#Fan mail? I'm honored! : inbox

[marukyustar]

“ rise-chan ! you are so charming in person. my father unfortunately did not allow me to listen to your music.. i fear i’m living far too much under a rock. ”

"why thank you!" Rise began to blush, she hadn't met a fan in person for years so, the letter from the heiress of the okumura food corporation was a bit surprising. "I-it's not often i get to meet new fans, uhm.. wow i feel like i should be asking for an autograph." She laughed a little unsure how to really interact.

[whichtammy]

Sent from Ithaca Ⅰ

Summary:

After "the Blip" and getting back to his daily life, Sam Wilson gets attracted by an email shown in his mailbox repeatedly and starts continuous correspondence with the sender named Ithaca. During their correspondence, Sam fills the lost memory of his lost home and starts to rebuild new life in the so-called post-bilp era. With the more letters he sends to and receives from Ithaca, however, the more strange connections does Sam find showing up between his real life and the words written down by that Ithaca who loves to tell stories and poems in his letters. Sam can't help but feeling that maybe there was not only an anonymous pen pal who loves literal fantasy behind the name of Ithaca, but a sign with an intention to lead him to get across the boundary between stories and the real life.

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Hi，

I was in your support group for veterans four years ago, are you still work there now? I'm wondering if I could be a member of your group again, or could you please recommend some other groups like that for me?

PS. I'd like to ask that can we talk if it is possible? The group work under your guidance had helped me a lot in the past, I wishthere could be a chance for me to say thank you in person.

Please contact me.

Yours

Ithaca

Sam Wilson finds the mail in his mailbox much of puzzling, the sender'sidentity is ambiguity, as well as the intention. He did work in a support group for veterans for a while, not a short time in fact, it was a regular and steady job after his retirement from the army. However, everybody could know it if one ever had any interest in Sam Wilson, nearly everything of him is on the internet after his real identity was made public, and his work experiences is just a small part of this massive archive of Sam Wilson, open source, 7/24 online. So, even the sender said he (maybe a she, Sam thinks) had been in his support group, there is nothing provable that he or she had really been there, nor if he is really a veteran who is searching for information. It seems like that the only real and clear intention is to get contact with Sam, and for some reasons, the contacts on the other side chose to make himself vague, hiding behind the name of Ithaca, which is no doubt an alias, left nothing of contact details, no phone number, no address. Of this Ithaca, the only information Sam receives is the request of "please contact me"at the end of an email and a traceless virtual mail address.

Another information Sam has is that the sending time of the mail is three years after when it was first sent. He checked through the inbox, there are actually more than one single letter with the same content, that Ithaca keeps sending the same mail to him every three months all the time and today is the day of another third month, so his mailbox received the exactly same words again. He must be doubting, if notthe detail time of "I was in your support group for veterans___ago" keeps changing, that maybe the sender had set a repeating schedule sending and forget it all afterwards, only to leave him an alarmed-like mailbox to remind him that "it'stime"with a virtual Ding.

However, the sender never forgot his letter, nor did Sam ever receive the reminder. He didn'tget any reminds of his mailbox at all during the past three years, in fact, he was even not reminded of himself either for such a long time. He feels like the life of his is a movie with the audience left midway, when the one was back to watch, it is already the "three years later". He also thinks himself as the movie lost audience and the audience missed the movie at the same time, as the movie, he continues without being conscious of, as the moviegoer, he watches with a lack of awareness of what has happened. There is a gap in his memory, something interrupted there, he knows it is there, but he can'tknow what it is that he missed exactly——he just keeps playing and watching, for he has settle down in now, he would have no time to chase the missing part in the past at the same time.

Is the mail a plot supplement of the movie? Sam clicks the reply, forIthaca’s mail, not the other mails alike in his inbox. His mail address got public too after the publicity, people keeps sendingmails in, they are just having a try, it'ssort of a free inviting after all. Many senders write true and false stories about themselves with fictional names and identities, some of them even make up stories of Sam and them to make themselves look like a real person who had real connection with him. Now, Sam has learned to distinguish these big and small lies from his experience of being a celebrity, he doesn'treply any of them now, but he picks up some long mails of them to read with an interest at some time and gets amazed by the imagination and details all the time. He admits to himself more than one time that he would really believe those stories they write about Sam Wilson if he is not Sam Wilson himself. Sometimes he would wonder, did he really in fact play a role in others'life in such a strange and detailed way? Is he really someone to others? Can he indeed have such strange and detailed meaning to strangers'life?

So he replys.

Hi Ithaca,

I'm not working in that group now, if you are looking for something like that, I think that the official website of SRV(Supporting and Rebuilding with Veteran) may provide the information you need about similar activities and groups we had before.

It would be my pleasure if i had helped, I'm so grateful for your supports, too.

