The Woman Who Touched Water

The woman touched her laptop. It was time to write another story.

Her editor was on her back for the latest copy of her book. Her fingers were white and pale and flit across the keyboard. She longed to create a masterpiece but her feeble attempts led nowhere.

She drank another gulp of wine and tried to drown her writing sorrows.

By 5pm the woman-whose name was Sarah had already ordered two Chinese dinners-broccoli and lobster sauce...where was the lobster?

and drunken noodles. She fed the leftovers to the trashcan, although her hoarder's instinct told her to keep them in the fridge for another 100 years.

Cascading down the staircase to the bottom of her apartment building at night, Sarah flowed like water towards a psychic medium shop. The lights of a crystal ball glittered in neon.

Sarah opened the door and the bell tinged. She heard a Kate Bush song play in her mind again and again. Kate's high soprano massaged her brain while she felt the velvet of the shop curtains.

I need ideas for my job. She got to the chase. No futzing, no mussing. The psychic eyed her with a weary face. Sarah, the psychic threw up her hands. You've been in here every night this month. Honey you need more than a few tarot cards. You need spiritual keys.

What do you mean? Sarah said exasperated. OH I'm so frustrated Shiela I can't even tell you. I haven't experienced this must spiritual block since the Raegan Administration.

You weren't alive in the Raegan administration honey.

Look just tell me what to do!! Sarah threw her hands up in the air again and practically pushed the cards off the table.

Listen, I only do this for my most desperate cases, and honey you are desperate with a capital D. She went to a velvet purse and pulled out a shiny business card. The card was purple and had little holographic stars on it. But it didn't look cheap.

Sarah Stumbled out of the shop in haze. She prayed to god this could help. There were only so many more candles she could light for St. John, and Sigils she could perform for spiritual breakthrough.

She had to turn in the next copy of her manuscript.

She went back to the apartment and drew a pentagram on the back of a piece of paper, then she made a Sigil for good luck. She drew two yellow candles from beneath her pillow and lit them with long wooden matches.

In the morning Sarah went to work, and then after work she rode the subway home. Then she put on a long black overcoat, combed her pale grey and brown hair which hung like a long shield over her beautiful face and tumbled down the stairs to the location listed on the card.

When she got to the building a robot was manning the entrance. She gave the code listed on the back of the art.

When she got inside, there was another strange bit. A tiny man or robot? You couldn't really tell who was a robot and who was a human these days, especially with these dark Brooklyn warehouses.

The walls inside the building were painted a deep purple. She touched the purple brick with her tiny little red fingernails.

Nobody quite noticed Sarah's beauty anymore. She always had her head down in a coat, or her head over a laptop, trying to finish her novel.

The novel was about the life-cycle of bees. It was meant to be a romance novel about a beekeeper and a waitress that was a thinly veiled vehicle for a very robust and edifying scientific discussion about bees and their habitats-and how to save them.

It was also meant to be a push and pull between the science of beekeeping and the looseness and warmness of the heroine-Cecily.

At any rate, 4 manuscript copies later and Sarah could not get past a block that had seemed to descend upon her life. Although her writing kept flowering, under the pressure of her pen, and her insatiable mind-which at times acted like a sort of demented task-master. Her mind was almost too severe. It drove her to misery, constantly pushing her to finish projects and meet deadlines, to keep creating, even when she was emotionally, physicially and spiritually exhausted. She couldn't really say when her mind had become like this. Maybe it was always this way but that she just had other things to focus on?

She wasn't sure. The robot/monkey/human waved her forward.

First door on the right it? said.

Still no conclusion on the sentience of that one...

She flowed into the door.

A man came to the door and answered. He was Syrian and had a black suit on.

Sarah, nice to meet you he said. Madame recommended you to us.

She says you are very desperate.

Yes. Sarah said. I am very desperate. I need answers, I need ideas, I need..Anything!!!!!

She slammed her hands on the silver desk. Desperation had turned nurturing, curious, intelligent Sarah into a rabid creature.

Sarah, we are going to help you. The Syrian procured something from under the desk. It was at first a crystal ball, but actually it was pure steel. It was like a crystal ball but made of pure steel.

Sarah looked amazed.

What is it..she said. With this you can touch water. The man said cryptically.

Just give it a go at home.

How much do I owe you? Everything in America has a price..can't forget that.

No payment at this time, the man said.

We are doing a trial of this product, its AI.

If we have good results we will take it to market, if not. its okay.

Consider yourself a guinea pig.

Sarah put the steel ball under her coat and took the subway home.

5 hours later it was time to write again. Sarah opened her laptop and procured the steel ball. She looked at it, then she touched her fingertips to the ball. suddenly the steel started to move, like it was alive, and it began to open. The steel gave way to fuscia, orange, cerulean blue, and other beautiful colors.

Suddenly her fingers began to write.

Sarah had ideas she never had before. She made art in a way she had never made art before. Her manuscript began to come alive.

But the ball did nothing but change colors.

Later on she went back to Broolyn warehouse. How does it work? Sarah said, point blank.

The Syranian looked sly but convicted. He relented against the urge to be opaque. It uses electromagnetic waves to change your brain patterns. We are synching your brain to the intelligence of famous authors using AI. Sarah was stunned. How could such a thing even be? Electromagnetic waves...seem safe enough..she pondered...

Do you want to keep it? The man asked.

Yes. She said, and she brought it back to her apartment.

When she woke up the next day she submitted her book to the editor. They were stunned and amazed.

What happened Sarah? Sherry, her editor asked. You've been stuck on this book for months. What changed?

I talked to a friend, was all Sarah cared to say, and she brushed her cold, smooth hair to the side. Her face was round and pale like a moonstone.

Her lips were stained a pale red.

Her eyes, a beautiful hue of blue.

She wore pressed white shirts and never got manicures.

Not even a one. She wore the same black pants or tweed skirts every day and to her meetings. There was something deeply restricted about her. She was like a flower whose petals closed very tightly. avoiding the sun.

her hand seemed to grip the coffee she drank with the same restricted hold.

Her posture seemed to say "everything is fine" but her hands were always pale and white, gripping the pencil or the page with a sort of desperation.

-Early success in life leads to midlife death and destruction..she would say later on.

She went home and took out the steel oracle again.

This time her fingers touched it and it turned only blue.

Was the ball reacting to her or just dealing a random deck of breakthroughs?

It didn't matter because suddenly the air around her became malleable, and thin, her head felt like it was underwater, and she couldn't breathe. She began to pass out..when a knock came on the door.

part two to arrive