TRY

                  TO

                                   ALLOW

Melissa

TEN YEARS FROM NOW…

Suddenly Melissa is at the United Nations. 

Just a second ago she was sleeping in, steadfastly ignoring morning’s glare, and now she’s standing bare-foot, flannel pants and tank top, facing dozens of dignitaries enthroned behind semi-circled rows of mahogany. They don’t look dignified right now, though – these terrified fuckers clearly want to run, but they just squirm and freak out in place, like invisible elastic bands are holding them down and they can’t take it anymore. In their distress, they don’t notice Melissa at all. She feels a brush against her ankle, like when a cat slinks by, but there’s no cat, and suddenly a large presence looms oppressively behind her, pushing into her right shoulder with a sickening chill-filled damp; a creepy, scratchy voice whispers like nails on chalkboard down her ear canal.

BRINK – Now, prove!

Melissa tries to turn her head to see the ominous spectre that darkens her peripheral, but the presence moves with her, a smokey shadow that stays out of reach.

A wind curls around the semi-circular podium, gathering dust and light, swirling into semi-substance to her left: another presence ready to converse in shimmering time with its lulling music. She barely registers the lyrics under her enthrallment with the song. 

MELLOW – Melissa, be calm. As promised, we have come. We find this lost one, your Earth, just as you said, soul planetized, stripped and bled in orbit as a slave, spinning out days in place, crying.  Abused, choking, dying. Harmed! Infested! We must act! Take eir life back from the rampant growth that’s run amok. If chance favours luck, we will rid Earth of eir cancer, heal eim, claim eim home. Yet here your species roam, maybe conscious manifestation, so first we take deliberations to test your claim. 

Blooming plumes, both presences grow into view and Melissa watches them, fascinated. Smoke dancing with light; colour twisting with shadows. The more animated they become, the more particles they draw together from the air, creating intricately complex spirals of glittery specks swimming like shoals of fish in a dizzying smoke of constant movement that keeps rhythm with their laguified expressions. The swish-swoosh-wind of their movements creates a white-noise percussive undercurrent, a tug on the ear, a pattern of thrum. They rise together from either side of her like they’re the genie and she’s the bottle, expanding out and back in, swirling and dancing their air, dust, and vapour trails into an ever-shifting mandala of movement that soon covers the entire ceiling as a masterpiece of beauty-in-motion, a backward waterfall of air currents captured and contained by the walls of the room. 

Melissa can’t look away, but most of the dignitaries remain oblivious, despite the gusts blowing down on them, despite the beauty of Mellow and Brink’s expressive windsong. It’s amazing. She feels absolutely amazed.  Terrified, and amazed. Back when they were still safely far away, these entities treated her to light shows that spanned galaxies, but that wasn’t real, not really, or at least that’s what she’d thought, when they were still just an exercise in imagination. This is something else. Mellow and Brink are embodying the elements directly; they are manifesting on this three dimensional planet using the matter here. This is actually happening. 

They have arrived. 

BRINK – Hold, hold! No claim! All life here rose in place, races of creatures native to the plane. 

MELLOW – This refrain? Make the case.

It takes all Melissa’s concentration to pull words from the musical intentions flying around, but establishing coherence from those words is another story. She tries to let meaning wash over her even when she can’t make sense.

BRINK – All and everything here is waste from one soul’s manifested longing for home. Earth’s desperate reaching, self-conscious glomming, just feeble tries for escape gone wrong. Scraped-off spirit. Solid song. Each cell imbued from one source alone.

MELLOW – Both dwellers and home. And so, even so, they may hold stake. 

BRINK –  Overruled! Slaked consciousness subsumes or returns to source in due course of the weather. Earth will only be better, by meaningful measures. Nothing is taken, no balance owed. And so, even so! If conscious, they are killers, failed losers or cruel abusers, at least wasteful users, thus no consideration comes due. The entire question is moot. 

MELLOW – A branch, not a root. Nothing yet precludes a test.

BRINK – And Melissa is the best sample?

A swirl of smokey dust winds around Melissa’s head, wrapping itself in a clench that fills her nose and chokes her throat for three full seconds before dissipating. The coughing fit that wracks her body burns her lungs like hot steel wool, leaving her voice hoarse and painful and her eyes, streaming. Her hands involuntarily grasp as she gasps for air. She feels shocked. It’s not that an entity has never hurt her before, but never from the outside, never as an external force. She shouldn’t be facing this alone. Where is her intermediary, her protector? Where is her guardian angel?

MELISSA – Mav! Where are you? I’m afraid.

She doesn’t really expect an answer, and she doesn’t get one. Instead, ribbons of smokey glitter twist together, like snakey ropes hanging down from the overhead swirl, knitting and weaving themselves into something human and familiar emerging from the patterns. Static and shade form a larger-than-life visage as Brink prepares to taunt her moment of weakness.

