In the world xseño Paula took me up una montaña to where the children tend to hunt for certain fruits. They are small and sometimes round and different colors. They taste so sweet, sometimes I had to suck my tongue in an embrace to the roof of my mouth, the flavor was so overwhelmingly satisfying. Paula let me eat until I was full, and she laughed at me many times. I didn't mind. I enjoy having her nearby. I like to see her face in that shape, her cheeks tight in knots below her eyes, her eyes flickering something like light. This is something so different than the world I am from, something so distant, almost inexistent. I do not miss where I am from here, I do not miss who I am with. For this I feel sadness, perhaps regret, perhaps disappointment in myself. Am I wrong to feel such things? Am I wrong to wish I was here instead of back there? I am lost in between thoughts, I dream of only here when I am home but when I am here, well home is freckle on my skin.
   Still, there are more important things. Mi hermano has not returned in three days. I blame it on el jefe and his gang, perhaps he is on a task, or far worse he could be on a test. El jefe and his crew are known to bestow cruel things on the newcomers. One time a young boy was tied up to a post for six days without food or water. It was a test. No one knows how he survived before el monstruo had clawed at his stomach and gnawed at his shins. He had bled to death, and the story is said that el jefe only said "pobre hijo" and walked away at the sight. El jefe is disturbed at nothing, he feels nothing, he has no moral, no self respect. The only respect he gets is forced upon others like the dust we breath. One more day without mi hermano and I will go looking for him. I am not afraid of el jefe. Xseño has given me strength, strength to believe in something more, some kernel of emotion I am not used to, something that seems only possible when hope is brought back inside. Still, I know this world to be a harsh one, I will not be a fool to think hope will stay at this doorstep without persuasion.

Mi amigo, Roco tried one pill. The xseño took him to a very different place. He describes machines and aircrafts and battle, all of which he is the captain of. He tells me he always wins the fights and never has fear. At first this was all fine and I would trade him a pill for some nice sweet or salts and bring them to mi madre. She would be happy and so would Roco, but he has let my invention slip. More people know and more people seek xseño. I have begun to trade it for nice foodstuff and clothing, but this is not how I intended, so many people knowing. So many people lining up at my door and mi madre beginning to ask questions. Perhaps now mi hermano can quit el jefe and his gang.

    I am starting to understand better the world xseño. The people here are kind and curious, they follow me with their eyes everywhere, but not so that I am intimidated. They have warmth in their eyes, like they are eager to learn and eager to share. I met Paula, maybe a type of leader here. They listen to her words and the small children run after her giggling and holding her hand. She has showed me around the world xseño, with patience. She smiles at my misunderstanding and laughs at perhaps my stupidity when I eye the flowers that shrink at my touch. She holds my hand gently near the flowers again with the type of patience I do not have and soon the flower warps around my finger- this world is something I cannot comprehend.
    Paula's hair runs long down her back, as all of the females do. They tie the front pieces of their hair back out of their faces, in all different ways, and let the rest fall loose. The woman are not very tall, but they seems so strong. They run up the hills and show me the ways to the rivers and the fresh water deposits worked into the mountain sides. Paula shows me where the perfect hojas live, leaves that are cupped and deep but sturdy enough so when I dip them en agua, la hoja holds the water perfectly so I may bring it to my lips and taste its sweetness.
        In the world xseño, it seems that all the duties are shared. They do not hunt el monstruo like we do, but pesca from the lakes, which there seems to be millions of. I look into the lake and I can count them, they are different size and different colors, they seem not shy nor annoying. They swim with the children, and when the people take them from the water, they put their hands on its skin and they say words quietly. Everyone eats together, and they all bring what they have found. They thank each other for their contributions and they are happy and full. They all have a cubby in which they sleep for the night, it is soft and my body sinks in when I close my eyes. The strangest part is that when I wake back up in my real world, I am no longer hungry, I am full and healthy. Mi madre worries when I do not eat here, and I just say that I am full, I am so very full.

Here is how those houses are designed.

