Maria stared at the ceiling of the
She held the spine connection searching unit in her left hand. It was a new unit which she was glad about, but she had only paid for one hour of time. The initial searches using her grandmothers code had not linked to her and the hour would soon be over.
Maria’s head was filled with a constant clatter of thoughts that collided with one another until she wasn’t really sure what subject her brain actually intended to think about and what it thought better to discard. Maria found herself watching the constant turning of the roof system in its tracking of the sun as it gathered energy for the electrical load on the Center.
She shuffled her feet, her slippers blinked back at her in a programmed musical rhythm. Her grandmother had always teased her about going nude. She told her it was extremely fortunate that she was born when she was because in the older days of earth the people were required to wear their clothes all the time, everywhere they went. Maria had always giggled at her grandmother over this. She thought maybe she was a little senile or something, repeating it over and over, but she did know that it was actually true about the old days. One evening she had tried to get Maria and her girlfriends to dress in unisuits for a party, but they were afraid the boys would make too much fun of them. She had said “Why don’t you try something different to get their attention?”
The countdown timer indicated 17 minutes left when the unit finally vibrated, signaling a connection.
Maria activated the unit to her inner ear frequency and spoke to her grandmother for the first time in over two months.
The sound of her voice always made Maria smile and it did this time as well. The frequency from Konyo, the resting place for her grandmother’s soul after it was surgically removed in 2106 was a little ragged but her grandmother was understandable.
Maria always tried to remember her grandmother’s mannerisms when she talked. That way she could imagine her stories in a more vivid way than was really possible by simply listening to her voice. She called her grandmother ‘Kiki’. It was the grandmother name given her because the adults referred to her often as being ‘coo-coo,’ but the kids had first pronounced it as ‘ki-ki’. The name had stuck.
When Kiki heard Maria’s voice she was as delighted as ever and the pitch of her voice went up as if it were her way of sending a huge hug and kiss down the frequency to Maria.
And just like it always was, Maria asked Kiki what she had been doing. Maria did this because she knew that what she was doing on earth, at least the explanation of it to her grandmother, was counter productive to Maria’s own need to explore other times and places. The historian in Maria always demanded center space and she not only wanted to know about the past on earth, she treasured the information of what life was like in Konyo. It was her window to the world of her future. Kiki knew this about Maria too.
Kiki had decided on the surgery to remove her soul when she felt that her body could no longer achieve the life her soul demanded. The decision had hurt Maria and her sister Raina, they did not want Kiki to go, but in the end their peace was made and she left earth with the unrestrained enthusiasm that never wandered far from her side.
Maria knew she would face the same decision. The time to decide when the body did not synch with her soul would come. Then Konyo would be her home too.
Kiki had begun the explanation of what she had done on this day in Konyo. She told Maria that she had chosen the year 1897 for the day. She had also chosen romance as the theme. She told Maria she wanted to know about romance in 1897 and what it felt like to be wanted by a man in a time she had not known on earth.
According to Kiki her day had begun by having to get the milk out of some cows. Maria wasn’t at all clear on this, but she didn’t interrupt. Then she said a man had come to the house assigned to her and sat on a couch beside her in the house.
After talking with the man, he invited her to go into a boat and ride across the water. Kiki’s voice increased in animation and Maria imagined all of her body language and tried to coordinate her mental images with Kiki’s voice as she told her tale about riding in the water.
She described a very still water with ripples that were created by the boat oars that the man used to propel them through the water. She described the man as having the very same face as her husband on earth, but he wore clothes, a heavy brown textured suit with a white shirt and one of the old time ties around his neck. It was a red and gold tie she said.
Kiki laughed and told Maria that she was just as naked as she ever was, but that the man didn’t seem to notice that he had all of those clothes on and that she didn’t have any at all. She also said she had to sit very still in the boat and that the man kept telling her so.
She said the man had sung a song to her and that it was a happy song about a bluebird on his shoulder. During the song he sang “It’s the truth, it’s actual.” That made her laugh because she knew she had just ordered him up for that day.
When the sun was setting behind the trees on the river, the man had kissed her. She told Maria it was not at all like union nexus kissing, and that it was the best thing that happened all day. She said it made her feel like the man loved her.
Then Kiki began to sing the song the man sang.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah Zip-a-dee-ay
What a wonderful feeling
Feeling this way!
Oh, Mr. Bluebird on my shoulder
It’s the truth, it’s actual
Everything is satisfactual.
Maria smiled. She knew that song. She was a music history student and she knew it had been written in 1962. How could the man in 1897 know this song?
She decided not to ask Kiki that question. She knew she would find out later when she went to Konyo herself. She just smiled inside and told her grandmother that she loved her.
Copyright 2005
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