idea).

There’s a man in front of me with a tray with drinks on it, he shoots us an apologetic look after accidentally walking in front of the camera and Aliyah is making shooing motions with her free hand, but I spot a few long glasses of something black and possibly caffeinated and I reach out and grab one and of course it’s hot, why wouldn’t they serve hot drinks in a hot room? I smile at him with just my eyes and fish out a straw from my pouch and slide one end into my port and the other end into the drink and it’s coffee mildly sugary no milk and wow.

It has a kick but I don’t so much jolt awake as feel myself slowly dragged back into something almost resembling alertness as fishbowl woman gives way to glasses woman on the stage. Wait no I think I can remember other names now, High Something right? Weird name, well it’s probably a title. I think glasses woman is Cynthia and probably professor, wait no that’s, wrong way round? Ugh.

Sip, sound. Sip, words. Sip-

“And once again I want to thank our sponsors the Dilmun Concern for allowing me and my team to carry out our work in their quarry, to thank the High Visionary for that ah, wonderful speech of her’s, and of course to thank all of you fine folks of the Mental Sovereignity movement in attendance this day who are here to ah, witness history in the making.”

Laughter from the audience at a joke that simply flies over my head as I sip and watch professor Glasses smirk a little.

“Sorry - sorry, my assistant keeps telling me I need to lighten up a little, crack a few jokes every now and then. Anyway! Before we wrap up and move on to the stunning feast for the senses you are no doubt looking ever forward to - we’d like to table a short Q&A session. So if any of you have any burning questions to ask you can start raising your hand from… now.”

For the first time in a while I turn my head around to look back at the crowd, hoping desperately that they’ll all read the room and just let this one slide so I can stumble off into a cold and dark room for a while. So of course Aliyah raised her hand.

The professor made a few motions at Aliyah’s general direction as she spoke, “Okay! Can someone give the person standing next to the camera a-yeah that’s right. Could you introduce yourself first?”

Aliyah tapped on her mic a little, noting the little pressure waves it made, “Hi, yes my name is Aliyah Ziegler, I’m a freelance documentarian with a focus on history, and let me just say that I really really appreciate all of the hard work you and your team put into this, I loved the presentations you and Ms, should I call her Miss or The High Visionary?”

Some of the people in the crowd behind me helpfully chimes in to say ‘the’ before the woman herself could turn on her mic about it. “Yeah, I think they were both very interesting.”

The professor smiles at that, interrupting her to say, “Thank you, thank you, that’s not really a question but I’m glad that people are seeing the value of our work.”

“Oh I wasn’t finished, I was going to ask… ok you kind of took the wind out of my sails a little there, give me a moment,” Aliyah reaches out with her free hand, to grab my half full glass from my hand and quaffs the rest of it down, only stopping to let out a pleased sigh before she continued with, “Was any of that real?”

There’s a burst of laughter from the crowd behind us, some frantic but mostly surprised sounding, like they can’t believe that someone would actually go out and say that, which was uncomfortable, but not as bad as looking up at the stage and realizing that the professor wasn’t laughing along with them.

“I mean I still appreciate all of the artistry and effort you all put into it!” Aliyah said, continuing to dig her own grave with me in it, “The lengths you’ve all gone to make this seem convincing is just,” she audibly kisses her hand, “Borderline perfect, almost no notes.” 

“But it’s just…” she’s thinking through it, trying to unwrap her head around it all, “I mean even if the MS movement weren’t so heavily involved we’re talking about a prehistoric spacefaring human civilization stemming from Alpha Centauri here. It’s just too ridiculous, too far fetched to be true, and well, frankly why would anyone in this movement want to present more human history unless all this was another intellectual provocation against the whole concept. It just doesn’t make sense is all, sorry.” 

The laughter had long since died down by now, and for a moment it was just me there squirming out of secondhand embarassment as the professor just looked thoughtful for a while. “Well that’s just one interpretation isn’t it? The whole prehistoric colonization angle, that’s something the High Visionary thought of that could be plausible but I wasn’t-”

She furrows her brow a little, “Okay so I need you to understand that we are still at a very early phase, this field of xenoarcheology is a new one and I want to say that I am pioneering right? We are all taking bold new steps forward here, and when you’re pioneering you want to keep an open mind right? As open as you can while still based on as many best practices and evidence you have? Do you understand?”

