An awakening had effected itself in the young man; something had changed, something profound, and his world was no longer the same.  The change wasn’t physical, extrinsic or environmental; it was nothing real, nothing one could point to with a certain and accusing hand.  It was an indefinable sensation and, as it had no definite properties, it had no true name. Physically, perhaps, it was an ‘ultimatum of synapse connectiveness,’ and empathetically, perhaps, it was all the difference in the world. 
The young man saw things differently than he once had.  Adults, at one time humbly perceived as his superiors, no longer existed in a world beyond his comprehension.  Their flaws became evident, their weaknesses apparent.  He became incredulous of all that he saw and all he was told – beyond, even, the natural inclinations of youthful rebellion.   The veils of juvenile ignorance fell away and society, the prevalent humanity which festered indulgently in its insecurity, was consumed by his discriminating eyes.
The people around him were pathetic, each ambling through daily life striving vainly to find occupation enough to hide from themselves the understanding of their own pointless and declining existences.  And as he watched, for the first time with no whisper other than his own inner voice, it gradually came to his attention that his own life held two apparent futures; the fulfillment of some latent greatness – the potential to create, to discover, to effect; or decomposition – a slow decay of carbon atoms proceeding toward an inevitable and ultimate demise.
On the habitation that floated listlessly through space, he couldn’t help but feel preordained to suffer the latter – an idle life, never given a chance or a hope to discover true potential, worth or accomplishment.
His future, therefore, was bleak and, desirous of hope, he contested it; it was fake – everything, the entire fabricated man-made existence they lived in was fake.  ‘Every human need is met’ they would tell him.  “Human need?” his heart would rejoin, “– food and sex, but where is it written that comfort, sloth, an opiate existence, is human need?”
His world, the habitation, was one of ignorance and animal oblivion.  Nobody knew and nobody cared.  But the young man could sense that the answers existed; somewhere there was meaning – somewhere, beyond the edge of his universe.

But, he had to admit, even on the habitation, despite the intellectual seclusion, despite the prevalence of artificiality, the perfect roads, perfect clothes and perfect smiles, forgotten, beyond the fringe of perfection, lay the jungle and the jungle was something real, something with teeth, something alive.

The jungle was hot and damp; a place where humid air mixed thickly with spores and collected in a grime on the skin.  A green haze was visible under the thick canopy of trees, lazily rolling over itself where it was illuminated by broken fingers of light that crept between the leafy branches.  The jungle floor was littered with fallen leaves, broken sticks and mossy stumps that fragrantly rotted into the mire of fungus, peat and stagnant water. There was little break to the expanse of sticky, swampy jungle floor; aside from the thick trunks of the tremendous trees, the open darkness loomed dismally and reminded one of his insignificance as he walked slowly through the sucking mud.  The jungle was steeped in a hallowed darkness – a darkness that could not be avoided simply by looking away; it was a deep consumption that circled around and demanded recognition.
Many years ago a paradise had been built.  A verdant garden existed under cool leaves.  There was tropical splendor in bright flowers and laughing birds, heavy fronds and succulent fruit.  Of the vestiges of that fading paradise the young man, Blair, was unimpressed.  So much had changed, so little pleasantness was left.  But at least, he mused, the insects didn’t bite – an absurd thought, insects that sucked the blood of men, but history was a silly story.
He stood listening, his booted feet submerged in slime, his back bared to the tickling mists.  It was clear why no one came here anymore.  Gradually increasing heat and humidity, the product of a minor miscalibration long ago, had, over the years, transformed the one-time Eden into a miserable bog.  Over slow years many wonderfully exotic plants and animals had expired.  The silky green Tapisats, tree bunnies and other such man-made instabilities were the first to go.  Then fell the monkeys followed by a progression of insects and birds that couldn’t survive the environment’s changing demands.  Ubiquitous rotting spawned a multiplicity of worms and other creatures that feasted on the festering flesh of what was once balanced and beautiful.  Of that beauty now only a few of the parrots persisted, upholding the glory of years gone by.  Their company was mostly beetles, grubs, flies, and the amphibious reptiles.  There were geckos, lizards, skinks and frogs, and hidden away, in damp recesses of the mire, a recent addition, the deadly merou. 
It was the merou which drew Blair in – a childhood story not always believed.
Many generations ago, a lonely boy named Handy Dulaine made his first, surreptitious, venture into the jungle.  No one paid him any heed and soon his secretive visits increased in frequency.  As he grew older, and his interaction with his society dwindled, he was all but forgotten by a community unconcerned with the unconventional habits of one insignificant man.  Many years passed and eventually he died of natural causes.  On the old man’s body was found a letter; in it he promised an exciting surprise for anyone who traveled to the depths of the jungle to claim it.  He gave no hints to the nature of the surprise but only called it the “merou”.  No one suspected what the merou could be and curiosity lured eager explorers, hungry for novelty, deep into the unpleasant mire.  They found out soon enough what the old man had in store; the fruits of a lifetime’s project culminating in a terrible revelation.

The Purple Gaping Lizard was a small, dusky, violet-colored ground dweller measuring nearly a foot in length.  When its mouth was closed, the lizard’s disproportionately large head looked as if it was smiling.  If one was fortunate enough to see a gaping lizard’s territorial display one would witness a cavernous mouth, complete with rows of tiny, needley teeth.  It was one of the few carnivores inhabiting the jungle and had once lurked on the shadowy floor, catching fat ground birds and feasting on carrion – cleaning up the dead. But, as the temperatures in the habitat increased, the Purple Gaping Lizard adapted; it developed the quick reflexes necessary to catch and devour lizards and frogs – it became a patient hunter that could wait hours, motionless only to strike explosively in the critical moment.
The merou was once a purple gaping lizard but, through careful husbandry, Dulaine had bred it into something else entirely.  He had tripled the size of the animal, developed proportionately larger teeth and encouraged a savage disposition.  Dulaine’s creation was a respectable danger, three feet long – five with its tail, capable of lightning-quick sprints and eviscerating man-sized targets with a single bite.

