Introduction by Julia
The Newcomen II runs on burning memories. Like most machines it requires specific fuel. Therefore, you will need to select your fuel type beforehand. The memory burning process will be discussed in full in the next section. Suitable memory fuel must contain two things:
1. High emotional content.
2. A common thread that will connect the various batches of fuel you will need to make throughout the life of your machine. (Elise’s side note: I have since discovered a way to retrofit the engine for new kinds of fuel. This method will be tacked on to the hard copy of this guide which will be available later this year.)
Exotic memory fuels , lke their more tangible analogs, may produce a stronger reaction, but will be harder to reproduce and will result in higher levels of the toxic substance known as N12
(Samm’s note: for clarification, N12 is our pet name for a very specific, self destructive and addictive form of nostalgia. See Part 4 for further details, hazards, and safety measures).
During periods of low emotional involvement we tend to conceptualize emotion in a very one dimensional manner; for example, in terms of obvious dichotomies like love and hate. We rarely consider the way emotions often mix, leading us to emotional states which appear conflicting but hold an internal logic. Moreover we often disregard emotional states which have no obvious descriptors. Standing on a New England beach just before dawn, as an example, elicits a specific emotional response, however, I cannot think of a world which would sufficiently describe it. Explore a wide range of emotional possibilities before settling on your fuel content.
There are tactical considerations as well. During one of his less mature periods Samm constructed a Newcomen II based device that was fueled by angry, often violent, memories. The output of the machine was hyperdimensional artifacts he used in further aggressive actions.
(Samm’s note: This lead to an inevitable fuel recycling that in time destroyed the machine and had a variety of other unpleasant side effects. *Elise’s addendum “Entropy. You’re soaking in it”) Despite oversights its design was ingenious. We have since developed safeguards which mitigate the caustic memory degradation that caused the catastrophic failure of Samm’s machine.
Similar emotional content is not the only way to establish a common thread. The integrity of the original Newcomen II’s fuel type is tied to a song. The emotional value of each batch has differed substantially but all are tied together with the original batch via song. This common thread is needed to establish a hyperdimensional cascade. The hyperdimensional cascade allows the fuel to move pieces of the machine that do not exist in the same time/space as the present “you”. The amount of fuel you will be able to extract from a particular memory will vary, but is important to note that eventually the memory will become spent. Spent memories, aside from being useless as fuel, contain high levels of N12. A certain degree of renewability can be achieved however. This was discovered unintentionally and under the best possible conditions.
We found it was possible to construct memories which are so similar to previous batches that the hyper dimensional cascade prevents the earlier memories from becoming either completely spent or dangerously toxic. This can be a tricky proposition. Over planning can reduce the levels of emotional content to such a degree that the fuel batch is useless. This is a hazard anytime you attempt to create a fuel batch of course, but the risk increases exponentially when you try to recreate earlier batches. Some types of emotional experiences will be more suited to this than others. The following examples, described by Samm, should demonstrate both how a fuel batch is concocted and how further batches can contribute to the renewability of earlier batches.
Fuel Batch 1 Created Saturday July 4th 1987:
(Samm’s note: because the original Newcomen II was constructed using both myself and Julia as pieces of the machinery, each fuel batch must have a comparable emotional strength for each of us. To this end when we create fuel it is part of a joint effort. This said, the emotional content for each of us is often derived from different aspects of the event. )
Julia had set up a pretty specific timeline for the construction process. Especially important was the small window of opportunity on the fourth of July . Her parents were planning to celebrate the 4th with family in New Hampshire, and it was far away enough that they’d end up spending the night. Julia was reasonably certain that if she feigned being ill they’d allow her to stay behind unattended. She called me around noon that Saturday to let me know things had gone according to plan. Her folks had just called from New Hampshire to check on her and let her know a family friend would be bringing her something to eat later on in the day.
(Elise’s note: Just a bit of clarification is needed here for anyone unfamiliar with the origins of cell 144. During Samm and Julia’s first foray into time magic they evoked a tesseract. The experiment left Julia decidedly older on the inside than she was on the outside. If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that there’s no fucking way kids could come up with this kind of shit you’re right. Our consensus is that during this period Julia was being directly controlled by a distant future self. We suspect Samm may have been being nudged similarly, but was mostly just hanging on for dear life throughout much of this ride. Though this changed drastically some weeks later when Samm and I met for the first time)
Julia had laid out her plans for this day the first time she suggested building the machine. I had lost my virginity a few weeks before this proposal, which is a good thing because I can’t imagine I would have been able to wrap my head around her proposal otherwise.