Aliyah said a clear “Yes,” and was very clearly attempting to say something more before the professor continued with, “So when our sponsor said okay there’s this woman, this wonderful, intelligent woman named the High Visionary who will be handling the catering and the event organizing and doing a speech right after your’s and I said okay right? I said okay, but I had to ask, what would the speech be about? Is it anything political? Should I be worried about what she will say?”

The professor turned her gaze back at her still seated guest of honor, as if gauging her approval, “And they got her in touch with me, this wonderful woman. And she said that she noticed links, potential commonalities between the artifacts we dug up and the material the Jovian ruins were said to be made out of, the ones that helped most of our ancestors get here and settle down. She told me all this right? And she said she wanted to talk about what that could imply, the material culture or shall we say ‘lost prehistoric civilization’ that could have been shared between the two, and I’ll be honest I said to her what I will say to you now, I think that’s going too far.”

There’s awkward laughter coming from the High Visionary herself, who nonetheless lets the professor have her moment as she continued with, “We don’t have any samples of the Jovian ruins to compare with these artifacts, we don’t have any proof that these artifacts are even all that advanced outside of how big the metal head is, and they’re not even that ancient, the most conservative estimates range sometime between 4 or 5 thousand years old, younger than the Pyramids would have been back on Earth!”

The professor started smiling again, slipping into an earnest confidence as she said, “But I also told her that ah well, it’s not so impossible that it could have never happened, it’s a new field and we need to keep an open mind. I don’t want everyone to be set on this theory of our homeland being the origin point of some extinct humanlike spacefaring race. We don’t have the fossils, we don’t have records or proof of infrastructure, all we have to infer all of this history from is a damaged space station our ancestors explored what? 100-200 years ago? And one temple complex in another star system entirely.”

Her eyes dart at someone to the side, and I catch a brief glimpse of a stagehand’s… hand moving away from a watch, “But what we do have is very real, very old, and very humanoid, and I think one thing you got right Ms Ziegler is that the MS movement is very preoccupied with seeing history as propaganda right? That all history is in some way. And so what I want to propagandize is that these artifacts are real, this planet was inhabited before we colonized it, and it’s people had a history that’s no less important to study and remember and consider than our vaunted Earth’s what? 10-12K years we can remember that led up to us being here in the ruins of someone else’s home. Thank you.”

There is a round of deafening applause and despite the apparent time limit the mic gets passed on to at least seven more people before the Q&A session ends.

I wish I could die.

_________________________________________________________________________

‘Human sweat layered thick as if to signify toil and heat’, ‘something gritty and grainy and earthy I can’t quite put it’, ‘stale dried out air wafting through a small long sealed hole’, all words Aliyah leaned in a little too closely to whisper in my ear to describe the scent that accompanied each of the courses in the ‘intellectual feast’ the High Visionary had designed.

Not to mention the sounds too, the whole tent was always abuzz with something. Worksongs, conversations and crass jokes, clanking chains or digging equipment tearing up the earth, the occasional clinking of glasses. All of it coming from our fellow participants or from speakers laced around a tent that blissfully was thick enough to shroud us in thick and relatively cool darkness. One that would have given me another shot at nice and blissful sleep if it wasn’t for the annoyance that was a light system that turned off or on based on whether each course was set in the ‘day’ or ‘night’ (I should book a trip to the dark side of the planet before the year is out, been a while).

I guess it was interesting? Watching people sift through little grains of brown rice for edible ‘jewels’ of slowly roasted pork and cracklings and taking pictures of each find to haggle with the waiter in the next course over to determine portion sizes in the next. But you know, despite how ‘open minded and futuristic’ the other guests at the table claimed to be, they all still looked at me weird for not taking off my mask the whole time. It made me really uncomfortable.

I told Aliyah as much, but I guess she was too distracted by our next course (a slab of beef stylized to look like a human arm wrapped up in what I am told are brine infused cloth that was roasted on the beef) to really care. By the time I slinked off outside of the tent to catch my breath I think she was trying to convince the other two to recite an old catholic exorcism prayer she found online before unwrapping it, since you know, it’s a cursed artifact. Made me chuckle a bit I’ll be honest.

But I already knew where I wanted to go. The giant metal head they uncovered is cool and all even from this distance, and I walked by a few tents that might be worth visiting later that’s marked by signs as ‘open case museums’ or merch stores (of course they’d have one). But that slight weight pressing down all around my body’s telling me to walk up and fall into one of the air conditioned building’s many beds, and really who am I to say otherwise? 

