***Note that this is the text only version. If you prefer a fun stylized format, I posted it just before this.***
_____
Subject: “Codename Onyx”
Agent William,
Sending over the first of the info we talked about. This is not your typical surveillance report—there's something off about our subject, and we’re getting closer to proving it. Keep this low-key, and give me your take on it.
The attached text is a transcript of an audio recording made by the subject, apparently submitted anonymously just days ago. We'll discuss the details in person next weekend at “The Arcade.”
Also, don't show up empty-handed.
Stay sharp,
N. A.
_________________________________________________
*Click*
(Cardiff speaking)
“And then it’s recording, you see the red dot? Dun da daaa! Record recoooordddd! And then to stop it you just-”
*Click*
*Static*
*13 seconds of Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" plays*
*Click*
(Onyx speaking)
“Okay let’s see, test test, is it working?”
*Click*
“Okay great it’s working, simple enough! Uhh this is Captain S’kara’k Onyx of Fleet 734- …..actually I guess I don’t have to give the official intro on this thing. Habit. This is my very first audio log on this machine which is called an “8-Track.” It feels a little weird… I’m so used to using the FST, but I thought it might be nice to record something personal for a change, and for that I have to be completely off network. There’s no way I’d record this on the ship, no matter how well I think I could hide it.
Let’s see…It is winter of the Earth year 1972, I am on campus in Cardiff’s office. This machine is brand new and technically property of the university so we aren’t allowed to take it home, unfortunately. I’m looking out the window to a light snow falling. There are only a couple students to be seen at the moment, as class is currently in session. In fact, that’s what Cardiff is up to right now…teaching. I have been thinking recently about what they do here and what they know and just how perfectly it goes along with what it is I’m doing and what I hope to do. Such a perfect orchestration. Which leads me to what I suppose is the reason I wanted to make this recording. I want to save a memory.Last night was one of the most beautiful nights of my entire life. But first, a little context.
So, it was a couple months ago…Cardiff and I went to a place called New York City! And that’s like a whole different story for another day but… AH! It was just wonderful. Certainly the tallest place I’ve seen on Earth so far. The tallest buildings were about half the height of our tallest back home.
Anyway, we basically just explored around all day every day, and on one particular morning we were walking on the sidewalk passing shops and such when something caught my eye in one of the large windows. A very large fluffy bear toy. And it was surrounded by other toys and such and I noticed this was a store for children, but at first glance through the windows I saw how tall the ceiling was and I realized this was much larger than any store for children I have seen here thus far. So I grabbed Cardiff’s hand, flung the door open, and dragged them in behind me. I say dragged but they are almost always willing to go where I go, if not enthusiastically so.
This store was indeed magnificent, the strangest combination of elegant and whimsical. Clearly for children, yet designed to match the style of the big city. We probably spent hours in that store, not only because it was indeed rather large, but also because there were just endless entertaining things to see. I was seriously overjoyed at all of it, and of course Cardiff endlessly made me laugh…. In the back corner of the store, surrounded by, ironically enough, space exploration and alien-themed toys…they had these cute little so-called “alien” fluffy pillow toys. Green with large black eyes, kind of like the M’ertricks. That seems to be the general consensus of what “aliens” look like here. *chuckles* Anyway, in the back corner of this room there was something just wonderful. I had seen one before a few times, and have always been so amused by them! They are called “Gumball Machines.” The first one I ever saw was here in London, but they are much more popular in America where we were. The first time I saw one, we walked up just as a few children were being assisted by their mother to utilize it. She inserted the currency into the front, and when the ball of candy began to roll down the spiral, the children! Oh, their reaction, I could never forget it. They were banging their little hands on the glass, somewhere between laughing and screaming, just as delighted as anyone could ever be. I remember thinking to myself, how much more money than that coin we have spent on things that bring a fraction of that joy. When they received their treat, they popped it into their mouths and just as soon lost interest in it. The joy was not in the candy, but in the way they acquired it. That has been on my mind a lot recently.
Anyway, so yes, back to this toy store in New York. Well, it was a Gumball Machine, however this one was absolutely enormous compared to any I had seen before. Probably a good 12 feet tall! And my goodness, it was just beautiful. The most vibrant cherry red, perfectly maintained and polished. Despite its large size, the balls of gum were not oversized accordingly. They were the same small size as typical, although there was no place to put quarters! It appeared the candy inside was simply for visual display, as was the entire gumball machine! And the whole thing suddenly became rather ironic. Why remove the aspect that brought the most joy? Who was this store designed for, anyway? Why have a gumball machine that large if you can’t even play with it? Anyway, despite the children in the vicinity paying it essentially no mind, I was of course enamored with this thing. I told Cardiff how I wished we could have taken it back home with us here to London.
Now, fast forward a few months to last night. Last night. *sighs* So it turns out that yesterday marked what Cardiff has decided is our two-year anniversary. I asked why that particular date, as it was not the day we met. They said that was the day that we TRULY SAW each other for the first time. Cardiff is very fond of the customary anniversary sentiment they have in this culture, and so they insisted we go out to dinner, with little flames on the tables. But this restaurant was not particularly fancy, just really unusually creative. Cardiff knows I prefer that over elegance any day. After dinner we walked the long way home through the park, which was extra lovely because the moon was completely full. We sat on a bench facing the pond, the moon reflecting off the water, melting into ripples with the occasional fish jumping for a bug on the surface of the water. We didn’t talk much, just sat and enjoyed the night, which gave me time to contemplate, and I caught myself in a bit of a surreal moment where, on the one hand, I can’t believe that I’ve known them for that long already. And yet simultaneously being surprised that I would even consider 2 years “that long” in the first place. I have only known them about 1/400th of my life!! Why does it feel like such a large percentage? I found myself noticing more than ever recently how detached I feel from my life before I met them. Well…detached isn’t the right word, because my past is still right there…but…. It’s more like…Those vinyl record player discs. It’s like life before Cardiff was one side of the disc, and when I met Cardiff, the disc flipped. Side B of my life began, and with it a whole new set of songs.