(Julia’s note: had he not told me about it, I doubt I would have proposed it in the first place. I suspect something similar still would have occurred however, much of this project seemed directed by unseen hands.) We’d spend the day together, a real romantic affair building up emotions and expectations until we released it all by “fooling around” as she put it. “My parents will be gone,” she said, “so we can use my house, and you can just tell your parents you’re staying with friends.” I just nodded in silent agreement. I don’t know it was weird because until that point I hadn’t even allowed myself to think of her as anything besides this smart as hell girl from school that I had shared a lot of weird experience with. I mean, I had tremendous respect for her on multiple levels, but I didn’t acknowledge any kind of heavy emotional attachment until the words “fooling around”. That was the first time I saw her as a young woman in her own right that might have the same kinds of desires I had. The best way to put it really is, that despite all we had shared, this was the first time I fully realized her as a human being. This was no flashing epiphany however, it would be years before I could put the thought to words, and bit longer still before I was ready to acknowledge just how deeply my emotions ran.
Julia lived in a house. She was the only friend I had at the time who lived in a house. Her house was pretty nice too, and it was filled with nice things, but not so nice you felt self conscious. She had been grim determination when describing her plan, but I was relieved to see she was as shy and awkward as I was those first few hours. The weight and promise of the evening seemed to be pushing the sun toward the horizon. Mostly we just watched TV, maybe sitting closer than we would have normally. Sometimes our hands would brush against each other or our knees would touch and it flushed me so severely I had to concentrate intensely just to stop myself from jerking away from her soft heat. Eventually that neighbor knocked and I hid in the hall closet, trying not to burst out laughing at J’s horrible acting.
She gave the all clear finally and I burst out of the closet laughing and teasing her. Eventually an awkward silence filled the air, and to break it and the stalemate we’d been wrestling with all day I pulled out a flask of 7 and 7 I had bought from one of the neighborhood kids earlier that day. She put her hand on my arm, gently preventing me from raising the flask. I put the flask back in the pocket of my denim vest and followed her upstairs to her parent’s room. She was leading me by the hand, and though she seemed confident it felt like she might have been trembling slightly. My own hormones had kicked in and I could feel that blank sensation wash through me. A precursor to adult lust I guess. Instead of my insides being run over with wild desire, it was like everything just shut off, at least until it came time to put my hands and lips to her body.
I sat on the bed and she put on a CD. I recognized it immediately even though it wasn’t my usual taste; U2’s Joshua Tree was pretty hard to avoid that summer. The first kiss was sweet. The second was awkward tongues positive they belonged in each other’s mouths but unsure of what they should be doing once they got there. There was nothing self conscious about it though, and even though I can look back and smile at how little we knew about kissing the truth is at the time it was amazing. New and urgent, so much so that the power and passion of that moment still undercuts whatever cute observations I have about our inexperience.
I remember eventually drifting off next to her. I could smell her hair and hear Bono sing over and over “and you give yourself away”. I woke up quick at about three am and decided to leave instead of crashing for the rest of the night. Honestly, it was a while before either of discussed that night frankly, but we both knew something important had happened. Watching me walk down her front drive she said, “It’s going to be like using a nuclear bomb for fuel isn’t it?” I just smiled. Once I got out past the light of her front porch, out came the flask.
