Ode to Prime Numbers

by Yin Xiaoyuan

Your name is ‘le seul’.

Undeconstructible, and enigmatically unyielding.

As straight as a feather, vividly white as well, is the fragment of bone in the depth of entwined source codes. You never know since when the lips of the cognoscenti started testing on you: They longed to know how the fluttering sequences of binary numbers smell, which scintillate between positive and negative infinity. Ambery? Or just intoxicatingly oriental?

Their coarseness hampered their forlorn attempt to reach you; their lust to disassemble left them nothing but despair and dirty, worn gloves.

Just as what Alphonse de Polignac once said: There is a mirror image of you in the fathomless universe, forever 2 degrees apart from where you are located. You almost felt her sometimes… You have spared no vision or hearing in your exploratory search for her: yet you sank into an ocean of molecules -- banal replicas of one another, and then a moor of double helixes blooming and withering ephemerally. All you could see is waving hyphae, stretching along fissures between clusters of stars, whose glimmers tasted so antiquely astringent!

You were chosen out of all others since you were a ripe embryo. Time-roughened hands with sophisticate calmness, combed through and smoothed out kernels of corn, like what Fate did to centillion bytes of data. The blazing ibis from the east condescended to them like a flash of wisdom –- devoutly before her they winnowed away chaff and dust, while you clung to the center of the giant mesh, like a rare butterfly… They let you nestle up among their fingers, held you to the light and murmured with a Mediterranean accent: “Ciao!”  

The streets that have supplied you with all colors and sounds of life are in a parallel system to theirs. When you saunter down to the seaside, hands in pockets, local people approaching you with buckets of olives and sardines can not actually meet you, as if you were walking past this place at different times of a day. They indulge in their neon nights while you embrace your sapphire days. Gradually you turn from strangers to dancing partners, lovers and then rivals, in the revelry of darkness! 

Growth curves of everything are invisible but to the stars: they appear as emerald waves, rising from feebleness to robustness, soaring marvelously, and then plunging, increasingly close to zero. Just as what the frequency of prime numbers reveals, they end up in decay as you end up in solitude. You are destined to be the last celestial body over seven thousand miles of graveyards.

[Voiceover 1] when you glanced away beyond tracks of time, suddenly he came into view, emerging from underneath surface of the ethereal, gleaming with vigor and tenacity. Those attributes of his do not perish with the body, or even with the soul. He is incarnated everywhere, in weather, energy, and even Zen. A roots-stems-leaves theory could never demystify the origin of him or the canopy above, which could be traced back to Hadean time.

[Voiceover 2]Compared to the entire history of time, phantasmagoric voices rustling through those lines are nothing but drops of liquid in vascular bundles of the universe. Ears which hear them would turn away shyly like autumn leaves. When there drip out mercury, whoever its sound reaches will be doomed.

 [Voiceover 3] It has been kept secret, that the Fate of human race had been long predicted, by the final scale the convex meniscus rose to.

（Excerpted from Avant-garde Trilogy, Tuanjie Press, 2015,

and Adirondack Review, Spring Issue, 2016)

32-bit Color Depth

By Yin Xiaoyuan

(An announcement：The Color Test System has been activated. This is the first warning. Please return to your rooms. )

“Have you noticed it? What we are in is not in a hotel. The scarlet velvet couches, dark golden carpets and chandeliers are but a camouflage--

This is an institution. It seems other buildings were only a green belt away, but you can never take a step outwards. "

(Eyes blood-red, he grasped a glass of Depth Charge from the trolley,

and gulped it down.) A piece of cloth was clipped to the board sent to your room--

Purple, neatly cut.

“Why is purple a possible outcome?”

A Jacaranda tree by the window sprayed sparks in the storm, scratching the sky and made it bleed...

What kind of personality are you? Red or blue? They are diffused into each other this very moment.

Look at those pieces of porcelain! They are neutralizing one another, their outlines mixing--

A spindle-shaped vase and a napkin box mixed into some scallop-shaped ware,

Moving, rustling, on the boundary between light and shadow.

A hypocrite lobby manager and a grumpy woman mixed into the sullen guest in Rm.1037,

The last person stepping out of the elevator was adhered to the wall.

--like a potato wrapped in candied floss! “Help！ ” She cried out.

