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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:base="http://wintermute.com.au/"><id>http://wintermute.com.au/bits/</id><title>Wintermute :: bits</title><updated>2024-12-31T06:49:49Z</updated><author> <name>Peter M Howard</name> <email>peter@wintermute.com.au</email></author><generator>home brewed by wintermute; powered by 11ty</generator><subtitle>Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist</subtitle><icon>/favicon.ico</icon><link rel="alternate" href="/bits/" /><link rel="self" href="/bits.atom" /> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-12-31:on-a-year-of-transformation</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-12/on-a-year-of-transformation/" /> <title>On a Year of Transformation</title> <published>2024-12-31</published> <summary> In which I am torn apart and rebuilt </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>In a therapy session three or four months ago — I don’t quite remember what we’d been talking about, probably something about long-buried feelings — my therapist asked what I felt like in that moment.</p><p>I felt like my body — my <em>being</em> — was stretched out, cracked open, to be squished back together. I saw myself floating in space, the tear in my centre like a black hole, pulling the light of the universe in. Part of that was a feeling of coming out of darkness and shadows, but it was also about potential — drawing in new influences, opening up to new connections.</p><p>And since then I’ve noticed some <strong>radical</strong> changes. So much of the background noise of my anxiety has reduced from an ongoing roar to a faint static. That reduced cognitive load has freed me up for so much more — for trying new things, making new commitments, meeting new people. I’ve noticed on a few occasions that I’ll be going into something that <em>used</em> to bring me great anxiety, and I’ll briefly feel anxious about <em>not</em> feeling anxious yet, and that little feeling is so much easier to acknowledge and move beyond. And I find myself deciding I want to do something and then actually doing it within days — rather than spending weeks talking things out, or talking myself out of what I want.</p><p>And there’s lots of mundane things as well — I’ve started a regular full-time job, I’m spending more time with friends, and I’m able to enjoy a lot more creative things.</p><p>Therapy has been a journey, but that one moment feels like a locus, a point around which my transformation hinges. And that vision of the universe is somehow enormous and intimate and it’s utterly magical.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="personal" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-11-15:on-a-name</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-11/on-a-name/" /> <title>On A Name</title> <published>2024-11-15</published> <summary> I never liked my name until I heard it from their mouth. It comes with a lot o [...] </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>I never liked my name until I heard it from their mouth.</p><p>It comes with a lot of baggage. My father’s name. Deeply influenced by a religion I don’t agree with, and that doesn’t agree with me.</p><p>I dislike when people shorten it, but I’ve not been comfortable enough with it to argue for it. The way it sounded never quite worked.</p><p>Until I heard them say it.</p><p>She calls my name, but softly, not to claim and to enclose, but to beckon, wide open.</p><p>He speaks my name, and he speaks with his heart.</p><p>You whisper my name.</p><p>Your lips hold each syllable, and release, and my name goes free, and I follow.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="poetry" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-11-12:on-getting-here</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-11/on-getting-here/" /> <title>On Getting Here</title> <published>2024-11-12</published> <summary> In which an election surprised us, again </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>I’ll admit to being surprised at the US election results last week. I’d expected it to be stolen, but not quite so quickly!</p><p>But so much of the response and analysis of it since has been aggravating. There’s obviously a tendency to attribute the results to whatever one’s favourite cause might be, and I’m arguably guilty of it myself right here. But the pet issue for me is one I don’t see many people talking about: America is not a democracy.</p><p>It seems like American pundits especially, but also liberal-thinkers from around the world, cling so tightly to the idea that American democracy is a beacon, that they’re left unable to comprehend the idea that an election can be stolen, even entirely <em>legally</em>. So such discussion is left to the realm of conspiracy-theory rabbit-holes.