But that’s where I see her, huddled against the side of the wall underneath the building’s shade with a rolled up smoke in hand and a lighter in the other that she’s flicking and flicking with her long fingers, trying to actually get the damned thing to work while I’m just, standing there figuratively scratching my head about feeling like I’ve seen this woman before. 

It’s not about her squarish but thin face or her gorgeous brown eyes or the light brown of her soft looking skin or anything about the way her wavy black hair settles on her broad shoulders. It’s not until I look down at her chest and more importantly the type of vest barely covering it that I find two braincells bouncing around in my head to rub together and realize that sh-

“You should take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Wha-huh?”

I look up again and realize that she’s been staring right back at me, um, awkward much.

“Can’t even get a moment to myself these days, Christ you know my identity’s not much of a secret right? All of you guerilla journo-tabloid types keep trying to snap candid shots and soundbites like my face and name isn’t all over the web already, and believe me I’ve read some of the shit you people have tried to smear me with, god forbid a woman ever believe in anything.”

Journo type? Wait is this because of what Aliyah said about us, “Uhhh-”

“Oh just make it quick and get a good angle at least, go on now, do it, do it before I change my mind.”

She flicks her lighter on and takes in a deep puff of her newly lit cigarette and gives me the sort of expectant and demanding look that makes me fumble around in my satchel for my old and kind of beat up phone. She’s striking a pose by the time I finally get it out, and there’s a sort of exasperated expression on her face when she sees what I’m packing.

“A phone? A phone? Can’t you at least pretend to take this seriously? What sort of journalist doesn’t even have a proper camera with them these days? you know half of what comes out of those things aren’t even real right?”

My finger twitches and takes a picture of her as she complains about my ignorance, it’s not very flattering, I do not mention it to her. “Huh? Wait really?”

“How do you not kno-look, with a pinhole lens that small it’s all facial filters and predictive algorithms. Bullshit, do you understand? It’s how the world looks the way they want it to based on how everything should be and has been and not how they actually are. god you could not have picked a wor-which rag did you say you worked for again?” God, she’s very… expressive when she’s not under the mask.

“Rag? I don’t… oh!” I shake my head, “I’m not working with anyone actually, I’m just kind of… here? Like my friend’s a Concordian but I’m not really involved with any of that, well she made me drive her here so I guess I am sorta?”

She points at me with just her cigarette, “Okay so if you’re not a journalist or a weird fan then what are you bothering me for man? The party’s back where you came from, trust me you’re missing the best part. I’m pretty sure someone’s figured out the curse tablets are edible by now.”

I reach into my satchel and pull out one of the meal mix slurry pouches I keep stashed away for emergencies, “This is basically all I can be bothered to eat these days ever since I got this mask. I mean I can take it off to eat if I want to but my face’s a little messed up underneath this thing and I didn’t want to put anyone off their meals and it sounded like you were using a lot of perfumes and scents or whatever that I just don’t get, I just can’t get any of that at all and you know I haven’t slept in hours and hours so whenever the night parts happen and people start talking about things I don’t really understand my body just sorta wants to lean back on those really comfortable seats and fade away but then they come back on or someone just starts screaming or laughing for no reason or Aliyah says something to me and like even if I tried some everything tastes wrong anyway, I just can’t right now sorry.”

I take in a deep breath, “Also I’m not a guy…”

She just stands there with a weird look on her face for a bit, as if in shock or trying to wrap her head around something before she lets out a very sudden and unannounced, “FUCK! FUCK! Ugh of course there’s people like you coming to these things now. No offense.”

“Look I don’t really have the time to unpack this right now, but if you ever have any ideas on you know, how to make something like this work better you should get in touch, here!” she slips her free hand into one of her vest’s pockets and maybe opens it up a bit too much but it doesn’t take long before my gaze is yanked over to a little black and green I guess business card she’s handing over to me.

“Oh uh, thanks, I’m not really a cook but I guess I’ll call you if I ever think of something?” I offer up to the High Visionary as she takes in a long drag from her cigarette and tosses it to the floor and crushes it under her heel.

“Don’t call, text first, I am a very busy woman Miss?” She’s starting to leave already, taking the first few slow steps towards me or rather the sorta road I was walking up.

“Holly, Holly Bashur,” I blurt it out, she’s already past me but something about that makes her stop.

