Author's Notes

 

Looking back after writing this story, I see certain similarities between it and Monica's "Glass Dreams," mostly regarding the idea of "specialness." Monica's fic must have settled itself at some deep level of my consciousness. Hopefully the two stories complement each other. For those of you who haven't read it, "Glass Dreams" is available on Monica's site (http://www.pipeline.com/~monica/). I highly recommend it as a sympathetic look at Satsuki--not to mention it features Lan from "Clover"! *meow*

Special thanks to Fuu-chan for prereading this story and advising me on the finer points of computer networking and programming. Her explanations were essential to the creation of this fic; any inaccuracies that might remain are my own. And while we're on the subject of computers, a Turing test is a measure of artificial intelligence: a test of an AI's ability to fool humans conversing with it into thinking that the computer is actually another human. (I wonder what it's called when a human fools someone into thinking that he or she is a computer? ^^)

Thanks should also go to Tin Mandigma, adminstrator of the CLAMP Fanfic ML, for orchestrating the challenge that led to this actually being written. The story had been rolling around in my head for months, but I would probably never have done it if Tin hadn't put out a call for "strangest pairing" stories. So now you know where to put the blame. ^^

I have a more elaborate discussion of the Kabbalistic terms and images used in this story below; this is the short version, for those who just want to know what the words mean:

Ayin Sof - "without end"; one of the titles of God
Sefirot - a point of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life diagram; a mystical stage of existence.
Keter and Tiferet - two of the Sefirot. In this story, Satsuki uses the Sefirot to categorize types of energy; these two sefirot are how she metaphorically describes Fuuma's and Subaru's powers, respectively.

Believe it or not, I actually have a photograph of the Tokyo Freemason Lodge! Since it's barely mentioned in the story, you can find it, along with some very brief notes about Freemasonry, on a separate page.

A couple of CLAMP notes to round things out further: Why does Nokoru go by "Magician"? Rewatch the first episode of the "CLAMP School" anime or reread the first story of the manga for the answer. Also, did anyone recognize the name on the account that Satsuki was using? (You have to be a real CLAMP geek to get this one....)

I invented a family name for Kanoe, since obviously she needs one if she's going to work in the outside world. "Ryoku" means "green, verdant"--I was thinking of the picture on the back of book 3.

"Rijichou" is Nokoru's current title, replacing the "Kaichou" of his school days. It's generally translated as "Chairman," but I've also seen it as "Director." I chose to use the latter because Nokoru spends most of this fic sitting down and I had too many sentences with both "Chairman" and "chair" in them....

"Dokun" is the sound-word for a heart beat.

Finally, you can find an Italian translation of the story by Ilaria Cariddi here.

 

Kabbalah Notes

 

Kabbalah is a mystical branch of Judaism, an esoteric teaching that describes the nature of God, the attributes of the universe, and the spiritual path of human beings by means of an elaborate set of symbols. The chief symbol in Kabbalah is the Tree of Life (right). The Tree of Life is composed of ten circles, called Sefirot (singular Sefirah), which are connected by lines or paths. (An eleventh, invisible Sefirah, Daat, is probably a later addition.) The ten circles represent the stages through which the Spirit of God moved in the process of creating the world. Each one expresses many complex qualities, and the lines between them symbolize all the relationships between forces that make up the whole of existence. Kabbalah is an intricate but highly ordered system of thought, which is probably why it's Satsuki's preferred magical metaphor.

Ayin Sof means "without end" and is one of the titles of God, the absolute Unknowable without any attributes at all, because attributes can only manifest within the Creation and God is outside of it. (In Satsuki's character file, she wonders whether Kamui is like Ayin Sof. You'll get my opinion about that in a bit.) From Ayin Sof, the beam of Divine Will flows down to Keter, The Crown, the top of the Tree of Life: the place where God first enters the universe. Keter is the point from which all emanations of spirit and substance depart and to which they return. From there, the Spirit travels in a zig-zag pattern through the other nine Sefirot until it reaches Malkhut, The Kingdom, which is the Presence of God in matter.

So why does Satsuki see Fuuma as a manifestation of Keter? Go back to Satsuki's other primary metaphor, which is computers. All computer functions reduce down to binary coding, the familiar concept of zeroes and ones. Everything that comes out of a computer, from spreadsheets to computer graphics, has its being in the relationship between those two poles of absence and presence, in the resonance of the patterns that they create. In the same way, Keter and Malkhut are opposite and complementary poles: one the void of potential that contains everything but is not in itself anything, and the other physical existence upon this Earth, where everything is singularly itself.

As I understand Fuuma, he's an entropic figure, one who works to unbind humanity's hold upon the creation--to make the Earth purer and closer to God. He's nothing in and of himself; he's the dark power that is "Kamui," and he's everybody that other people want to see. Kamui, on the other hand, is fighting for things as we know them--for specific people in particular. The war for Earth's destiny can therefore be taken metaphysically as the creative tension between those two states of being.

The other Sefirah that Satsuki mentions is Tiferet, the Heart of Hearts, which is her attempt to classify Subaru's psychic presence within her milieu. Tiferet is considered to be a central Sefirah, a point of balance or meeting place between the two sides of the Tree of Life. It's the spiritual level of the Teacher, the person through whom knowledge of higher worlds is communicated; in the human psyche, it's the watcher or the guiding self. In all cases, it's where the inner essence a thing can be found.

Tiferet, appropriately enough, is Beauty.

Information taken from Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge by Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1979).

 


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