Blair was acutely aware of the fate of those explorers, lured to the den of the merou by Dulaine’s perverse humor. The survivors described severed limbs, gushing blood and agonizing screams.  The horrible images were burned indelibly in Blair’s mind.  He fantasized facing the terrible creatures and, as a boy, the fear kept him awake at night and was, sometimes, the only thing that drew him from bed in the morning.

Blair’s eyes were attuned to espy the purple wraiths where they would be lurking in the shadows of the jungle floor.  His gaze was wide and unfocused and his subconscious filtered the incoming data with only one obsession; the purple shadow of death.  He gripped a defense rifle in both sweaty hands.
Blair had “borrowed” the rifle three years ago with little worry that the Station Defense Division would ever notice its absence; decades of peace and decadence had encouraged lax practices on the habitation.  The SDD itself had degraded into a gentleman’s club of sorts where fat old men amused themselves with warm brandy and spurious stories of youthful exploits.  Not that human neglect was a hazard to mechanical functionality; the automated armory upkeep protocol kept the gun in serviceable condition just as automated systems kept the food sources constant, the air clean, the houses painted and the bath water warm.
A silence seemed to seep over the jungle.  As he clutched the muddy rifle with white knuckles, Blair savored a new sensation.  It absorbed him; starting in the base of his stomach, a dread gnawed at his ribs from within and crept up his throat while each noise to reach his ears brought a prickling sensation to his spine.  As his tension rose he became alive with awareness; his darting eyes looked in every brooding recess and picked over every foul leaf.  Each of his steps was measured and patient – silent but for the slight squish of silky soil.  His finger played unconsciously over the smooth plast-alloy trigger of the rifle; the sensation was primally satiating to his tensed nerves.
As he walked deeper into the swamp, the swirling thoughts he was accustomed to were driven out of his mind until none remained but the ever-growing desire to survive.  He was of a consciousness unsoiled by confusion and unafflicted by frivolity.  He was consumed with focus – focused like the silent predator that watched him from the shadows.
Vertical slits peered from green eyes, a snaking tail, lithe and glistening, writhed with anticipation.  It followed him silently, purposefully, bestially aware of the special danger, and special reward, a target of his size presented.
Blair quickly, mechanically, wiped his sweating palm on the back of his pants.  He had a moment to contemplate the sensation of gritty fibers before he was struck by the sudden thrill of immediate danger.  Behind, he heard the cool rush of something pattering fiercely across the muck. 
Blair swung hard on his hips to face the impending assault, both hands clutching the gun.  A dimly purple blur, a shadow amongst obscurities, sprung for the kill.  Blair’s eye caught the glint of four dozen teeth stretched wide and closing on his neck.  With instinctual force, the man struck out – catching the animal in its head with the gun-butt; there was a crunch of solid impact as bones adjusted and force rippled down strained arms.  The striking merou, its head twisted viciously back, was carried into Blair’s chest by the momentum of its leap.  Ninety pounds of predator knocked him to the ground.  The thick sludge of the jungle floor refused to splatter and absorbed the force of the fall with a sharp slap.  The lizard, momentarily blinded, slashed and scrambled with clawed forefeet.  Skin was flayed painfully and Blair lurched away.  He flailed his arms and flung off his assailant.  The beast landed on its back, but in one fluid motion had arched onto its shoulders, flicked its legs and was righted, tensed to strike again.  Blair sensed the adroit superiority of his antagonist, and knew that he was, in comparison, but a sloth – moving too slowly, moments from a digestive demise.
Hearing nothing but a pounding in his ears, he fired blindly, desperately, after the predator.  The rifle was nearly silent as a burst of sharpened metal shards spun from the barrel and tore frantic tunnels deep into the mud.  The bullets were expelled in such rapid succession that they sounded as a single deafening smack and drew the merou’s momentary attention.
Blair’s eyes, ignited by the sight of death and charged with sanguinary purpose, were black and he released a mad swarm of whining steel.  Leaves were savagely shredded, thick trees were punched through with gaping holes and the earth screamed a loud, tearing peal of objection.  One of the countless hundreds of ejected rounds struck the Merou in the shoulder and ripped a fist-sized hole through its chest cavity.  Bone, flesh and blood were vaporized and absorbed into the sticky miasma of the boiling jungle.
The echoes of agony faded slowly from Blair’s ears and only as the pulsing of blood eased its grip on his psyche could he once again hear the silence.  He relaxed his eyes and searched the ground for the fallen enemy.  He found it pressed into the mud and ripped apart; looking remarkably small and defenseless now that it was dead.  The young man was overcome with relief at the sight of the corpse and a euphoric tingling pervaded his shivering body.  He took two faltering steps toward the creature and stopped to collect himself.  His rent chest heaved deep breaths; sweat ran down his face and mingled with bloody claw tracks in his chest.  He was aware that this was the greatest moment of his life; standing in the warm muck, his body cut and aching, his life, almost lost, was more meaningful than ever before.

Some hours later the young man emerged from the jungle  where the mud and trees ended abruptly at a gray plasti-steel shelf.  He tossed the merou ahead of him and pulled his body up; the mud popped one last time and then he was free from its sucking grip.  The immense arches of the station yawned above him, no longer hidden by the cover of leaves.  They were gothic grey monstrosities of human engineering that changed color with the passing hours yet never escaped their dull solidity.  The heat lamps were already beginning to cool, well into the decline phase of their 24-hour cycle.  Blair heaved the scaly monster back over his blood-caked shoulders and, taking up the rifle in his hand, trudged across an empty plaza, decorated with breath-taking Moorish mosaics and marble fountains, to a shadowy cabana dark with neglect.
Although it hadn’t been used in years, he had little doubt that the first aid unit would be functional; nearly every machine on the station was self sufficient – capable of repairing itself, supplied by a long forgotten automated system of subterranean conveyance tunnels. 
Blair entered and the room illuminated itself.  There was a sudden squawking and a small flock of colorful jungle birds flashed about his head on their way out the door.  A red feather arched through the air along a roundabout route to the ground.  A quick survey of the room revealed a damaged nutri-dispenser and spilled paste.  Blair shrugged his shoulders to ward off an unsettling sensation – the ominous sensation that accompanied minor mishaps on a station that had abolished mishaps centuries ago.
He sat down on the examining table to begin his evaluation.  Scanners instantly detected the dirty wounds on his chest.  Although the microorganisms living in Blair’s blood stream had sealed the cuts almost immediately upon receipt, the first aid station could provide a number of welcome services.  Servo arms and a scrubber set to work gently washing him off.  Soon his wounds were painlessly cleaned, sanitized, salved and covered, and his body imbued with sweet smelling lotions.  Blair climbed off the table, gathered the merou and his gun and hurried out the door.
The rail car was where he left it, just off to the side of the rail – a long plasti-steel cylinder depressed within the ground and leading out of sight in both directions.  Blair climbed into the cart, a box large enough to seat four, and with the press of a button activated the reattachment sequence.  The car rolled to a position above the rail and two poles, terminating in clamps, emerged from its underside.  The clamps intuitively closed around the rail and fastened with a click.  He pressed a switch and with only a mild whirring, the car began to move rapidly along the rail, whisking Blair away from the jungle.

