string FirstName ; // N.

string LastName ; // K.

int PersonalID ; // 01052090



label S.S.ID; // Aralaster



label designation; // Lead



label current status; // Unknown



label entry type; // compilation, holo-receiver, neural implants, diary entries, vidcomms, vidcalls to CZ, US & 4 classified class 5 frigates



label unit type; // expeditionary

Salary ; // 40k deadkums/hr



WorkingHours ; // 12 – 12







//…Dispensing…

//…Dispensing…

//…Information received…

//…Entry processed…

ÿ̵̢͚̪͖̠͍̦̘̹̟́̈̏̃̓̀̐̇̏͌͘͝ǫ̵̨̮̻̱̺͉̭̼͇͇̙̜͇̭̹͉̰̙̘̏̊̿̊̑͛̓̈̈̍̿̽̀̌̅͂͘͜͝͝ų̶̢̲̞̳̦̝̜͈͙̲̱̳̳͖̲̠̮̇͋͗̃̓ͅ ̵̧̝̱̼̥̖̺̪̰̝̫̹͇̂͂͂͂̾̎͂̔̆̔̂͂̅͂̕̚͘̕͝͠w̵̧̧̛̛̹̫̦͖͔̰̠͕̙̳̻̣̜̺̫͛͗̍̿̀̓̈́̉̏̈̓̊̂͊̏͘͝͝i̸̡̛͎̩͔̯̼̅͛̐̈́͊̈́̋̑͛̆̅̎̆͆͐͒̃̿̚̕͝ͅl̷̢̹͚̬͍̻̮͙̝̣̮̠̗̼̇̾͒̽́͆̌̒́̇̍̽̚l̷̨̺̤̟̪̯̱̹̪̯̬̄̐̀̂̎́̄͗̀̂̎̇̄̽͑̀ ̵̡̥̩͇͇͙̪͖͈̬̻͔͋̂͝b̶͔̺̻̪̙̟͓̍̑̈́́̈̆́̽̋̓͜͠e̷̛̼̜̱̦̬̊̔̊̽̾̋͆̅̅̆̀̔͋̇̊̃͑̍̑̚͘͜ ̵̺̳̻͓͔̗̱̰̯͕̝̞̯̪̯̱̦̲́̽̂̽̍̉͜͠͠c̴̡̡̼̟̞͕̜̘̭͛͒̇͛̔̏̆͘͠a̵̛͔̹̗̽̊̎̑̈́͌́̓̉̽͝ų̴̢̱̘̩̜͔͈̰̰͉̲̻̩͈̜͕̳̼̓̓̈́̋̔̽̿̅̽͐̌͂̑̋̍̕̕͜͝g̷̨͓͈͚͎̫͉̱̹͓͖̰̞͑̓̍̾̈́̈́͆̅̓̍̕̕͠͠͝ͅh̷͕̝͔͖̿̌̌̆̂t̵̖͙̻͚̐͌̀̏̑̓͜͜ ̸̡͉̞̺̲̖̱͎̯̹̯͙̬̫̫̫̫̻̜̻̺̙̓͑͊̃̋̅̀͂͊͊̉̓̃̋â̸͇͚͔̞̼͎̞͍͔̦̖̜̳͎̝̗͙̙͚̬̎̈́͒̓̄̂͗̃̎̃̆̀̀͐̚͜͝n̷̯͍͍̠̟̔́̏̀̇͗̇̍̔̌̈́̓͑̓d̶̟̪̩̓̎̀̋̽̃͌̏̀͂̉̓͘̕͝ ̷̢̛̬͇̜̣̯̭̼̞̰̱͍̘̞̘̺͚̿͛̊̊̋̏̉͊̉̒́̔͝s̷̨̧̜̙͖̞͔͉̘̻̰͎͇̼͉͛̈́̑͜ṱ̵̛̪̻̖͍̩̳͆̍͐̐̀͗̋̍̋̚r̴̨̛̛͖̤͉̪͍̳̦̱̮̹͖̩̥͈̘̥̾̂̒́̀̏̏́̾̉͆̃̆̄͋̉̀͜͠ǘ̴̡̼̭̪̫̻̬̭̭͇̠̳̼͍̖͈̟̺̀̃̒̌͜ͅn̶̛͕͚̼̏͛͆̒̔̾͛̃̀̎g̷̛͕̥̹̬̯͊̊̈́͌̔̍̄̚̚͘͝ ̶̧̧̡̛̦̼͚̗̻͕̍́̃̄̀̅̕͝͝͝ū̴͕̦̱͇͓̓͆̏̌̒͑̿͒̇̒̀͘͠͝p̶̧̺̤̮̰̯̏̑̃́̔̆̒̃͐͐ ̴͍̀̀̈́̚ạ̷̪̓̄̐̆͒͋̈́͌͌̚ń̶͍̹̫̭̮͇̖̐̑͗͛̈̎́̿̽͜d̶̦̠͌̾̋̈́̇̀̄̔̇̃̔͑͊̍͐̚ͅ ̸̛̰̺͍̪̜̰̓͆̾̀͛̒̀̈̚̕͝͠ţ̷̨̧̙͎̗̼̩͙̬͖̟̫͕̈͛̊͆̑͛̓ͅͅh̶̙͕̥̠̫̼̠̜̰̤͐̀̔̀̀́̆̅̿̓͊̒̚̚̕͘͝͝͝͝e̶̢̢̨̛̩̖͙͈͓͔̺̺̯̝̯̜̦̠̟̮̙͙̓̿̋͐̓͐͛͂̓̈́̃̽̆̈́̕̕͝ͅr̴̢̡̧͈̹͔̜̹̮̬͓̫͈̂̏̍͋̉̄͌̌̈́̃̓̓͘̕͠ͅͅe̵̢̧̫͍̤̙͕̙̜̓̉͑́́̿̉̈̎̈́̾̆͗͆̃̓̀̈́͛͊̈́ ̷̧͍͍̥̼͙͎̞͓̹͔́̋̀̒̈́̃͜ẃ̴̨̛̜̠͕̱̞̮͈̲̮̻̙̦̗̉̑̊͐̉̿̋̋̃̓̂͜͝i̵̦͆̀̾̂l̴̛̤͈̻̙̲̱̠̺̼̳̯͖̫͚̭̥͍̭̰͐̉̉̏͋͆͆̽l̵̗̞͔̙̺̲̭͇̃̈̓̐́̍̐͛͆͘͜ͅͅ ̸̡̢̖͓͉̪͖̥̪̬̟̼̦̘͍̖̤̣͊b̵̢̺̖̖̱́́̋̂̾̀̐̿͊͗̌͋̕ë̸͎̥̤͖̼͈͍̈́͌̃̕ ̶̛̞̝͚͐͗̉̓̃̇̋͆̂̑̄̾̌͗̈́̽͂̕͠ṇ̸̨̢̬̦̦̘͖͕̖̜͙͕̗̤̯͓̊̄͆̄͐̋͑͛͐̀̌̏͜ͅo̶͇̮̩̠̳͓͂̾̋͒̈́͒͠ṭ̸͈̭̝̱͚͍̉͐͒̉͛̒̉͆͗͋̆͛͊̂͘͝͝͝h̶̘͇͚̭̣̗̝̮̮̱͖̬͈̰͗̐ȉ̷̧̡̡̧͇͚̙̭̯̦͕͕̖̪̙̺͍̲̇̒͌̇͐̅̓̊̓̓̐̚̕͝ņ̶̢̡̩͚̤͈̭̤̞͕̭̲͉͙̮̟̖̥̹̞̎̇̾̀̿̆́̆̒̀́͆̇̾̄̽̍̀͆̄͝͠ģ̴̡̛͈͚̬̻̻̘̣̳̳̞͚͕̈́̓̈́͆́̈͗̿̾́͌̈́́̈̈́̚ͅ ̴̧͍̺̦͔͔̗͕̯̳̘̘̬͇̯̩͙̒̀͆̔̄̓̈́̽̏̒̎̽͒̂͝ļ̶͚̖̙̟̮̻͇͚͕͙͔̙͚͔͑̂̀̔̈̇̍͛͒̽̍̿͘̚͠͝e̵̢̨̛̛̠̰̟̫͈̩̦͎̪͚͙̜̣̮̒̂͑̎̏͂̈̑̄̽̽̇́͆́͛͂̿̚͘f̵̛̜̼͂̒̓͂͆̾̍̌͒̃̊́͒ț̸̢̛̙͍̯̤̫̹̫̟͎̩̫̟͓̙̐̑̓̈́͋̊̊͑̈̀̔̊́͑̔̄̈́͝ ̸̺̘͕͈͖͉͘ö̵̧̧̲̤͓͔́͆̂̂̂͒̆͒̃̓͆̕͠͝f̴̛͎̫͚͚̱̼͔̻͕̣̻̩͖͓͚̣͎͔̍̏̅̋̑̔̇̀͝͝ͅ ̷̢̩̟͕̓̏͘ý̶̧̨̧̢̝̜̮̟̼̩̼̭̭̗̣̳̙̹͍̘̈́̾̉̿́̓̐̏͛̆̆̎̓̿̍͗̀̂͛͝ő̸̢̡͍̫̫͚̥͔̲͉̖̬͎̼͙̝̝̗̫̓̀͜u̵̼̓͐͌͋́̚͝ ̵͍̼̭̺͗̉͋̓̚m̴̨̛̮̘͍͕͓͚̖̼̜̰̦̜͚͉̗̳̤̩̱̂̀ÿ̵̡̨̗̰̘̻̞͓̫̯̳̥͎͉̲̥̼̘́̀̀͆̀̋̅̔͠ ̵̨̣͍̭̩̲̻̙̦͎̫̭̪̭̱̞͖̣̼͐͐̈́̒̎́̇̋͝͝d̴̡̨͇͖̗͎͓̺̯̫̳̹͕͚̟̂̉͜e̸̡̧̝̞̣͖̦̫̖̗̭̮̜̳̠͎͍̘͚͂̅̂́͗̈́̏̽̓̋̅͘͝͠ͅa̸̠̹̪̮̓͋̂̓̓͆͑̽͛̿̃̕̕ŕ̸͉̉ ̸̳̩͗̈́́̃͌̌͆̒͗̽́̋̑̇̒̊̆́̈́͝á̴̞̺̫̜̺̝̟̙͇̳̩͖̺̱̯͜ņ̴̛̛̱̞͓͎̄͂̈̈́̓̏̓̀́̈̀̂͋̓͌̿͒͊̚d̴̢͍͖͚̦̬̥̒͒̓͜ͅ ̴̡̯͍̖͙̦̮͉̘̠͙̜̰͍̜̺̖̿̌̍̄̇͒̔̿͗́̎̂̓͝į̴̧̯̦̟͉̖̩̪̖̮̦̦͌̈́͋ͅ ̶̢̢̤͖̻̱̫̞͚͍̋͊̒̑̂̃̉̊̂̂̓̈̐͑́͆̀͘͘͠͝a̵̡̢̟̜̙̪͈̾͂̈́̏̍̀̇̃͌̀̄͝ḿ̸̨̛̥̝̗̰͈̰̯̜̪̯̋͌̀́͐́͊̈́͐͌̊͐̈́͂̊͛͝͝ͅ ̴̢͓̮̙̣̳͎̤̞̱̫̺̻̩̩͔̻͇̥̗̟̞̉͂̀̈́̈̽̎̉̉̈́͗̈́̽̀͑̑͘̕͝s̷̨̪̦͎̦̲̰̻̖͙̥̫̺̤͊̄̆̋̚͜͝͠o̸̧̢͈̯͎̳͖͇̭̟̽͋̐̃̔͒̐͠ͅr̶̡̢̧̢̺̮͎̞̻͙͕͙͇̩͕̼͍̼̾̀͛͌̂͌̂̋̂̀́̍̿̓̅̇̚r̶̨͉̘̪͍͍̟̹̣̮̫̹̳̹̂́̋̏̇̋͂̊̊̎̾́̚̚͜y̸̛̮̗̮͈̹̭͕̖̳̼̟͈̮̱̭͙̰̥̗̓