BRINK – Are you abandoned, betrayed? And so, even so, debts must be paid. You pretend this is all a surprise, like you haven’t been trading potentials and lives all this time! So the rent comes due, and you whine? 

Pink, white, and green prismic light glint off the air ribbons that spin themselves into Mellow’s embodiment of choice, the bulging eyes and triangular face of a translucent praying mantis, looming in and out of swirling focus. Giant orbs grow to fill half the room, inspecting Melissa like she’s the bug under the microscope. 

MELLOW – Melissa, know: if conscious life has beneficial control we will not simply roll the weather over, we work together, try to leave you whole. But on the whole, we contend you measure short for such concessions, your apparent consciousness seems simply a reflection, a reflex of Earth’s manifested tension and wish to go home. 

MELISSA – What? 

BRINK – You are hair growing on Earth’s head. If you dance it is the wind that raises your dead weight. You are polyps, grown legs. Cancerous waste.

MELLOW – Enough. You don’t need to understand to call that bluff, you only need be something more than Earth’s sluffed-off skin, not just detritus and kin blown asunder, but an actual wonder, matter imbued with life. We have full evidence to contradict the view, but in retort, we present you. 

MELISSA – Well, shit.

Is she supposed to stand in for some kind of proof in one of their convoluted tests? Without Mav to mediate she has no idea how to parse this. She stands, utterly alone, without protection, at the fucking UN, barely holding on to her senses  Surely this must be a dream, but clearly, it’s not.

First Mellow, then Brink, dissipates face, releasing excess particles in a quiet, dusty rain to the ground. Melissa feels they are losing steam – the thrum of movement slows above, the air thickening rain clouds, their complex patterns congealing more and more into diamond stones up there. As the gathering solid pieces gain weight they fall like little bullets, but instead of hitting anything they burst and scatter in mid-air after only a few feet, snowing dust that blows into the corners and crevices of the floor. Melissa senses that her not-imaginary friends are having trouble corporealizing; holding solid matter is resource-heavy work, even when it’s just particles and vapour on air currents. That’s good, she thinks, or hopes. Maybe we still have time.

FLORA – What exactly are they saying?

One of the dignitaries has stopped struggling and watches Melissa with eyes half closed, trying to see what’s really going on. Another soul in the room who can see something, that’s helpful. Melissa tries to simplify what she’s taken in from the Shakespearean garble of the entities’ rhythmic intentions. She’s pretty much translating for the other woman at the same time as for herself, but editing liberally along the way. She doesn’t owe anyone anything she doesn’t want to share. 

MELISSA – They think we’re not conscious creatures, we’re just, like, Earth, trying to escape orbit and go home by assembling some of its molecules into us. We’re nerve endings that walk around. 

FLORA – I don’t understand.

MELISSA – Well, neither do I. But, like, if Earth is a soul that got stuck out here, in space, solidified, planetized, then we’re just gloms of Earth trying to venture back out into space. Which we did, like a long time ago, so that actually worked, in a way. But these entities, Mellow and Brink, they figure if they change the weather and kill us that’s ok, since we’re really just bits of Earth anyway, like the grass or soil.

FLORA – What do they want?

MELISSA – I think they want to test our level of consciousness to see if they have to try to work with us or if they can just wipe us out, outright, and take over Earth.

FLORA – They think we’re not conscious?

MELISSA – What do you think I’ve been saying? Look, I know this is stressful but try to keep up. How many of these people here can see? 

FLORA – I don’t know…

MELISSA – Well how long have you been here? Aren’t you all supposed to be the best and brightest or something? I may not know much but I know who’s awake around me! Look, just try to get people’s attention and tell them to calm down and listen. The ties only bind against their struggle, so they should make like trees and root. 

The woman just stares.

MELISSA – It’s your energy from struggling that gives them a field to set in motion, which is what’s holding you down in the first place. It’s a party trick. 

Shit, that was a mistake! Melissa ducks fearfully, alert for any sign of mood change above, hardly daring to hope her blunder has passed unpunished. She knows better than to say that word around Brink and Mellow! For them, there is no worse insult than to be accused of tricks, and they don’t take kindly to insults. She lowers her voice, like that can help.

MELISSA – Look, you’re holding still for a while, calm, and now you’re less stuck. See? Got it? Pass it on. Okay? I need to concentrate. I’m trying to find a friend. Don’t interrupt me and don’t freak out if I do anything weird. 

Melissa turns deliberately away, leaving the deer to her headlights. She doesn’t have the capacity to babysit. It’s the end of the world if she’s not careful, and probably even if she is. Mellow and Brink told her what was coming, and if she only half believed her own reality it doesn’t matter, now. They have arrived, and everyone here is fucked.

