Flatland

When Meg and Cal and Charles Wallace "Tesser" through space, they accidentally find themselves in a two dimensional universe. Their three spatial dimensions can’t survive in this universe and they nearly die, constrained like paper dolls on a flat surface.

We live in three spatial dimensions – and one dimension of time: a four-dimensional universe. Behind us, the past stretches out immutably, and before us lie the infinite probabilities of future time.  When I met Sjors, my time dimension became irresistibly tangled with his. Where he went, I would be. We would talk and live and breathe together and make love. We would have children, adventures, and I would touch him and know him every morning and every night. When we turned 85, we would step from the universe hand in hand. He promised me his future and I promised him mine only as a formality: it was already his. 

When I lost Sjors, I lost my future. For more than a year, I have lived in this flatland: having only this moment. Constrained to one single point in time. Like Charles Wallace, I have not been able to move or breathe and I’ve felt it killing me. I knew that the pain of living in an insufficient universe would become too great, and I would step out early. My future time was hopelessly slim.

In the past two days, I have glimpsed the elusive fourth dimension. 

I spent the weekend in Suffolk.  Jim invited me out to his home in a converted barn. Not a romantic getaway: a working weekend. Jim only needs to sleep four hours each night and I tried to keep up with his frenetic pace. Saturday, we worked for fifteen hours and Sunday, seventeen. We had pots of coffee and fridge-fulls of diet coke, and an occasional walk through the freshly cut barley fields: golden yellow to offset the black-green silhouettes of trees and the pale sky.  

We worked on my physical chemistry concept, resurrecting the stalled-out project one conversation at a time: mapping our ideas onto complementary computer screens on opposite ends of the same desk. He pushed and prodded me – drew out my ideas, brushed off the dust, dressed them with his insights and handed them back gleaming. Excited, I would work again until my back ached and my feet twitched. We ate our meals twice in a small seaside town, and walked onto the pebble beach to see the grey water reflecting the mood of a gloomy sky.  Late at night, to revive bloodflow, I propped my legs on the desk and kept working. It was painful and long. I lost track of time, of myself. He put chocolate in front of me and I made us sandwiches. Jim fed the fish. I wandered out into the dark, pacing the gravel along the edges of his porch light.

He said, “With the power and value of this tool, we can influence how pharmaceutical companies do business. We sell them polymorphs of their drugs in exchange for donations to humanitarian causes and drugs to third-world places.”

“Benevolent blackmail,” I christened it. I’d had a similar idea: “We offer discounts to pharmaceutical research into lifesaving drugs – vice lifestyle drugs.”

“You can do more with this than what you’re planning,” he said. “What if…”

And so it went. And, just like that, I had some future again. And it wasn’t linked to the pain of knowing Sjors won’t be in it. It wasn’t a reminder of the children I would not have. It was just: a hopeful future that was all mine. For a few hours this weekend, Jim handed me a compass and map.

There may be a way to leave Flatland.

Midnight football

I walked down to Via Napoli tonight, and along the busy waterfront. It was dark and the yellow moon shone a low light across the slick black water.

It is always busy here during the warm summer nights. Old men and women stroll together; street vendors sell knock-off goods on large gray bedsheets so they can easily make a sack from the four corners and run for it when the Guardia Finanza (the financial police) show up; gypsies peddle plastic flowers to diners in the outdoor cafe and beg for money; lovers are draped across one another on the cement benches and pressed along the seaside wall.

The shoe parade alone is worth the visit: girls and women teeter along the cobblestones on the most impossible platform heels, looking for all the world that they hardly notice the beribboned, strappy, leather and vinyl torture devices they've strapped to their feet. They seem equally deliberately oblivious to the fact that their makeup is perfectly applied ("I just woke up looking like this"). The men still comb and spray their hair high, Fonzie style. Their pants are like some badly-conceived costume from a B-grade sci-fi movie: high waist, tight on the calves, baggy on the thighs, and a crotch that rides towards the knees. From behind, they look like penguins.  I would have to be all kinds of desperate before I began seeing this as an attractive display of masculinity.