I can’t think about anything except pussy. Help me.

I’m supposed to be supervising a whole siphoning caravan and all I can think about is Ellie in a form-fitting yellow sweater sucking me off in the backyard and Audrey in an orange dress bending over to sip a Madiran as black as her own hair and during shuttle trips I always daydream of Rose, who I will never see again since she has disappeared into the Eta, but who always let me do whatever I want, even if by the end of it her neck looked like tanned leather.

Goodbye, Rose. I hope space has not split you apart.



Catalan the shuttle pilot got divorced last year so now he compulsively eats banana pudding, even when he’s flying. Just fucking always. I haven’t seen him without it in weeks.

His wife took everything so he plots us to stars and sobs in his bunk at night and eats too much pudding and masturbates to old holos of Emma Roberts and a sex tape he has of his wife somewhere on the beaches of Whitehaven, where she throws back a few Palomas and flashes her tits and ass every few seconds, sucks on her own fingers waist-high in the swell while moaning embarrassingly to high heaven.

He listens to it so loud I’ve memorized the whole thing.

She tells him his cock is as big as a submarine. I laugh every time I hear her say this.

“Oh yeah, baby. Your cock is as big as a submarine.”

He plays it on repeat and sometimes, lowly, curtain drawn, lights out, midnight, he’ll whisper to himself,

“Yeah, my cock IS as big as a submarine….”

Catalan’s somewhere in his forties and dumbly Australian and never stops talking about her, her, the one of all ones, even as he’s swooshing us through asteroid belts.

Swoosh —

“I think she still loves me guys. She’s not even technically seeing Howard. They’re just friends now!”

Then he’ll laugh. A lot. The way he laughs about his own misfortune makes me believe he is going to hang himself soon.

There’s eight of us here on the ship. I’ve kept us alive so far through two star systems but really I’m only using this job as a means of free transportation to rendezvous with Ellie and Aubrey, who live only a state or so apart and make as much time for me as they can, bless their hearts.

The crew, especially Shiloh and Tamler, complain every time we port at the Misendel but they still tell me to fuck her good and to be honest I don’t know if I’ve ever fucked Ellie good except when I’ve had a Hytachi-Mess-Em-Up on hand, but other than that she always seems as though I am middling, a moderate lay in her list of overwhelming eye-gouging cumtimes.

But I can’t get over Ellie Hyatt, even if she is fucking the whole universe when I’m not around. Oliveish skin. Coy. Clever. Big brown eyes. Mischievous. Rationally nihilistic but extroverted. Cheery but defeated in her heart. Could destroy me with a few words.

Lets me do anything. Likes it sometimes. Smells like monogamy but acts like a spy.

Okay, whatever, fuck Ellie, I shouldn’t be writing about her anyway — we’re on our way to the Ghost of Jupiter, to Hydra. The Mother Star’s there and we’re gonna’ eat her up and put her into a big ol’ metal cup a billion miles away and that metal cup is gonna’ give energy to a whole bunch of mamas and babies and ugly hookers and everyone in between which is pretty much all of the people.

And if we don’t, well, they’ll probably find someone else to do it. Even if we melt. They don’t care if we melt. Let us melt. Let us go back to where we came from.

The last time I saw Ellie I scolded her for being such a wanton little slut. She cried. We talked. We talked and we fucked and both came. Fell asleep together. She said I love you more than anything. I said I hope she kills me one day. I told her she’s the end, seriously the end, the unfair dumbly un-poetic anticlimactic end I’ve always wanted.

The last time I saw Audrey she told me we couldn’t fuck ’cause she was on her period but she still let me toss her around a little bit and pull her hair and grope her and smack her ass. She sends me soundbites of her playing theremin and I don’t understand her and she is everything I have ever wanted.

Fuck, first shuttle’s out. It’s Catalan and Shiloh and Tamler and I can’t think about anything except Audrey shoving her ass in my face. Sapping stars is, like, really volatile. I should be thinking about anything but this.

I hope they live. At least I hope Shiloh does ’cause she’s a strawberry blonde cutie with a hoo nose and even though she probably wouldn’t let me I really want to have a go at it, even in a jumpsuit she looks better than most chicks in sundresses and yesterday she spilled some coffee on her crotch in the mess hall and I couldn’t help but stare at her try to clean it off. She noticed and I blushed and she didn’t smile and kinda’ walked away without asking me about it. I’d maim so many small animals to sleep with her. I’d throw a puppy into a thruster for a handjob where she ignores me and spits on my face afterward and calls me a creepy loser dipshit faggo.

This is the ideal I’m going for when I fuck Ellie or Audrey or anybody, really: it’s not only about desecrating a sacred altar, it’s about turning everything she is into slush with a barrage of head-shot orgasms that leave her a leveled puddle no longer capable of doing anything other than jittering and near-seizing and cumming. But I’ll never be able to ’cause I’m not a human SybianMK6, you know, unfortunately.

Not that it matters. Even if you did find some way to become the Cum-God, betrayal is inherent to relationships. It’s a fundamental property of the universe. It’s intrinsic, preordained, built into the fabric of the system.

The moment a love reaches its highest height it begins to die.

Zeniths only mean the hike down.

Everything looks good so far. They’re slurping the shit out of that star, all right. Shiloh’s an employee who is so good at her job we can’t give her another one or promote her or anything. Just too smart. Has to stay where she is. I mean, seriously, how many people do you know that can suck the energy out of stars using molecularized nanotube-vacuums? And she’s like a fucking 9. Some people get all the good stuff. Lucky ducks.

Tamler’s a lucky duck, too, maybe the luckiest of all ducks. Top of his class golden boy Ivy League (Stanford) astronaut shitter. Wicked jawline. Doesn’t even look real sometimes. Looks carved. Otherwise he’s vaguely, I don’t know, French? He looked a bit Robespierre-ish in the airlock leaving, waving back, solemn but chipper, smirking, dumb curly mustache and waving pepperdark hair. I could definitely see him ordering a guillotine-ing or two.

Oh, the gulp of bright white smooshing through the tube, percolating, flooding into a stationary SuckModule a lightyear away…

My Neurodafibulizers are all screwy. Mess with my head. Mom tells me to get them checked. They’re old. Out of date. Sometimes when I see something I see a thousand things it reminds me of and I go all limp and dumb-paralyzed and I can’t, I can’t, I just can absolutely not, I forfeit, it’s over, there’s so much white and it’s everywhere and it reminds me of the dying I have not done yet. Stasis due to over-analogizing.

