truth test software

When I forward my summary of the events at Eureka to Samsara's attention at the repository in the Thousand Ruby Galaxy, there's no acknowledgment, no reply. I wait for what seems like a decent interval - or else eternity - then send a polite, follow-up query. Again silence. I'm not sure what to do, beyond reminding myself that uninhibited and unimpeded communication between us is a fairly recent development, that things used to be much more fraught, much more like they are now than they ever were before. I wait a while longer then frame a third inquiry but just as I'm about to send it I get a reply to my second: it's brief and hectic, thanking me for the piece on Eureka, apologising for the delay in responding and saying that she'll be in touch at greater length once the galactic storms plaguing her system have receded or passed over. I wonder what this means - are they weather storms, magnetic storms, psychic storms or some other kind of storm we've never heard of here? Or a combination of all four. I worry that Moksha's dead hand has fallen across her slender white wrist, that he has made good his threat to hurl her into exile out beyond the Sombrero Galaxy; that my Eureka piece is the astroporn that tears our small skein apart. I remember driving away from our last real world encounter, through Redhead and Jewell and Violet Town, and the names seem to murmur an inconsolable song. Then one night I'm walking through Martin Place, late, with a friend, having been to the Art Gallery of NSW Christmas Party (depressing: they don't serve red wine because it stains the floor, two different art hags in high heels wound my feet with their stilletos, the show upstairs of indigenous people photographed by indigenous people is full of facile quasi-political interpretations scrawled across the portraits) when my phone goes off. Where are you? the message reads. Can we talk? I text back: Town Hall station in 10 minutes then walk my friend over to George Street and hail her a cab. Once she's safely on her way I head down past the QVB to the underground station. On Platform 1 I text Samsara again - I have really no idea where in the universe she might be - saying I'll be taking the 11.57 to Summer Hill, ETA 12.16 - how would she like to talk? Skype? Or is she 'here'? The journey seems to take forever, first through the dark tunnels under the City, then slowly along the dreary stations of the Western Line, past grimy streets full of equivocal shadows under the yellow lamps. The carriage itself is a drift of discarded food wrappers, sheets from tawdry giveaway newspapers, unidentifiable stains and an empty soft drink bottle rolling randomly, insanely, to and fro under the ripped blue seats; while the only other people there, a young English couple, backpackers perhaps, argue viciously with one another in hissing whispers. There's no text, no phone call and by the time I'm walking down the deserted cavern of Lackey Street towards the place laughingly called home I'm so alienated by the events of the night that I become convinced that our so-called civilization is a mistake that cannot be rectified, cannot even be dignified with the adjective tragic, since our errors and misapprehensions are so relentlessly trivial as to deserve to be forgotten before they were made, should such a thing be possible. Hours later I'm woken in the night by a text message coming in on my phone, which I've left on for just this eventuality. Truth test software advises re-writing Eureka, it says. History decays into images, not stories. See you in Uch or Ferozepore ... soon, Samsara.