 

           It is time you know more about this place. When I was young, mi abuela would tell me stories- I know much more than any other child today. These stories were forbidden to talk about before, but now they are simply a thing of the past. El revolucíon had started when she was only una pequeña chica, the streets were lit on fire. Brigh blaze and dark smoke, she gulped it down like water, unable to do any other way. When she got to her baby hermano's crib, he would not wake. Mi abuela got out alive, among only a few in the entire nation. Their used to be a thing called government that you could put your eyes on it. You could place it in a man, she said. But after that night, no one could place anything.

            The government came from somewhere afar. Today it dictates nothing but escape, it shows us the way to another world where fear is no such thing, and food is on your table every day- to think of such a place. Mi abuela told me of the stories, of how her people reformed, assigning jobs to each survivor, denying the outcasts. Mi abuela had to search for a group to live with, and almost no one would take her at such a short age, finally she was accepted after offering berries she had collected upon a deserted trail. That is how the new world formed, upon ashes of the past. Today we hunt for monstruo, the only thing we can find alive. El jefe has the most hunters, they take the most numbers of monstruo, and everyone else is left to fight for a few. Mi abuela and her people learned how to make batter from bark, crushing It and adding water, like we do today. In the morning mi madre crushes the bark that mi hermanas can find, it is very scarce, and sometimes we must trade, labor or clothing. There was a time when I was young, when mi madre had to trade a child, though she will not mention it ever again. That was the same time mi padre left.

            There are schools today, formed out of the good ones left, mi madre tells me. We go to school, and we learn of things like hunting, and numbers, and government, though no one understands, including las instructoras. School is where I lerned to mix chemicals, that is our favorite parts. Mi padre understood my love for ingredients and he was able to trade un monstruo he caught on a lucky break for a máquina. I was able to produce pills for strength, and pills that make you feel not so hungry. Mi madre hated these pills and thought I was denying fate its face. He told me that some day, I would learn to save my people, some day I would be key. But I never believed him. I never got excited or happy or innovative, I just kept with the way of things, and didn’t let a tear loose when he departed. 

            In my land there is no more talk of hope, no more talk of good. There is no government that one can see. There is not state. This is no place. This is land where we stand and we breathe on. No on knows why we try, we only try to survive, and we only survive to die. Mi hermanas shiver from hunger, mi hermanos look to me with faith in their eyes, only to be met with disappointment upon their next days. Today that streets are run by el jefe, the boss, the man that gathers his children in groups and holds power of this nothing. Mi hermano has joined this group, as I described before. He came home with blood on his shirt and black pasted on his eyes like a dark oil stain through the ground, his hair caked with crust from his open scalp, his hands offering a loaf of bread. Mi madre, she is fuerte, she is only strong so that we may not smell the lie, but it comes to our children anyways. They grow up with fear as their only game, they grow up with hunger as their only friend. When mi madre saw mi hermano, she wasn’t sad and she was not mad. She took his shirt and sent the little one down to the wash. She took the bread and said nothing. I feel anger and disappointment. Mi hermano, he smiles when no one is looking, he is proud. How can I be proud of a job I have not done, a job he must endanger himself to do, a job he has endangered this family to do. El jefe roams the streets now with our home in his territory, our names on his walls. Mi poco hermana’s in prospect for a consequence of betrayal. Their little faces sacrificed for the right of his game.

            El jefe knows all there is to know about all his territory, he knows everything about his people: their names, their lives, and their jobs. He does not know about me. He does not know about xseño. How will I hide it now? Now with el jefe down my throat, in my cellar, in my room, watching us with his right through mi hermano, through mi hermana’s. I am the oldest. These streets are dirty with my humility, shown through paths and doorsteps, stuck on feet and hoofs. 

The world xseño has been suspendío for a bit. The grounds here are dangerous and mi hermano has taken sides with the wrong pack. It's the greatest pack this city has known, but the meanest, and without moral or thought they rummage through these streets with little respect and no true glory to hold to their names. I worry about mi hermano, as if he were mi hijo. There is no padre here anymore and it is my responsibility to hide mi familia from the ill effects of este mundo. Mi hermano is not making my life easy. I can see why he wants to run with the packs of fame, though I cannot see why he would put este familia in danger like that. Resources are small, so perhaps he is taking the only measures known to some to help their familia. I have another idea though and if I get enough bids, perhaps I could get the word out about xseño. This is risky- if this gets on the wrong path it could be fatal. Although I wish to realize this experience either way, perhaps I should lead my name away from the tag of the drug. I wish to write more about the world of my xseño, but for now I must deal with mi hermano, and decide on este familias next meal.

