So here I am, my little world spinning around me, white sunlines burning up my failing eyes, optic dreams falling into dust and glory.
On the comscreen, Fry says, “We’ll come back — just hang in there–” his voice breaking into a million shards of static. I am a million miles from home. I am a million souls from salvation. I am a billion dollars of Confederacy hubris, sitting at the helm of a trillion dollar ghost ship.
And all that’s waiting for this cow to come home is six months in a vat.
I hit the button and blank the screen.
“So long, starlight,” I say, and I turn off the shields.
and crap to fix (an annotation for myself)
Coeval
One day in November, the telephone rang. It was Darla.
‘James,’ her voice said, echoing across the miles. She was in Manhattan. She had quit her engineering job. She owned a gallery. She sounded sad for me, and happy for herself all at once.
‘Why’d you call?’ I asked.
‘I wanted to make sure you were alright,’ she said, ‘and if you wanted to come to the wedding.’
I laughed. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘And I don’t belong there. And that’s fine.’
The line crackled with static and silence.
‘I love you,’ she said, at last. And it was only when I heard my voice say it back to her that I knew this part of my life had come to an end.
I called our realtor the next morning, and put the house up for sale.
I walked down to the beach, where I had found Lucy.
I waded through the waves, cold salt lapping against the hair fringing my legs. I stood there, no longer a circle but a point on a line, caught between two points, understanding that to move backwards in time can only ever be negative, and deciding, inevitably, to swim for the blue horizon, and forward again, until the land and the coffin and the grave blurred into a quiet and distant memory.