But there was nothing you could do. The outlines of everything were opening up towards the infinite,

while borderlines between colors shattered.

“This company, emerging from nowhere, has pronounced their breaking the bottleneck of Photoshop, by successfully making 32-bit pictures,

which is definitely an astounding breakthrough：

A gradiant has replaced a color atlas.”

Veronica's irises are like the Grand Prismatic Spring: emerald in the middle, garnet on the outer ring, and mustard at the edge…

Men drown in them described them as “a crescendo of hues”, in which he witnessed his own soul being detached from his flesh.

Window frames shimmered with mercury luster.

They drew the curtains wide and felt the world outside:

“Super-5-star luxury and lustration, in the year 2023 we opened outlines of objects…”

-- Those are letters written on the scrolls, hanging from top of this skyscraper.

You were born and imprisoned in such a picture,

brighter than you were in your previous life, but remained odorless

To Kill a Process

by Yin Xiaoyuan

To make rolls with caviar, lemon and dill;

To dive into the hinterland of a railway timetable in hope of catching a black-headed gull underneath;

To set a clock to your biological clock；to filter the trickling sunshine with Chemex paper;

To double-check tone needs with a copy machine; to keep your battery charged with water and pure air...

Steps to take:

Start Task Manager by Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Set priorities.

Cut, sand and polish it-- with resolution.

Shreds floating in the air tried to form new logics: To catch the smell of dill with Chemex paper, and set its tone to your needs...

The clock is always the last thing to deal with. （After all, it is not the clock in Benjamin Button’s story that runs backwards）

To kill a process-- unsuccessfully. Just confusing multithreading.

You were in a jam between “static” and possible velocity.

A sign sent from outside：Cover of the Enigma Album--

Seven Lives Many Faces

“Are you good at Excel？”“Just so-so. ”

“Expand the selection before you sort a column , or the data no longer match up.”（There is a sin in making a cell…）

--why could a caviar roll be attuned to “double helix of time”，

and a conversation with the copy machine possibly “gave sunshine a honey hue? ”

“Wheat is ripe when seasons were interwoven within,

while the copy machine harbored vagrant colors around.”

(From Valley Voices[US], 2018）

13 Items in the Start Menu

by Yin Xiaoyuan

Common Applications：

A. Biological clock. Autorun self-debugging function. Full warranty (including fine adjustment service) for 40 years since date of original installation.

Its service life varies based on climatic zones, precipitation, pH values, types of temperament, jet-lag traumas and system junk.  The default value is “local time”, free to switch when in multi-regional mode.

B. Single-timeline memory. When a parameter changes, mass begins accumulating in an alternative space-time elsewhere, as its inverse function. "Add-up" mode for skills and "overwrite" for emotions. Self-destruction process is started when the system is experiencing a shutdown, which inevitably swallows unique techniques and family heirlooms.

As a built-in APP, its values are modifiable. No long guaranteed once rooted.

C.Self-protective/self-destructive mechanism, the former includes psychological projection/compensation, selective amnesia, pain and immunity,

the latter “cell-autophagy” and “TRAIL receptor”,etc.

Customizable Software Packages：

D. Human nature: Its beta version is formally released at age 18, an infamous bug-ridden OS, extremely susceptible to Trojan and viruses.

The only APP with one-key recovery function. (It is said “By laying down weapons one restores Buddhist sedateness.”)

E. Intelligence. Usually categorized as a news or social APP, but actually an image-and-video editing APP,

processing megabytes of complicated data in a twinkling. Unaffected by races, genders or religions, which influence only the user-interfaces.

F. Temperament. In contrast to its low priority, its memory usage is bewildering, which sometimes leads to motherboard damage.

There are several set menus, on which George Gurdjieff and Jung &Myers-Briggs kept arguing on over a century.

G. Gender. One’s physical gender is like anti-virus software, starts automatically and unable to be terminated;

while psychological gender is like windows, it keeps updating itself.

Random APPs:

H. Fortune. When used in the sense of “destiny” it is a read-only document, can be opened only by an exclusive reader (pay-on-demand) named FortuneTeller; when used in the sense of “wealth” it is a kind of office software, with pop-up ads including stock and lottery information, which are clicked by mistake by novices from time to time.