The gulp of bright white smooshing through the tube: it’s all there, everywhere, fills in my periphery. It reminds me of Zlin at 16, blackberry fields, wicked-sunny days after weeks of rain, the bitter tinge of girls two years older than me telling I’m too chubby and babyfaced (back then, they were right) to get a girlfriend while they’re downing Pilsners they stole from their aunt’s fridge — and Mazatlan, fuck, all of those people died, screaming, like that one nightclub fire in New Jersey or wherever and they couldn’t get out ’cause there were just too many and you could see people clawing at the doors and suffocating and burning alive — reminds me of the first time I met Alison (she’s new and I’m sorry her name also starts with ‘A’, like Audrey, but there’s two A’s right now, okay? I can’t do anything about it and I will try to keep dearly my Audrey and Alison and all the other A’s that come to be) and she forfeited her body to me and I couldn’t quite get her off so I watched her masturbate and it was one of the greatest things in the world, a thing everyone should go through every once and a while.

If they like you they’ll come around you even if you suck and that’s the end of it.

It reminds me of drinking Malbec at nine in the morning. Everything’s hazy. Not quite white. Not quite grey. Sonoran monsoon-ish big-blue storm-cloud in the corner. Ellie tastes sweet and in the moment I dream of dying in between her legs, suffocating myself, leaving her to clean up the mess in the midst of her own shaking knees.

The way she looks at me kills me. There’s rain on the windows. I want to know but will never know. There’s steam rising from her tea. I tap her skull, her forehead. Put my ear to it to see what’s rattling. What’s behind there, in all those crossed wires? Are her pathways as confectionery as her lips?

Catalan spits into his comm,

“Hey boss, you still with us?”

And I say back to him,

“Do your job and shut up. I’m thinking.”

Behind me — the navigation tech Yuri Yates squeezes me on the shoulder. Yuri’s a scrawny golden haired pipsqueak little fuck who doesn’t know how to stay out of people’s personal bubbles. He’s a nice kid and really knows his astrocharts but you don’t touch daddy (me) without permission. He deserves the wallop.

I smack him in the face, hard, and the left frame of his glasses shatter.

My hands are made of alloys from the Eta, where Rose absconded, metal-upon-metal, nano-graphine and Malthusian soul-stuff plucked off the starving moneyless throwaway thots on Parsilon. Rose is probably dead. Maybe she found a husband. Same thing. Sorry.

“Don’t touch me, Yuri.”

“Whoa, boss, pretty sure you can’t hit me like that, ha-ha…”

“Okay, you’re right, sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Yuri holds his face and glowers into his own lap. The light blue from the shuttle’s reflector-plates cast over his forehead and illuminate a strata of bead-sweat on his brows. He laces his fingers together in spiraled knots, fake gang signs. Taps both back heels in 3/3.

He’s only nineteen and maybe the youngest person ever let on a commercial-yield vessel like the Aralaster, but he’s a straight up genius and it kind of bugs everyone else on board, especially Shiloh and Tamler, who have definitely been groomed to be the smartest punched-up sophisticates in the room. I don’t much mind it. A polymath or two are prerequisites for interstellar voyages. Someone with a background in everything keeps probability titled slightly away from disaster and death and trust me, when you’re hurling blind in the blackness like everyone is these days, when there’s not much old left but so much new, too much new, too many unchecked boxes, any small nudge in your favor is not welcomed but entirely necessary. Without smarty pants, you’re gonna’ get your skin ripped off and turn into a human sleeve.

I say,

“Status report.”

Tamler grunts into his comm. Shiloh doesn’t respond.

“All’s swell that ends swell, cap-ee-tano,” Tamler (unbearably) replies.

Yesterday Yuri cornered me in the crewdeck and told me all about the French Revolution. He named the French Republican Calendar for no reason.

“Vendemiaire, Brumaire — like the coup by Napoleon, that’s when that happened — Frimaire, Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, Germinal, Floreal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor — like when Robespierre was beheaded by the remaining Convention on 10 Thermidor II, and Fructidor.”

“Wow, so interesting,” I said, chomping down on a hard plastic spoon of boysenberry yogurt and purposefully getting it all over my chin and chewing it obnoxiously even though it’s yogurt. Chomp, gush, mslusk, mslusk.

“Not into revolutions, boss? Seems kinda’ important to know all the bloody history, ha-ha, or at least that’s what my dad always told me.”

Yuri sat backward on a chair across from me, tilting his head to the side like the inquisitive schoolboy know-it-all brat he is and was and always will be.

“On the contrary, although I consider myself more a counter revolutionary.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I think we should go back to the old ways. Slavery. Beating insubordinates. Unchecked corporate fraud.”

Yuri gulped, looked away, gold strands falling into his eyes, false-round green things, marble-sized and pearlescent.

“Sounds a little extreme…”

“It’s a joke, Yuri.”

Yuri looks like a dog when he’s smiling. Pointy teeth and an ear-to-ear grin. I shivered and internally suicided at my unintended moment of unintentional acquaintanceship.

He sure does love his camaraderie, though. Yuri leaned forward, shifting, and he snapped at me and pointed and his sliding chair squealed too many decibels for comfort and left an ash-colored stain on the crewdeck marble.

“Say, boss, you know, I really liked Ellie. Thanks for introducing her to the crew.”

“She’s very important to me.” My voice cracked. Fucking baby. I said it so solemnly, like a kicked kitten, but too old to be a kitten now, little bitch, dumb cunt, fuck you, you don’t deserve this or to be thinking about it. Get happy. Even if it’s fake happy. Staying sad is for losers. Losers and henpecked dandies and widows.

Lace-lights on her shoes, flickering, rainbow sputters, every quadrant and which way, now they’re magenta and she’s tying them and looking up at me and sadly smiling and when she gets up she kisses me and puts her hand on my neck and her lips are dry and wet at the same time and she walks away and there’s a note of Chocolate Stout on her breath.

She touches some bald-headed asshole’s arm outside an arcade-bar in the middle of the desert. He makes her laugh. I gawk like a jealous child and some wayskinny chick tells me I remind her of Hunter S. Thompson and I tell her I’d like to keep my identity without being compared to 20th/21st century journalists and just cause my glasses are kinda yellowy-see-through-ey doesn’t mean I’m emulating anyone, thank you very fucking much, okay?

I die a little each time she’s mentioned. I die a little thinking about what she’s doing even though I know what she’s doing but what is she doing and why am I not enough? Is anyone ever enough for anyone?

Can we be canyons and stars and a swamp of slopes?

Can we be places wrapped into ourselves?

“I can tell. And I can see why, ha-ha. She’s exactly the kind of woman I want around one day. So you know, I could really use some help with, ha-ha, you know…”

“Get taller. And dumber.”

I peek out the observation bay and Shiloh’s still whirling around with the hose, Tamler right behind her with a hose of his own and boy is Mama Star bountiful. The Aralaster V.I. chimes in from the relay comms.

“First Sol containment module at full capacity. Proceed drainage?”

“Proceed drainage, divert to secondary module.”

“Drainage diverting to secondary module, per outbound officer.”

Here’s Audrey eating sashimi. Cute bites. Middle of the day. Sol system, somewhere, maybe Mercury. The sun shawls her shoulders and neck and the entire time in the booth across from her I think about fucking her face. But it’s not to keep her from talking. I’d rather she talk than fuck her face, actually. Isn’t that incredible?



She can use chopsticks better than I can but that’s because chopsticks don’t make any sense and conventional silverware is vastly superior but that could just be my own internalized western bias and I’m sure there’s plenty of examples I’m missing of chopsticks being way better.

Sorry, kick back, where am I? Here you go.



Audrey and I talk about everything we can and there’s only a couple gaps of awkward silence in between but in general it’s smooth and operational and delightfully fun. We fuck quickly in my cabin later and I can tell she’s disappointed but she assures me it’s all right and unlike Ellie, I believe her when she talks. She’s never fucked me around before and probably won’t. She says the things even if they hurt. I don’t deserve her.



She says things I don’t want to be true but are true and maybe it’s true that the truths you don’t want to be true are the ones that shake you the most. And if you’re like me and too sentimental for your own good with major circuitry-implant issues, you will re-live the vital and large moments day in and day out and wrestle with yourself about their impact and possible resolutions and never get anywhere except exactly where you started. You will loop yourself into accepting facts you’ve already accepted and go on arguing with them anyway.



She knows it’ll end one day.

She knows we’ll be cinder, or wind, or rust, or some other trawling entropic thing, sooner or later.

A conception once existing until we’re lights in separate houses, like all the others.



Do you ever wonder how many hidden lovers, perfect for you, rest away in those lights? A freeway, a view from an airplane, a view from an overlook — all the same. Lights, lives, darkness in the gaps, so many uncountable variations of people there ready to love you until you can’t stand each other anymore. How many of them will you ever meet?

She knows we will be strangers again, revert back to how we were before we met, and she knows we won’t talk and devalue what we had once, or at least forget so much of it that it will all become superfluous and not worth the time to look back fondly.

She knows she won’t think of me as she’s dying, or even in a few years. She will have someone strong-jawed and wealthy and better than me at most everything, even the things I hold dear, the things I cannot stand being beaten at.

Audrey, more than any of them, kisses me like she means it. And I believe her when she says she means it. She embraces me with her all because she’s aware of it as a waning softness, temporal, a choice she will not have access to in the future, a state she will decide one day to crumble with no input of my own.