Best wishes

Sam Wilson

He reads his brief reply again with a mixed feeling of curiosity and suspiciousness. He wants to see the sender behind the mask, while he is afraid of the fact that what he reveals would only be another face of a hater, a stalker. The mailbox is fulled with mails of stalking, fever, curses and hatred, and they are only a small part of the massive archive of the cult of Sam Wilson. Maybe that is what it takes be to a celebrity, Sam thinks, being a celebrity means exposing yourself to everyone, there is a chance that anyone could come for you, holding a comprehensive information of you and somehow your life truns to be a waiting for the ambush from maybe a friend or foe. He used to believe that he would leave the habit of distinguish people as friend and foe behind when he left the army, he knew he needed time to adopt a new regular life, he would take time to tame his battle life into a tamed daily life, that's why he joint the support group for veterans, as a group member first, sooner a group leader. Sam had expectations of it, he was hoping to build a loose but continuous connection between his two lives and land himself in the soft daily life without enemy in the end.The smooth landing he hoped for would not erase his old friends who had gone with his old foes away in a cold way, he was trying to make it a soft goodbye. Sam truly believe it a realistically ideal plan, he was planing to share this realistic idealism to more people like him. He failed, he thinks later, his vision of life was much simpler that what it is. Life was not going to say a soft hello in return, Sam soon realized the group was in fact the beginning of a new war. He had planned to meet with different people and experience, even complex adventures, the exciting potential was as another a great reason why he choose to keep contact with veterans, but he didn't see the whole vision, he didn't know how strange the man he would meet, nor did he predict the adventures coming along with him. He had no idea about the honor he would fight for, for he was clueless about bad things coming along with it as well.

He recalls that he had regarded the veteran group as a farewell to sacrifice, no more sacrifice he would see, what's waiting for would only be stories of sacrifice to be heard, they would not be alive but are only memories, living in the past and reliving only in the room crowded with lively narrators. That was what Sam expected for, he was prepared for heavy stories and sharing the burden of those who could take their stories alone no more. He would be obligatory to help if the owner wanted to share her or his story. Tell the untold, remember the forgotten, make nameless sacrifice heard and rest in a rectified name, he said this to himself. Now he sees the imprudence of his prediction, the future has given him stories as wish, telling him that his life would be totally changed by a stranger, who carries so many stories that he himself is like a fictional being in the end, every story he had dreamed for would come true because of the stranger, in a wilder way though, just like a fictional fantasy.

For this reason Sam feels he has a empathy for people who write him long letters, how couldn't he show up in someone's "normal life" when the living legend Captain America could ran into his house and asked for help when he was a normal nobody. Sam is immersing in those thoughts and writes his polite reply with a intention of keeping distance from Ithaca. On the one side, the last thing he wants to do is to arouse the interest of a potential stalker, on the other, he would blame himself if he intended to ignore someone with a honest and stubborn heart, even though he knows that the line between a insisting fan and insisting hater is always dim. Sam would like to believe maybe the sender really have some stories to tell, the name of Ithaca implies it, too. The name is another reason made him write his reply, he is home now, spending his time getting familiar with the small town he used to know very well. It occurs to him that the sender, if is telling the truth and did attend his group activities, could possibly be the young man who said wanted to be a poet in a theme activity of "getting a job". Sam remembers his talk, he said he was reading Homer then and recited some verses from the epic. He can't remember the verses by words, but he has a clear picture of the scene, it was some poetic sentences about the desire of going home and the failed of it. The young man said that everyone in the room would share the same feeling when they heard Ithaca calling Odysseus. A long silence fell down to the room after his speech, the young man sensed it too, he said "sorry" as a conclusion. There was no "it's OK" responded, perhaps people in the room had no clue of whether should she or he accept that apology, they may didn't know should they take it as something offensive but forgivable, people were just sad. Sam was short of words for a while, he hadn't read the book then, but the poem did hurt him down in a direct way. He thought at that time that maybe that was the gift of being a poet, look at the reckless young man, he could lift and drown people's hearts only by a verse.

Sam opens the browser to search what exactly the verses are, unfortunately, his vague memory leads him to nothing precisely relevant, which makes him want a reply mail from Ithaca more eagerly, he wants him to contact him back, as long as he is the young man in his memory. Sam opens his mailbox, writes and sends another mail to Ithaca, he thinks himself kind of reckless as soon as he clicked the button of "send", what if he is not him? What if the man on the other side has a dark plan? Would he use his letter as an inspiration of gossips and rumors? Things like that happen all the time. Sam is so tired of get misunderstood because of his own words being twisted, he always gets hurt of those made-up stories, he is tired of making explanations of his stories which are not belong to him at all, he is tired of feeling hurt. He sends it anyway.

Hi Ithaca,

I can't remember if it goes like

"they talk about the days of going home"

Sam

To Be Continued…