On a Knife-Edge

The clouds cascade above you in incredible detail. In places, their bases form an impenetrable ceiling, but that ceiling is temporary. Wisps of shadow float against glowing shards of the sun, illuminating another layer behind. The effect continues below the clouds. As you move forward, you can see the boundaries between light and dark projected on the ground. The changing brightness pulsates as it sweeps over you.

As you learn the contours above you, the scale of things shifts. The sky is closer now: close enough to visit, it seems, and its vault looks comfortable, as if you could live inside. You are much larger than before. Your body warps — for the moment, more spirit than matter — and your extremities flow up to nestle between the darkened floors, in the space of light between. You feel your heart rate slow, coming to rest after the day.

Remember when you would stir a giant basin of treacle in your mind's eye? Remember how the thoughts would catch on the circling waves, tearing and smearing, disappearing into the uniform surface? This feels kind of like then.

Eyes on the road

The violence of collision drifts into your thoughts. It seems to you now as if even its specter transforms your flesh into something new and strange.

Your flesh remembers the slam of impact, mere inches from your left arm, only the door's thin layer of metal and plastic separating you. It's as if those materials have punched an imprint into your skin and bone, staying there ever since. The acrid smell lingers in your nostrils, a mix of spent propellant and that strange harshness that sprang from within your head.

You've heard it said that if a machine never leaves your side, how different is it from an implant? You wonder where your body ends. You wonder what you would have to remove to become yourself again.

Eyes on the road

You glide along a knife-edge. All around is peaceful. It would be so easy to float into someone else, into something stable and fixed. How can you be flying and yet still at the same time?

You return your eyes to the clouds. They have blended together into a murky gray while you weren't looking.