And that is the way of women: they will decide when you are extraneous and you will not decide shit about shit and that’s the end of it, bye-bye, thanks for playing the game you knew was impossible before you started.

Why don’t you argue with yourself some more about it, dumbfuck?



Oof, and of course even when I’m thinking of Audrey I’m thinking of Ellie, who has sacrificed so much of her time for me but continues fibbing about whereabouts and rendezvous’, a confusing woman all things considered, equally dumbfounding and infuriating as she is loving and generous, a besmirched but still wholly enchanting Sicilian nymph-ette with a fuckbunch of uncertain motivations. One day I will think she loves me more than beer and the next it’ll be like I’ve been painted into the walls. And still no matter what, I cannot get Ellie Hyatt out of my mind, just like I couldn’t when we met, just like I couldn’t when we met again and again, and kept meeting and not forgetting, just like I will never be able to unless I get one of those whacky TabulaRasa procedures.

When I saw her in Silver Lake a long time ago now, nary half a decade, a quick bar-chat checkup back-to-your-place meeting she likely does not remember much of, I looked her in the eyes and told her I wanted to do this forever, whatever it is, whatever dumb unlucky shit it is.

She sucked me off on a roof. I looked at the stars. We smoked yellow American Spirits.



Wizoop — Shiloh sucks up too much. A fat clod of Mama Star’s guts jet-beam to the center of the (visible to us, anyway) hose-vacuum,

“Operator 1, intermediary vacuum malfunction, hull breach at section 24sigma.”

It explodes at the center and wiggles out an eclipse-equivalent light, smothering the backdrop of space to nothing but blown-out, crisp white. The Aralaster’s sensors pick this up as a solar flare and automatically safe-tint the windows but we all look away anyway and when we look back, Tamler’s unattached from his siphoning-platform and jet-booting his way to Shiloh, who spins (slowly and calmly) out of control with the remainder of her hose.

“Automatic VonLescher-seal initialized at 24sigma. 3% of total yield lost.”

Shiloh chimes in,

“Hey guys, boots are out. Got fried.”

“Hold up, Op 1, I’m around the corner,” Tamler says, approaching Shiloh and wrapping his arms around her waist. He pulls her into his chest and u-turns the other way. They look at each other in the eyes the entire way back to the Aralaster, Tamler cradling her tenderly, and one of her hands is on his chest and the other is swooped around his neck and they look like an ad for getting married in space by old-school Virgin Galactic.

“Airlock opened for boarding party.”

We get them in the airlock and decontaminate them and give them a couple ChemoLitePhaseShots and we give Shiloh a blanket which she wraps around her shoulders and Tamler and this other brute steroid-using face tattooed Polynesian idiot on crew named Waggoner but we just call him Wagon draw up a foot-bath for her and they feed her grapes and give her back rubs. If my intuition is right here, they will be Eiffel Towering her by 8.

All the guys on crew gather around Shiloh when her feet are in the bath, exploiting her temporary inability to get the fuck out of there, as Shiloh (and most pretty women) are prone to doing. Yuri’s the only one to stay back but he watches from the shadowed corner and laughs when the others laugh and nods when the others nod and never inputs anything original despite having more knowledge than all of us combined.

Tamler, Wagon and Catalan trade off touching Shiloh in uhhhh ethically impermissible ways. The small of her back should press charges for how frequently it’s getting molested.

They switch from sitting directly next to her, maybe throwing a palm in her lap every now and then, to standing so their jumpsuitdicks are in her face, maybe rubbing a shoulder or two, to leaning ultra coolly on the bannister-console next her and crossing their arms and coldly disagreeing with each other about nothing important like real men ought to.

I sit next to Yuri. I smoke and drink a Hue’dorange brandy. We watch.

The other two female crew members, Harriet and Kelham, the onboard medic and stations engineer respectively, join in too and pester Shiloh about all the boys giving her sooo much attention, but they also give her Pistachio ice cream so the teasing is all right.

The moment Harriet sits down, Catalan diverts his remaining energy from Shiloh, who is unobtainable anyway, and shifts his whole body weight to Harriet. Catalan bothers Harriet too much ’cause she looks like his ex-wife, an overly freckled orange haired chubby-but-not-too-chubby nerdgirl Irish fetish master.

Lately, though, Harriet’s been leaning in. I normally wouldn’t mind this too much, but it seems as though half or so of my crew is fucking each other and that kind of romantic volatility can really explode in your face.

Catalan taps Harriet on the knee,

“Pretty crazy, right?”

Harriet bites on her fingernails, pushes up her giant perfectly round glasses.

“I’m glad she’s okay.”

“Me too. Goes to show you, though, gotta’ live life to the fullest ’cause you never know, you know. You can never know.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Harriet says, taking a nibble from the Pistachio ice cream in Shiloh’s hands.

Tamler, rubbing Shiloh’s back, says,

“Hey, does this feel good?”

And Shiloh says back,

“Mmm, yeah, that feels good.”

Wagon looms over all of them, literally casting a shadow, and says,

“Do you guys remember that one time I saved you all from that rhino in Johannesburg and how you almost died but didn’t die ’cause I was there? Do you remember?”

And they did all indeed remember. Lucky ducks.

The Aralaster VI chirps in,

“Class A Frigate approaching terminal vector.”

Without a word we all file to starboard observation and we’re greeted by a 300 person frigate of unknown make and model hovering on top of us, purpleblack and sleek and squash-shaped, powered by a triad of Dyson propulsion drives at the tail.

I’m chasing Ellie with a camera through a casino, Bison Steve’s I think, and she’s giggling and (playfully) shrieking at me to turn it off. We drink and talk at the slots. I ask her how many people she’s slept with. I ask her if I’m the most fulfilling fuck of her life. She calls some guy she fucked named Steven ‘gorgeous’ and I knew he was the standard I would never reach. I ask her why we never tried anything real before and she doesn’t know, really.

We stroll around the strip and Fremont. We drink until we’re dead. I listen. I ask questions. I want to know how she is. We go to the aquarium and she is the shark I am most afraid of.



The next day we do cocaine with one another throughout the afternoon/evening. Slots, talk, cigarettes, drink, cocaine, talk, talk, monologue at her, she monologues at me, cocaine, smoke, drinks, cocaine, smoke, drinks, I have never been more invested in another human person. She tells me everything about her family, her forever-growing dislike of her mother and brother. She tells me how it was growing up as a shy nerd girl in an East Coast tundra. She tells me she wants to date a woman one day — like actually be in a relationship with a woman and I applaud the idea and give her bonus points for not thinking of me in the slightest.

“This is the S.S. Danton, please stand down and disable firewalls. Boarding party approaching.”

“Who are these guys?” Shiloh asks, still chomping away at the pistachio ice cream.

“Don’t know, don’t care, we’re getting the fuck out of here,” I say.

Aralaster VI chimes in,

“They are attempting to breach exterior defensive firewalls.”

“Plot the jump.”

“Propulsion temporarily disabled due to firewall breach.”

“Okay, plan C everybody.”

“Plan C?” Shiloh asks.

“Escape shuttle — now.”

We gather at the escape shuttle and Catalan straps himself in extra tight. Besides Tamler and Yuri, he’s the only one with enough flight know-how to successfully evade a frigate this advanced, so if he goes we all go.

We strap in to the escape shuttle, four on one side, three on the other, Catalan flying. I’m sitting directly across from Shiloh and next to Yuri and Harriet.

Shiloh looks me in the eyes and she is stammering to herself and afraid and her breathing is long, un-punctuated. I squint at her. She squints back. She is so fucking hot.

Catalan flicks a couple of buttons and levers and swipes a holo-screen like seventeen times and then, finally, says,

“Okay boarding party, jump in ten.”

The shuttle lifts. Weightlessness. I watch Shiloh’s just-above-shoulder-length hair (of questionable color, depending on the light, and thus is the first magic wizdums of strawberry blondes) flutter up and stick there and she closes her eyes tight and chews the right corner of her lip and squeezes her padded seat like it’s the neck of a child she hates.

So here I am, propelled into space away from the love that has never betrayed me, on a shuttle piloted by a manic depressive pudding-swallowing still-in-love-with-his-duplicitous-ex-wife Australian man-teenager, a professional surfer at one point for god fucking sakes — and to think! — my fifty trillion deadkum investment in the thralls of some shitheads I’ve never seen before in my life, a ship I cannot lose or damage or else I will be paying it off until the grave, a ship that only belongs to me in form. The moment I’m out of eye-shot and it is commandeered, or registered salvage, I will be on a thousand debtor lists and marked as a deserter, a coward who could not go down with his ship, who refused to trade his own life for pressed cotton.



Tamler’s calmly reading Tocqueville, yawning. The Old Regime and the Revolution. I kick Tamler in knee.

“Really? Is this the time?”

“If not now, when?” And he chooses, for whatever reason, to grin at me.

“Ten,” Catalan says.

There was a moment when El and I were in the snow together, in Flagstaff. It’s lost now, mostly, fragmented, but there’s something in the snow… she’s awash an orange-white sheet of barely visible sky, lampposts burning auburn, cigarette cherry lighting up a portion of her cheeks. Her eyes are huge and soul-trapping and I fall into them, wells I can’t help but gorge from.

“Rulers who destroy men’s freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.”

“Nine.”