Julia’s notes:
I had extreme reservations about revealing this story. While Samm has always had a certain comfort with what my parents refer to as his “degeneracy” I was always acutely aware of just how abnormal his life was. I had a very strange relationship with it as a young girl; I was both repulsed and intrigued. I’m still not sure what to make of it. So much of what he did, and what we did in those years was transgressive. I’d be mortified if it had happened to anyone but me, but because it was me there is a strange normalcy to it. I was shocked when he confided in me that he had lost his virginity. The story was not at all romantic and though he claimed to not be bothered it left me feeling profoundly sad for him. I wished there was some way I could give him the tenderness I felt a first time should have. (Samm’s note: I still “claim” it didn’t bother me, however, I will concede it was an extraordinarily weird and in the strictest sense unhealthy event)
Samm recalls me being mostly calm as a cucumber, but I remember being a wreck. I have never been so nervous to this very day. My recollections are not as vivid as Samm’s. What I recall most about our first kiss was that he was so gentle and timid; it was sweet as he says. I should have known him better, but somehow I always imagined that moment was going to be as rough and course as Samm looked. The lyiric I remember most is always “You give it all but I want more.” While I felt sad about a great deal of Samm’s life, I was also fiercely jealous of it sometimes. I can vividly recall watching him talk to his girlfriend after school from the second floor balcony outside our class room. I was curious, we all were, he was the only boy in our grade with a girlfriend. One dayI leaned over the railing to get a look at her. I can’t even remember exactly what she looked like, though I know her description well enough from Samm’s writing. What I do remember is how they looked at each other. I wondered why Samm didn’t ever look at me like that, and if he noticed the way I looked at him. (Samm’s note: much of my life was profoundly screwed up at this point. Julia had the kind of childhood kids are supposed to have. Even though I enjoyed regaling her with my stories, I never actually invited her to my neighborhood. On some level I was afraid I’d ruin her I think, but more importantly, I needed her to be an example for me to aspire too)
Now, I want to stress that we did not have sex until a great many years later, and while it was to my great consternation that his retelling did not make that abundantly clear, I understand it. I wasn’t ready to have sex, but if he had pressed the issue I would have given. That night he looked at me like he looked at other girls, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more than he had given anyone else. Like some of Samm’s recollections, this wasn’t something I could admit or articulate for many years to come.
Fuel Batch 6 Created Early Summer 1996:
The long and short of my high school experience is that it was miserable. I rarely talked to either Julia or Elise, let alone saw them, and by graduation had at best an uneasy truce with kids who were supposed to be my friends. Having finally graduated my first order of business was to celebrate with Julia who had also graduated that year. I’m pretty sure her friends thought I was profoundly weird, but they treated me well enough. Despite many missteps on both our parts, it is to our credit that almost ten years after I had moved away we found each other to have become even more of who we had started to become as kids. Eventually we found ourselves upstairs listening to the radio and reliving stories from our youth. Given every bit of high weirdness that had filled my to that point I should not have been surprised when “With Or Without You” came on the radio, but I was.
Julia kissed me with none of the awkwardness I remembered from years before, but with all the urgency and passion. I’ll be real with it though, I was pretty sure that this is where things were going as soon as I realized we were tanked and alone. Actually I was pretty sure this was the reason I had driven two hours to see her now that we were both eighteen and unteathered. None of this was romantic to me, for me this was a feeling of getting what I felt I was owed, not from Julia, but from life. Really it takes a special kind of arrogance to demand the universe pay you back for being unfair, but that’s the kind of asshole I was at eighteen. I almost feel like I should be embarrassed to admit this, but fucking her, I was angry, like pissing in the face of the kid you just beat up angry. Here I was eighteen, free and really in the middle of the best night I‘d known in forever, but somehow it wasn’t enough.
Julia’s note: I thought the night was absolutely romantic. I am not prone to tears, but I was teary when that song came on the radio. I touched him in all the same ways I had touched him when I was a girl. His eyes were filed with the kind of pain I had always felt he kept inside. I know he feels like he was closed off that night, but I feel he was more open than he’d ever been. My body remembered how it felt to be that little girl wanting more than she was ready for, and now all these years later I was ready for it and it was there for me. Life then was s rarely so effortlessly accommodating.
When we woke up the next afternoon I was feeling decidedly better about life. Lying in bed next to her I kept thinking about the summer of 87. I had spent most of the last seven years abusing my memories of that summer. The memories, by that time, only made me bitter about my life. I always ended up doing some stupid shit after stewing on them for too long, but somehow anytime things got tough I went straight back to those memories. That’s N12 addiction for you. That morning though, it was somehow different. Even though the room smelled like day old sex and drunk sweat I was more comfortable than I’d been in forever. That morning I forgot everything I needed to and remembered much of who I was meant to be. The radio was still on, this time “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” came on...Seriously you can’t make this shit up.
Again, I won’t front, I wasn’t instantly healed but I woke wanting to push my magick and art again. I had at the very least found the spirit of wanderlust and play that had once soured on me. I was ready to be a magician again.
(Up next Part Four : Converting Memory Into Kairotic Energy)
PS, in case you missed it:
Part 1
Part 2
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