I'm experimenting with a new style here, so please
don't think there's anything wrong with your mailer. 
There really *aren't* any quotation marks.

Start: 7:23 p.m., 30/12/2001
*****

In Silence

by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com

*****
	GateKeepers is copyright a lot of people, none of
whom I know, none of whom are myself.  
*****

	I miss him.

	I suppose some people - young Kaoru certainly,
possibly Ruriko, but not Ukiya, I don't think - would
think that I was crazy.  Or that it was proof that I'm
plotting against them all again.

	I do hate him, now.  I hate him - but only because
there was a time when I thought I loved him.  But now,
I think I loved the image of him that I built inside
my head.  He simply saw it and slipped inside my
dreams.  Ironic - after I was sure I had thrown all my
dreams away, he slid so neatly into the one I had
clung to so tightly I didn't even realize I still had
it.

	I don't blame him, though.  Does one blame a cobra
for being what it is?  It can't help it, and neither
could he.

	I think a part of me still loves him.

	The Commander spent a long time talking with me,
afterwards, and I told him what was at the root of my
- corruption, he called it, but I don't see it that
way.

	I have never been important to anyone, I told him,
and I wanted to be.  Whatever it took.  I always have.

	What about your parents? he asked me.  What about
them?

	I am about as individual to them as a noodle in one
of the bowls of chow mein they cook in their
restaurant, I replied.  I am their daughter Megumi,
not Megumi their daughter.

	He was silent a long time.

	It isn't true, he said finally.  You are the only
GateKeeper with the Gate of Protection.

	And how important is that? I asked, bitterly.  How
many missions depended on the Gate of Protection,
rather than Ukiya's Gate of Wind, or Ruriko's Gate of
Life?  Even the Gate of *Illusion* is more important
to AEGIS.

	I already *know* I'm unique.  Everybody is *unique*. 
I want to be *important*.

	He had no answers for me.  Only platitudes.  I
listened in silence, and left as soon as politeness
permitted.

	He made me feel important.  That was what was so
insidious, really.  All his beliefs tallied in with my
own.  Only the important were worthy of his regard,
therefore as I had his regard, I was important.  It
was what I wanted to hear.

	What wakes me up at night, though, is that even now
his actions seem so *reasonable*.  People *are*
stupid.  Litterbugs *are* idiots.  Rude people *are*
selfish.  And it is so tempting to try to teach those
cruel jocks who taunt the quiet ones (like myself)
until they crack a lesson that they will *never*
forget....

	His Gate was black.  Mine is not - it's still green. 
Which proves to me that this darkness at the bottom of
my heart is not imposed, as it was on Ruriko, nor is
it a madness, as it was with him, but a part of me. 
Which means that it will never go away.

	I wonder if the Commander realizes what a danger I
could be, if I chose?

	Will I choose?

	All I want, really, is to be important.  It doesn't
have to be to the nation, or the world.  Technically I
am already, and I know how real *that* importance is. 
The real importance is when someone smiles when you
enter the room, because you have entered the room. 
It's when someone feels their life has changed because
you entered it.  And it doesn't matter if that person
is the only one who feels that way; that they *do*
feel that way is all that you need.  That I need.

	All I want is to be important.  

	It was a lie, but he made me feel important.

	I miss him.

*****
Finish: 8:14 p.m., 30/12/2001

=====
raye_j@yahoo.com
http://www.thejohnsens.com/index.html

"'I run, therefore I am'; more accurately, 
'I run, therefore with any luck I'll still *be*'."
   - Rincewind's philosophy, as explained in "Interesting Times"

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