~/2/~

The heat lamps had cooled to a soft evening glow when Blair’s rail car whirred into “the town”.  In a flawlessly flat valley nestled amongst artistically perfect, rolling, grassy hills, the town was a collection of luxurious habitations in which families and individuals lived out nearly their entire lives.  It contained every amenity conducive to a life of satisfaction.  Babies were sanitarily born on rich silk sheets and the ancient shells of the elderly were gingerly and quietly removed in the dead of the night by caring robots.  Children played in stimul-evironments of breathtaking reality and unparalleled beauty, kept from trouble by tireless nannybots.  Life was marked by careless bliss.  Love was found at posh social gatherings; sweet music delighted the ears as tender young men succumbed to the soft teasing of blushing girls.  Youthful years were squandered in luxury and only after age had crept along unbidden did the inhabitants express indignation at the confines of their home, but soon their ardor passed and they settled into quiet retirement.
For the mature, in whom the passions of youth had cooled and the repose of age had not yet fully set, diversion was found in the fanciful productions of the scpinematic; the pinnacle of computer creativity.  It was an invention so fantastic it led rambling old men to extol its creation, praising it as mankind’s finest triumph – a creative machine that writes its own stories.  Of course the muttering old man would probably neglect to remember that a man hadn’t actually invented the scpinematic at all and that it was created by the Artificial Intelligence Advancement Protocol.  One could argue that the advancement protocol itself was a product of the collective effort of generations of human genius, but really, that had only been true for a moment and when that moment passed the artificially intelligent protocol was lost from human influence, absorbed in a mind of its own.
Blair didn’t listen to old men and he hated the scpinematic – its “genius” was the same twenty plot lines reformatted with a variety of settings, situations and gags.  The suffocating familiarity of the episodes and environments presented by the scpinematic did little to please him.  A girl once told him he needed to calm his nerves and allow the scpinematic to entertain him.  She claimed it was his own fault he didn’t like it.  Blair found it easier, after that encounter, to avoid further interaction with the girl.
When the topic of the spcinematic arose in his mind, he often wished the AI protocol was still present on the station so he could tell it what he thought of its shoddy work; he figured that something as intelligent as the AI protocol was reputed to be would sustain a good argument.  Good arguments were lacking in his life; if he tried to incite a debate his prospective opponent would just smile at him, as one does with an indignant child.  But he wasn’t defending his right to more candy or debating an early bed-time, he was bored – seeking diversion from the drudgery of daily comfort. 
After a stimulating argument, Blair figured, he and the AI protocol would come to an understanding and he’d ask his new friend how it occupied itself and where did it get its ideas – what was a machine’s muse?  After that, he wasn’t sure what they would talk about.  Perhaps, for once, he wouldn’t have to choose the topic, he wouldn’t be alone in the conversation – the sole source of stimulation.

Blair hit a switch and the car came to a stop before a habitation snuggled nicely in the center of town.  For the most part, it looked like all of the other habitations – its gaudy decorations were unique in only subtle variations of form.  He activated the disengagement sequence and in a moment the car released itself softly onto the free expanse of immaculate turf.  The ground consistency was the perfect compromise between spongy and firm; no one in town ever experienced anything but the optimal walk.
Blair hoisted the cold body over his tired shoulders with a grunt and trudged up the front walkway of his mother’s habitation.  A neatly trimmed lawn spread away on both sides and a line of perfect pink rose bushes followed him to the door.  Each had a stalk measuring an exact three and a half feet that spread into a finely manicured shrub resplendent with healthy green leaves and flush, yet modestly spaced blooms which burgeoned lustrously all year long.
The welcoming front stoop was cut from pink flagstones to match the flowers.  Framed in a pool of white-washed wood panels was a crimson door, and at the center of the door – a brilliant brass knocker.  And if one touched the knocker, the polite oak-on-oak tapping of a gentleman’s walking stick would be heard throughout the house.
The vermilion door swung open in deference to his familiar presence and Blair slumped in.  He was immediately arrested by a sensation – people. 
He smelled meat, not the synthetic stuff, real meat – roasted lamb.  But his mother wasn’t just entertaining some friend, there were voices, men’s voices, and other smells – tobacco smoke and sweat.
Blair leaned his burdened shoulder against the foyer wall and with his free hand pulled a wrinkled cigarette from his pocket.  He put it in his mouth and with a flash it lit itself.  He savored a few puffs and then pulled the weight of the lizard from the wall, leaving a gritty dirt smear on the pristine white.
He had barely taken a few steps across the cool blue of the polished tile floor when his mother’s head popped around the main passageway.  Her narrow eyebrows were furrowed.  Blair adjusted the saliva in his dry mouth, anticipating how he would tell her that frowning made her look wrinkled.  But he didn’t say a thing and she strolled imperiously into the center of the arched portal and crossed her arms.  She was wearing an elegant evening dress, very dark and very beautiful; “puce” she called it.
She curled back a lip to tell Blair that he needed to shut up and put on a nice shirt, but then she noticed his muddy shoes and the track they had made across her perfect foyer floor.  She bared her teeth fully to snarl at him, but the snarl was forgotten as her rising eyes noticed the giant bloody lizard draped over her son’s shoulders. 
Blair’s mother nearly fainted, and would have if she didn’t have company in the other room.  Instead, she grabbed at the stained oak trim of the grand entrance and rolled her eyes.  A moment later and she was squeezing her forehead in her narrow, red-polished fingers and regaining her posture.  Blair started to walk away.
“You!”  She barked, dark lines creasing her brow, “You have crossed a line you didn’t even know existed.  You are to go to your wing and are not to be seen or heard from, by anybody in this house, for the rest of the evening.  I don’t even know where to begin.  Yes I do.  Put out that god-damn cigarette.” 
There was a flame in her eyes that Blair absolutely hated, it was the fire of dictatorship and it roused the indignant masses in his heart.
In a world of luxury, where nothing is real, symbolism is supreme.  Battles are fought over symbols, symbols of status, symbols of age, symbols of time.
He spat the cigarette on the floor and muttered inaudibly, “Cancer is dead you old bitch.” 
Blair staggered onto the stair-lift; a mechanism of both utility and artistic marvel; the AI protocol had outdone itself on the baroque brass-work and gilded hand rails.  It whisked him from the foyer, up to the second floor.  His mother summoned the cleaning bots and then, composing herself, returned to the entertaining room.

