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.