P: & in his MITnAS he is mobile in the crazy looping sense of it: fully aerial & loving it having 'flown' more than once (i.e. x2) throughout his youth like any VR enthusiast he is properly suited for the task; he just had to start dressing like it
classes happen but he dreams of only flying
he waltzes thru them knowing that on the other side there waits a golden statue made for him to ride into the skies
and so gifted with wings he soars for it
with a fearlessness beneath his aerial step that is unmatched by any member of the department
he dances wonderfully across the canopies, waltzing wild through the forests, tango tipsy-turvy in the—
L: well, it turns out you can't actually fly very far or fast under current FAA regulations
P: but it's high enough the jetpack automagical limits let him get to be satisfied w/his own kind of wings
E: on this day he is cruising through the outer grove toward that stand of twelve
specifically headed for the tallest tree on YPI's campus
the only one to rival the tower itself
BIG PAPA, 246m tall
routine maintenance of the sylvan skirts that lay sentinel ‘tween the college and the town outside falls to him every Monday night and Thursday early afternoon
L: & i’d say i prefer the night shift, if just for the starry sights
& the cooling function on MITnAS can be kind of underwhelming during bright sunshine
this was a thursday right before my lunch break, so not the greatest
but the sky was kinda hazy, meaning mostly shady, making me a little happier
so my flight pretty much started off fine
i arrived copse-side at 1416 hrs and lit amid the monstrous bowers of trunks so thick as to be monuments of bark
these columns built by sunlight and some H2O
i spin from sequoia to sequoia through the canopies in slipstream sliding aerially, ‘round odd flocks of birds—all sorts—that wheel themselves around the greenery
finally latching fully onto Big Papa with bungee’d carabiner
about 123 m up in the air
and begin to trim its excess branches and brambles
clean the growth in just the way the headlights tell me, i.e.
E: just follow LED patterns w/ the hacksaw, though ensure you don’t buzz overzealously
L: i fall into a senseless, brutish rhythm pretty easily
it’s a rote pattern of action but therapeutic in the casual sense
staying manually repetitive is all theta wave relaxing
+ for good measure i’m listening to music
(Sufjan Stevens) thru the built-in haraldphonics in the MITnAS
w/ the combo of tunes & menial labor i soon leave this earthly area
and pursue the behavior to its perfectly precise end result
in the middle of the bushy manicure i'm manufacturing
i notice a thing that most usually is not upon this leafy section
in hot violet flashes, curl some ivy strands around BIG PAPA's trunk
have snarled midst the barky gnarls, a royally chromatic weed that's just not supposed to be
here, & incredibly the LEDs ignore it; under the radar falls its band of hue, i think
it is unseen to the computer but before me curls it, plain in ultra light beams
i kill the tool and investigate more closely
it is beautiful, i think; never having come across these kinds of strands before
i wonder where they came from
how they got up here
why...
[a basso profundo kerthunk of distant thunder]
[leroy looks up from the ivy]
L: shit
i’m so focused on these fucking bits of purple leaves
i miss the dark clouds rolling in around me
& don’t snap out of it till i hear water droplets splash against my face shield
& by the time i gather stock of my new dangerous surroundings i can only realize that the storm has arrived
i hear cracks faraway, moving closer; ominous gunmetal indigo is the sky in jagged wisps
i try to gather my toolkit; pack up all i brought
in slow motion a bright light before my eyes is drawn to the sequoia to the left of me, and the twelve birds upon it
then my phone buzzes
the rest i remember experiencing only retrospectively
in the moment it was utter jet black
but i am told a lot happened in that darkest millisecond
[total illumination of a blinding white flavor fills the stage]
[then it fades, followed by a sharp crackle]
bzzt
L: as the tree flashed w/lightning, i saw
sparkling
starlings
startled
falter
hardly sixteen milliseconds
then immediately automatic antikatabatic reflex mechanisms kick in
balky wings first dip
then stiffen
black pinions glisten in the sudden brightness
absorb all light waves save dark purplish; ultraviolet excess the heat gets excreted as & with speed in full flight
the light leaves
the tree smokes, its leaves echo whitely;
the birds flee in the moment of open eye blindness
i begin to fly away
my thrusters reverse as strong as force allows, i have jerked back fully towards where i remember home was not too long ago
first i zoom then am frozen for one frame then unzoom in the other direction (X+Y axial vector acceleration)
suddenly my velocity is negative
