Gargantua
Zap! Fried
brainburger I am, now? And if I fly again, so what? Too proud of
being proud I think, so watch the narcoleptics when they tell you.
Crack! Is it open again? Are all the white collared blood cells and
the internal flames self-defeated? Now mewling incessantly? Too
pitiful to be pitied, more like. Too foreign to get away. The
alien's eye sees color too, just not like you. Watch the turret turn
and know that even though the diameter of that laser cannon far
excedes your head, the sun rises tomorrow. How many bloody corpses
does it take to screw in a light bulb? How few kg/cm before a man's
lungs come out his nose?
It turns, it's a sun, it's a head, it's a star, it's an eye, it's a
planet. We were never in any real danger, but a heart attack is
likely now imminant. Kepp an eye on - slam! O no, o no, he should have
paid better attention. Ain't that friggin' hindsight 20/20? One word
worth ten thousand pictures. One word worth a million pictures. Love?
Life. Damage. Hope. Broken. Universe. Man.
Now if I pay attention I might learn a thing or two from his reaction,
but you know I've never really learned much of anything from anything. A
dream is a thing that you are supposed to have with your eyes closed.
Wings are pointless when you have a rocket. Fins even become less than
ideal at higher speeds, smoothness is requisite. Always loved to watch
'em fly, I hope that's known of me, always loved the ships moving across
the sky. To fly. Imagine.
Weightless. Heaviest. Upside-down. Inside-out. Fly. Crash.
This is what I think, and I have always known that it has very little to
do with what other people think, it's just how I stayed in a constant
state of panic. Man touches other planets just like we touch the earth.
Seen any pictures of Io lately? And moons. Mined, or terra-formed, or both.
Mined into pieces, Io. And I flew those people around. But you gotta make
a living. And flying is all I know that could keep me fed and clothed. So
we flew. Now... I don't wanna think about it.
Why act so sad? That is what I do not understand, everything dies,
everything is consumed, why mourn? A celebration is in order! Never has
any corporation ever built an interplanetary freighter of this size. Never
before has any spaceport supported the assembly of a craft on this scale. But
now what? With no future the past is uddenly significant. What melts has
melted, what is real is actually supported by empirical evidence.
The moment after this will not come for us, I am so sorry, so terribly
terribly sorry, my dear crew, my poor passengers. No one had ever tried.
That seems to have been a good idea.
Obviously vessels of this scale must be assembled off-planet. Obviously the
reactors to power thrust and the solar cells for the life support are of a
unique scales. Simply being in their presence is, literally, fantastic.