Shiloh scratches at her seat. Wagon tries to comfort her by grabbing her hand but she slaps him away and says ‘ew no’ and goes back to mouthing a bunch of wacky incomprehensible shit under her breath and breathing like a pacing greyhound. Harriet plays a convent-building sim on her Micro-TendoLite XL called Genuflecters where you play as the lead nun in a convent that eventually sparks a super violent revolution in 16th century Polish Lithuania and the whole objective of the game is to turn your convent into a hyper-militarized authoritarian autocracy in order to beat back the hordes of ‘Brown Invaders’. Never quite understood it myself.

“The desire to grow rich at all costs, the taste for business, the passion for gain, the pursuit of comfort and material enjoyment are thus the most common preoccupations in despotisms.”

“Eight.”

El and I are at a concert, Texas, and it’s raining and we don’t care, there’s pretty lights and it’s fun and we’re drunk so it doesn’t matter, and later that same night there’s a dozen or so pieced jazz band playing under a tent and like a hundred people are squished around them so we squish ourselves around them too and sway a bit like we’re socially instructed. There’s a fountain at the center of the venue-park and we sit on the edges and we plan trips together, to the Meridian, the Casa del Gato, Japan, the ruins of Ptolemy X.

“Don’t worry, we have so much time,” she says and I believe her even though she is lying or misinformed or both.

The shuttle bumps, swerves, descends.

“Hold up,” Catalan says.

“Shuttle firewalls disabled,” the stupid idiot V.I. says.

Wagon vomits up about sixteen servings of spam-rice and gravy and rumchatas. This isn’t worth it. Kill me. Why the torture?

The shuttle keeps plummeting and Shiloh’s passed out and covered in Wagon (I hate this sentence but it is accurate) and Tamler hasn’t even dropped his book. Fuck this dude.

He reads,

“Centralization and socialism are products of the same soil. The one is to the other what the cultivated fruit is to the wild stock.”

Catalan says,

“Okay, sorry guys, this is gonna’ suck a lot.”

Without a charted course, Catalan pushes the propulsion drive. He’s shaking his head, he’s shaking his head, his elbows are on the controls now and he’s pushing his hair back…

We are spat out in the most populated major metropolitan area on Terra Novus, a city called Plate, and unfortunately for like you know fucking everybody the shuttle’s ass end smacks directly into the most populated tourist trap hotel in the whole dumb city and cause the thrusters are meant for, like, you know, space, they subsequently burn to death an old Belgian couple and their English Bulldog, Louis XVI, and forty five female volleyball players, reportedly only in town because of an annual charity scrimmage between Terra Novus and their sister city Terra Novellus (half of all proceeds go to SmooshyCorp, though, which seems a little fucked up).

We flop into the middle of traffic after the initial hotel impact and kill two prominent Vespa-riding lesbian Russian novelists who wrote the classics, ‘Dosvedanya, You Gay Dyke’ and ‘Dmitri the Girl-Turner.’

Super fucking disaster, in other words. Oh, and a steel rod from the hotel punctured Yuri’s shoulder/heart/ribs, so he’s dead, so that’s pretty much the worst thing to have ever happened. And guess who has to tell his parents?

There’s smoke everywhere, I can’t see, there’s too much smoke and Shiloh’s nose is bleeding and she’s sprawled out on the deck face up and Catalan’s not saying anything and there’s too much smoke to see anyone else.

Shiloh’s lip twitches. She opens her eyes at me. I lean in. She leans in.

“You okay?”

Her nose is broken. Her mouth is bleeding. She’s covered in Wagon. She’s so fucking hot.



Her smile is mauve and charming and roots fill the gaps.

“I’m so wet, boss.”

I just about die when she says this.

And then we all get arrested.

Except Yuri, you know, ’cause he’s dead.