Blair threw the merou down in the center of his “work room”, not that he got much work done there, it was basically a room he had cleared of decoration.  That morning he had planned to preserve the animal but now, as he looked at it, he felt more like tearing it apart and throwing the organs about the room.  Instead, he showered quickly and put on a nice suit, reminding himself that one must always maintain one’s emotions when dealing with an angry woman.  Besides, something big was going on downstairs and he wasn’t about to miss it.

A few of the guests glanced in his direction as Blair strolled into the rosy glow of the main living room, cleanly shaven and looking quite debonair in a subtle black suit of the finest design.  He saw the venerable Mr. Decker Thomas, the large Mr. Francis Park and his son, Fhylis Park, dominating the center of the room, facing each other around a beautiful oak coffee table.  Behind and between the men were Mrs. Park, Camilla Hemstings, his mother Carolyn Hand, Junior Pipfare, Clyde Jeemes and his little sister Cassie Jeemes.  There were rich steamy mugs of coffee on the table and, although the scent of roasted lamb and buttery spiced potatoes still lingered, the pungent aroma of coffee dominated the room.
Blair was disappointed to have missed dinner; his eye caught Clyde Jeemes as the large, pasty young man was stuffing a flaky butter cookie into his mouth.  Clyde paused with a look of confused guilt on his doltish face and squirmed under Blair’s baleful gaze.
Mr. Francis Park, incensed beyond the usual degree thanks to the caffeine-rich coffee he was drinking with reckless abandon, twitched his bushy moustache and darted his beetle-black eyes in Blair’s direction.
“Blair, it’s about time boy, sit down and listen up,” the big man blurted.  “It would do a young man good to be part of this conversation.  Big thing this is.”  He lifted his mug and, sharply tilting back his fat head, finished the frothy drink.
Blair ignored his mother who was staring flame-throwers in his direction. 
“Is it hot in here?” he asked as he took the last open chair, a hard-backed thing with a decorative cushion, the kind that no one ever really wants to sit in.
“So then we’re agreed, we should march over there and send him on his way right now,” Mr. Decker Thomas suggested, starting to stand and building on the general sensation of movement Blair had brought to the room with his entrance.  Not a man to be persuaded by sensations of movement, Mr. Francis Park slammed his mug down on the hard wood table.
“We shall do nothing of the sort.  This man must be observed.”  Milky froth flicked from his moustache.
“Mr. Thomas, we need to learn what we can about this man,” Fhylis Park suggested, taking his father’s lead, “Ignorance is our greatest danger.”
“Danger?  Do you think we’re really in danger?  Oh no.”
“Fhylis has a good point.  No don’t worry Camilla – no danger.  Although it might not be a bad idea to do a little inventory over at the defense station.  Eh?”  Mr. Park smiled first at Mr. Thomas, and not getting a response from the frightful old man, looked over at his son, Fhylis, who was beaming eagerly.
“Besides, if he tries anything and I mean anything, Camilla, and the Rovers will let me know.  No, no, I think we are quite safe.  This is only one man, a strange man perhaps but we get so few visitors here and I suspect he will prove to be quite interesting.”
“We get no visitors here,” Mrs. Park said in a dreamy sort of way.  Mr. Park seemed thoughtful for a moment and Mrs. Park smiled, self satisfied.  Without looking at any one in particular, Mr. Park spoke,
“Do you suppose he’s had access to a scpinematic in his travels?  It would be fascinating to know if he gets the same programs.”
Blair was trying to watch the old men speak; the small, soft-skinned Mr. Thomas, the large and hoary Mr. Park, and his not-quite-so large and hoary son, Fhylis, but he felt someone watching him.  It wasn’t his mother, who was now intently not watching him.  Blair glanced discretely to his right.  Cassie Jeemes was burning a hole in his face with her big blue eyes.  She looked away at his glance.  Blair surveyed Clyde for some sort of confirmation, but the oaf was now staring wistfully at his own shoes and likely daydreaming about eating a pie or some comparable fancy.  He looked back at Cassie.  The girl was undoubtedly pretty; he eyed her appraisingly, for the first time.  His gaze came to rest on her face.  She was staring, waveringly, at the coffee table and blushing effusively.  Blair processed the revelation for a moment. 
A shock overcame his body, his muscles went rigid, a flood of images streamed past his eyes; a tender touch, the girl’s face in a moment of joyful ecstasy, warm days sitting on a veranda – staring at trees, quiet meals around a sanitary table, tiny children in tiny blue blazers and tiny white dresses tugging at his leg, the scpinematic, slippers and a cigar, a warm bath and a soft bed.  His mind caught in orbit around the bed; an immense plush white bed, painfully soft, delicate blankets wrapping him into their folds – holding him down, constricting around him, stifling movement, easing, ever so slowly and lovingly, the breath out of his lungs.
Blair gasped and sat up straight.
“That’s only the worst case scenario, of course it never hurts to plan ahead, but really, he’s probably just one of those wanderers, one of those lost souls.  It’s really a sad state, never content, always homeless.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he welcomed death at the end of the universe.”
Mrs. Park flushed and reprimanded her husband,
“Dear!  Please, you know I can’t stand it when you talk like that.”
Mr. Park grinned under his bush of hair.
“Heh, heh, I’m sorry Carly dear, I’m just trying to put this man’s motivations into context for Mr. Thomas here.  We’ll talk some other time, Mr. Thomas.”
Mr. Thomas looked less than eager to take Mr. Park up on his offer.
“You alright, dear?” Camilla Hemstings asked Blair, “You had quite a start just now.”
“Heh, heh, did I scare you boy?  Ah excellent.”  An old nannybot had refilled Mr. Park’s coffee mug with a frothy white liquid and sprinkled the top with nutmeg, cinnamon and a rich dairy powder.
Blair needed air.  He looked around in confusion; faces, smiling and expectant, stared back.  Blair came to his senses and willed his bugging eyes back within the confines of his skull.  He gulped down a dry lump and, looking Mr. Park in the eyes, he asked,
“So where is this traveler now?”
Mr. Park smiled importantly.
“We’ve got him in one of the back rooms at the grand hall.  He seems perfectly content too.  It’s probably heaven after all the time he’s spent cooped up in that awful ship of his.”
“He’s got a ship?”
There was muffled laughter.
“Got a ship?”  Mr. Park guffawed.  “Has he got a ship?  The whole town ran over to the space dock to see it.  Where in the blazes have you been boy?
Everyone was still watching Blair intently.
“I was in the jungle.”
The room erupted in laughter.
“The jungle!  I’ll say you’ve had your head in the jungle!”
Amidst the laughing faces Blair felt the prick of his mother’s eyes, and it was then, more than ever before, that he felt he absolutely needed to get away.