So sitting on the bench next to Cardiff, our fingers interlocked, our breaths fogging up the cold air, all I could think of was… how this beautiful person next to me came out of nothing and yet now was somehow everything to me.
When we got home, once we got settled, Cardiff told me that they had a gift for me. I thought the dinner experience had already been the gift, so I was of course delighted for another surprise. They told me to close my eyes for a few moments, and when I opened them there was Cardiff smiling their giant toothy smile, with arms stretched outward towards me holding the most wonderful gift anyone has ever given me in all my years of life.
It was a gumball machine. Of course not the large ones you see in the stores, but a small one, like would fit on a desk, just a little over a foot tall. But despite its cute size, it was very well crafted, sturdy metal and glass, beautiful shiny chrome all over, and of course filled to the brim with gumballs, red, green and blue. When I tell you that my jaw DROPPED! I grabbed it from them and held it in astonishment and admiration for a moment before throwing my arms around Cardiff and telling them how much I loved it and how much it meant to me that they would think of such a perfect and meaningful gift for me.
Well, it wasn’t long after that, well, our clothes were off. *chuckles* I will tell more of our living arrangements on another day, but I will just say Cardiff’s loft is QUITE cozy, especially on these recent cold nights. The lighting is just exquisite, soft, warm, my favorite aspect of which is that marvelous light source they call a “lava lamp.” Anyway I say this just to emphasize the romance ambience of the evening. And despite how many nights we have spent together, life somehow finds a way to keep raising the bar. I continue to find deeper levels of love for them. There is more to them beneath the surface than I could have ever imagined. I often wonder, how could someone who has traveled almost nowhere at all compared to myself still be such a compatible partnership for me? I suppose our depth is not measured by what we have seen, but by how much we desire to see.
One of the ways our connection has been deepening recently is through our physical touch. It just keeps becoming more and more wonderful, especially with the breathing techniques I taught that they have been practicing. And so last night, at one point we were connected, in every sense of the word, when looking into each other's eyes, something happened that I have never experienced anything like before. Well, first off, last night during our love-making I was presenting as my real body, and I was also projecting Cardiff into a Shallmari body. Of course I’m used to the closeness that comes with this type of linking, but last night was something else. Something happened to us. Suddenly, we JUMPED. We like, SWITCHED! At first it was enough to do one’s head in, because we were looking into each other’s eyes, when suddenly I was looking at myself! It all happened faster than it could be contemplated before we appeared to be back in our bodies. But the most remarkable thing was that I was not alone in the experience! Cardiff ALSO had the same experience of being in my body at the same moment. We talked about it for a few minutes. Needless to say we were halfway between shock and delight. We admittedly both enjoyed the experience so much that we wanted to try to make it happen again. So we, uh, built our momentum up again… *laughs* And well, we weren’t able to get there again. HOWEVER, we did manage to tap into that energy again but to a lesser degree. For just a few moments. We could both feel it. As if a bridge had been made, and we were both standing on our sides of the bridge, but we couldn’t cross it. But the bridge was there and it was…US. We were both the bridge and there was only one bridge and therefore…we were one. Not figuratively, and not in a big universal way that goes without saying…but… literally…in a way I don’t have words for other than the simple reiteration that…we were…One.
An hour later or so, we had finished. We were sprawled across the chaise lounge facing the large windows overlooking the rooftops of London. Despite the cold, we opened the windows wide open to the balcony, the dancing curtains framing the view of the city below and perfectly framed in our view, because of course, was the full moon. We sat in silence, catching our breath, Cardiff smoking a cigarette. I was laying down, my head resting on their naked legs.
My head was swirling a little bit, but in a good way. I felt a certain weight of significance in the air… it had been a truly transcendent night and I was basking in the afterglow. And perhaps it was within this alignment, my moment of pure allowance, that the idea slipped through the crack and into my mind. And as soon as it did, it was the only thing that made any sense. Suddenly the last two years jumped into clear view in ways I had not even considered before. And then suddenly that viewpoint opened up to the even larger scale of my entire life, and I saw all the moments in my life that had contributed to my being here, in this room, on this planet, with this person. And I saw how everything had been intertwined from the beginning, that this was the destiny I had always been carving out for myself, one dream at a time.
And then I saw the future. Or rather, I felt it for a moment. I knew what I should do. It’s not like I hadn’t been considering it over time, but suddenly it was crystal clear. I shifted on Cardiff’s lap to readjust my neck, and upon looking in the new direction…what was direct and center in my focus? The gumball machine. Sitting on the small bedside table, reflecting glimmers of excitement, the purple aura of the lava lamp on its one side and the white glow of the moon on the other. And as soon as I saw it I knew. I laughed out loud at such a ridiculous idea. Cardiff asked what was so funny. I didn’t answer for a few moments. I just stared at the moon. The silent, bright, beckoning, beautiful moon. A smile began to spread even further across my face. Finally I asked, still looking at the moon,“Do you want to build something with me?”Cardiff said, “Build what?”I said… “Something….extraordinary.”Cardiff didn’t answer for a few moments either, and so I rolled my head to look up at them. Our eyes met and they beamed down at me on their lap. They had never looked so beautiful before. They had the tiniest of all smirks. And they still didn’t reply so I just stared into their eyes. The same eyes I had just seen out of myself minutes ago. Those eyes I had fallen in love with again and again every day for two years. Those silent, bright, beckoning, beautiful eyes.Finally, they said with a soft-spoken smile,
“With you? ……….Anything.”*Click*