Then, there are the children. Of all ages. It's Neverland here: night activities last well until 2 or 3 AM. Tonight, there were pint-sized footballers. They absolutely cracked me up. All ages seemed to be involved: from four to twelve years old, playing their hearts out on an open stretch of pavement. Fancy footwork, and equal effort regardless of gender. One cheeky ten-year-old girl with an enormous gut overhanging too-tight pants huffed along after the ball with as much enthusiasm as the slimmest boy. No real conversation. Just concentration, and cheering with every goal.

There was one anomalous fellow of around 30 (wearing penguin pants) who was probably the father of one of the kids. It would seem that he should be mediating - ensuring that everyone got their fair play. But was he being a grown up? Absolutely not! He was playing his heart out, too. Taking the ball from the people half his size. He wasn't pulling any punches! At first I felt indignant. How dare he do this? He had an obvious advantage. But then I noticed that I didn't have anything to worry about. The little ones were holding their own just fine against him. Maybe there was a method to his madness: no coddling. Just play the game.

The way you laugh

How are you doing?

Why does this question still matter so much to me? Every day you are on my mind and I wonder how you are.

No matter how much I fight; no matter how I throw myself into my work, I come home and this hollow sense pervades everything.

The emptiness is not a generalized thing. It is the absence of you. After all this time, what I wrote to you once is true still: life without you is clockwork. Not life. 

I remember how you laugh. I remember that we laughed all the time. It occurs to me that I don't laugh anymore and I get angry at myself because I can't seem to laugh.

It would have been better if I had never met you. I wish that I did not know you existed. How can I know you and love you and never hear your voice again? Never touch you? Never support you or lift you up when you're low? How can I not reach over and ask you how you are? How can I not touch your skin or feel my body pressed against yours? 

I still marvel that you were able to shut this off after a year of loving me and aching for me. How do you feel these days?

Is there a hole in the center of you as there is for me? Do you wonder how I am doing?

Are you able to laugh? 

Is it possible to take the good and leave the sorrow behind? Can I pretend that things did not end so awfully? Can I imagine that we did not love one another half as well as we did? Can I forget every promise you made? Will I forget the way you laugh?

Criminal Complaint

Last week, I was in Germany; at a maritime tabletop exercise. I ate salted German food. I worked with the African participants of the exercise. I conducted surveys and briefed the results with my brand new intern. I worked with my NATO counterpart to design an approach to merging Operation Ocean Shield and APS. I climbed a mountain and took the cable car down. I listened to cow bells. I tried to be healthy and robust and the picture of efficiency and health. And the entire time, I waited for the clock to tick down - for the moment when I could return and file with the Italian Prosecutor.

This morning, I was back in Naples. And I filed the criminal complaint against the Dutch Intelligence agency who invaded my privacy. My lawyer had all of the paperwork ready and we walked through the bizarre justice building (built, ironically, by the local organized crime family) and we filed the appropriate paperwork. Then, we visited the prosecutor and my lawyer briefed her on the complaint. She said she would look at it today.

We stopped by an ATM on the way out and I paid my lawyer more of what I owe him (it felt like a drug deal: me handing him a roll of bills that he stuffed into a jacket pocket). I drank an espresso, and he drank a lemon tea, and it was over.

So that's it. That's all I can do. It's out of my hands, and I'm left feeling a bit empty.

I knew it was lost before I started. We would not be at this point if I had actually won against them. All that is left is this second-rate prize: my ability to say out loud, "what you did was wrong. You should not have invaded my privacy. You were wrong."

But does it even matter any more? All that matters is that I have lost too much to them. I have lost too much to him. I have lost him, and it is all so tangled up in them, I can't tell which was his decision and which was theirs. Does it even matter anymore? The results are the same.

I hope that the pain begins to ebb. People tell me it will, and I smile and nod and say, "I'm sure you're right." They tell me that I will move on and I, raised in a society that creates the archetype of Miss Havisham for any woman who does not heal after a broken heart, begin to fear when I do not believe them. I am 34. I know myself. I know that I am lying when I tell myself that he was not my match - that I will find someone else. 

