Monday, March 31st, 11:26 PM

It occurred to me as I was walking, that I didn't have anything to think about. Not that I was carefree or lost in a daydream, I simply had nothing to think about. No parents or friends or siblings to be worry over, no lover to be pining over or hurrying home to, no home that I could remember. No memories.

I stopped at this realization, looking around to see if my surroundings would give me any clue to who I was. The street was residential...lower middle-class, urban, American East Coast architectural mix...it was slightly chilly but sunny out...budding trees, jackets and scarves but no earmuffs or gloves, high moisture content, most probably April...and the crossroads were Mt. Carmel Place and Oak Street...probably location: Yonkers, New York, satellite position Lat: 40.942, Long: -73.878. Apparently I'm well informed on geographic locations. Now if I can just figure out why I'm here.

No one is walking with me, no one's making eye contact or smiling at me. I'm pretty sure that's normal for New York. My clothes offer about as much information: jeans, blue turtleneck sweater, sturdy leather boots, a grey newsie cap, and a silver medical bracelet. Except, the bracelet doesn't have a Rod of Asclepius on it, instead the serpents were twined through a double helix and on the reverse the inscription read, "Eve, who is every woman."

Am I Eve? What's with the biblical reference? Am I religious? The bracelet feels comfortable, like a weight I like wearing. What an odd phrase...

The winds gusts for a moment and it goes right through the turtleneck. I wonder why I'm not wearing a jacket or scarf like everyone else. Then I feel the warmth of spring jacket, light fleece and storm grey, with a matching scarf. I glance around, suddenly feeling exposed. My muscles tense and I watch the street, but the midday passerbys pay me no notice. Perhaps magically appearing clothing was normal in this particular neighborhood?

Then the screaming starts. It's not movie screaming, the top of the lungs, unemotional, safe screaming. No, this is a barely human keen that cuts through brick and mortor and ten thousand years of culture to speak to the lizard brain inside you and tell you that something is wrong and cannot be made right. That sound is familiar too. It's coming from a building behind me, about halfway down the block to the north.

There's a piece of paper and a key in my left front jeans pocket. I know this because when I turned to find find the person who was speaking to my lizard brain it dug into my thigh.

I have a memory now: an apartment door and the creak it makes when I open it. A man sitting at a card table pouring over street maps and building blueprints; there's crate boxes and the rest of his equipment in the kitchen, along with the smell of soldered wires. It's not hard, just twist of thought, an enhanced intent and slight tug on biology. My fingers pass lightly through his short sandy-brown curls and it's done. He reaches up and scratches his scalp, too engrossed to even be suspicious. I can feel it starting already; he'll be dead in minutes. And I just walk out. That's what the screaming is about. I don't know who found him, what his name was, or why I killed him with a touch, but I know that this memory is true.

I can hear the sirens now, good people coming to salvage what they can from my interruption of their life. I wonder if I should tell them what I did. I can't tell them who I am or why I did it; I don't know. I'm standing outside of the apartment building now, watching the paramedics as they rush in. The smell up there will be the hardest thing for them to forget, or get rid of. Almonds and cherry blossoms. I'm ruining Spring for them; nothing to be done about it, though.

I step over to the ambulance, curious as the why the police officers in the cars that followed the emergency vehicle weren't shooing me away from the building entrance like everyone else. Not a glance or gruff word. I check my reflection the side mirror of the ambulance to see if I'm wearing a badge I didn't notice or if my jacket says FBI or something. I still don't know. I don't have a reflection.

Have I always been invisible?

Monday, March 31st, 12:11 PM

I slip into a cafe with Maurine's scrawled across the window in the wake of a man on his blackberry that wouldn't have noticed me even if he could see me. He shoes are scuffed and the cuffs of his suit are two inches too long. I note the picture and license number when he open his wallet pay for his double expresso latte and lemon poppyseed muffin; I wonder if the blackberry's stolen, too.