Melissa has enough experience to guess that Mellow and Brink’s current lull doesn’t mean they are gone, they’re probably just too lazy to do more than absolutely necessary. As long as everyone here keeps struggling themselves into cages and missing the show, Brink/Mellow won’t see much point watching or performing. Time doesn’t feel the same way to them. If things stay boring, they might even forget about all this for the length of a spell, and she wants that space to process.

In the years that she’s been entertaining entities, Melissa has never encountered so much reality slapping her in the face. Where is Mav? How could ei leave her to navigate now, when it’s not games and hypotheticals anymore, when the entire planet is at stake? It’s true, they didn’t leave things exactly amicably, the last time, and it has been a long time, but surely ei won’t leave her without armour, without guidance, without a voice, during the fucking invasion of fucking Earth? Ei will show up, won’t ei?

Or maybe ei bailed so totally that ei doesn’t even know or care to know what happens next. She can believe it. Why would ei choose her, anyway? Maybe, this time, when it actually matters, it’s up to her alone.

Either-or misses the score, her mind pings at her, a remnant of Mav’s lazy, irony-skewed reminders pushing to the surface. Retro help. It’s true that something is missing in the equation that Mellow/Brink presented. If she understands them correctly, they are trying to determine whether Melissa represents an entire race of consciousness separate from Earth, or if she is just one of billions of dead skin cells to be exfoliated off the planet. But neither of those conclusions feels valid. Melissa knows she is more than just molecules. She is not all animal instinct, she is also conscious awareness, separate from Earth, something else. She is Self. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t made from Earth, a creature of Earth. So what does that mean?

She thinks: If I test for consciousness and pass, it still seems likely that I’ll be held personally accountable for the dire state of Earth’s health, so we might lose, anyway. And in the grand scheme, one human, conscious or not, is small. How do I account for everyone else and their consciousness? We would need to be a single species in negotiations, and people suck, we would never get agreement. But what if Brink is right, and humans are just bits of Earth trying to get free from the Sun? Does it naturally follow that we can be exterminated? Doesn’t it actually mean that I can speak for Earth? That I can be Earth’s conscious representative? A planet is big enough to matter – what if, instead of speaking for my species, I speak as my planet?

Just forming the questions feels far enough for now. It’s possible that opening two competing questions might actually be a good way to tie Mellow/Brink up for a while, make them define the terms, delay their judgement. And now might be a good time, while they’re tired from all that heavy lifting of glitter dust and air. Melissa feels surprised to find herself bold. She decides to call them and try her theories. Why wait? Time rarely improves a deteriorating situation. Who needs Mav? She’s got this.

Centering her Being on her breath, Melissa engages a pattern of movements that she knows opens pathways preferred by the entities. She speaks aloud so the people in the room will at least hear her side of things.

MELISSA – So what?

A harmony of Mellow and Brink echoes her sound waves back at her in a rhythm that speeds and rises then dissipates like sand – so what so what so what so what so what so what?

MELISSA – So what if we’re not a separate consciousness from Earth? That means we ARE the consciousness of Earth, manifested here. So what I say is what Earth says. I speak for the Earth, an entity of consciousness.

Melissa ducks reflexively, narrowly avoiding a swipe of nasty, smokey cloud swinging for her head. Brink’s favourite, villainous face morphs in and out of the gently vibrating cloud above.

BRINK – A thimble like you? Then that would be true of all of you. Dismissed.

MELLOW – Hold, hold, Melissa’s bold claim has merit. Not every life here speaks for the whole planet, true, but that does not preclude the potential some do. Perhaps she is formed for this.

Melissa sees her moment to shake the jar.

MELISSA – But it’s not just that. Because I’m not just a conduit for Earth to say eir piece. I’m also me, I’m Melissa, I’m a conscious life form separate from Earth, aware separate from Earth, and I claim sovereignty on this planet beyond my flesh and blood.

MELLOW – Oh, now you’ve stirred the mud.

Melissa finds it harder and harder to pull anything like language from the air of Mellow and Brink’s intentions, their discussions among themselves soon occupying a frequency she can’t tune, swirling above at a speed that turns their patterns invisible except for occasional wisps and flashes; inaudible, except as a high-pitched static. She abandons her movement sequence, roots down, and watches what’s going on.

As she’d hoped, her double-claim seems to have the entity stirred up, working through their own ethics in their own time, giving her time to regroup, or, just group in the first place. She’d hoped Flora was gathering the troops while she engaged, but she’s disheartened to see only a ragtag string of seven or eight teetery world leaders doing their best to convince the others to calm down.

MELISSA – Forget it! Leave them to writhe, we have work to do, get down here!

Of course they all just look at her in that dazed, childish way people have of letting anyone else take control of a situation. Even these people, the ones who are supposed to rule the world. They just want someone else to tell them what to do. Melissa actively tries to suppress her impatience. Immediately, a new presence infuses her body so completely that she hardly reacts, shaking through her like a light rain. Her mind echoes with the loveliest, sexiest voice her imagination can conjure, a sensuous fingertip sliding over angles and curves of language.