I. Love. An APP like Mafia Mystery-- a game involving conspiracies, suspensions and judgments,

in which there are roles including killers, doctors, cops and civilians. Every player regards himself breaker of conventions but eventually ends up with preset outcome.

J. Lifespan. A Russian-roulettish APP. Nutritionists, alchemists, phrenologists and geomancers claims it to be a calculator APP,

for which they can get a better result from the same base number, when the fact is :

contingencies contribute more to it than predictable factors do. It definitely has a maximum value –unknown yet

and a minimum  value -- 0, so nobody has ever been in the red.

Others：

K. Innocence. A kind of translation software that simplifies almost everything, and filters outdated habits, prejudices and lies.

Incompatible with most of the other APPs, often manually terminated as people grow older. V1.1.0x0y_a_V.7.2.1231_release can even decrypt garbled messages, which has a nickname -- “WonderChild”.

Versions after that were equipped with richer vocabularies but their keyword-recognizing functions have disappointedly retrograded

L. Charisma. It is metabolism, consistent data-exchanging with the world outside, that made a man radiating charm.

This APP is like weather APP in a way, “eloquent and persuasive,

but error-prone. Its icon can be placed on desktop as a decoration.

M.Features. Just as the saying goes, “The soul is the creator of the features”, it is something like Autodesk Maya,

depicting a person with parameters.  A for his vitality, D for his expressions,  F and L for his charm,

I for his gentleness and K for his youthfulness…

Miracles can happen to a man with balanced parameters.

Relative Coordinates of your Divine Self

by Yin Xiaoyuan

When you were born, your coordinates relative to Divinity was:

(@0，0，-30). Yes, He was floating in the air, surrounded in his halo, 30 meters over your head.

The surface of an unfamiliar matrix was always level with those of old major waterbodies. There seraphs took shape of humankind,

carrying water in jars. Viverridae, procyonidae and hyaenidae…

New names originated, when mountains rose and valleys fell,

Touches of spring on the wild were as pompous as crushed butterflies.

Driving along a twisting Lancashire road,

as rough as bleached denim, the sunshine flew down it, to the abysmal emptiness you used to keep yourself from

-- It was a slight but metallic sound that gave you an ecstatic thrill.

The phantom island of Tonga,

once surfaced before your eyes like a shark from an ink-blue ocean.

Hisses and crackles. Swifts broke away from the ethereal draperies and glided down to the abysm for afterglows.

Rumbles. A panther couple dived to the bottom, inviting the Evil to be their witness.

They dwindled like paper-cut figures.

In the bitter wind, the earth beneath you just vanished like a hallucination.

You were just in time for His ascending. Again, He was right there, 30 meters

over your head.

The God Particle，Or a Teaspoon of Unknown Elements

by Xiaoyuan Yin

Defined as marrow of shapes, mass will inevitably function as

A source of light, casting influence upon its worshipers

Snaking through the desert

A universe suffused with gluons, photons and mesons -

Before this Mantis-headed alien with one quark on either side

Emerged. A profusion of substances exerts a gravitational force

On the three-dimensional ocean of existence. ‘Out of string theory, 11 dimensions

Have loomed up, while beneath iris cells of a compound eye, 

Its name remains a complex, made up of mirror images and fluffy clouds.’

In this spacetime, particles with hard cores and bright rings, cavities and RBC structure

Teem like annelids. 61 elementary particles,

With shadows hemispherical, spherical, biconcave or even catenoid,

A spoonful is too much, since arguments on color charges

Left them in discord. They had been lingering on the edge,

Until catalyzed by God – Just in the way souls combine with bodies,

They were blessed with gravity and speed.