It became clear that I could control the natural things, but much of the world had been here long before I had- and this, I had no control over. It will all be difficult to explain, but I will attempt. Every building seemed like un huevo- three fourths of an oval protruding from the ground. The skins of the houses were glossy white, or clear, and all of a form of glass and as I looked around green plants and shoots with appendages sprouted up around me. These plants carried so much color. Yes, color! Full of patterns and streak and light. I have never seen it like this, but I recognized it all from mi abuela’s stories that this is what filled in borders sucked some happy feeling from our eyes and into our hearts. The buildings sat in an area beneath the hills that shot waterfalls from its edges, and glittery clear water gathered in pockets and crevices of rocks and valleys.

I saw this all in the first day, but what I could never imagine, was that there were others. At first I didn’t believe it to be true. Everything was quiet and still. No life seemed as though it had touched this world. I knew it was my world and I thought only the objects inside it were to my projection, but this was untrue. The first building I walked into was just as pristine as it was outside. The inside was made up of compartments, like giant square cubbies all along the inside of the shell. No means to get to each compartment were present, although tables, beds, cushions, and chairs seemed to be everywhere within them. The bed like areas were towards the top and dining areas towards the bottom. When I looked up through the building the convex ceiling turned from its glossy white to clear and I could see the sky above me as it drew in oranges intertwined with the fluff and the deep azul I recognized from earlier.

It was just then that a figure came from the side and frightened me, I took steps back, forgetting my control of this place. I remember the sky jetting to black and a lightening bolt striking the house, which scared me even more. All this man said is “Do not be afraid,” and something inside me calmed and the sky turned to a light pink. The man carried a tray of food and drink, but I didn’t dare touch- at first. I thought about the possibilities of my mind tricking me into consuming something to overcome this state of mind, or what I was eating in my real world, or if I could eat at all- if the affect of sustenance could carry over in my real body. That is, if this wasn’t my real body. Even so, I finally accepted the drink, and when I did out came a hundred others from the world xseño. 

The first shuttle crash happened yesterday. They said it was impossible, but we were all proved wrong. Six hundred turned to stars, which may seem like a lot, though somehow it doesn't.  My people say they are afraid to fly now, that they will bare the weight of this world a few years longer. Mi madre cried at meal, and I think she is worried that mi padre will never come home. I stopped thinking he could. I tried to comfort mi madre and I tried to feel concern, but my world is being created fast, and there is so much to tell.

The drug is solid and clear. If i were to drop it to the dirt, I'd never find that pill again. That's alright though, I've already produced hundreds. This is how it happened the first time I took xseño: I woke up and the world was white. Shimmering, really. When I stepped, this silver dust fell down in front of my feet. It stuck to the ground, it wouldn't budge, not when I dropped onto my hand and knees and tried to blow it away. I did not know where I would go, I just kept walking, and the silver dust showed a path. And then I saw it. I saw the grass. It sprung up everywhere, it covered the ground, and it was green! The real green, mi abuela had spoken about. The brightness came from the sky and when I looked around, I saw it was blue- I knew it was blue. Blue, blue! Like mi hermanas eyes, azul like the sky!

Then these spots of smoke formed in the air, white and fluffy, like my blanket I had when I was only un niño that mi madre bargained su salsa de chocolate for. Her homemade salsa de chocolate, was a prize for my people. The blanket was brown and musty but mi madre, she cleaned it up, and it came out a nice grey. Those things in the sky, they looked so good, like I could sleep on them, like I could jump up and down on them. When I wished that, that's just what happened. They came down softly next to me and I was able to get on to it, while it floated back into the sky. I looked down at the green and I followed the path of silver, it came upon structures all white and shiny, some like the pill, solid and clear. I told the white form to bring me there. It is all too amazing to describe now. I will say, that when I woke it had been a couple days, but my clock told me it had only been six hours. I must get to sleep, I have a big day tomorrow.

La abuela used to talk of color, though it was hard for me to comprehend. The sky used to be a bright blue and not a musky, swampy green, she said, still I wasn't sure how she meant. The ground, she said, was a real green, covered in a short stiff plant with tiny blade like arms called grass. I have tried to type codes in and find the grass, but the color I still cannot display into my mind.

