Chapter 1 

So much at the pivot to turn so the flint gives the spark and the wheel is lifted into a new angle of attack. So that little Earth fades and all our markings so much endearing nonsense we salute it on our way into the darkness. And the darkness was a coiling thing so we couldn't avoid the feeling a being spun at incredible speed so that what we thought was ourselves peeled off in layers, along with parts of our body and we saw it all floating without, as yet, a voice to make it real.

We wanted to shout, "goodbye you rat world! You fools paradise!" And the faster we spun and the more disembodied we became we could see so precisely down there, down into the all-know, the totality of it like looked to me, at that moment, like a shined up beggar bowl with colorful worms trying to get inside. And then the ice flew by like a huge planet itself.

There is a terrifying moment when the polarities reverse and the next face you see is gruesome.

"Are we expanding?" we have already asked. "Or are we imploding and will be crushed by our own material?" We wanted to know but there was silence. It was a good silence, a fair silence considering the vast night we were in. It was a spectacular island of nothingness lit up here and there but we already knew those lights were huge.

We wanted to see the surface of Mars but there was nothing but the taste of ions. Mars would come with some good structure I was certain of that. But it didn’t come and I felt a bit betrayed as if I had been put me harm’s way and then of perp had run off somewhere.

David Eide
January 24, 2014