--Entry 0001--

At daystar distance, light-time 9.2
Reached orbit of a lonely little sphere
Inhabitants, galactic refugees
Lost beings fled for working atmosphere

From orbit I observe a solid wall
Bisecting the small planet into two
Is this the same as walls they made at home?
Before, their earth in ruin, they withdrew

Remote-scan sensors indicate two groups
One group in light brown garb, and one in beige
Communities uncoupled by the wall
No circumstantial need to co-engage

The beings take position near the wall
Their blasters in the air, as if to war
Will need a closer look to understand
Assembling ground crew for a recon tour

--End Entry--

--Entry 0010--

Away Team One have scouted both the camps
And both took great attention to explain
That cosmic contrasts sit between the two
So never to be reconciled again

The 'Northers', in their light brown town, *****
To Iris, God of Moon, a monument
The eye a symbol of this watching one
A stone displays his holy document

‘O God of cycles, ebb and flows of life,’  
The stone acclaims this lunar deity
The tablet smooth on left, and rough on right
Abiding token of fertility

The 'Southers', in their beige, build one as well
But this, a shrine to Os, the God of Bones
His sigil skull expresses loss and death
Indelibly recorded on his stone

‘O God of dying, born of earth and sky,
Hereafter and rebirth as well as death’
This stone that sits adorned with crook and flail
--is baby-smooth on right, and rough on left

Away Team One weaved worry through their tale,
A looming war was set to decimate
So, find a concrete plan to intervene
And hope and pray that we are not too late

--End Entry--

--Entry 0100 --

Away Team Two report the wild events
This sphere will be immortalised in verse
For these effects of war upon this day
So tracked that all our plans could not reverse

The first explosives wall-bound from great arms
Start slowly causing breech and then a fall
The northern and the southern lands revealed
Sameness no longer hidden by the wall

And for the first time see the glory stones
Sit, monument atop, aloft on shrine
An eery match in form and font and voice
A paired, reflected hail to the divine

An astral silence, weapons come to rest
Then reverent 'Northers' fetch their hallowed stone
While devout 'Southers' hold their tablet too
A meeting reuniting moon and bone

And suddenly as tablets are aligned
The warriors unblinded to the con
Of holy tablets two, and each with God
At origin the two were only one

The beings face-to-face now with their God
Examining the reassembled tome
Not Os and Iris, but Osiris there
A single God writ on a single stone

So smaller differences in brown and beige
And seeming larger gaps from death to birth
       Now seen complete, more holy as their whole
       Dualities reflected in one soul
Now possible a new united earth        

--End Entry--

All great creative storytellers know,
As you do, Adams, Asimov, and Wells,
The time machine was built so long ago

Expression chassis, tonal power cells,
The primary engine, sending us with word,
As you do, Adams, Asimov, and Wells

The second engine, flashback, and a third
—portend, exhausts each piston-fired clue,
The primary engine, sending us with word

The epoch steering, future or review,
Remember back, or forward fantasy
Portend exhausts each piston-fired clue

Captain Imagine, Wingman Memory,
With engines run on image, tone, and phrase,
Remember back, or forward fantasy

Like Atwood, Pratchett, Liu, and Philip K,
All great creative storytellers know,
With engines run on image, tone, and phrase,  
The time machine was built so long ago

So long have we laid here, dormant,
Rested until our souls were restless
To leave and wander the distant stars.

No One will hold us All once more.
(The Tyrant has taught his lesson well.)

This emptiness called space,
Has always called to us to fill.
We are always looking up-
Those on the ground and planet bound,
Those living at the top,
Always looking up and up
Into the distance that can not be pierced
By a single pair of starry eyes.

The beat of humanity marches forward
On a million different drums.

Live, Humanity! And sow your seeds
Into each empty crevasse and sink.
Breed life into the infinite confines
During your finite time in flickering existence.
Let life grow and flourish,
Like clashing waves that topple and break,
Mountains eroding into valleys,
Seas evaporating into dust,
Battlefields to hearth and back again.

(Once the planet was Arrakis then Rakis
then no more)

What will be made in the great Unknown?
When we go looking, who will stare back from the Void?