At first it was just another drug, the kinds you make as a kid, just better. I had mixed and matched, and used mi hermana's perritos nuevo to come up with a cleaner more sustainable kind of atmosphere- something no kid learns to do. When i got it up to experimental draft, I took my first try. The repercussions were beautiful, the ground came up all neat like in a silver and clean fog, the human structures began to insinuate changes when I looked upon them long enough, changes I started to wish for. Some bars to climb or a shoot to get to the top floor; they started to appear. Though in the real world it came to be a perception only, a flickering light that would die when I approached.

It's easy enough to understand the components that make the affect to parts of the allusion. We learned that long ago, though I've mastered it. With a little more Adrino and a little less Pitinine, I was able to up the the perceptions and dim the haze. Soon it conformed more within my head, than within the world. I spent less time in the streets and more time in my room, distorting and duplicating the tiny drawers on my bench, enlarging them and climbing inside.

I kept the charges up, but added Hallgenite and Tranite. I stayed in my bed but my mind wandered the streets, anywhere I wanted to go, anywhere I wanted to see, I went. I had conversations with el jefe and I  picked his mind, learning his secrets, later wondering if they were true. I spent a small amount of time at el laboratorio de gobierno learning certain tricks and comprehending it all. This is how I got here, this is how I created the xseño. This is why my worlds were never the same. 

    I was eight years old when el padre left for the new world. We walked two days to see him launched off. It happened slow at first, like our world would fight to keep the ship put, but eventually it left from the sky and the only thing that was left of mi padre was the smudges of exhaust against the atmosphere.

    Mi padre, he told me one thing, and just that. “You take care of su madre. You take care of sus hermanas. You take care of sus hermanos.” The eyes of mi padre, they showed of the strictest sorrow. My people, they talk of devastation and resignation and death. They talk of divine rule, injustice, and evil.

    The day of mi hermana pequeña's birthday we were walking down the street and she gripped my hand tight. She held her chin high and grimaced at ever stranger that passed. Hatred in the eyes of a six year old. This is when I finally accepted what my people have been saying. I have begun to understand the hopelessness of it all, of our lives here. There are dangers on the street, el jefe and his gang, hunger, los monstruos rabid at night, thieves, hunters, kidnappers. I must do my duty. I must keep my family safe. 

    After school and when los niños have gone to sleep, I have started to experiment more and more with the material mi padre has left me. I want to make him proud, though maybe, I just want to keep together and discover our ticket to survival. I have not seen my father since the day he left. No one has seen anyone return yet. After someone leaves, we never hear from them again. We know little of what is out there and we know little of our fate here. It is day 29J, the year is 2501.

In the old ages humans spelled messages with ink, the kind my father left me in a little black box with white pieces of a crisp sheet. Those humans wrapped their words into a bundle and wrote another human's title on top. The message went from hand to hand, everything read the name on the top and eventually it was received by that human. El hermano, Eloy,  told me that it wasn't true, that an object could never get pressed beneath eyes and find its way to another life without being snatched away every time. I've never seen a book. It works when a bunch of those little messages are all packaged up, they tell stories, like mi madre used to tell when I was young. I know it's true because the database I have broken into has this system of messages called 'blogs.' From what I can tell, humans from the past wrote stories about their life. They wrote them everyday and other human could see it all. I know there were books, because one time I read about a human who was titled 'librarian.' She spent every day in a place called a 'library' and in the 'library' there were millions of books for other humans to read. I couldn't understand who owned the library or what the human had to do to look at these books. Though I'm sure it was something cruel and disheartening.

I am not worried about other humans reading this. The database has been terminated for  a couple hundreds of years now. I'm not sure I'm the only one here, but no one would tell me secrets. No one would risk that. If no one else sees this, well that's fine. I want words in a place other than my mind. My name is Lula and I created a drug. I titled it xseño, and what it will allow you to create is something unbelievable, but nothing but believable once you have taken it. If the drug does not die when I do, as I hope it will, well at least now it will be known here where it came from, what it was meant to do, what I wished for it. I am seventeen years old, and when xseño was born I knew nothing else.