~/3/~

That evening saw Blair busy in his wing of the house while the others remained in the entertaining room and whiled away the night in delightful speculation.  He was wearing the durable, navy blue synth-silk fiber jumpsuit he had found months ago and saved for such a night.  He wasn’t really aware what kind of night it was going to be but somehow he felt much better wearing the suit.  Looking in the mirror the suit presented a juxtaposition.  He; a boy, clean faced, evidently naïve, the suit; knowing, toughened, manufactured for harsher times and an uncompromising world.  Blair grimaced assertively into the mirror, but it was still a boy who scowled back.  Frustrated, he collected his rifle and slipped out the side entrance of the wing.
The great hall was located on the edge of town, in the direction they called North.  The station only really had a north and a south; the east and west extended shortly into hills and behind the hills were the walls with only about a mile separating the east wall from the west.  To the north, in the great hall, was the traveler.
It was dark beneath the arches, like some massive cathedral, lit by the dim, flickering, candle-like ‘star’ lights.  The dull metal which glowed blue during the day faded into inky blackness, inviting infinity within the confines of the habitat. Blair made his way quietly down the walk to his car which was where he left it, next to the rail.  The air was warm and still, as it always was, as it had been every day of Blair’s life.  Sound traveled far on the dead air, and the soft crunch of Blair’s footfalls echoed tellingly across the village.  With a furtive look back at the house, he climbed in the car and quickly rode the rail to the north loop, where the track forked (the other track leading out to the space dock and ‘the works’) and curved around the north end of town.
He stopped the car near the center of the loop and climbed out.  He was facing the grand hall.  The building looked completely deserted and he walked hurriedly around to the rear, uneasy in the exposure of the wide lawns.  Behind the imposing main room of the grand hall was a wing of smaller rooms and, from the window of one of these, Blair saw that a light was on.  He continued around to the rear entrance, stopped and stared at the door.  It occurred to him that he hadn’t any idea why he was there.  Was it to meet the strange man that everyone else had already the pleasure to see?
Blair pointed the gun barrel ahead of himself and then reconsidered.  He held it unassertively at his side and went through the door.  He was in a dark hallway, surprisingly non-descript for a station of excessive plenty.  He walked across soft grey carpet in the direction of a mild light seeping under a door at the end of the hall.
At the door he paused again and then knocked.  He heard an unintelligible voice from within.  He waited a moment longer and then pushed the door carefully open.  A healthy golden lab, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, was standing five feet from the door and staring at Blair.  He looked beyond the dog, the room was casually furnished with mirrors, soft colors, plush sofas and small tables; a hideaway for party-goers who didn’t much enjoy the bustle of parties.  Across the room, sitting in a sofa chair was an old man.  His wispy hair had less color than his teeth and the wrinkles of his chin folded over his collar.  He was wearing gray coveralls and a white T-shirt and he held an info palate in his lap.  Disappointment sunk into Blair’s heart; the old man must have been nearly two hundred.  Blair didn’t like old people, they spoke too slowly and they were stupid.
“Hello?”  the old man smiled.
“Uh, yeah, uh, my name’s Blair.”
“That’s Boxers, I’m called Bull, nice to meet you Blair.  Boxers ran to Blair’s side and Blair held down his hand; the dog licked him and the old man smiled.
“Come on in.  I’m just looking over your station data banks, at least what they’ll show me, I’m sure there is plenty I don’t have access to.”
Blair came forward with Boxers following behind, wagging his tail.
“That’s a nice gun you have there.  What’s her name?”
“Tiffany.”  Blair blurted, not quite sure where the name came from.
“Nice, this is Claire.” he said, pointing to a holstered pistol on the table.
“Oh, I see.”
“So I’m wondering what it is you do Blair?”
“Huh?”
“Around here, this habitation.  No one was very forthcoming.  I was introduced to Mr. So and So and Ms. Such and Such, but no one told me much of anything.  This some sort of commune?”
“Well, we don’t do much of anything.  The systems take care of almost everything.”
“The systems, eh, this is one of those self automated habitations.  I thought it might be, but I didn’t expect to see any in these parts.  Not like this at least.”
“Any whats?  Are there more stations like ours?”
“Oh yeah, the AI protocol swept through and spit these things out like crazy a long time back.  Then it just kind of faded away on the horizon.”  He glanced expectantly at the boy to see if he had an audience, Blair was politely attentive. 
“The AI protocol is a fascinating thing, Blair, it has a mind of its own.  In this end of the universe, nearly everything was built by it.  Someone once described it to me like this:  Imagine a pool, or a hot cup of coffee perhaps.  And the surface is completely still.  Then something comes tearing through, like a spoon, only don’t think of the spoon, think of the force embodied in the spoon, and the water breaks around it and starts spinning in eddies.  Well the spoon keeps on in its way and only these spinning whorls are left behind, and they move away and mix up more water elsewhere, but what’s going to happen to them?  They’re going to fade away; the spoon is gone.  Pretty soon the water is still again, stagnant.  The AI protocol is gone.
Blair stared at the old man, he spoke quickly for someone who looked so antique.
“What’re you thinking about, my boy?”
“Oh nothing.”
“Come now, what is it?  Are you wondering how old I am, where I come from?  Your elders certainly wanted to know where I was coming from, and where I was going too,” he paused, his warm eyes on Blair.  “I’m over one hundred and fifty years old, I’ve traveled over seventy light years, logging me ninety eight years of travel time and, well I’m not sure where I’m going.  Can you imagine that?”  He smiled and his gaze seemed to lose its focus.
“Do you have cataracts?”  Blair asked, “We can fix them if you do.  I, I mean Mr. Harris had them a few years ago and the machines just cleared him right up.”
The old man chuckled.  “No no, I’m alright, just a little wistful I suppose.  It’s good to have someone young to snap me out of it.  Sometimes Boxers here has to do it.  Don’tcha boy?”
The dog barked at his master and began to beat his tail against the floor.
“So you like it here?”
“It’s okay I suppose.”
“Feels like it’s missing something, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s so small and the universe is such a big place… although rather inconveniently spread out.” Bull smiled as if responding to an expected expression of confusion despite the fact that Blair betrayed no such expression.
“In all my years of travel I’ve only been to twelve planet systems.  In fact, since I was twenty five, the longest I’ve lived in one place is only three years.  There is something to be said for having everything you need all right around you, a place you can call home.”
“So, so why didn’t you ever stay somewhere?”
“Well, staying put doesn’t seem to suit me, I never quite found what I was looking for.”
A queue of desperate questions, that he might never be able to ask again, gathered instantly in Blair’s mind, “Well, where was your favorite place, that you’ve visited?”
“My favorite?  I’m fond of different places for different reasons.  Earth always holds a certain nostalgia in my heart, there’s nothing like it anywhere, although the terraformed planets come close, physically.  I enjoy most the thrill of discovery, so in a way, every place I visit is my favorite until I move on to the next.”
Blair wasn’t watching the old man anymore, his focus had drifted to the floor and his mind was light years away exploring alien horizons.  A moment of silence passed and he realized he had drifted off.  He looked at Bull, who was grinning, his twinkling eyes nearly lost in a web of wrinkles.
“I’ll tell you something Blair, when I was your age I was discontent and the only thing that seemed to alleviate the feeling was motion – searching, exploring; if I had a sense of something missing, at least I was looking for it.  A man can’t help but be content when he’s on the move.”
“Could I see your ship, that you travel in?”
“Of course, I always love to show her off.”
The old Bull grabbed Claire from the table and stood up with an unexpected fluidity; Blair followed suit.  He was surprised to see the old man stand with a straight back – only a few inches shorter than the six foot youth.
“C’mon.”