Quantum Walk

by Yin Xiaoyuan

Man with [ginger-hued fingers][standard biological clock][recluse mind][decrepit lungs]

Man with [jade-hued fingers][Oversped biological clock][moderate mind][fresh lungs]

Man with [jade-hued fingers][disordered biological clock][fractured mind][stout lungs]

……

HE formulated them as above until the scarlet scrawl zigzagged

Beyond the ever-stretching wall, while between the curves he remarked 

In smaller font size: ‘Only for reference as gender-specific samples,’

Applied equally to females, even humans in preceding or subsequent historical stages.’ Quanta without features

Longan-shaped-skulled ones, swirling blind, taking in wisps of smoke, and aroma of wheat

Then dissolved into differentiated data. ‘Appearing like rolling date code stamp,

They formed digits of various numerals, with inherent DNA fragments within, 

Snaky bones (almost phenomenal), and got the label

‘Superposed State’. Braided into a binary plait

Thin and diaphanous, suspended vertically,

They bided their time. Later claimed to be shaped like spinning tops

Instead of coins with heads and tails. They disentangled themselves

Into different positions. This time they were observed

On a two-dimensioned basis. honeycomb pattern in the bullseye – men in [equilibrium state]

9 Points- men in [particular states]

7 & 8 Points- men barely classed as [existing]

2 to 6 Points- all men known to us

Wave-particle Duality for Existence

by Yin Xiaoyuan

Socotra dragon trees, engulfed in the depth of ever-fuming afterglow,

Brace up its grand arch, against a background of wasteland,

Ribbons of light are wrapped around. Buntings got brilliance and darkness

As camouflage. Desert roses, caudex vase-shaped, carmine flowers dipped

Into the sun, were fused into

Grand yet capricious clouds. You had planned to cut across time

- Crow’s flight, wiping off thorns, keen edges, and even

Weight of your streamlines. Now clusters of sunshine, leap up from all directions,

Like sailfishes do. It is the aromatic plants

Robust and drought-tolerant, which share constant load on the land,

When you walk along. A journey long-range and eternal

Should be slowed down, linear to punctiform. Moments of seclusion

Flash across the eyes of sea birds. When you unpack your entire life

On the shore, like a windblown sleet, froth and foam will rise

From the center of the ocean, and sweep across your feet

As well as the bloodstones. A particle are you too, round and full,

Identical to those circling within a limestone, above which, blood-red

Caralluma, blooms in waves of voices

Of The Creator.

Brooding over the Dwindling Figure of a Kenai Peninsula Wolf

by Yin Xiaoyuan

To slit open the glow- suffused canopy above, you must turn around first

and face the grey and damp vastness. In the heather shrubs lies the Excalibur of the mighty

resplendent with a diamond in its handle. Your hands are stuck, there between

maxillary and mandible jaws of a Kenai Peninsula Wolf. One possibility of geological history must succumb to another

that seems more likely to stretch permanently. You used to witness whiteness extracted

from wheat and milk, and tapped with mallets to make it chewier

“Get me stoned, or turn me into a stone.”

--In return he murmurs Lamentations

into your ears. Soon you will be banished into the darkness

of a hangover or a crush.

But what are you, precisely? A musk ox?

A link in their concentric defensive formation? Or are you a blessed infant,

Or some ardent, self-sacrificing devotee? The scavengers on the hillside

have drawn second hands from clocks for the fencing:

In the capricious world, a belle is now Bodhisattva, now asura.

The wind of evolution never stops. The Great Migration taking place through the wilderness

forms shapes of moths, nimbuses, spirals and beltfish… in the turmoil

you saved the diamond while losing your precious wolf

Just as long ago, you saved the sun but lost your eternal night

Wolfram

by Yin Xiaoyuan

“Optics is the philosophy of extracting daylight from night.” In the eternal gloominess

after the withering of a candle, at last he lifted his hands

so dusty with silver grey. People flocked to the pile of ore

he had dug out. “We make a lock out of it,

so daylight will evaporate no more!” Wolfram remained imperturbable

in a Petri dish, shimmering like an unfolding lotus

rising from sacred relics. He looked outside: the earth had been divided into two

by light and shadow. The Old World

in gauzy pink dusk, while oceans in the New World were surging over

a crescent horizon. Once inside the lock cylinder

restless sounds converted into tranquility, spheres of tungsten wires sank and floated up

in branches of the river of night, purged itself of dross

and shone. “Sleep now! The flames on the eastern ranges

will quench it, with more heat and light!” They fell asleep with prayers or totems, none of whom rose early the next day

to witness this reunion. Wolfram, a blind saint, wrapped in rays of light

without knowing it, walked past the cliffs, bumped into the sun

but walked again through it, like what he did

back in savage times, he hesitated a moment

wondering what it was, that he was brushing elbows with

（From Mad Swirl, August 12, 2018）