ESSENCE – No, Child, you’ll soon find that your impatience is all that serves you, Time is up, no room for nice when you must learn to be kind.

MELISSA – Do I know you?

ESSENCE – You laid claim, so we came. While we debate the nature of test, you would do best to prepare.

MELISSA – How should I prepare?

ESSENCE – Every answer is there, inside, but don’t hide out alone or you may never get home. Look for the helpers. Sing and dance. Take a chance on love.

Every trite Hallmark mug but at the same time, Essence gives the eternal truth, the only things that have ever been true, the only advice that could ever make sense.

MELISSA – How long do I have?

ESSENCE – As long as you have.

Melissa feels Essence withdraw, and a sadness overtakes her; she misses Essence already. Their presence felt like a warm fireplace, purring kitten, and a good book. Their withdrawal feels like an unwelcome chill when the fire blows out.

Scanning the freaking-out crowd, she sees Flora still trying to round up the freed souls.

FLORA – You heard her, if you’ve managed to get free, come. She knows what’s going on.

That’s a pretty big stretch, but Melissa decides to let it pass. If people need to believe someone knows what’s going on before they can chill out enough to deal, fine. The truth, that what she actually knows couldn’t fill a shot glass, and what she doesn’t know may be the most dangerous chasm on Earth, isn’t likely to help this situation.

A half dozen dazed dignitaries trip their way to the ornate floor, circling Melissa like she’s a campfire. The rest continue struggling in agony in their seats. Melissa shakes her head at how many people have managed to arrive here, in the hallowed halls and rarified seats of power, without a fucking clue. Dummies.

BAZ – What is happening?

MELISSA – You were here before me, you tell me what’s happening.

Looking around at the lost faces in front of her, Melissa isn’t sure if she feels more pity or irritation. That’s not true. It’s irritation.

MELISSA – Look, we’re done. All the doing you were doing here is done. You’re not in charge anymore. They have arrived.

Melissa hears a whimper that she mistakes for a dog, and her heart leaps with joy
before she realizes it’s actually just the short-statured, balding man in the $25k suit who chews his finger-nails.

JESPER – Who? Who who who…?

MELISSA – Them. I don’t know. Some kind of advanced being, or beings. I know them as Brink and Mellow, but that’s just me. Anyway, they’re here for Earth. They like water, wind, some of the elements here, our Sun is special in what it nurtures, some things here, they’re rare, they want them. For some reason. I don’t know why. And they like riding along on what it feels like to be solid, in a body. Animal bodies, plants, fish, birds, lots of insects. And us. Our bodies.

Baz steps forward two steps, standing at triangular attention with his arms crossed like he’s angry, though it’s clear what he actually feels: appalled, spooked, terror-stricken, and calling on his every inch of conditioning to overcome all that and seem like a reasonable human.

BAZ – Um, okay, so they want to vacation here on our bodies while they mine for rare elements and play with the wind?

Melissa finds it uncanny how close Baz’s description comes, while still falling so very far short of stark reality.

MELISSA – Kind of? But, and also, this is important: they think everything we do, even the fact that we are, like, alive, is a symptom of Earth suiciding, because it’s depressed about being stuck as a planet. So they want to save Earth. From itself. From us. Before we waste the things they want. They’ve been projecting here for years, learning, practising manipulating matter, but now they’re actually here, ready to take the planet over, fix our mess.

BAZ – They can’t just come here and take Earth! Can they?

MELISSA – I don’t know what they can do. But I have no reason to doubt that they can take Earth. They have most of your pals stuck in chairs and they aren’t even paying attention to them. Don’t think for a second we’re the only thing that has their attention right now, either. For all I know, they might have trapped everyone on the planet. Earth is small to them, we’re microscopic – that’s why they have trouble even relating to us.

BAZ – You make no sense. How many war ships do they have?

MELISSA – You don’t get it. They aren’t just, like, alien kinds of people. They are another kind of conscious life, advanced beings, beyond comprehension.

DIEDRE – So you said. What makes them so advanced?

At least this one is a woman. But first glance tells Melissa she’s found a closed mind, too barricaded to take in most of what’s happening, despite having figured out the key to escaping her chair.

MELISSA – They manipulate time, energy, and matter in ways we can’t even understand. They use sound, electricity, and magnetism like tools. They influence potentials like we might blow smoke a certain direction. They can infiltrate our bodies and minds. They could wipe us out while we’re having this conversation. We have no idea what they’re doing right now, in fact.

JESPER – Who? What? I mean, how…who?

MELISSA (to Flora) – Calm that one down.