 Edna St. Vincent Millay had it right:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

You owe me better than this

At what point did they realize I wasn't playing a game? Did they ever realize it? I don't know that they could have. People who make it their job to deceive and play games don't understand truth-tellers. They are always looking for the twist. 

Me: "You have violated my privacy. I will file criminal charges against you and seek justice. If you don't want me to do this, then release my friend."

Them: "What is it you really want? We don't understand what you're talking about."

Me: "I'm very serious about this. You intercepted phone calls and messages. You tapped the line. You spied on me. You violated the EU privacy laws. I saw you. I documented your actions. I will ensure that you pay the price. I will forego my chance for justice, however, if you release my friend."  

Them: "Uh, you are very upset. We don't understand why you're upset. Maybe if we keep playing stupid and stalling, you'll go away. Maybe we'll think of some way to manipulate you into doing what we want.

Me: "Oh baby, you haven't seen upset yet."

But it didn't seem to matter how I framed it, they were sure there was some angle. They were confident that I would tell them what I "really" wanted, or that they would find some way to catch me out. This was their mistake. I was not lying. I was not bluffing. Now I will file criminal charges against them. 

Do they realize now what I plan to do? Are they frightened? Are they upset? They cannot be as upset as I have been during the last two years, fearing for Sjors; never understanding exactly why he was behaving as he was; knowing that they had their claws in him. 

Now, they have used Sjors against me. He writes to me to PLEASE stop what I'm doing. And then he follows this up by telling me he doesn't know what I'm doing. When I explain what I'm doing, he pretends he was never there - never figured out the mystery of the phones with me, never told me what he has told me. 

Instead, he writes: 

"I needed time to respond, I was shocked about the contents.The truth is that there has never been anyone messing with us. I only have tried to compartimentalise our contact.That is the reason no one understands your threats.Now it is on the brink of escalation. Something I desperately try to prevent.If it will, you and I will be the victims. (and please don't be suspicious)I think you need help and I offer you my friendship.I feel you created your own reality but it is far from the truth"

It makes me sick. He un-writes everything that was written between us. He forgets that I kept careful records. 

I write back: 

"Your message to me was awful and a terrible lie. For the first time since knowing you, I am truly ashamed of you. You may have decided to sell your soul to them, but I have paid the price for that decision time and time again.You knew you were not your own person when you first approached me. You knew that you were married and, more than this, you knew that you belonged to them. You knew you were not free to offer yourself to me, but you came anyway. You did not tell me any of this. You promised me things that were not yours to offer. I have paid the price.
You know that I deserve justice for their violation of my privacy. But you aid them in their attempts to discredit me. What was that bullshit? "Created your own reality" and "I think you need help"? That was awful and nasty and I am ashamed of you for participating. Your job may require you to play deceptive games, but you also have the choice to remain silent.
I will fight the bastards because, among other things, they have violated my privacy. The prosecutor will determine whether the evidence is credible and sufficient. Your attempts to paint me as “out of touch with reality” will harm you more than they will ever harm me. Already, they have harmed you in my eyes.Do not allow yourself to become their mouthpiece to me again.
You owe me better than this."

I don't know what happens next. I can't control the consequences. But I will keep pushing until he is free or until I've punished them for the damage they've caused. 

  

Too many lies and secrets

Dear Sjors,

I feel so sad by what you tell me: you will support me if you can, but you are constrained and prefer that things don't get messy.

As always you fear for your children. You are worried that you may have something to be afraid of, but you don't clarify what that is. I pray to god that they will not punish you for what I've done. I also pray that you have nothing to fear from me. I have done what I can to insulate you (and taken quite a bit of heat for it, too). The security folks here are understandably upset that Mac was in sensitive spaces. And they're pissed that I won't paint them the complete picture about how I know, drawing a line to you.

You wish me happiness. God, I wish that I might have that, too. There is no future for me that will be happy, because I will lack you. I wish you happiness, too. But I think it will be equally improbable because you lack me and I am your other half. But you do have your sons and they bring you joy. So that is good.

I wish you had not lied to me. It makes me feel that I can’t leave anything for you – can’t tell you what I feel because you might give it to them. I also can't really believe you when you say how you are. You have lied about that for months and months and all I can do is ache for you and be so sorry.
You tell me “PLEASE Stop what you are doing. PLEASE.” And then you say you don’t know what I am doing or what is going on. Which is it? How can you ask me to stop doing something if you don’t know what that is?