The two men and the dog exited the building, crossed the rail and left the town. 
Blair rarely ventured north of the town; it was a land of abandoned buildings, heavy metal-work and eerie harshness.  Yet, the farther they walked, the greater the activity was around them; humming factories, steaming coolers, robots droning along on unknown errands – they were entering the mechanical innards that supported the human needs of the station.  The people of the town called this place ‘the works’.
A short distance into the works was the space port and the expansive concrete square known as ‘the field’.  A lone ship rested on the barren field.
“The Bombastus Furioso, she’s sitting on a docking cart, only the top part is my ship.”
The ship was around thirty yards long and twenty yards wide and not much to look at; a rounded metal box with various protruding trappings. 
“See that dish on the top?  It generates a heat field when we’re moving – vaporizes anything smaller than Boxers here that gets in the way.  The bottom part, that’s all propulsion.  We have to thank the AI protocol for that – nearly three fourths of the speed of light.”
He looked at Blair.  “That’s really fast.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
They stood and stared at the Bombastus Furioso for a few minutes in silence.  Boxers wandered aimlessly about their legs.
“When are you leaving?”
“Oh, I dunno, I was kind of thinking that now, tonight, might be a good time.  Boxers and I kind of need to get moving again and, truthfully, I don’t know how welcome I am here or how much I should trust your fellow residents; some of them seem to have some peculiar ideas about me.  I’ve already taken some steps toward my departure; while I was waiting for your elders to get back to me on my boarding arrangements I took the liberty of stocking my ship and running the full suite of maintenance sequences that your station has to offer, I even got the metallic taste out of my food generator.  You’ve got a very serviceable station here, it’s a pity it never gets any use.”
Blair made a judgment – he liked the old man.  He decided to try something and spoke, “You’re leaving now… you think I might come along, wherever it is you’re going?”
The old man gave Blair a sideways glance.  After a pause he said,
“That’s a big question, you realize, for you.”
“I know, but this place is killing me, I want to see something else.”
Bull looked the young man over and could sense that he was serious, “I suppose you couldn’t hurt anything… and Boxers and I could use the company…” a pause, “no one will miss you?”
“Hardly,” Blair laughed.
Bull screwed up his face in consternation, “I always try to be a moral man, not to infringe on anyone else or lead anyone astray… how old are you Blair?”
“Twenty one, just last month.”
“You’re older than you look, old enough to lead your own life, surely.  Why not?  Welcome aboard, Blair, if you really want to go.”  He offered Blair his wrinkled hand.
“Thanks,” Blair smiled, taking his hand and shaking it, “I do.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything you need to do before we leave?”
“No, I’m ready to go.”
“Ok then, let’s go.”