į̸̨̨͍̦̟̪͕̱͓͈̪͎̮̞̜̗̩̲͚̙̦̎̔̽̄͗͗̀̃̒̀̉̎͂̓͒́̈́̀̂̈̈́͊̐̒͂͐͘͝ͅͅͅf̴̡̢̛̪͇̪̳̠̹͖̻̩̟̮̻̯̤̖͚̞͚̗̣͔̹̼̠͍̞͈͍͓̞̜̀̆̅̽͌̂͒̌̇̔̑̎̀̑̽̓́̀͐̚͘̕ͅe̷̛̟̫̬̹̽̉͛̋̈́̃̋͘͠ę̷͙̦̹͖̠̰̦͚̹̤͉̲̖̫̠̻̓͗́̅̃́̊͑̔͊̂̋͛̓̈́͒͝͝͝͝l̶̨̛̯̟̦͍̫̪̠̥͔͎̠̖̠̭̙̠̖̻̜̎̆̎̈́́̀̈̍͗́̏̃̓̏̔̈́͒̈́͋͗͂̈͆̈́͂̂̉̓̀̕͜͝͠͠ ̶̧̜͎͕̺͔̭̘̩̭̓̀̎͊̈̓̓̂́̏͒̅̆̔̋͊̏̽̑͌̑̓̌̈́͛̐́̎̕̚̚͝͠ş̶̢͚̬̰̮̠̭̰̟̔̍͠ơ̸̢̛̻͓̩̲̰̬͔͕̮̘̖͍̙̠̬̟͇͖̞͔͙̖̞͙̱̙͖͖̝̟͇̲̱͌̿̽̊̓̋̎́̿́͗̇͐̊̈́̔̒͊̊̓͆̊̋̾̉̓̒̑̿́̕̚͠͠͠͝ ̶̢̛̙͉̞̝͇͕̩̲̩̥̫̻͙̈̎́̀̇̐̿͂̓͂̈́̂͐̿̐͆͒̋̋̎͌͑͗͑̕̚̚͝͝a̸̡̧͕̫̻͇̞̖̰̠̣̦̬͋̂̇̎͂͛̓̈́͌͌͒̕͜͝ͅf̸̧̡͇̜̹͓̫̙͔̝͉̙̥͒̇̉̈́̈͐̆̽̏̂̈̅͘͝ȓ̶͓̻̲̣̳̗̙̮̤͆̑̆̋̓̒͛̂̊̐̇́̋̓͒̌̌̀̚a̷̡̠̝͉̞̪̣̩͈̞̩̦̒̈́͌̏̋̉̊̏̑́̆̌́̿͐̄͗̑͆͐̃̀̇̄̒̉̒͐̏̄̊̍̄́̕̕͝͝i̷̛̼̼̟̝͓̹̪̿̏̓̑́͗̔̑̀̃̽̀͊̓̌̚͘̚͝͠͝͠ͅd̵̢̢̧̢̦͉̭͙̩͈̰͇͔̠͚̜̟͖̯̱̪̝͙̲̥̝̞́̏͛̈̒̒͌̂̈́̈́͋̒͑͆͒̏̐̐̍̾͊̃͆̀͛̊͒̓͒̀̀̄̕͜͝͝͝ ̴̹͙͕͙̮̘̼͙̠̜̬̠͇̞͙̘̭͙̬͖͚̻̠̠̥̤͍͓̹̪͚͉̹̯̉̄͋̑́̎̍͌̆̓̕͘͝͝͝ͅö̷̡̢̲̙̳̲̻̹̰̫̜̩̟̻̟̼̣̲͉̘͖̯͍͕͎̏̒̽̈́̕͝f̸̧̡̢͚͈̥̻̯̬̃͆̈́̎̅̾͝ͅw̷̢̢͇̠͉̗̔́ḥ̶̨̦͕̘̘̘̳̞̪̜̟̤̜͉͉̺͚̮̠̮͉̯̭͙͚̱͚̲͍̒̌ͅą̴̨̩͕͔̼̥̬͉̺̯̦̜̺̙͈̎̃̉̊̀̒̆̇͆t̵̡̨̛͎̼̪̺̥̭̜͚̘̯̬͈̭̩̼̳͖̭̩̩̹̹̙̠̺̏̓͐̓͂̐̃͋͆́̇͒͊̇̿̒̊̓̾̌͛́͋͆̏̀̇́͛̃͋̉̿͋̎̂̚͝ṭ̴͎̜̻̳̺̞̻̟͔̖̰̪̠̠̮̠̱̲̟̭̺̯̟̟̖͕̤͚̯͔̥̖̣̰̽͜͜h̷̡̢̨͕̤̝̹͖̬͉̯̲͚͚̗̣͈̮̳̫̖̙̫̯̭͖͓͈͖̼̗͙̖̗̓̓̓̀̇̽̍́̑̽̉͆́͌̈̓͂̿͛͑̐̂̿̾̊̏͘̚̚̚ͅͅͅe̴̡̧͓͓̤͔͕̳͙̹̘̞͈̪̩̮̦͇̲̹̥̰͙͉͈̩̤͎̭͉̩̹̖̗̓̃̌̌͜y̷̧̙̮͈̤̻̙̌̓̎́͛̒̋̐̓̇͒̃̓͂͊̿͆͂̽̒̓̄̑̓́͛͋̌̈͗̋́̓̚̚͝͝ͅ’̵̡̨̟͖̞̠̻̬̯͉̩̪̖̬̗͔̬̺̯͕̬͈͈̣̼̦̰̫̈͆̐̑́̋̎̀͊̀̇́̿̔̿̕̚̕̚͜͝͠ͅr̸̲͙̜̐̈́̒͌̂͂̑̎̅͊̽͐̓̀̌̌͐e̸̢̧̡̨̛̠̙͕͔͖͖̪̙͔͉̩̬̭̲̣͖̻̘̥͇̳͎̫̭̦̅̓̔̊͗̍̓̃̊̾̂̈́͒̄̀͂̐̐͌̾̍͛̌̊͛̀́̚ ̴͕́͒̇͑̾̂́͒̐͛͆̀͂̆̉̐̊̓̚̕͘g̵̰̼̑͑́̏̋͋͑̍̄̀̃̀̎̐̚͠o̶̡̪̣͕̬̝͇̰͇̝͚͔͔̞̪͓̭̮̩͎͈̹͗̑̎i̷̛̖̰͆̓͊̋̓̄͑̾̍̈̊̐́̏̄̾̑̉̿̃̀̽̿͘͠n̶̛̳̲̞̝͖͕̙̞̗͔͈̩̱̓́̓̓̒͗̅̍͗̍̇́̀̎̇́̋̐̕͝g̴̢̙̼̺̰̙̯͉̖̗̼̥͂̿̈́͛̄̀͛͐̌̇̀͐̽͐̒̚̚ ̴̧̡̨̬͇͉̪̥͇̣͙̻̱̫͍̮̱̙̲͉͕̼͒̄̆̊͜͝ẗ̵̢̪̭̥̗̖̝̑̐́̋͆͌̒̊̚̕͝ơ̶̧̛̠̩̬̣̱̣̹̱̦̩̗̲̗̫͖͙̯̦̟̬͎͍͚͇̻̠͓̺̜̳̺̯͛̈́̎̿̌͌̽̿̃̑̆́͑͌̏̃̽͒̌̂̒̔̔͘̕͠͝ͅ ̶̨͍̤̻̜̳̺̜̣̊̀̏̀͑͑̆̊͋̋͑̓̅̂̂̈́̈́̋̏̅̚͜ͅs̴̺̺̊̃̊̿͊͗̋̀̊̈́̿̽̌̄͂͒̾̋̈́̊͑à̶̢̨̛̮͇̻̥͖̞̦̼̞̰͔͚̠̖̫͎̼̮̹̼̰̯͕̭͙̦̲̖̙̥̩̆͑̈̇̽̽͆̌̒͆̈́̐͑͂̃̿͝͝͝ͅỳ̵̨̨̝̗̻̫̭̯͈̺͔̮̞̺̳̘͇̩͎̙̬̭͈̟̮̹͍̃͛̓̓͋̿̈̊͗͘͜͝r̵̛̥̝͙̪͕̬̜̫̦̩̣̮̞̞̮̹̘͚͕͈̰͂̆̀̈́̀͒̀͆͗͑̀͋̓̊̈́͌̊͐̊͘͜͠͝͠ͅe̶̡̢̢̨̛͓͍̦͈̝̯̘̫̠̙̺̜͉̦͍̳͍̲͍̣͉͉̟̲̮͇̗͈͍̎͐͌͒͛̏̈́͜͜͜͝͝͝p̷̨̡̨̡̛̯̮̮̲͙̱̦̣̱̗̱̪̫͇̥̟̝͔̖̫̝̤̻̟̺͙̰̝͓͆̃̾̽̑́̕̕͜͜͝ǫ̷͖̩̤̫̱̭̘͍̥̪͗̒͊̒͜r̴̨̡̲̭̼̭̯͉̹̞͚̟̳͎͚̯̙̭̃̄̀̐̓̀́̓̓̃̐̈̎̔̑͑͒̅̐̈́͋̔̒͆̀̀͘͘̕͝t̷̢̛̹̯̰̞̺͎̱̲͑̋͌͑͑̈͊͋̄͗̇̊̍̏̄̅͌̇̑͛̃̇̆̐̒̌̔̈͘̕͝ĕ̴̡̨̢̛̱͍͈̥͇̳͈̼͎̺͇̼͚̝̦̮͔͖̟̩͍̘̮̠̼̬̠̉͛͒̀̽̈̓͗́͆͗͒́͐͒̒̈̈́̔̾̋̈́́͒́̌̚͘͜ṯ̶̢̭̼͓̬̹̬͍̺̥̝̱̰͍̬̮̻̰͍̺̰̖̱͚̅͗̉̔͐͂̒̑͆́̓͋͜͝͠͝ͅơ̷̖͌̊̆̔̔̔̔̈́͗̀̓̈̏͂̋̀̔̓̐̍̀̾̓͌͘̕͜͝͠͠ț̵̀̋̇͂̈͛̔̏̏͛̂͗ḩ̸̢̠̪̲̰͍̪̪̪̱̱͙̟̦͖͇̜̻̳̻̼̒̾̄͂̿͋̂̏̃̇͂̑͆̄͊̒̓̇̀́͘͘͘͝͝ͅe̸̠͍̥͔͛͊͒͛̆͌̓͑͛͘͝ļ̴̢̧̻̖̬͉̪͙͈̩̙͇͔͖̘̦̝̳̣̫̰̯̼̻̟̻̹̦̜̯͓̳͖͍͆̑̒͑̌̈́͋̈́̒̄̔͆͆̈́͛͊̂̑̓͘͘͘͘ͅͅo̶̢̢̢̺̤̰̭͔̳̮̹̰̣̜͓̣͔̱͍͇͖͇̟̟̮͚͂̆̆̿͆͑̍͝͠ͅͅg̷̛̛͍͚͌̐̀͊̇̄͋́̊̀͘͘͝͝ͅi̸̡̢͕̘̠̮̭͎͍͎͕̩͙͉͉̳̥͙͇̘͉͈̺͚̘̤̭̳͈̪̤̻̰̮̓̔̈̈́̉̃̓̀̉́͑͆̀̿̔̊̎̓͗̾̀̈̽̉̕͜͝͝ͅͅc̸̨̳̖͎̫̣͎͎̦̣̀̈́̔̉̏͂̔̓̂̊͐̄͌͌͌̑͐̈́̅͐͒͝p̷̧̢̢̛͖͙̤̬̗͖̥̣̗̰̞̠̰̤͍͈̬̯̜̖͇͉͎̭̫̣͈̹̗̔͛̔̂͑͒̔̉̋͗̐̿͊̀̽̏͗̏̀̈̉̈͂̎̒͛͊̇̈́́͛͝͠͝ṟ̸̨̖͕̱͕͇̩͇̥͖̗̗̘̼͍̗̿̒̾́̈́̃͋̈́̎̔̆́̒̔̓̄̉̐͒̑̐͒͐͆̍͌̓̐͂͌̍͌͐̿̉̕͝ơ̶̧̢̛̬͔̟̙̟̩̣͙̙͇̫͙͍̦̜̻͓͉̹̗̣̥̦̍̄̿̈́͗̂̒̇͂͊͜c̷̞͓͇͈͇̜̝̫̳̘̺͎̒͊̀̊̌̉͆̈́ę̷̛̛̛̖̠͍̺̮̝̰̫̳̥͉͔̟̥̖͔̿͆͛̏̊́̆̅́̀̂̀̏͆̑̓̈́͘̚͠͝s̴̫̜̘̹͙̞̈̀̊̓͋͒̈͊́́̋̽̄͜͝s̸̡̨̡͍̬͈̱͈̠͈̩͙̞̝͇̩̗͚͈̜̱͙̹̘̩̯̲̣̈́͑̐̊̀͒̅̿̀̋͛̈́͜i̶̧̢̢̱͇̟̝͉̭̙͙͓̫͈̝̰͚̞̙̱̫͎̥͊̈́̄̊̓̊̆̌̒̋̆̋͐̒̒́͆́̊̓͒͗͋͒̓͋̆́́̎̈́͘͠n̶̢͍͇̘̭͖͐̆̓̾̉̈́̃̿̅̔̽̌̐̊̃͌͛͑̾͒͌̏̍͐̉̑̽̂̋͒̚̕͝͠g̴̨̡͎͕̥̣̈́̃̄̈́̚͜ų̷̧̧̢̡̧̨̺̳̙̗͖̪̤̙̬̪͍̻̲̲̫̭̣̫̻̩͙̳̣͚̘͇̦̱̲̺̒͋͗̓̀͋̿̀̀̂̌͘͜n̷̟͚̟͕̻͙̏̊́̅̑̏͑͂̎͋̋̈́̀̿̈́̋̂̈́͑̍̊̑̈͂̕͝͝͝į̸̡̢̧̧̦̥͇͖̻̣̦̭̣̝̥̮̹͕̳͇͉͍̤̣͚̤͔̼͉̫́͜͜t̴̡̨̧̧̛̛̥̦͚̪̳͓̩̺̻̼͔̥̣̬̼̫̦̹̄̓̂̊̈́̋̒̊̋̈͑̃̒̀̒͐̒̈́̄̃̈́͂̒̈̎̽̂̚̕̚̕͜͝ͅa̷̝̖̯͙̼̫̞̘̝̣̱͍̪̬̱̎̉́̑͋́͊̈́̓͊̍̑̈́͋͗̔͊̾̈͗́̀̏̋̀͐̊̿̉̀̂̈͂̿͂͜͝͝͝f̷̧̧̢͈̟̗̺̥̜̦̫͖̱̩̝̭͍̝͚̫͚̜͚̳̩͓͕̝̱̬̞̬̙̖͖͗͐͒̎͐̈̌̈̌̈́͑͐̾͛̔͒͊̈́̾̎̏̂̀̕͘͠͠͠͝ͅt̸̢̛̟͈͈̤͉̝͕̮̞̪͙͇͙͈͍̠̹̼̋̾̌̂̎̽̅̓̈́̒̌͐̌̈́͒́́̈̊͘̕̕͝e̷̢̡̨̧͓̦̠̮͍̜̘̬̠̰͚͍̤̮͔͎̻̹̙͍̤̣̠̖̣̮̎̂̅͆̍̊̃̋̎̄̿̊̈́̐̈́̇̀̊́̀͒̅̈́̆͋̀̋̊͛͂͊̍̕̕͜͠͠ͅr̵̨̨̨̢̟̠̩̥̟̳̗̜̙̩̤̦̥̞̮͈̰̗͚̦͎͔̰͈̯̱͙̖̻̗̲͎͂̊́̐̽̂͂̅̐̾̿̅̐͊̎̚̚ͅͅṭ̴̛̛̻̭̥̗̰̲̲̋̌̋͋̊̈́̑̃̈́̋̅̇̈́͑̈́̇͋̚͘͝ḩ̵̨͕̹̺͍̼͉̥̍́̀̕e̴̼̯̙̦̟͕͑̈̒̾̐̔̇̕̚̕f̷̧̡͚̯̯̞̼̙͍̭̭͎͙̼͕̰̻̩̞̜͍̯͍̫͖͍̮͍̜̟͖̱̟͔̳̽̆̌̀̽͌̓̌͜͜͜͜ã̴̧̧̙͈̺̙̹̣̘̻͓͚̥̼̗̯̬͉̖͇̻̞̠̮͖̮̝̖̱̲̦͎̬̼͎̼͋́̈́͗͑͂̐́̓͑̕ͅͅć̶͍̦͙̘͇̦͈͔̾͂͌̑̌̌̈́͐̃͂̉̇̒͋̃̓̅̿̒͋̌̒̾̑̃̅̽̄̅̕͘͘͜͠͝į̷̛̛̛̹͖̱̜̙͎̖̹̞̗̠̦͉̘͎̩͙͋͆́͛́̍̃̃́͑̎̑͑̅̃̈́̈́̕͘͝ͅl̸͉̟̞̙͎̥̪̬̣̫͍̠̙͑͆͋̈͜ͅį̸̛͇͙͎̹̱͙̗̠̮͈͎̱̤̺̥̪͉̻̩̮̺̱̈̓̓̍̇t̴͔̤͓̬̞̻̘̲͘y̴̢̡͈̮̟̩̬̘͖̯̮̮̝̻͍̹̹̱̮̦̳̰̲͇̤̼̣͖̥̮̙̜͛͒̔͌͒͒̀̇͌̓̓́͊̑̅̈́͐̈́̕ͅͅb̸̢̧̡̛̛̰͇̫̱͖̳̘̻͚̳͓̻̯̝̠́͋͛̋́̔́̉̇̓̒̈́͐͆͋̀̏̈́́́̈͊͊̍̓̎̃͘̚̕̚͝͝ͅr̸̨̨̨̧̡̨̡̛͓͈̘̳͙͓̮͕͎̖͓̝̯͇̯̹͑̈́͒̿̆̆̔̎͗͆̅̀͊͒̆͂̋͊̎̃͜͠ͅe̷̛͕̬͓̮͑̈́̑͒͗́̈́̓̅̋̔̈̌͗̑̌̉̈́̓̑͑͊̑͆͗̿̓͠a̸̧̪̬̟̮͎͎̫̳̰̱̝̅̅̃͒̓̈́̂̐̓̽͛̊̄͆̓̂̊̆̀̇͐̇̾̌̐̽̂̊͐̐̃̚͝͠͠͝ḵ̵̡̢̢̧̧̯͙̟͉̜̝̬̥͍͉̖͖͈͚͎̖͈̻͈̜̙̤͍͔̤͒̈́̐̈͆͌́̀͊̌͋͐̕͘̕̚͜ͅs̴̺͇̈͒̈́̍̍̆̓́̒̄̐́̈́͌͂̋̈́̒͌̕̕̕͝͝ų̶̨̣̰̩̣̫̪̯͖̻͎̩̖̻̗̞͕̒̌̐͗̾͐̈́̋̈́͘͜ṗ̴̡̛̙̲̹̰̭̮̜̘̻̦̪̱̼̤̥̲̟̻̣͓̙͖̒̌̀̆̊̑̃͊̿͌̀̑̉͋͌̈́́̕͠a̶͙̙̲̲̝͖͔̩͛́͐͐͝n̸̨̨̧̧̧̛͔̥̦̱̩͉̣͍͎̖̫̺̪̩͍̺̂̇̃̌͂̋̈́̏͊̋͐̒̈́̇̇͛̄͐̈́́̏̚͘͘̚̕͜͝͠d̵̨̨̛̛̹͙̞̘͕̲̣̰̗͉̲̹̖̺̫̮͚̥̄͒̋̐̔̉̈͋̈́͛͐͗̓̽͂̒́͋̎̔̋̇̌̅̒̊̈́̚̕͜a̷̛͔̜̟͚̦̟̤͂̌͒͋̓̍̔͂̀̊̈̂͊͐̒͐͊̾̿̉̎̋̆̈̈́̈́̀̆̓͒̚͘͝͝͝l̸͓͑̊͒̄͗̄́̎̅̑́̍͌̈́͘͝ḽ̶̢͖̦͔̞̯̮̼͈͔͖̘̼̝͉̣̜̫͙̖̼͚̥͇̫̈́̄̄̃́͗̅̎̾̋̾̎̃̋̃͆͋̓̽̈͋̋̌̊͐̀͑̀̎̌́͐͠͠͝ͅw̶̢̛͙̥͖̮̒͑̈̌́́͋̃̂̉͆̄̇̆̀̈́͑̈͑͌́̈̽̏̽̐̅̈́͝͝i̸̡͈̦̻̲̞̜̠̼͕̩̩̹̲̭̞͚̥̞̬͍͆͐̄̒̿͒́̉̆͛̕͠l̷̨̢̢̧̢̛̛̛͚͓͖̫̘̦͎͈͖̝̝̮̹̘̳͉͓͇͕̝̦̥͖͎̭̄͐̎́͆̀̈́̽́̓̀̆͒͒̐͌̋̒̔̉̆̕̚̚͜͜͠͝ļ̵̢̢̡͇̬͚̠̝̥̮̘̥͍̯̭͇͙̯̩͙̗̬͉̫̯̹͚͔͕̺̝͔͉̏̓̍̾̉̃̆͗̑͘͜͜͠͠͝͝ͅͅb̸̥͍̤̤̒̊͊̉́̍͋̑̓̓͋̓̌̏͋̓͌͌̕͘̕̚͝͝͠é̷̛͚́̿̀͆̎́̈́́̅̿̄̉͗̄̌͗̄̅̈́́̾̈́͒̂͘̚͝ẘ̸̧̢͎̣̞̪̺̲͙̭͕̭͉̪͓͙̠͕͎̞̪̣̺̣̙͓͍͕̼̯͔̼͕̗̅̌̈̋͂͊͜e̸̛̦̻͈̙̮͚̪͍͆̊͒̀̊͒̋͋͊̉̒͂̓͊͐̕̕̚͝͝͝l̸̢̧̨̨̨̨̠̜̦̟̩̹̭̗͇͎̟̥̞͈͉͚͓͓̜̗̦͇̩͔̦̣͒̅̏̐̒͂̏̈̈́́͘͘͝ͅļ̸̨̢̛͉̲͖̺̹̲̙͚̤̥̲͈͍̜̳̰̺̩̹̗̖̭̩̻̥̄̉̓͋̐̀͌̈͆͛̾̍̉̑̓͐̈́̒̇̈̃̈͒͜͝ͅͅ