You tell me that noone has done anything illegal against me when you know this is not true. You know that Mac & his gang intercepted phone calls and messages and fucked with my privacy in ways that violate Italian privacy laws and the privacy laws of the EU. This is well documented and the documentation verified by experts, and the phones I used exploited by professionals. If you lie to me about this, how can I trust you when you tell me in the same breath that I am not in any danger?

Furthermore, if you don’t know what is going on, how can you tell me with confidence that I am not in any danger? Any organization will act to protect itself when threatened - and it will use the tools at its disposal. I have threatened a covert organization and will bring their illegal actions into the light. I intend to severely threaten this organization and ensure that they are thoroughly exposed. How am I to know what tools it will deploy against me to make me stop? Already, they have used you against me and this is very sad and awful for me.

It's possible that you truly believe that you have made all your decisions without the influence of others. So, what happened to you on November 24, 2010 and December 12, 2010, and later in August/September 2011 (and god knows how many other times) when you were taken away and
spoken to, if this was not "influence"? What was it? Friendly advice?

I have been in hell. I do not feel it would profit me at all to describe this because I think you know what this hell feels like. But you dealt with it in a different fashion: when you felt the hell of losing me, you shut yourself off from me completely. You told yourself that I was not trustworthy; that I was not your person. Do you feel that you live half a life now? Do you feel that there was something beautiful that you remember once, but that you have never felt since? Do you wonder why you are so angry when I try to remind you of this? Do you remember me? Do you remember what we were?

I could not shut down, and it has all but killed me to live in this hell: a constant remembrance of what I’ve lost: the fact that I've lost you and feel a desperate need to rewrite some crucial moment in my past so that this truth will not be. Sometimes the emotional pain of this loss is more than I can manage. It does not diminish with time. In spite of all my efforts, it has not diminished.

When I approached Mac, I did not believe that I would somehow manage to get you in my life again. I knew you were lost to me. I intended two things: First, I intended to liberate you if I could and, that failing, I intended to punish your institution for the evil it has done to me.

Please do not tell me it has not done evil to me. By making me fear so terribly in those early days with you, they set the stage for near-constant fear for your safety and a knowledge that I could not
fight openly for what I believed in: for the man I so deeply loved. This awful helplessness was compounded when I later learned that you were married. You were unavailable to me in every possible way and I was impotent to reach a hand out and touch you. If you had not been married, I could have married you and we would have fought the bastards together as you were so hopeful we might. But there was nothing I could do to help you or be with you. I had no rights or say in the matter. How can you imagine that this would not destroy the woman you cared so deeply for?

Now, I channel this unbearable pain into a slow burn of patient, careful planning and execution. It is the only thing that gives me relief: to find some justice for what they have done. I am an analyst
and a scientist. I have thorough data and documentation that I have painstakingly collected, and I will use my extensive information and my analytical skills to expose your institution.

You may be constrained. You are constrained. You must lie to me: tell me the company line. I hate that you lie to me. I hate that you become their tool and make the same lies that Mac made to me. It makes me feel dirty and awful for you.

If you do not tell me the truth, then I cannot be as precise as I need to be. How can the surgeon see the healthy tissue when he makes his cut if you do not give him light?

You tell me you will not come back to read what I have written for you so I send this to you now. I know that it is likely they will see it because you have agreed to their terms for your life. You have
convinced yourself that these are your decisions. What more will they learn from it that they do not already know? That I love you? That I am dangerous to them? That you have broken ties with me?

It is an understandable but obvious decision by the organization to attempt to discredit me. This was clear from the correspondence with Mac. But Mac made far too many mistakes and, had there not been truth in my words, he would have been a fool to continue the dialogue as long as he did. Furthermore, I am a credible person and my data and analyses are highly credible and are being pursued by serious people.

 If you decide to respond to this message, do not bring me back their words. Do not paint me with a brush that you know is false, with the hope that it will serve their end.

With deep love and sorrow for your situation.