3

“…which was barring any mechanical hitch, which could, if fortunate strand me for months in the middle of nowhere, or unfortunately lead to my inopportune demise, neither seems particularly attractive, “

Three Months on the atomic clocks, the body clock pills, I could not sleep; just play these stupid games, the harsh potential of pointlessness on a loop. I sort of sometimes remember a drink that is so refreshing but I cannot quite place it, a hidden memory of a need fulfilled, a taste so dazzling it could be served to Angels as Manna from tantalising heaven.

Static buzzes and hums to itself, electricity, computer screen unblinking.

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The ship was carrying Ice from the twelfth diminishing cluster to Cassandra, and I am with the machine, every machine with minute working parts has a Vials Factor of three thousand errors per journey. The machine is made out of a polyether which is translucent.

Ice is valuable; they turn it into oxygen. The process was precise, temperamental and time consuming. They engineer the oxygen atom, not Nitrogen Phosphate Ice, or Magnesium Xenophile Squared Disequilibrium rather Hydrogen Oxide Squared Stable equilibrium Ice.

The oxygen mask starts to annoy after the first few weeks, as if you were wearing a sling and you wanted to itch your arm, it feels like suffocation. I can swim about as much as I like. It gets quite repetitive, it was disorientating, dizzy. I always felt slightly uncomfortable -Baird’s syndrome, a fear of being outside confined space.

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The Quasar advocated to be out with Space was a means by which to achieve tranquillity and equilibrium. They thought that all around us was energy, and when you died your spirit returned in its eternal cycle of energy, returning to the great flux out into space. I am not sure about the cults of religion; I have never even seen the base appeal. Perhaps I do not have the sensitivity to such things as suffering to understand how this could move a believer to some hope of paradise. I think that the Karma I expended consuming when I lived is offset by the Karma I gain for the rest of eternity as things chew on me.

Out here in the Universal night I guess paradise is a beautiful thing, and if you want to feel true suffering this is a good place to formulate those kinds of beliefs.

I am sure for some paradise is a reward for suffering, or a reward for sacrifice, but what fools hope for me when my life has been wasted in the pious servitude of someone curmudgeon.

If I can curry favour with the gods, let it be unknowingly through my actions, that my courage, wisdom, and Justice will be sufficiently noticed by the Deities that they shall reward me with good luck. Rather that than pander to the odd convulsion’s, rituals, smoke, mirrors, and money collecting which involves living by the law of a priests Deity.

The Quasar had built the tomb of Man upon Cassandra; an x-ray in homage to ancient Michelangelo, five thousand xenon-radium high and ten thousand xenon-radium wide, huge murals of the Saviour Prodigal gives his last breath to the scattered as they found fresh water, vistas of the legend, the seed and the scattering.

 Innocents Calvin III the Chief Quasar lives on Cassandra and on each turning of the nuptial cycle of Ra’, they chant,

“Maybe, you’re going be the one that saves me,

Maybe I don’t care how your garden grows,

Because you are going to be the one to save me “

The sense of unease I feel comes from the knowledge that I was not designed to survive here. To what extent does this existence correlate to the toleration of the human condition by the insight given to us by the human mind? I did know it was the darkness, the lack of conditional normality, the hostility of the environment and the precariousness of our very survival. What we are here is a Limpet clinging to a black rock, the sea surrounding us dark and airless. What we are here is a malignant tumour of life in a desert of lifelessness and cold brutal force.

We have developed an awareness of this emptiness and have compared it, deep in our souls, I am not sure how to describe it, each time we close our eyes, or the moments before we wake, we are standing beside the sea, or running in the air- basking in the Golden Sun.

Cassandra, the 12^th City, Solent XII, was covered with a plastic dome which acted as anti-gravitational stabiliser, Carbon Dioxide oxygenizes, light filter, radiation screen and maintained an atmosphere. They built upwards - skyscrapers made of obsidian and mangos quartz. The high towers of the quasar and the Generals of the trade federation can be found at one hundred and seventy five thousand feet.

If you wanted to go somewhere you went by kite, the gravity was meagre, I guess by old Earth measurements is was one tenth. The kites were powered by generators in satellites. Millions of radiation suckers orbited nearby Gnomically XV. You paid a fee, and you could hook up into a generator on the dome, and I mean the technology was slick. You could travel at pretty much eighty clines and what with the anti-collision radar, you could swoop and soar as fast as could with no chance of collision- If you enjoyed the out of control sensation?

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The new media on the ship was standard, but how long can you actually spend reading encyclopedias, listening to music, reading the news and sending messages. He always appreciated face to face contact, only because he knew it was a dieing art-form. The new media junkies never took off there headsets, just tuned into the spheres, I guess Trish was the only thing that kept him sane, meeting her for a drink, just to talk to her.   

She was going awry like everyone else, tuned into the clouds more often than not. He would only do it on the job, never back in the cities; maybe the grass was always greener on the other side for her. What few movies and pictures they had of the real Earth made you feel the loss even more. You could just drop a pill and then you could be somewhere else for a few hours, somewhere familiar, somewhere you were designed to survive on.