a 'p 4 t 4 * ' 4 A A S C I E N C E F I C T I 0 N 3 . 1 She was white fire falling in the distance, swirling vapors *cover light limbs lifting auras where magnetic spirits hover - metal glistens at her feet, electric humming to the chanted beat priestess, keeper of the keys, say goddess images of white wire and women working under city lights - broken neon halos shimmer through de- serted night - bright smoke behind her and the supplicants starting to move, to flight, the music their chanting her voice winding through memory narrowing down seasonless landscape of dying con- tinents and inherited strangeness repeating: feel it in the flames, see it in the smoke, smell it in the night: six hundred years later, images linger light laps her liquid eyes, fingers her hair, her wings -images of rednightsun scorching lines across the, sky - the roar of the thunder that drowned the whole world - heat of the sun's core recalled in streaks of underlighting, her throat and chin - the sick cities lying wasted and steaming - new forms that rose from the rubble - her body quivers as they move faster fanning the fires with the beat of wings - watch her wield the jewels - the humming swells as metal pulses, their breath hisses among the siz- zling pyres - moaning in the love of the moiling night, cries in the mist priestess, goddess, keeper, say midwife she raises her face to the moon - her form, six hundred years ago, from dead science (but nothing dies finally) - the baby laid at her feet, the metal cradle opening slowly - listen to the electric rum bling all through the circulated earth, the dry flutter of their wings mother and crystal lover, frail and tense - with a sudden bleeding shriek she leaps arms working. . . . She was dull beat of wings sloppi earth's gurgling there -l sures pouts open around t- plode skyward - searing images dance - sacrificic race when their gravity f whiteorange clouds openir inconceivable winds Priestess, swift goddess, to mother; angel and eag phoenix - white wings w show only webbed outlines sharply shadowed, now fad a billion crying the pain, wings and sing smoky wisp their bodies, the earth's n as always - gravity reclai lava oozes out of the grour wounds, the ancient diseas ty of gravity grown rotten a must - images of politic powerfed, feeding the sick in formulated conflict (ne flames?) clinging to lead phoenix feeling the final ti - a billion faces - phot fingers keening - the cc images in her mind now womb: wingless. the first return of gravity. society. surely in glass flowing it backwards or forwards (b keeper of the keys, the so again the old machines (rc ascent?) - and left. Ligl into the boiling earth - forms, crisping inside the sumed in icy time and the Text by Gabe Eisenstein Photos by Tom Gottlieb 2 She was flash of a hazy form flying flapping hands and wings * legs and whirling hair in darkling tones and bright speed against the slowly dying stars - spinning on their eyes images of silver planes and soaring spears floating across the moon - old comic panels - icons and windows - faces beautiful in the white- smoked night the land dying of an ancient sickness - land grown barren under incomplete magic - imagined in the flare of their bodies reflecting light the old fires which live again from age to age goddess, lover devilbird? say angel some races are quickly, knowing when to die, not wasted in sickness, in sick lands - wet wind rushing cold under membrane and bone, high in racial dreams of newspapers in alleyways, wind in subway tunnels - whispering in the bones of her face re- called human faces, survivors then, wingless, soon dead all dead soft and tense, breathing deep and low - feel in her flesh six hundred years of freedom, unbound by human gravities, societies and virus - images of dark forests, highways and elevators, cold eyes con- cealed above city lights - peace out of time in frozen motion small birds leave their paths in flurries - through pitched night the flight is over water for a time - silver wings and night sun: death of the old race re- membered in flight silent and opaque, the sky now jet velvet - variations through new cycles back in the land the sacral fires yet blaze - the metal throb- bing now to human pulse, the cradle closing wires glowing to white heat (humming fills the circuited earth) flare of lines falling, sharp limbs wings and fingers -with silence, from the clouds, they plummet ....