Journey back to an unexpected time and delve deep into what you think you know…
Phase I – The Children of A-space
Sun Child
– Issue 2 –
Witnesses to the current Alia in her adulthood, describe her as a kind, but aloof young woman. Workers at a supermarket in a small town in the heart of North Carolina who recall a woman named Alia who worked as a butcher for a few months before she disappeared, say she was a nice person to talk to. She talked easily about the news and other current events, but when she did her job, she was impossible to talk to. She focused on her work like it was the only thing that mattered. On her breaks, she would sit alone outside staring into the sun and it was impossible to break her concentration.
“I ain’t never seen nobody look right at the sun like that,” one of her co-workers says, “and it didn’t seem to faze her either.”
Her time with the Maker predates this brief stint as a butcher. Witnesses tell of an exclusive magic show on the beaches of Wilmington, North Carolina where the Maker and a female companion would create light shows and card tricks out of thin air. The woman sometimes gave private sessions after the shows and she could tell a person what was deep in their mind, things they did not want to admit to themselves.
“I was at the show with my boyfriend,” an attendee of one of the shows recalls, “and the organizer says that the mind reader was offering private readings for some insane amount of money, and I made my boyfriend pay for it ’cause I was sure he was cheating on me. So we sit in the sand with this woman. Gorgeous woman, she had these big spooky eyes and she was just so pretty, and she tells me that she’ll say it all out loud if I want her to, but everything I think is true, is the truth. I ask her to say it out loud, and she confirmed it. My boyfriend was cheating. She knew all the names and places and my boyfriend couldn’t deny it. That woman was worth every penny.”
As of late, the current Alia has been spotted with Clay and Ivan, living in their hometown. She was spotted at a local church at least once. And she seems to be keeping a low profile.
Alia’s story makes me sad. Hers is a story of neglect and abandon, and it seems that she longs to know the family that she lost as she was born into the world. If she belongs to the line of extraordinary women known as the Alia, then it is a testament to the oppressive conditions of the society that reared such an extraordinary woman to be relegated to the margins as she has been. She is a woman of color and that is two strikes against her in a world grasping for dear life to the old white male patriarchy paradigm. Her survival, her perseverance and her strong resolve are all testaments to her very strong character that proves that she is the best choice to carry on such a large legacy.
But this is me hero worshiping. I imagine that there are layers to Alia that our reporting cannot penetrate, not unless we get the privilege of sitting with her for an interview.
The TIp: Earth website is very skant on stories that feature Alia, though it would be easy to ascribe any of the mysterious stories that do feature a woman doing extraordinary things to Alia. I will resist the urge. Alia’s significance is apparent because of her connection to a mysterious laboratory in rural Georgia that does not have a website. It’s strange for a business of any kind to not have a website in this day and age, but this Institute where Alia may have lived for years, has never had one.
Recently when I was interviewing people in the area, someone reported seeing a man who fit the description of the Maker. He seemed to have been out for a jog and then he took flight and disappeared, the witness is not sure in which direction. I think that the Maker is at the Institute but I’m afraid to do any snooping there. It has the feel of a government compound from the outside and I don’t want to end up on any watch lists.
Dark Angels
– Issue 4 –
I directed the staff of This and Other Things to comb through all of the materials available to PRL Contributors and we have already familiarized ourselves with much of the material on the website TIp: Earth. You can imagine our PRL office, with the This and Other Things logo on the door, big table in the middle where we gather collectively as the brain of VIV, with a big cork board on one wall and index cards with names or ideas tacked up. We have red yarn to draw connections and we have maps to keep track of locations. We have access to the full Encyclopedia of the Known Universe; it is an actual book that is thicker than a book should be allowed to be if I’m being honest, but it is a wonder nonetheless. We have access to some texts from the Consortium of Human History, thirty or so that I am reading my way through currently. Some are interesting, some are abhorrent, but I am baring it for the sake of this project.
I have also been catching up on the volumes of the Serials that are like the dramatization of the stories and theories I’ve encountered in very scientific texts, news reports, or in medical records, etc. I came across a term from all the way back in Volume III, “Sentient Authorities”, and I wondered if it was created by the Serial Contributors, or if it was borrowed from the other material. I found it in the first place I looked, the best and only reference guide that a person would ever need, the Encyclopedia of the Known Universe.
This is an excerpt from Vol III, Issue 10:
This volume adheres to the belief that the entity previously referred to as AEther is the creator of life, the ability to perceive Time and subsequently contemplate the repercussions of its movements, and the resulting advanced sapience that is a feature of many of the sentient species that exist in the universe. Supposing that AEther is the creator of our experience, and it’s motivation is to slow Time by propagating sentience throughout the universe, then it stands to reason that AEther has a vested interest in the protection of said sentience. Evidence of this can be seen on various planets, and in various civilizations that have been extensively documented by the PRL contributors.
Does that sound like anyone you know? I don’t know, maybe an advanced civilization of beings that will exist at the relative end of the life of the universe, only to travel back to the relative beginning with the goal of extending the life of the universe?
These boys do some heavy plotting here at the PRL.
I bring this up because we are at the point in the story of Ivan and Clay where they have realized their extraordinary powers, they have come into their preternatural gifts and they have found one another. And it’s easy to wonder why. Why them? Why that moment? Maybe the answer is bigger than we know, influenced by bigger things than we can wrap our brain around.
PRL Serials 