May 12, 2005 – Oakland, California

This trip was prime, just as the label said.

Mac had no idea where the bottle of pills had come from, but this was the highest he’d ever been, even after fifteen years of experience with some hard pharmaceuticals. The trip, or whatever you wanted to call this altered state, just seemed to go on and on, making everything seem even more real, if that were at all possible. Philosophy wasn’t his strong suit, but you could get into some incredible conversations with the people on the streets. The reincarnation of Emperor Norton, for instance, was said to be haunting the Presidio, but Mac rarely had reason to go to San Francisco.

This stuff, Prime if he remembered the name right, seemed to do interesting things to his senses, especially his sense of time. He seemed to be taking a breath every three minutes, give or take, but that couldn’t be right, could it? Just like those weird streaks of motion that lingered around the flies that moved around the dumpster, each wing’s beat clearly visible even twelve feet away. Wicked…

He looked up at Interstate 980, and he swore he could see the street lights strobe faintly as the traffic seemed to crawl by on its way deeper into the city. That when he saw it, whatever it was.

It looked, frankly, like God’s Own Calligraphy Brush, but that didn’t seem right. But the ‘brush’ moved through the air, and strange symbols appeared in the air, kind of like those he would see on those Asian comic books. Whatever those people used instead of the alphabet. Part of Mac’s mind tried to focus on finding the right word, sure that he knew it somewhere in his memories, but the fascination of the Brush drawing its strange chicken scratches was just too compelling to not watch.

The symbols seemed to glow in the air to his eyes, although no one else noticed anything, or at least no one called attention to it. Then again, there were maybe half a dozen people in the area, and they were entirely too busy trying to get along with whatever passed for their lives. The sight pulled at his eyes, so much so that it felt like he trying to look down the tube of a running vacuum cleaner. The pressure to watch compelled him, so he stared, unblinking, as the brush continued its alien writings.

The brush disappeared, then was replaced with another brush, one more suited for inking a penciled sketch into something permanent. Mac watched in compulsive fascination, as the brush drew in lines flowing from the Interstate to a point about fifteen feet in the air. The lines reminded him of… speed? Yeah, speed, kind of like the smoke trails you’d see when that coyote chased that personification of avian speed on Saturday morning television. Mac wished he could remembered the name of that damned critter, but that reality might as well have been another country.

Then there seemed to be something like… circles? Yeah, circles appeared, danced around until the brush pinned them down, and forced them into a caricature of a human being. The more the brush flowed with its divine ink, the more real the figure became. The figure was merely monochrome, but it personified beauty and clean lines. In a sense, it was a sketch on a piece of paper come to life, if you could accept the notion of sketching on a tesseract. The language never occurred to Mac; he was entirely too busy just experiencing it, the phantom observer of creation.

Color flowed into the figure once the lines were completed. The colors shimmied up and down the spectrum before settling down to what the Creator apparently wished. Blue hair, that was interesting, but he’d seen more garish hairstyles on Castro. This was just straight, silky locks. The face was beautiful, but seemed to lack flaw, which made it extremely attractive, but also a little unearthly. Asian features, a short, petite frame, but obviously feminine, the figure hovered five meters in the air, caught in mid-leap. Clothes appeared, a simple t-shirt and jeans, covered by a windbreaker and shod with running shoes.

Mac gazed upon this glowing creation, and a sense of awed rapture filled his mind. He smiled quietly to himself as the brush sketched the final touches, and then a small kanji appeared just to the right and beneath the hovering figure. Mac looked at that symbol, and realized that was a mistake when the symbol looked back at him, aware of his observation. The observer affects the observed, of course, but uncertainty is a two way street…

* * * * * * * * * *

Hayase Misa hit the ground running, utterly amazed at herself. What had been going through her mind, she railed internally, to consider leaping off a skyway and landing on the surface street… sixty feet below? More? God only knew.

She looked at the spot where she landed after she came to a complete stop, and observed where she had shattered the pavement from the impact, then each stride continued to crack the asphalt until she slowed down to something human rather than highway speeds. The young woman breathed deeply of the night air, and found it delightful. She was free, free of her family and their stultifying way, their unending criticism and impossible expectations. She vowed never to go back, but keep moving forward, to find her way in the world.

But at the moment, she needed a place to sleep. She walked past a prone figure on a bench, not even noticing the spacey smile, the unblinking gaze, or the fact that its chest no longer rose nor fell. Her eyes cast about her, and she noticed a church in the distance that seemed to catch her attention. Heartened, she broke into a steady jog toward the shelter that beckoned.