</p><p>But it’s important to consider seriously. American democracy has always been flawed, has always disenfranchised huge parts of its population, and the Republican party have been quite open about their plans to suppress votes across the country for at least a couple years! Add billionaires’ easy confidence about the result, and Trump out telling rally crowds they wouldn’t have to vote again, and it’s clear the stitch was in. And this isn’t about any vast conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes and/or steal votes — it’s just more of the same suppression they’ve been doing for decades, on a nationwide scale. Voters were being stricken from rolls mere weeks before the election; early-voting routinely failed, postal systems disrupted and delayed; and the long queues we saw on election day were evidence of the lack of polling places, not of any increase in turnout. A complicit mainstream media and captured social media obviously didn’t help with any ability to carry a national alternative message.</p><p>The turnout is the most obvious measure, and also an important one. There isn’t actually any evidence that the US “swung” to Trump or to fascism — his total vote didn’t really shift! Rather the Dems vote completely collapsed. And some of that can be attributed to a pretty unnappealing campaign, but the majority of it is classic voter suppression.</p><p>Importantly, we really need to push back on the idea that the populace has embraced Trump, or his policies! I see so many liberal-minded folks just accepting this narrative — whether they’re insisting we should accept a democratic outcome, implying the majority of people are just stupid (I really hate this one!), or falling for conspiracy theories about Russian or other foreign state influence. But all of these accept some amount of defeat, assume there’s nothing we can do in response. And that’s the narrative I’m most scared about leaking into Australia and other countries outside the US.</p><p>Here in Aus we have a federal election due next year, and there are good odds the Labor party will swing even further right in the belief that the population actually wants fascist/-adjacent policies. But as always, it’s clear people vote based on a ground game — so many great Dem reps who stood up for Palestine and for trans rights and for their local communities were re-elected even amidst this supposed “swing”, and anyone who can reproduce that energy in Australia has the real chance of winning.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="myth" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-03-23:feelings-at-the-door</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-03/feelings-at-the-door/" /> <title>Feelings at the Door</title> <published>2024-03-23</published> <summary> In which an old friend comes knocking... </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>My latest breakthrough at therapy was identifying that I’m not the affect-less even-keeled person I’ve assumed I was for the last 20 years. And figuring out that not only do I have feelings, but importantly this is okay, they don’t have to be locked away.</p><p>Coming out of this latest session my anxiety came back something awful, and it took me a little bit to figure out why. But it’s like I’ve had all these feelings knocking at my door, and I’ve been going «no that’s a stupid feeling» and trying to rationalise them away, when all I’m really doing is slamming the door on them.</p><p>This morning one in particular knocked at the door (whether the front entrance or the door to the closet I’ve kept them/him locked up in) all «oh I hear you’re ready to see me», and I pushed back at first but they kept knocking so eventually I was like «ok fine but you’re waiting in the lobby until I have time».</p><p>And I still haven’t actually dealt with it but wow just <em>acknowledging</em> it made so much difference! It’s still there waiting in the lobby, a constant presence in my head like everything else I need to get around to, but it’s not doing that huge hammering on the door that just spikes my adrenaline and pulls me into my head and out of the real world.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="personal" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-01-28:on-unfinished-thoughts</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-01/on-unfinished-thoughts/" /> <title>On Unfinished Thoughts</title> <published>2024-01-28</published> <summary> In which something... </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>I have so many unfinished draft posts, gathered over the years. And snippets of things scrawled in notebooks, now taking up space. Between <a href="/bits/2023-12/rebirth-or-reinvention/" title="Rebirth, or Reinvention">resurrecting</a> this site and doing some cleanup at home I’ve been rereading some old stuff, and thinking about the ways and reasons I’ve stopped writing (or especially, publishing) so much.</p><p>There’s definitely a thing where, for a while, I’ve felt like I <em>shouldn’t</em> publish anything I haven’t fully thought through, that I’m not ready to defend from all angles, or at least make clear that I’ve thought about a lot of them. Some of this is the toxicity of mass social media, but there’s also a bunch of unhealthy stuff I internalised and really leaned into in my thirties.