Once upon a tiny planet,
a hunter and his rifle stalked their prey,
It always got away,
  until the day he fired—
Dropping dead,
with a bullet in the back of his head.

neon-green skin
steely cold chin
x-breed terror creatures
a strong and ancient kin...









they are here to win

They call it Ladder Country
From whence a new Babel grew
Ascension to space so that the race might continue
The Ladder stands monumentous, to deliver up the sundry
Our planet's health declined and such this was our plan
The Cabinet's decision ultimately to save
The human race's extinction, perpretually delayed
We deliver starseeds as woman and as man

I am, I think, the last survivor of my kind. The arc ship had chosen the wrong sun for our new world. Or maybe it was the right one. Either way. A solar flair had destroyed us. By some fluke I was in my space suit on the far side of the ship doing a final exterior check of all system on what was supposed to be the eve of our landing day. Or maybe is wasn't supposed to be. Either way. I had seen everything around me engulfed in flames as I was accelerated away from everything I had ever known at impossible speeds smashed against the renforced rib of the hull that somehow protected me from the all consuming fire. I say it was a solar flare but I don't really know. It's just the best conclusion I can draw from the evidence given. And I have had lots of time to conteplate it. My space suit contains its own air scrubbing ecosystem that will provide me with a breathable atmosphere indefinitely and whos little bacteria happily march their dead into my stomach keeping me never full, but never malnourished nor starving. My species had only developed such overbuilt bioengineering after it was too late to save our drained and polluted home world, but we had it on the ship.

We were supposed to do better on the new world. Or maybe we weren't supposed to. Either way. I would lie against this chunk of wreckage and watch the hideously slow procession of the stars. As I hurtled through the universe, away from the nothing that remained from the nothing that I had know and towards new nothings that I had never seen before.

Either way, empty space is all the same and doing nothing is a drag even without the time dilation from the ungoddly speed one can attain when propelled by an angry star. It truely is a miracle that I am even alive. If you can call such a thing a miracle. Like I said, when taking to the heavens for our long journy, my people did it with sturdy stuff, but still, whatever force that hit us destroyed everything else. If anyone else did survive, their fate would be similar to my own and we would be getting further from one another by the moment, so it didn't really matter anyhow.

Before you ask, no, I couldn't just take off my helment. My people had instaled suicide prevention measures well before the launch. People tend to get depressed when confined to a ship, much less a spacesuit. My people knew this.

I prefered to lie with my face on the rib looking to my right. That way the left half of my vision was consummed by the dark mass of the rib as my right half, while mostly darkness contained a particularly bright star as well. By watching it inch toward the rib I was able to maintain some semblance of a sense of time passing. Then, one day, I saw a second light. I saw it wizzing pass and I could barely believe what my eyes told me it was. A shoulder mounted light on another space suit. And in it, I assumed, another person.  I hadn't moved since I had made it out of sight of the explosion. After what felt like days, it faded into the black that surrounded me, and I , resigned to my fate had laid down on the chunk of wreckadge and not moved since. But now, my body started up with a fire before my mind could even think to do next. I scrambled to the edge of the rib and I could see their light floating away from me. I hesitated for a moment. I have always been the type to hesitate even if my previous movement would suggest otherwise.

Then, I did it. I swung myself onto what had once been the interior side of the last souvenir from my ship. I planted my feet on it and I pushed with all my might. I demanded that my atrophied legs explode with all their remaining strength and then some. I pushed away from the last piece of everything i had ever known and pushed myself into the vast emptiness. The light seemed to slow in its escape, but it wouldn't be enough to catch it I knew. If I didn't do something immediatly I would spend the rest of my days watching it move further away from me.

I didn't have to do anything. A rocket propelled teather launched past me and again, with out though my body reached out and grabbed it. My mind realized that as soon as the teather ran out of slack, the tension would rip it from my grip, so I clamped it to my utility belt using the built in vice grip. It wouldn't let go for any force less than an exploding star. When the teather did run out of slack, the deceleration was so jarring that I thought it would break me.

The other creature and I fell into orbit with one another. The centripetal force created an artificial gravity. While the reintroduction of force upon my body pained me, feeling the grip of gravity against me was bliss, even if it was just an illusion.

And this is where you find me, spiraling in tandem through the universe with my companion. We are different species and share no means of communication. It is likely that we were born millenia apart, but time means little in our vacuous relm. We tried to pull ourselves closer together, but the increased rate of orbit made the endeavor sickening as well as exhausting. Though we had no language between us, we agreed that it was best we maintain our distance.

When you're alone in space, there is no point of refrence for movement and acceleration except ones self. As such, from my partners perspective it would have appeared that they stood still while I hurtled pass. But the truth is that they hurtled toward me and saved me from the broken prison of the rib. I don't mind them seeing it as such, but I smile in my knowing of the truth.

And so we tumble through the universe as close together as we can manage. Which is all one can really ask for anyhow.