Flora places her hand on Jesper’s arm. He startles back like he’s been burned, but almost immediately relaxes, allowing her hand to remain. In moments his breath slows and deepens. Melissa feels grateful for a speck of help, at least one semi-useful human in the world. Flora has potential.

DIEDRE – What do they want from us?

MELISSA – They don’t want anything from us. They just want the planet, we’re actually more what they see as an infestation to remove. So they want us gone, I guess.

FLORA – Then why are we still here?

MELISSA – They have some kind of code. Like the Prime Directive. In Star Trek? Come on! No one? STAR Trek? Anyway, they don’t just take from other advanced beings, and they figure maybe Earth is like them, but stuck here, like a dolphin in the tuna net, planetized. So I’ve got them debating whether I am sufficiently Earth’s voice for them to care what I say about what they do to the planet. To us.

FLORA – Why you?

MELISSA – They already know me.

FLORA – I mean, if you speak for Earth, then so do I, and so does Jesper here, and every other person, and every person thinks something different about what’s best for Earth.

MELISSA – Yes, that’s what they said! But I got them debating it, and that’s all that’s bought us this time to waste on you people trying to understand what can’t be understood and decide if you believe what’s actually happening, when what we need to do is figure out how to keep them from wiping us out!

BAZ – Well what are we supposed to do? From what you say, there’s nothing we can do. If they want the planet they’ll take it.

MELISSA – Not if it clashes with their…ethics? Essence. Oh, that’s why…okay, anyway, they test their theories, and with them, a test could be centuries. Or it’s over in a flash. But it depends on the test, and how complicated it is. Think of legal challenges, how they are never done, there is always someone opening the argument in another direction. I think they might be susceptible to that…tactic. Like, they find it interesting to debate to death. So maybe we have a chance, if we get them to test me, maybe it could take long enough for us to heal Earth, to come up with a plan or a deal or negotiate…I don’t know. It’s a long shot. It’s probably not going to work.

FLORA – No, keep going. I think I know what you mean. I can almost hear you.

Melissa looks up from her sudden doubt, actually meeting Flora’s eyes for the first time. They see each other, a core of recognition in each of them settling into their bones with the satisfying, relieving click and clunk of something misaligned finally falling into place. Of course, this moment of connection, so rare and immediate, comes at the end of the world. Melissa laughs out loud at the absurdity of finding Flora here, now, in this way. Flora smiles uncertainly in return.

MELISSA – Flora. Pretty name. Sorry, sweetheart, we don’t have time for our love story. But I’m glad you’re here.

DIEDRE: Are you serious right now? You’re flirting? And we’re supposed to just accept what you say, that there is some kind of alien being here to take over Earth, and they only speak to you? Some trick!

The word rings out and Melissa cringes. There’s no way they are getting away with that word again, not all indignant like that.

MELISSA – Shut up! Don’t ever accuse them of…(whispers) tricks.

DIEDRE: Tricks! I’ll say what I want! Tricks, tricks, tricks, tricks. Tricky tricks tricking us! Are you some kind of tube shocker? I don’t believe any of this at all!

Melissa looks around, hyper-aware that more of the chair-bound dignitaries are free and running from the room. She doesn’t know why she even cares, but she wants these sheep in human clothing to escape, to be relieved of the burden they aren’t equipped to comprehend. If that woman keeps baiting Brink and Mellow, no one will escape. She turns on Diedre with a smothered snarl.

MELISSA – You need to calm down and shut the fuck up, lady.

Too late. The words have barely escaped her lips before Diedre dehydrates, so fast Melissa misses the moment the dignitary shifts from anguished surprise to a husk of dried-out skin draped over a skeleton, to a pile of clothing fibre and dust on the floor. Several people run screaming. Baz falls to his knees. Jesper’s mouth gapes open, a wet stain seeping down the front of his five thousand dollar pant leg. Flora starts crying. Melissa doesn’t feel nearly as surprised as she thought she would

.

JESPER – Did you…was that you?

FLORA and MELISSA (in unison) – Of course not!

BRINK – Tell them! Tell them we are here, make them fear what will happen if they don’t comply.

MELISSA – Did any of you understand what Brink said? No one? Basically, do what they say or else!

A few dishevelled humans stand dumbfounded in front of her, while a dozen or more still struggle in seats as though they don’t have the power to end their bondage just by holding still. Everyone is terrified, but Melissa feels surprisingly calm. She’s been preparing for this moment for a very long time, even though she never actually believed that until right now. She’s not sure she’s ready, but she’s sure as shit more ready than any of these people. She speaks to the cameras she knows have been recording this whole time. 

MELISSA – Listen to my words. They are here. There’s no point in not believing it, because they’ll just suck you dry like they did to that lady. They don’t give a shit what you believe. They don’t care what you think and they won’t be debated. We’re lucky they even noticed we’re alive, here, we’re like ants to them. So shut up and pay attention. Whatever they tell you to do, do it. Okay?