</p><p>It’s weird reading some of my earlier stuff, ’cause I can see clearly that I was on a journey, was starting to see through a lot of bullshit. But I was challenged to have to make an intellectual argument — feelings that something is askew isn’t good enough. Part of this is toxic masculinity (the idea that men can’t argue from feelings), part is weird old Catholic notions of ‘Natural Law’ (which is the same thing basically: a rationalisation of big scary feelings whenever one’s observations of the world don’t match one’s expectations).</p><p>But anyway, here I am now, not really a man and definitely not caring for intellectual gatekeepers that will only hear arguments from people (men) who play by their debating rules.</p><p>So the weirdly revolutionary thing I’m going to do here is publish something I haven’t fully figured out.</p><p>Some of what I liked about Twitter was that its short-form constraints lent itself to putting unfinished thoughts out there — but as it expanded and its social rules changed it also became a place for second-guessing oneself. I’m off Twitter, I’m not convinced mass social media is healthy, and I’m gonna try using my personal blog space as somewhere to figure out my thoughts, even if it remains a place of <a href="/bits/2006-03/some-justifications/" title="Why I Do This; Some Justifications">neither fact nor fiction</a>.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="personal" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2024-01-08:superpowers-or-empires</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2024-01/superpowers-or-empires/" /> <title>Superpowers, or Empires?</title> <published>2024-01-08</published> <summary> In which I wonder how we describe hegemony now, and for the next few decades, and how Australia fits amongst global players </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Overheard a random American accent saying something vaguely like “China will be the next superpower within 50 years”, which struck me both as absurd and as something I’ve been hearing from young white Americans (and related hegemonists) for nearly 30 years now.</p><p>And I realised that the actual problem here isn’t their grasp of the relative power of the US and/or China, but actually the concept of a Superpower at all.</p><p>I think this idea of Superpower nations really is an invention of the States, as a way of diverting attention from Empire, and their Empire in particular. Like clearly, the American Empire suffered its first losses in Vietnam, and its failure to recognise that loss has led to decades of subsequent failures. But at the same time their cultural and market power has lasted a lot longer, so the core imperial middle class hasn’t really noticed the decline until the most recent years, and even that is the source of internal conflict. Meanwhile though, the US Empire had to explain its global position somehow, and was invested in <em>not</em> describing itself as Empire — so it invented Superpower nations, initially about the US and the USSR in some sort of good-vs-evil struggle, more recently about the US and China, though Putin still plays his role as a wannabe Superpower. So much Cold War nuclear-apocalypse angst comes from this source, but is built on nonsense, so it’s weird to see it still play out now in any cultural memory.</p><p>All that said, I’ll grant that the current Chinese government, especially as led by Xi, sees itself as an Imperial power, and that is dangerous. But that is <em>now</em>, not decades away after some <em>future</em> American decline, and it is not a global superpower. The idea that the globe can handle just one or two superpowers at a given time is an invented nonsense; we may easily see a number of competing Empires, or power vaccuums where there are none that have any meaningful power outside their ‘national’ borders.</p><p>Realistically now the US and Russia are both dwindling Empires, dying out in slightly different ways but still thrashing their <s>dicks</s> power about to the detriment of people abroad and at home. China is a powerful Empire, but it’s limited by a vision of ethnic purity — it’s been awful against the Uyghurs, but any of their colonisation in Africa or the Pacific, for example, isn’t sustainable without mass emigration which they don’t actually have the numbers for. The messiest conflicts in the coming decades are going to be from the wannabe Empires — Modi in India, the Sauds, some of the pan-European fascist movements — none of whom have any compelling ‘glue’ to make an Empire work, but still have violent ambitions beyond their borders...