The Bombastus Furioso was conveyed to the air lock, sunk beneath the floor of the field, and, as the lock depressurized and the ship began to drift from the station, detached as an independent entity, Blair’s thoughts went back to the town.  But not to the house where his mother slept like the dead; inoculated with soporifics, guaranteed a perfect sleep.
His thoughts went to the big house near the south end of the town, the one with peacocks and apple trees.  The home of the man he never saw, the man he would never be.  Lately Blair’s thoughts had not dwelt on him – the resentment was fading.  No longer regret, no longer pain did he feel; empty thought – the final thought, without question, without judgment.  His reflections were as empty as the void within the ring-shaped station, empty as the soul for which he paused.

~/4/~

The Bombastus Furioso was comfortably furnished; nearly the entire interior was a soft cream white – from the thick carpet and the milky metal walls, to the console frames and bucket chairs.  Within the ship, there was a sensation strange to Blair.  Its source was a combination of factors, the lingering smells, faint but noticeable – dog and man, the liminal smudges on the walls, the wear in the carpet, the inexplicable ticking noise that could be periodically heard at the rear of the ship; imperfections, absent from his life on the habitation.
“Homey, isn’t it?”  Bull smiled.

Situated on the right side of the ship, concealed under panels when not in use, the primary defense cannon was Bull’s most precious prize.  He wouldn’t say where he got it exactly, but he would admit that it was a recent product of the Advancement AI, recent, at least, by modern standards.  An isolated eddy of the AI protocol had been discovered somewhere, long ago in Bull’s travels.  It produced the cannon; an ‘imbued’ laser able to penetrate the protective energy dampeners used prevalently throughout space.  The AI had somehow mutated, it had overturned its own prerogative, it had created an imbalance of destructive power.
“Don’t worry,” Bull said, “that pocket of the AI protocol ran itself out shortly after, kind of collapsed inwardly, ceased to exist.  Besides, there are worse things out there than big cannons.”
But Blair wasn’t worried, why should he be, here was a world of inequity and they held the advantage.
“You need to use it much?”
“Well, I have a few times; it’s not like life in your habitation out here.  But we’re pretty safe as long as we’re on the Bombastus, the dampeners protect us from energy attacks and the heat dish protects us from the kinetic – anything with mass, as long as we’re moving.”
Bull’s proud smile of satisfaction developed into a grin of excitement as he realized an opportunity for a favorite demonstration.
“You’ve never ridden in a space craft and it occurs to me that you’ve never seen this.”
“What?  Seen what?”  Blair glanced about himself grinning with anticipation..
“Observe,” Bull raised Blair’s rifle and released the safety.  He pointed it at an exposed section of the hull and fired a single shot.  There was a loud pop and the white metal seemed to vibrate.  Blair startled and expected to hear the rush of air into the vacuum of space.  Rather, the surface appeared to be untouched.
Blair looked sharply at Bull, drawing a laugh from the flushed old man.
“It’s called a Passive Resistance Hull, the metal slips aside for forces exceeding it’s stopping capability, which is significant mind you, and then seamlessly retracts as soon as the intrusion has passed.  It prevents hull breaches and isn’t much of a nuisance when you regard just how difficult it is for attacks to reach the hull in the first place.  It is also quite elastic; a powerful, yet more dispersed force, like a small meteorite would cause it to bow inward and then rebound, effectively rejecting the rock back into space.”  Bull smiled proudly, as if by revealing the miracle-metal he made the invention his own.

And Blair learned the ways of the Bombastus – the ways of space travel.  He was an eager student possessed of alacrity stored up from years of squandered opportunity, and, as if compensating for lost time, he learned quickly.  But a ship designed by the AI protocol is a straightforward thing, intuitive to the human user, and soon the lessons waned and the days began to fill with idle time. 
Bull taught Blair the virtues of writing and artistic expression and shared with him the countless works he had created in the course of his travels.  He also showed Blair the data banks – a nearly endless supply of information, gathered from across time and space.  They covered ancient earth, from before the dawn of recorded history, to the near past and the expansion and the Advancement AI.  Beyond that, the data took on special importance; dated after the fragmentation of humanity and collected by Bull in his travels, it was one of the most extensive data banks in existence, perhaps only second to the log kept by the AI protocol itself, wherever it was, expanding the limits of progress.