Melissa looks around, daring anyone in the room to see what happens if they continue to waste time deciding whether or not the Arrival is real, whether or not they need to do what they’re told. No one seems inclined in that direction.

MELISSA – And you people still stuck, hold still, for fuck’s sake, and breathe some calm in! Before you use all the energy you have left fighting yourselves.

MELISSA – (to Brink) So, okay, I told them, but please, don’t do that! Just, killing people like that, it’s pretty extreme.

BRINK – In a body death is common. Released consciousness subsumes.

MELLOW – No time for resisting. Trapped lives are best exhumed.

There is no point debating them. They don’t respect her opinion on how they use their power. As always, if they listen to her, it’s a whim, a precarious indulgence. She can’t count on her influence, so she needs to save it for something important.

BRINK – Your feat remains incomplete.

MELISSA – I told them what you said. What more do you want me to say?

BRINK – Tell your species: we are here.

MELISSA – Who’s got a phone? Can you livestream this please? Hashtag apocalypse invasion UN?

Flora pulls out her phone, poking quickly through the screens and holding it up, ready to go.

MELISSA – Make sure you get the crazy light show up there if you can. Ready? Are we recording? Look, Earth, we are being boarded, like a ship, by advanced alien consciousnesses. They’ve been on their way, but now they want me to tell you: we are here.

BRINK – Earth’s saviours have arrived.

MELISSA – (to Brink) Really?

Brink’s face reappears, taking up half the room, frowning a clear response.

MELISSA – They say: Earth’s saviours have arrived.

BRINK – If you all comply we will accept the premise

MELISSA – If we all comply they…accept a premise?

BRINK – Test your claim to sovereign independence,

MELISSA – Testing our conscious independence…?

BRINK – Establishing Melissa’s right to be the voice of Earth.

MELISSA – Wait, what?

Mellow’s staticky, light-and-dust mantis flits about the room, wings buzzing electric zaps of excitement.

MELLOW – Melissa, we empower you. You decide each action taken, we enact your words verbatim. Five rotations to coherence, three generations make it so, tend Earth’s health, determine any weight owed. The test is set.

FLORA – Are they saying what I think I…

BAZ – What are they saying?

FLORA – That Melissa is in charge of healing the world. Right? For…five…weather cycles? Is that weeks or months, or.. years?…and something about three…levels or, um, versions of people? …oh, generations, right? They’re giving her power, making what she wants happen.

MELISSA – Phone down. You can hear them?

FLORA – Sort of, but maybe…I think maybe I just hear them through you?

MELISSA – Huh. That makes sense.

Melissa walks calmly to Flora, bare feet splat-splatting across the mosaic tiles, and kisses her full on the lips. Flora’s surprise softens into the kiss, while everyone in the room watches. All of Earth, actually – Baz has taken over phone duty. More of the dignitaries get distracted from writhing in their chairs, so they amaze themselves with freedom. Most run from the room, while others seem unable to stand, but Melissa doesn’t notice any of it. For her, this exquisite moment is all that exists. Why process any of what’s happening when the world is ending and Flora is right here, connected so deeply that not touching her feels like a complete waste of whatever time may be left. Melissa wants that connection and she doesn’t want any of the rest of this. She’s gotten good at embracing the moment these past few years, so she leans every molecule of her being into being in this embrace, basking in the best feeling she’s ever had with another person. Their tongues gently find each other, lips sinking together like pieces of a well-loved puzzle. She revels in the warmth her hand finds at the small of Flora’s back, and enjoys the surge of power she feels where her other palm cups Flora’s head. She loves the tiny whimper she hears guttering in Flora’s throat, and the grip of Flora’s nails at her collar. As far as she’s concerned, this kiss can last forever. Every other thing about this bullshit situation can wait. Flora is the strawberry plucked on the fall into the tiger pit.

Melissa isn’t surprised when Mellow and Brink join the sidetrack – they love sex almost as much as sugar. She feels them melting through her, opening the space inside, where she and Flora can indulge time out of time. Melissa whispers into the kiss: close your eyes, go inside, as Mellow and Brink take up the chant, close your eyes, go inside, their ornate musicality creating a background orchestration that starts with the beat of her whisper, expanding and growing in that beautiful way they have, their music a lure, a bright light calling open the overlap of their venn, calling a bubble into the entanglement between their beings that starts at their lips and reaches like tendrils through their souls, reminding those souls that they are simply nodes of one being, and that being chooses to be them, each and both experiencing now together.