</p><p>I don’t have a conclusion here, but back in Australia it’s a clear explainer of so much of our international politics. As a small country we’re kinda destined to be a vassal state, unless we can find a compelling economic reason to retain some independence. For a long time we’ve been a vassal to the American Empire, but as it becomes clear the US is shrinking its borders and its sphere of influence, we’ll have to step back from that. So the question becomes whether we ally with China as an awkward trade partner and supporter of its abuses (we seem to have no problem voting with the US against most of the rest of the world, so there aren’t actual moral qualms here), or try become an independent South Pacific economy, like an old imagined pirate tradepost.</p><p>For all the darkness here, there’s a positive view for this country too — Australia is so full of renewable energy potential, both in terms of minerals and sunlight, that in a climate-positive future we really could become an independent powerhouse. That’s gonna require giving up a lot of our existing hangups though — moving away from the US Empire’s dependence on fossil fuels, reskilling our existing population, and letting in a lot of non-white folks who can help with that transition at all levels.</p><p>I want to believe that we can do this!</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="myth" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2023-12-11:rebirth-or-reinvention</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2023-12/rebirth-or-reinvention/" /> <title>Rebirth, or Reinvention</title> <published>2023-12-11</published> <summary> In which I enter a new decade, and invent a new me </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p><img src="https://media.wintermute.com.au/bits/fiji-pool.jpg" alt="Pool-side in Fiji"></p><p>A couple weeks back I turned 40. Took a few days off, stayed at a resort, something I never thought I’d do, but turns out the low-stakes relaxation is just what I needed.</p><p>A couple weeks prior I released a refresh of this website, switching to a static built thing (<a href="http://11ty.dev">11ty!</a>) after years of running on Django and paying for a VM to stay active when I almost never actually wrote anything new.</p><p>For the last ~9 months I’ve been in long-overdue therapy, also something I <em>long</em> thought I wouldn’t do.</p><p>At the start of last year I quit my job and went freelance, getting in just before burn-out hit, and using the time to focus on the things I enjoy about my work. I’ve loved working on lots of different projects, but I’m almost ready to go full-time again, maybe for someone else, or kicking off a startup (whether a consumer thing or something that elevates and focusses the consulting game).</p><p>These things are all related.</p><blockquote><p>Men will literally <insert something complicated and/or absurd> instead of going to therapy</p></blockquote><p>^ That was me for a while. Figuring out I’m not a man kinda helped me figure out I could actually go to therapy.</p><p>How much of this new re-birthed me I share in public I’m not sure of yet, but after years of keeping me/them hidden I’m ready to write and publish again.</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="personal" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2023-10-23:sucking-it-up</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2023-10/sucking-it-up/" /> <title>Sucking it Up</title> <published>2023-10-23</published> <summary> In which white dudes... </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Tim Bray is very much an elder white tech dude, but his discovering and documenting his priviledge has been interesting; here he figures out something:</p><blockquote><p>That system depends on another class doing shitty jobs for low pay, mostly women and people of color. One of the biggest reduce-racial-injustice policy moves I can think of would be to pay those people more. It’s pretty easy to see how powerful individuals (mostly white) who might not personally be racist are economically invested in the racist status quo.</p></blockquote><p>And the real kicker:</p><blockquote><p>I think (you won’t be surprised) the problem isn’t the tech worker bees, it’s the big-money culture. Because big money attracts morally crippled people. There’s the VC-driven winner-take-all growth-hacking buzz of the Bay Aryans, and the world of big finance it feeds into, and neither of those cultures offers rewards for doing the right thing.</p><p>...</p><p>Is it fair to say that we should have seen it coming? ... That uncritically empowering anyone to say anything to anybody leads inexorably to GamerGate and KiwiFarms and slaughtered Rohingya?</p></blockquote><p>There’s also an awkward thing where he doesn’t like the “Ok Boomer” tag, which I’ve heard from other boomers but doesn’t really make sense (like, when the label doesn’t apply to you, maybe simply ignore it?)... But I think he gets it overall</p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="links" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2022-09-22:untitled-dispatch</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2022-09/untitled-dispatch/" /> <title>Untitled Dispatch</title> <published>2022-09-22</published> <summary> In which a message is received, from a distant planet </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Time passes. And space.