Once in the bathroom, I check the stalls for loiterers, and then peered at the nothingness in the mirror. I'm female, Caucasion, my hands confirm that, but my hair is too short to pull in front of my eyes. I haven't spoken yet, and I feel comfortable with my own silence. I get the impression I don't talk much, if my single memory is any indication of what I do for a living.

Peering at the blank mirror I wonder: Do live like this all the time? How do I interact with anyone? How do I live? Slowly a form begins to fill in in the mirror, a swirly, smoky figure resolving itself into a lithe young red-haired woman scrunching her nose in thought and concentration. I can feel a part of me, somewhere near my left temple, relaxing. I'm tired. Very tired.

Clearing my throat I try for the next sense. "Well, at least I can order a hot tea now." My voice is light, pleasant, and trained to pitch. Perhaps I'm a singer? Yeah, a singer that kills on Monday mornings for the extra cash. The door opens behind me and a mother with her toddler make a noisy entrance. I run a hand through my hair, all pretentious New Yorker, and walk out. I have no money, no identification, no phone, nothing to tie me to a past except the address and key that connects me to a rather odd case of arsenic poisoning.

I glance over to the pod of public computers then catch the eye of one of the baristas. "Hey, can I use one of the open computers?"

The high schooler points to the sign I'd already seen next to the pod that reads 'For paying customers only.' I sigh and slip into the skin of a woman trying to escape her abusive boyfriend. My eyes lower and I look defeated, shifting my weight away from her like a slow flinch. "Sorry...I-I don't have any cash on me."

I can see each step of my deception sink into her: she bites her lip, glances at the half-empty cafe, then reaches beneath the bar and pulls out the employee key card for the computers. "Here, just don't try to download anything and I'll have to get you off after a half hour, okay?"

Nodding and keeping my demure pretense in place, I take a seat at the computer. I pull up Mozilla and navigate to the Q & A section of Yahoo. 'Invisibility' brings up a rather interesting list of questions. Apparently I'm not the only one that can pull this particular trick; I follow one of the links on the site to the Novapedia and begin relearning my world.

I page through the Novapedia entries and cross reference them with posts on the Ask A Nova board of the OpNet. There seem to be quite a few novas in New York City: Juri McClendon aka Salamander, who couldn't get much more publicity without setting half the city on fire; a Doctor Robert White, pedantic but what doctor isn't; Odysseus, that I don't have a real name for, sarcastic but intelligent from the few posts I have to go on; a handful of others that look mostly like teens or college kids.

Start at the beginning, right? Salamander makes me nervous, like when my clothes had first changed at Oak & Mt Carmel. She seems foolishly exposed, a target large enough for anyone. On the other hand, she also seems emotional and prone to taking foolish risks, which might come in han-

Stop. Right there. I don't know who I used to be, but I don't think it's someone I want to be again. The greater part of my mind ignores me and is still off on that tanget, running through the various iterations of how to 'handle' Ms. McClendon. Apparently disgust can't stop a part of you that ingrained.

Damn it. Well, fine. I'll just wait for responses and see what comes of it. I certainly can't stay at Maurine's for the rest of my life.

Tuesday April 1st, 7:00 PM

First day come and gone. No responses on the nova site, but that's fine. I spent the night walking around the city, listening to sounds and looking for anything familiar. I marked the public libraries I passed, as well as likely looking places to get food. I'm pretty sure I could con my way into a meal here or there from the more gullible (read: newer) New Yorkers, but it's just easier to grab it from the food kitchens. I'm still hungry, but I'm sure I've eaten for three or four already today. I hope I'm not pregnant; that would be complicate things.

I should go to one of those clinics, the Rashoud Clinic. There's one here in the city, but every time I think of the clinics something cold and wet shivers up my spine. I could probably get whatever I need to register for the nova-only parts of the site I found, but again with the prehistoric amphibian and my spinal cord. I'll walk again tonight. It's easier to think in the cold and quiet.