MELISSA – Open your eyes

Flora and Melissa stand naked together in a forest of light, early morning sun bright-fading the leaves and glinting off dawn’s droplets in a dazzling show. They step back naturally from their embrace. Flora doesn’t seem surprised or afraid, filling Melissa with deep relief that she doesn’t have to explain all this. If Flora is here, she knows. Just coming inside, communing this way, will have filled her with a certain degree of knowing. Flora must be able to hear Mellow and Brink’s song since she has joined Melissa here, and this wondrous, first-time moment of not feeling completely alone on Earth in her experience fills Melissa with such intense gratitude that she visibly glows with it. She can see a rose-gold shimmer radiating from her. Flora smooths her hand over the glowing silhouette hovering around Melissa’s cheek, and Melissa shivers with delight, the sensation both like and unlike an amplified, intensified version of physical touch. They are both smiling so big they look goofy, like comic-book fools on the verge of laughter. Melissa realizes they are becoming giddy, so this bubble won’t last and she wants only to stay here, with Flora, time out of time. She is greedy for more, but the longer they stand here marvelling at their successful baby-step, the less they will attract Mellow and Brink. The song that holds this space is fading. Melissa grips Flora’s hand tightly to her cheek, taking her thumb into her mouth. This time it’s Flora who steps forward into a new embrace, bodies pressed tightly together. Their breath synchronises. Melissa lets herself be held, relaxing her rod-straight posture, allowing them to share their weight. Mellow and Brink respond by deepening the song, their musical beauty another sensation among a thousand sensations. The forest around them shimmers in and out of view, their bodies and the trees increasingly appearing as light, movement, glitter dancing on air; translucent colours winding in and out like a silk scarf dance. Dissipation feels exquisite but Melissa knows the moment of no return, and it’s about to pass them by; if they don’t reign this in they will never get back to being in their bodies in time, and for some reason that seems important…

Melissa summons her face, configuring it from memory, and as it takes form she shouts for Flora, who falls immediately out of enthrallment and back to a semblance of herself, much faster than Melissa, who is still pulling herself together in the semi-translucent forest. Melissa feels unnerved and impressed. That could have gotten dangerous fast but Flora seems highly adept at transitioning between states of being without losing herself. She has already mastered something that Melissa still struggles with daily. She’s a natural, or maybe she’s had practice?

FLORA – I’ve never met these beings before. But I have had practice communing.

MELISSA – Can you hear my thoughts? I can’t hear your thoughts.

FLORA – No, I just feel a sense of your intentions, my mind puts words to what I pick up.

MELISSA – You’re not a dignitary!

FLORA – I’m an empathic advisor.

The song is truly faltering now – they are so boring that Mellow and Brink start chanting the word into their song

boring boring boring boring,

as they let go of the overlap’s boundaries. The barely-there forest is almost gone and Melissa sees time stuttering back up through their fade like a projector coming into focus, as they re-emerge in the reality they never left.

MELISSA – Our time out of time is up, my love. I’m really happy to know you, Flora.

FLORA – Likewise, Honeybee.

And they are back in reality, the same distressed faces surrounding them as before the interlude. But Melissa is no longer alone. She isn’t afraid and she feels zero longing to go back to ten minutes ago. She accepts exactly the situation of now, as completely as a human can accept it; her role as arbiter of the world seems like the only thing that makes sense, with Flora by her side.

MELLOW (a whisper surrounding Melissa’s head) – A bouquet to offset the costs. A tether so you won’t get lost. See, see how we love you, blessed one, little sun? See how we root for your proof? See how we plan for fun? Are you happy to be blessed?

MELISSA – Yeah, sure, I guess.

Mellow’s mantis barely remains, a bevy of sparkles hanging in the air, and then gone in a blink. It takes Melissa a few beats to understand that the sudden silence isn’t, itself, a sound, but the absence of a sound to which she’d grown accustomed. The thrum of movement and the indoor wind have stopped, or more accurately, been sucked from the room, creating a vacuum almost painful to the eardrum. Mellow and Brink have stopped being here. But they’re her ride! They brought her all the way to this place, physically, for real, and fucking dumped her. Shit.

MELISSA – Mav! I could really use some help!

She feels foolish, shouting to the air, but whatever. Ei’s not going to answer anyway.

FLORA – Ei’s not here.

MELISSA – No shit, Sherlock. Are you…do you know Mav?

FLORA – Ei sent me here. For you, I’m guessing.

MELISSA – Sent you? Like ei visited you, told you, clearly in words, to come to this room at the UN today?

FLORA – Well, no, I was assigned to be here. But, ei contrived it.

MELISSA – Yeah? Or did ei just let you think ei’d contrived what actually ended up happening so you’d think ei was more powerful than ei is?

FLORA – I don’t know.

MELISSA – Exactly. So ei’s been pimping you out, too?

FLORA – Not at all.

MELISSA – Sure. So, where’s our friend, now? Huh?

FLORA – I think ei’s having trouble getting through the static they’re throwing.

MELISSA – Convenient.

FLORA – You have a real problem with eim.

MELISSA – Yeah, well we have history. Is that a problem for you and me?