</p><p>I awake in a familiar home, on an unfamiliar planet. My eyes adjust to the light, the lenses applying a new white-balance, making the contrasts easier to see beneath the pink-tinged sky.</p><p>I take a deep breath, hold it while my lungs re-calibrate. A lot more gases in the air here, but enough oxygen to work with if my filters hold up.</p><p>With feeling returning to my limbs, I pull myself up and to the edge of the bed. Not sure if it’s the 1.2 gravity or an after-effect of however much time I’ve spent travelling, but the exertion is a lot.</p><p>Fortunately the hab has been productive during our travel. Mushrooms and leafy greens and grassy grains keep my nutrition covered. It’s also recycled the materials from our last posting, and will have more of the base established in another few hours. Time enough to get a walk in and orient myself.</p><hr><p>I walk in a loop, a concentric spiral expanding outwards. At first just a hundred metres from the hab, then 200, and on. When I’m 500 metres out I turn back. It’s been a couple of hours, and the hab has expanded, with new compartments for keeping clean, growing more food, and—core to this mission—alchemy.</p><p>I start in the cleaning station, scrubbing off a layer of grime from travel, dust from this new planet, and skin from the last. I’m paler here, my dermal implants already figuring out I should absorb more light through the pale red atmosphere. I dry carefully — my new skin is prone to break out if I leave it wet, and it’s humid enough here anyway.</p><p>Feeling fresh, it’s time to plan my next few weeks’ work. I’d spotted a few mining opportunities in my local loop, and the alchemy lab will have an idea of our priority targets.</p><hr><p>Time passes. Space is the same though, I think? I know I have a tendency to lose myself in my work but this feels different. I couldn’t tell you how long I’ve been here. Or even been away.</p><p>Wait—</p><p>What’s the last thing I remember? I look back at my journal — the last entry is from when I first woke here. The memory sounds familiar, but there’s nothing since then. Any earlier is fuzzy too. I’m sure there were missions before this, and I remember my training placement on Luna.</p><p>My body’s changed so much that it’s no longer a measure of time. Changes to my eyes to handle the light, to my skin to absorb more or less radiation. I open a mirror and close it again, unwilling to look too long at the stranger who is also me, like this hab on a foreign planet is also home, always has been.</p><hr><p>The alchemy lab has sent me further than ever today. Six k’s in one direction is a great canyon, and I’m supposed to descend into it. We’ve picked up a fresh vein on the scanner another k deep. I’ve got the ropes and pulleys I need for the descent, but I need to spread it out, find some spaces to rest and adjust to the atmosphere and the changing pressure.</p><p>The sun is blocked before I’m halfway down; it feels like night come early. My body adjusts to handle the cold, but it costs me in time, and I’m wishing I’d brought some warm clothes.</p><p>Eventually I reach the vein. It’s still dark down here, but if I squint I can see light returning to the sky way above — a shift from purple to pink. I look back to the vein and my ears nearly pop.</p><p>It’s such a bright glowing colour I can HEAR it, pulsing. The lab only needs a sample but I want to take it all. Hang on. Is this how the prospectors of Old Earth felt? I catch myself, say a prayer to the planet, the pulsing eases. I scoop out a little of the vein. It has a consistency like lava, but it breaks like crystal. That’s unexpected. I pinch off a little between my fingers, and it disappears like fine salt — whether fallen or absorbed I can’t quite tell.</p><hr><p>Time moves slow.</p><p>I’m halfway back up the canyon.</p><p>I’m at the top.</p><p>I can see the hab. It’s only 100 metres away.</p><p>I’m walking up to the lab. Opening the door. Pulling out the alchemy gear for analysis.</p><p>The sample is smaller than I remember.</p><hr><p>What time is it? There’s no light out. I don’t remember a time with no light here.</p><p>The lab! I’m supposed to be bringing the sample back.</p><p>I’m halfway back up the canyon.</p><p>I’m at the top.</p><p>I can see the hab. It’s only 100 metres away. I’m walking up to the lab, opening the door, pulling out— No. The alchemy gear is already setup for analysis. It shows a result.</p><p>It can’t be, that’s impossible.</p><p>I pull the sample out of my bag to run it again. Huh, less of it than I remember. I load it up for analysis.</p><hr><p>Time passes.</p><p>I’m in a familiar home, on an unfamiliar planet. My body is having no problems adjusting to it though, so I must have been here before. The pink-tinged sky is familiar, maybe?</p><p>The walls, though— something different. A teal-ish mineral vein, pulsing between the seams. I haven’t seen this before. The hab is supposed to be good at self-preservation; it’s the most consistently grey in all my travels. I reach for it, pinch some between my fingers, it dissolves there.