“You named yourself after an extinct tree?” she asks with genuine surprise in her voice.

“What?” I say, blinking at her.

“Nevermind,” is all she has to say in response, and I turn around in time to watch her walk away. I let my gaze linger there until she drops entirely out of sight. What a strange woman.

I bring her card up and on the green banded black side I see yep, that’s the Dilmun Concern’s logo alright, funny how bringing a plant over from lightyears away suddenly gives you the right to trademark a date palm leaf as your logo. The other side’s more interesting though, there’s a picture of her smiling in a strawberry shirtdress that definitely clashes with the I guess black banded leaf green of this side of the card, contact information that I infuriatingly enough need to manually type in to my phone for some reason, and her name, “Salome Tzeitman” huh? I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere before.

Wait, actually, this says CEO at the bottom.
_________________________________________________________________________

My body takes me the rest of the way down on autopilot and man it’s…

The beds are fine, the air is cool enough, and I’ve got my facemask on since I like to sleep in the dark, but it takes me a while to ease into it because I’m too used to the capsules back at home you know? Like no matter how clean this place is I’m still a little too exposed for comfort, maybe if I had been working here for a few months or years and gotten to know damn near everyone that’d come in here first I wouldn’t be so paranoid and jumpy. But tired is as tired does, and after a while I settle into a hazy half awake resting state with my satchel buried underneath the covers and-

That’s weird.

I can’t quite wrap my head around it, everything’s all hazy whenever I stop looking/thinking at it, but I think I’m in a field/enemy territory/charnel house? My right hand is holding a large mace firmly its bronze head slick with blood and encrusted gore and my left hand is bearing a long wooden shield. I think about letting go of both of these but a sense of fear/awareness/rational sense kicks in and I figure that I am not safe here and I am given brief glimpses of the bodies upon bodies upon bodies upon- 

There is a rustling sound and I look and behold not too far in front of me a woman right leg wounded not terminal black of hair fear in face maybe bearing bow in hand definitely and arrow in other hand also and she nocks it points towards me and I think to myself ‘what a fool she was to not surrender or hide amongst the corpses’ and I approach bare breasted and proud as she buries an arrow on my shield with a THUNK and she buries an arrow on my shoulderplate with a CLANG and I am upon her and with a swing I hear her arm bone separating into four pieces with a CRACK and a AAAAAAARGH as she screams and curses my name and I know her mind is stuck between hobble away fear or reach knife stab and I help her decide by bringing my mace down with FLSH and a GRGLL until her thoughts are only FLSH and GRGLL or rather “ ”.

And I look again and a man approaches spear in hand bare of breast stronger maybe and shield bearing anger and hate in face and I shout hate and he is upon me as I am upon him and spear pierces maybe but mace hand still free to turn all of him into goo flowing down flowing into black soil and I take deep breath deep pain shooting from open wound air knocked out gasping body and me going down to ground and rolling rolling I see another her atop me face like mine hair like mine shaking shaking as my fists slams down on her head down on her head as she growls grabs me with strong arms lifts up crush my wound stands and looks at me with piercing judging blue eyes that go POP as head collapses under fist and blue lips smiling and saying, "Metkatštâ meškaḥnâ l-mes‘arbhâde." 

She swings her arm and I am free.

The field, the bodies, the wounds they all fall away and I’m floating slowly turning around in a void planet below me stars above planet below stars above moving further and further away staring screaming soundlessly flailing and further and further away until I see it I see them I see them all arrayed in their glory a procession of vast vast machines built only for war and killing and conquest and I think to myself if they could even touch planetside and I think of the skies burning and people screaming and the least landing as painlessly for itself as the greatest and I think to myself how big are they really and I think a mountain range made out of brick but trudging forward on two legs and I think to myself where are they going and I rotate and I see home and I think to myself can anything stand against them? Who would be here to save/help us and I think about my hands bloody bruised and still pounding away and I ask myself/her who are these people? What are they to you and me and she replies in that selfsame and assured voice, “Sâ’nâ Ḥayltânâ”

I wake up cold yet sweaty and somehow unburdened from the weight of my travels but my hands feel strange and I pull them out from under the bed and find them grasping around something cold and pipelike and curved and firm and metallic and golden in nature or at least in appearance. For some reason the little pointed horns makes me think of that giant head at the edge of the quarry and the blue from my dreams and the blue of its jaw, and I think.

“Maybe I should go and see it for myself.”