Catalan goes to prison for forty years. I never visit.

Yuri’s parents permanently live in SmooshyWorld, an unfortunate theme-planet in Lapley’s Stellar Stream that is as spacious as it is specious and maybe the single most aggravating place in the universe. They live in an apartment complex underneath a rollercoaster called Inferno’s Sanctum or something so there’s a lot of red flashing lights randomly all the time but surprisingly the sound-proofing is spot on so there’s almost no rumbling or tremors at all. Still, I hate them for this decision.

Roy and Jeckie (NOT JACKIE) Yates invite me in without a syllable and point me to the green-felt love seat by the corner window. Jeckie brings me black-leaved tea. She has dentures and frizzy patched hair the color of old ashes.

Roy is too senile and mostly deaf to understand anything and hunched so severely it’s a wonder he hasn’t snapped in half and he’s wearing an all red jumpsuit like an elderly Eastern Bloc Mario or something.

Jeckie says, (there’s red flashy lights, zoom zoom, vroom vroom noises)

“So what’s this about, young man?”

Red flashy lights.

They have a dog statue that reminds me of these little terrier earrings Ellie always wears. She wore them the last time I saw her, or one of them at least, ’cause she lost the other one in the Aralaster cabin somewhere. She has a nose ring, too, and she’s the girl that made me love nose rings. It’s all her for sure.

Ellie has tattoos on her back for all the places she’s been. I kiss them every time I see her. I trace my fingers on their borders and try to tickle her but she’s not very ticklish and her skin is always so delicate, as if it hadn’t been tainted by a thousand other fingers but it has and I know it has. I try to mark it as mine but there’s no flag to stake down, no real territory to claim. In the way she is, her soulstuff, she is free and untied and liberated somehow by her own solitude. The worlds are her world. No need for an explorer to assert his conquer.