</p><p>I head to the lab.</p><p>The alchemy computers have gone to sleep, but they whir back into action after a few prods. There’s a test result waiting on the screen. It’s what we’ve been looking for! The «Philosopher’s Stone» is a living salt-based organism, not an empty rock. But I can understand why the ancients couldn’t really describe this substance. Small amounts of it must have crashed with meteorites on Old Earth, but here it was embedded. Even small doses messed with our sense of time — my own and the hab’s computers. This planet was like a black hole in time — pulling in and extending and spaghetti-fying our sense of change. Here we could truly live forever.</p><hr><p>Time passes.</p><hr><p>** Message Received — data incomplete, waiting for completion — … — … — signal received — … — ends? **</p><p>** Recommendation: cease protocol. Abort Project Ganymede. — **</p><hr><p>“You have to see this!”</p><p>“What—?”</p><p>“New signal. Twenty light years out. But it’s tagged for Project Ganymede”</p><p>“The project we started last year?”</p><p>“The very one.”</p><p>They brought the dispatch up on screen. It took me a while to figure out what we were looking at—</p><p>“We haven’t even found this planet yet?!”</p><p>“We haven’t found this planet yet.”</p><p>“And they’re sending images too. This can’t be real, right?”</p><p>The images looked like an archaeological dig — a guardian statue in front of an ancient temple. But weirdly other-worldly, a pink sky, and glowing blue veins in the walls of the temple.</p><p>“But get this. That ‘statue’ has an ID-sig signed by Ganymede.”</p><p>I stared into its face. Its eyes and skin were an unusual colour, but something about it was oddly familiar. My own reflection overlaid on the screen a little too closely.</p><p>I’d been thinking about a transfer to the Ganymede project…</p><hr><p>Time passes.</p><hr><p><a href="#top">Reset ➰</a></p> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="writing" /> </entry> <entry> <id>tag:wintermute.com.au,2015-03-22:they-cannot-go-back</id> <link rel="alternate" href="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/2015-03/they-cannot-go-back/" /> <title>They cannot go back</title> <published>2015-03-22</published> <summary> In which a dreamer wakes, a world emerging </summary> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Wrote this this morning. It comes, I think, from the opening of the second act of the new novel. Sam, Kate, and Luke are our protagonists; Kate has been in a coma for the whole of the first act, and when she wakes, things change.</p><blockquote class="script"><p>Kate opens her eyes. Sam is there, talking to another woman she doesn't know. She can't make out the words, but something at the back of her mind tears at her. She wants to speak up, but can't find the words. She wants to yell. Scream. Nothing.Nothing. Black—</p><p>Kate wakes, opens her eyes. Sees— herself, looking back up at her. She's floating above her body, looking around the room. Luke is there, dozing in the corner. Sam is outside the door, arguing with someone she can't see. She tries to open her mouth. No sound comes out. She falls, crashes back into her body. Black—</p><p>Kate wakes, but it's dark. Is she in the hospital room, or in that other place? Her eyes adjust, take in the moonlight. The moon isn't as bright as in the other place, she must be <em>here</em>. As her mind catches up with her body, feeling slowly returns. The bed under her is still. The room is empty. She can't tell what time it is, but it's quiet out.</p><p>She remembers she had to tell Sam and Luke something. Warn them. She doesn't know what it is, but she's sure it's urgent. She has to tell them now! She has to get! up!</p><p>She pulls her legs up, has to use her arms for balance. Props herself up on a pillow. Pauses for breath, her arms shaking from the smallest exertion. Deep breath and spins herself off the bed, legs hanging over the edge, and falls into a crouch.</p><p>Everything hurts, muscles tired, but she has to get out. Has to warn Sam and Luke. They can't try again, it's a trap.</p><p>She pulls herself up standing, stumbles towards the door, and crashes into it. She's suddenly aware of the sound, a high-pitched whine coming from somewhere behind her, echoed somewhere down the hall, and there's a nurse on the other side of the door, pushing gently against her, trying to get in, bundling her back to the bed.</p><p>"They can't go back!" she's crying, over and over, but the nurse isn't listening, or doesn't care. "It's not safe there!", as she falls back into a sleep, slips into the darkness.</p></blockquote> </div> </content> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/bits/" term="writing" /> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/tags/" term="Immortals" /> <category scheme="http://wintermute.com.au/tags/" term="Dreaming" /> </entry> </feed>