FLORA – I doubt it.

MELISSA – So, now what? I’m just stuck here? No wallet, no phone, no passport, no clothes? Where are we, anyway?

FLORA – New York.

MELISSA – Oh, thank godliness! I was afraid they dumped me in Geneva. I have to get home.

FLORA – What, you’re leaving? Now?

MELISSA – My dog needs to go out.

FLORA – But…what about the entities? What about all these people? They are freaking out! What about healing the planet, and the test?

MELISSA – Look, the world as we knew it is over. Maybe no one knows that yet, but it won’t be any fun as they figure it out. And those entities, they’ll do what they’ll do, that’s not something you and I can control. But whether my dog pees my carpet and feels all sad and ashamed, I might be able to do something about that. Anyway, they said we have some cycles, who knows how long?

FLORA – I thought you knew. But listen, slow down, I think we’re here, at the UN, for a reason. Maybe we need some of these people? Or something here. Maybe –

MELISSA – Look, sweetheart, it’s not a video game with clues. These entities, we can’t fathom their reasons from one instant to the next. Okay? If something is meant to be, it will just happen, and not because you or I worry about it. Hon, I’m sorry to be blunt because I love you with my tender heart, but get with the moment! Stop worrying. We can’t make a mistake because everything has already happened and whatever happens is just what is happening, and that’s it. Live or die. Right or wrong. All just constructs. None of this is real, except the parts that are, and you and me? We’re barely dust. We hardly count as existing, here.

Melissa looks around at the stricken faces of incomprehension, finally and reluctantly resting on Flora’s wide, liquid eyes, all disappointed. Well, she thinks, I never claimed to be the hero of the day, but it still breaks her heart, to feel so misunderstood. Every crack in her heart lets compassion seep in. She steps towards Flora, taking her hand while gentling her tone.

MELISSA – The dramatics here are over, they made their entrance, shook up the closest thing we have to world leaders, delivered their message, made an example of someone, and set the test. If they want me they’ll come for me wherever or drag me wherever, anyway. Right now, I need to figure out how to get back home before my dog loses her mind and my cat eats her. Come with me, or stay here and fart around with these guys, it’s up to you.

FLORA – I don’t think you’re right. But I’m with you, lady! From now on, however long is left, I’m with you. Okay?

MELISSA (smiling the goofy smile from the forest) – Read my intentions or whatever.

JESPER – Hey, me too – you’re not leaving me here.

BAZ – You’re the only one who seems to know what these beings are saying. I’m not letting you out of my sight.

MELISSA – And how do you propose we all get to my place in nowheretown, Ontario?

BAZ – I don’t know. Is the world still working? I have a car. And maybe a jet.

MELISSA – Well la di da. Okay, then, let’s motor. Anyone else? Last chance to join the chain gang.

She hears a shuffle and again thinks DOG! But it’s not a dog. Now that she tunes in she knows there’s someone else here who’s awake and alive. That’s rare enough to require immediate investigation. Melissa scans the newly-empty rows of curved desks for any stragglers that haven’t made their way to the floor or run screaming. Her bare feet pat along the cold floor, row by row, moving towards the fast, light breath she now hears clearly, and the charismatic golden aura she now senses. Where did that come from? If this person was in the room before, Melissa would have known it. But maybe not; she realizes that whoever is hiding has been cloaked and is now letting herself be found. Melissa looks to her right and sees a gorgeous little girl, maybe nine years old, blonde hair down her back. She sits hidden in plain sight, comfortably tucked beneath the back row of desks under a small, quilted blanket, a water flask and a little snack of cheese and crackers laid out beside her. The girl flashes Melissa a dazzling smile, emerging to standing with a graceful sweep of her belongings into the blanket, knotted and slung over her shoulder in a single movement that ends with a handful of crackers slammed into her mouth so her cheeks bulge.

MELISSA – Well you’re an interesting find. What are you doing here?

The girl shrugs at Melissa nonchalantly as she chews and swallows. When she does speak, it’s Flora she addresses

CANDY – Flora, don’t be mad. I wouldn’t have changed anything, either way. It’s not about me. I don’t think.

FLORA – Of course not! But you weren’t supposed to be up here. You were presenting to the special sub-committee, that’s three floors away.

CANDY – I had to come here. It wasn’t up to me. They called so loud! Just a tiny jump. And I’m glad I didn’t miss the show.

MELISSA (to Flora) – Your kid?

Flora and Candy laugh. Melissa feels an unexpected ping of jealousy at their camaraderie leaving her out.

FLORA – Hardly! But we are well acquainted.

MELISSA – Why were you hiding? Wait, I can tell that’s a longer explanation. Forget it. Doesn’t matter. No coincidences. Guess you’re with us, too. Let’s go!

Melissa doesn’t look back to see who comes and who stays. She doesn’t care, actually. She’s going home.