realizing as momentum shifts that i am still by bungee tethered loosely to this tree trunk
and my pull resulted in a pushback toward the bark
it approaches my face closely but by bare reflex i am able to veer rocket-wise to the left
i skirt the sequoia with a bare whoosh and escape w/ just a scrape along my right forearm
but now i am speeding further backwards from the direction of shelter, into deeper outskirts
and my bungee is still attached to the tree behind me; i speed on and brace for whiplash
but it snaps
i career tumbling gliding falling up
i cannot stop
i cannot
[a sudden change of everything
centered round a line of lightning
touching leroy to the ground + ceiling
suspended lengthwise, he is stretching
the photons extend- & dissolving his being
he is connected to infinity, is how it feels]
L: the suit beeps haywire
ozone snap makes crackled pops
my ears sound as if they are on fire
all my pores feel, like, crispier
my limbs are frozen
in permanent change i am stuck,
simultaneous as bodily i am struck
30k K of electric energy in a burst of ions caper
my limbs aloft are shaking vapor free like burning trees
i am oozing thru my pores my soul, shedding fiery weight like fool's gold
ekpyrosis done as pyrite's forced departure heralds
titanic change in this fellow
bzzt
R: a rogue guero in a rosy golden aura haloed
free at last for once from the torment of tomorrow
he is the man of shells, and once flung a substantial ‘nuff x+y vector they all start to pulse in unisolated oscillations
cycling rhythmic electric outward-minded circles
MITnAS self-conducting an orchestra of every lambda
the sparky loop starts its running from most inner barycenter
then as hoop voltaic expands in concentric growing bands; every molecule set reverberating by the one that lies inside it on the 3D spectra
it echoes the sum of the thrums that occurred right before it
L: i am beating with something
C: (he thinks in flashes)
E: he is flying
he is flying
he is falling up
T: and then there is nothing for a while
P: when leroy comes back down to earth
the world shudders once, say all the nurses & emts & attendant physicians who saw the object impact
from t-minus 3 sec & ~40m out & up above, tracking en masse flight path
scopophilic tendencies of the eye-guided Is the premier drive behind their benign &,
like,
blithe unconcern as they saunter (these docs do) full of nonchalance across the lawn
following their nice post midterm catered picnic
they wonder jovially if it may be a comet
laughing casually and light about the wacky things one may encounter on this wacky campus
that is yorcester polytechnic institute
the tallest school in the Northeast US Region (3 yrs running, tho the crown has been in jeopardy recently)
M: what an accomplishment
tallness for the sake of tallness
of course there will be things falling from the sky
what goes up must come down
and there is serious consideration for which part of space this may have descended from
though they're more inclined to watch reruns of Grey's Anatomy (these docs are) than of Cosmos
C: it's a disappointing climax when upon actual impact there’s only one li'l rattle in the full & tectonic sense
excluding the aftershocks of internal excitement plainly happening displayed on every eager bright-faced white-labelled RN’s heart sleeves
in every third case among them one could safely say they thought (these docs did, one in three) that they would one day go to space
about 33% of kids @ YPI attend precisely for the height advantage; new proximity to outer space beyond the gaian terrain
astronautic occupations never cease to offer endless wonder to our tiny flightless grounded brains
but the slots on the shuttles were harder to bargain for in hearty body mind & soul than any kid quite can imagine
ergo here they find themselves
tangentially fulfilling their acropassion
taking classes on the tallest outcropping around
R: as the doctors’ picnic nears the crater
wondering what would wait beneath its upturned dirt walls
what encircled by ejecta they could expect to find
chit-chat dwindles
so fast that by first glance the gasp of she who spots the body mid-vibration in its self-made dirty caldera
carries (gasp does) to the back of the group
roughshod tumbles thru the silence that did just fall
and the information dicta carries news on telegraphic monosyllables
bearing clues of what darkness awaits within the crater
they now know (the caboose does) before they can see it
what to expect
it's the worst
but instead he turns out upon touch not quite dead
not quite yet
& the mystery is lessened
& his death becomes a legend
because it doesn't happen
not then, at least
it is the corpse that wouldn't quit, still shocked
P: we are witnessing one man's personal ragnarok
nobody in particular thought
but it was around, floating
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