She is discovery herself, bundled miraculously into a single unit.

“Yuri was on my ship,” I say. I hand them his death certificate and life insurance policy.

Alison thanks me for making her feel human. She invited me to her roommate’s 25th birthday party, so I took a shuttle-cab to her apartment on the Misendel and made sure to arrive ultra-late and I did and the party was over by the time I got there thank God, so Alison and I went straight to her room and she despaired at me about her love life and how difficult it is for a molecular biology PHD candidate to find love, to find someone actually good enough for her. And being good enough in the long run for someone like Alison, who is not only a smokeshow with a tight little ass but a tempered, dedicated to science and reason, learned individual, is nearly impossible for most average men. She is simply above grade in all the relevant categories and the vast majority of human males would kill to be in my position.

I make her come three times with only a smoke break in between each. She can hardly stand by the end of it. She’s a hard cummer. Really takes a lot out of her. Ellie’s a soft cummer, or maybe she’s just faking it (probably this), and Audrey’s kind of in between, the proverbial Goldilocks, but Alison’s a bonafide fuck-me-up cummer who couldn’t fake it even if she wanted to. Turns her into a paraplegic retard basically.

“What’s this? Our eyes aren’t so good…” Jeckie hands the papers back.

Audrey holds my hand, we’re in bed, clothes still on, her shirt hiked up and bra untangled. We just look at each other a little. She giggles. I ask her why and she says ‘ I don’t know’ and ogles me a bit more before arching her chin down and staring into my chest. She tells me I have a slow heartbeat. Not too slow, though.



When we first met, Audrey had a strict rule about first dates: she confined them to roughly fifteen minutes, as she’s perilously short on time, and conducted ours inside her car, where we asked each other a string of not-so-pertinent rapid-fire questions to ‘gauge mutual compatibility’ or whatever. It went well for the most part, except when I explicitly told her I would never be just her friend and can be honest with myself about how attracted I am to her and she said something like,

“I don’t know, I think we can be good friends, I’m not gonna’ fuck you.”

And so this made me feel as though I had lost the ballgame and so I left and counted it as a loss until about two hours later, where she messaged me and scolded me for leaving and told me I was a dummy, which I am, and so we met up again a week later and made out on my bed while the electricity was out at my house and it was 95 degrees outside but we didn’t care and we kept each other cool with ice packs from my fridge and rubbed them on each other and I dropped them down her shirt and pressed them against her neck to torture her and she hardly complained at all. We climaxed together and at the crescendo of both the air conditioning kicked in and a cool wave of air washed into our sternums and it felt to me then like God speaking through the electricity.

“Yuri is dead. I’m sorry.”

I’m telling them their prodigal son is dead. I’m telling them their nineteen years of hard work, their lineage, their whip-smart baby boy, is dead.

And all I can think about is Ellie in a form-fitting yellow sweater sucking me off in the backyard.

Jeckie collapses into Roy’s arms and ugly cries. Ugly mother-gonna-bury-her-own-son cries. Roy doesn’t understand and stares blankly into the distance.

Jeckie’s the only one really here.

Roy pats his wife’s back and says,

“Oh but dear, the bluejays are out.”

There’s a couple jostles of darting blue outside the window next to me. One bird stops on the branch nearest to me and there’s a worm wriggling in its beak and internally I ask the bird to stop, to let the worm go, but all it does is feed it to its children and the worm is torn in hundreds, slaughtered for food.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Yates.”

I stand and turn toward the door.

“Yuri…”

I get a message from Shiloh and rudely check it. I haven’t seen Shiloh or Tamler since the crash. She reached out and wants to go to this one place where they have turtle races. Ellie and I have been there before, a shit little patio-bar with a couple giant screens and a little arena-pad for the turtles. It’s cute, it’s fun, I agree. Shiloh invites Harriet and Kelham and Wagon, too.

We meet at dusk and drink immediately and disastrously. Tamler and Shiloh sit close enough for their shoulders to touch and flirt with their wrists, the lovestruck perfect couple shitbags.

Harriet gets way too drunk within the first three rounds of her gin and tonics and threatens to drink the blood of some fake-ID-wielding-hipster-twinks one table over so Kelham and Wagon escort her home and they probably have a threesome or something, even though all Harriet can do at the moment is drool on herself and throw up gin in her mouth and play her stupid Micro-Tendo kid bullshit. Good for Wagon, though, I guess.

A turtle named James Franco wins three races in a row. There’s a crowd of eighty or so people circling the turtle arena and they’re all blitzed and screaming at nothing and everyone’s way too excited to be betting on turtles but there’s some novelty there and the turtles aren’t really mistreated besides their poor baby eardrums and all the confusing movement and lights and as I’m writing this it sounds kind of bad.

Tamler and Shiloh tell me they are getting married now that my ship is lost, so there’s no professional boundary there. Fuck, I owe trillions of deadkums. I say ‘congratulations’ and clink glasses with them and revel in the true-hot-people sex they’re going to have for the rest of their lives and definitely never cheat on each other with other hot people even though the hotter you are the more opportunity you have to cheat but whatever, I guess that’s too Bayesian for most people or something.

Shiloh says,

“Hey, so, how’s Ellie doing these days?”

I want to tell her but I don’t know. Ellie only talks when she’s around. Doesn’t keep in radio contact if she can help it, or get away with it, I guess is more accurate and she can get away with almost anything as far my availability to her goes. Fuck me up, beat me, psychologically warp me, kill my family, whatever. El can do all that and I’d bow. She is indelible. A pillar. I didn’t choose it, it just happened, and doesn’t it all sort of just happen at you? If I could control how I felt about these women I’d hit the stop button in a heartbeat. It’s not logical or even inherently beneficial to be in love, or lust, with anyone ever. At its best, human pair bonding is an economic stopgap. At its worst it’s murder-suicide. Maybe split the difference and stop shacking up all together if that’s the muck we’re getting dragged in.

“Ellie’s fine, kind of an extended sabbatical for a couple months. Going all over.”

“Sounds fun. We’re gonna’ do the same for our honeymoon.”

“Go all over?”

“Yeah,” Tamler interjects. “Like an extended three month honeymoon kind of thing. Symbolic of the kind of love we think is important.”

“Yikes,” I say. “Whatever you say, dude.”

“What?”

“You two are gonna’ get sick of each other in six months.”

Shiloh rolls her eyes.

“Whatever, boss. We’re gonna’ go now. Thanks for meeting with us.”

They leave. Tamler shakes his head as he walks away and doesn’t even properly say goodbye.

I drink two more beers alone and a cute solid 7 in a blue sundress with tattoos of periodic elements on her forearms chats me up and asks me what I’m doing here, she’s never seen me here before, etc. I tell her I’m from out of town. She tells me I’m cute. I tell her my girlfriends think so too and she laughs.

I go home alone. I sleep on pillows I haven’t washed in a year. I wait for a message that never comes. I think of Ellie and Audrey falling in love. I think of what they’d look like pressed together. How the world would explode. How I could gas myself after their consummation and it wouldn’t even matter. And then they shuffle and cycle and I am not sure who I am thinking of at all anymore. Do I have it all straight? What pieces of them do I remember? Are they the right pieces? What pieces do they remember of me?

Shhh, Ellie’s asleep, my face pressed into the small of her back. I can feel her asleep. I listen to her breath. I’m so glad it’s like this. I’m so glad it’s tender and soft and warm and safe sometimes and there is only good and please try to remember the small essences in between the larger moments. How the lights were, what they smelled like, the way they drank their beer. Movements, surfaces, textures — essence. Remember how she is as she’s falling asleep and there is no one there but you to make it right. Remember how she is when she treats you to parcels you don’t deserve and you complain about her anyway like a stuck up cunt. Remember the shape of her spine and how it reveals itself from her back when she bends to pick up her underwear.



Shhh, Audrey’s not asleep, she’s resting. She’s busy so she can’t sleep. I put lips everywhere I can possibly put them. She pulls my hair. I pull hers. She asks me a good question I can’t answer and don’t remember. I feel her heart but don’t tell her if it’s fast or slow or anything. I listen. I ask her if she knows how the internet works and she gives me a comprehensive answer. I lick her thigh.

Shhh, El’s still asleep.

Recall in the woods the deathly snares of nightbirds which surrounded her but are no threat and there is so much snow I can hardly see and there’s a plow blaring a foglight in the distance and I want our lips to freeze together.

What if Rose is dead? What if Rose is married?

Shiloh and Tamler fuck and it is a nation unto itself. They are an ecstasy conduit not yet discovered, TruPerfectPlowMachinas who will never find a better lover in their lives. Pity. Look at what they’ve done to themselves by being too good for each other.

I wish I still had a cat. I get anxious when I have nothing to pet.

Shhh, she’s asleep. I don’t want to wake her. She needs her rest. She’s busy. It’s okay, whatever she does, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. Shhh, don’t be too loud. I don’t want her to know I listen to the faintness of her breathing. I don’t want her to know how many eons of morning light I have captured her in. It’s best she not know what I have stored of her.

Wait, can you hear?

There’s rain on the windows.

It’s not raining but there’s rain on the windows. I wish I still had a cat.

I make myself tea and watch it steam and cool and die.