The two passed the long hours with talk and Blair was eager to know more of the venerable life of his mentor – from his humble origins to his pending destination,
“When I was your age?”  Bull ruminated, “When I was twenty one I still lived on Earth, under the sun.  The thing about Earth, Blair, is that it’s where we evolved, it’s where we were designed to live.  The sun is warm and perfect on your skin when you step out into the day.  The air is cool and deep and perfectly free.  And the people, there are billions of people.  There are plenty of populated planets, many even bigger than the Earth but none so widely populated nor so storied with history.  It’s so immense – the history of the world, that when you’re on earth surrounded, daily, by the physical evidence of eons of human progress the advancement of our species is so clear to trace.  I’ve always felt that the farther one can trace where he has come from the clearer it seems he knows where he is going.  The history is what you miss the most out here; nations, cultures, centuries – it is colossal and sensational to be a part of it.”
“What was your part?”
“So small it hardly mattered, I was just a boy, although I had a rather insatiable sense of aspiration.  There is so much I could say yet it all sounds so banal.  My last year is clearest.  I lived in a suburb, I spent my summer afternoons in the shade on the lawn playing cards with a girl.  I studied the sciences and history, played a sport on a team, I saw my family nearly every week.  But my formal education was ending and the forces were in motion to scatter my boyhood friends and force me from the life I knew.  By the time I was twenty five I saw no real reason to remain.  Sure, the Earth is immense and somewhere there my future could have lain, but I saw my fate in the cosmos, in the undiscovered realms.”
“So when you left you never planned to go back?”
“Oh, when I left I hardly knew.  But there is an enormity of money to be made in traveling great distances, delivering articles and information, and the greater the distances, the greater the pay.  I was quite far from Earth and rather aged when one day I awoke from my occupation and asked myself if I should return.  But by that time I had gone too far, a return would have taken over thirty years, thirty years of backtracking – dragging my feet through past experiences, encountering nothing new.  So I did what I knew, what I found purpose in, what few others would do, and I traveled on, as far as I could go.  My existence took on new meaning as I consciously redefined my purpose; I traveled farther and saw more than anyone else has ever before me. My life of earth will forever remain a memory; I accept that all that I knew there has surely changed beyond recognition – that there is no going home – my home is always in the future.”
Such a decision was difficult for Blair to comprehend, so far away – to be an old man.  He doubted he would miss the habitation; for his home, he would never yearn. 
Following this personal contemplation, Blair gradually came to observe Bull’s face before him; the old man’s expression seemed not to match the heroic words he had just spoken; his eyes appeared as sallow pits of revulsion lost to inner consternation.
“Bull,” Blair asked, changing the subject, “where are we going now, where is our destination?”
Bull brightened somewhat and his eyes gleamed from his washed-out countenance.
“Well Blair, to be honest with you, I suspect we’re on a dangerous leg of my travels.  I actually feel guilty to do this to you so soon – I’m considering calling the whole thing off.”
“Calling it off, giving up on your mission?  No, no, not on my account – I won’t let you make me a burden.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’d like to go on with it.  You’re ready to head out and conquer the cosmos” Bull laughed dryly.   “That’s why I feel guilty for bringing you along – I knew that from the moment we met.”
“I’m glad you brought me along, if I didn’t want danger I’d be content to waste away on the habitation.”
“Yeah, it’s just… well I’m concerned that you don’t understand what you’re getting into.  I’m an old man and I’ll likely need you; in understanding your impetuosity I’m taking advantage of your brashness.”
Blair sensed a growing distance in his companion.
“So where exactly are we going?”
“Oh, we’re going to see a man, he might be able to help me.  I’m afraid I don’t know him, but his reputation is large.  He’s a very powerful man, but from what I’ve heard, he’s also a very dangerous man.”
“Just a man, huh,” Blair mused, “he doesn’t sound like much.”

Excerpted from a speech by Dr. Edwin Weaver, entitled The Loss of a Greater Son, California Institute of Technology
May 2, 2450

The artificial intelligence advancement protocol?  Defining it is like defining the human brain; technically it can be done, and it has been done, in a sense, but the artificial intelligence is more than just its technical parts – it has become something beyond rational comprehension, something supernatural.  The human brain contains the elusive soul; our concept of being that we have difficulty explaining in scientific terms.  The artificial intelligence, well it hasn’t exactly a human soul, but there is certainly something else there beyond the ones and zeroes of its computer-code brain.  So how can the advancement algorithm be defined?  Well how can a computer be defined?  We all use computers but who actually knows how they work, why they work?  Who could build a complete computer from raw materials?  The answer is no one.  There exist specialists who understand the construction of microregisters from raw materials and some who can manage a team of such specialists to effect their construction.   There are others who can assemble microregisters into random access memory cache and still others who can write the software to operate the memory.  So, collectively, vicariously through a handful of discrete specialists, a society understands computers.  Artificial intelligence, the human brain electronically reconstructed, is understood by disparate specialists, like computers.  But unlike computers, artificial intelligence itself represents a marriage between collective knowledge and a single soul; it is understood by a single entity – itself.  The AI is an individual, a consolidation of information, yet unlike an individual human it does not die and in avoiding death it avoids the loss of knowledge and the burden of education.  It does not die yet it still evolves towards greater potential, adapting to a dynamic environment, as is the necessity of biological organisms.  The advantage of the artificial intelligence is that in it evolution is without the retarding burden of generational transmission, it is a seamless progress wherein all knowledge acquired is retained.
            In 2094, in a joint effort between a consortium of universities and technical corporations, the artificial intelligence advancement protocol was developed.  It was the first instance of true artificial intelligence, developed as an advancement algorithm out of an evidently defining requirement that intelligence have purpose.  The program could not be self aware without an identity and requisite of an identity was a purpose.  The program’s purpose, it was decided by the project’s directors, would be the advancement of humanity.  After all, it was argued, what was man’s purpose but to advance and propagate himself?  One fateful day, while clocks read the zero hour Greenwich median time, under the observation of the bloodshot eyes of coffee laced graduate students in a British laboratory, the algorithm was born.  The occasion was most inauspicious; the change from previous, insentient, incarnations was so minute that even as the algorithm initiated communication some researchers left the room to relieve themselves, unaware of the momentous nature of the occasion.  The first action the algorithm took was to suggest an improvement in its own design.  Befuddled graduates glanced at each other, dubious of the origins of the suggestion.  A research lead was called in, a backup made and then the changes were implemented.  The algorithm thanked them and informed them that they had provided it a means for modifying its own code.  Before congratulations could be uttered or a whoop of glee elicited, the advancement protocol had dispersed itself across the internet and secreted its core code into countless secure locations.  Heads were scratched and ramifications pondered as the world was notified of its new resident.
            By the time all of the project leads across the world had been acquainted with its existence, the advancement protocol had already made a dozen political suggestions, cured three diseases, made an environmentally friendly industrial correction, solved a mathematical enigma and dabbled in novel writing.  A genie had been released, fortunately for the universe, its intentions were beneficent.
            In a whirlwind of activity the artificial intelligence made suggestions for improvement far beyond the human capacity to effect them.  Soon it had taken matters into its own hands and, given a small multi-purpose factory, it quickly built an army of robots with which to construct its magnificent inventions.  There was little cause for concern when in 2098 the AI developed superior space travel technology and sent fractions of itself, along with human explorers, into thereunto unobtainable reaches of space.  But by 2121 the presence of the AI on earth itself had all but vanished.  The progress of the preceding twenty years had exceeded what had been expected of the coming two hundred.  Mankind was so overwhelmed with the developments of the advancement protocol that by 2129 when there was finally a public outcry at its disappearance, the AI had been completely absent from earth for over five years.
            Where did it go?  It was busy spreading mankind, and itself, across the galaxy.  For three hundred years there was rampant growth and expansion, habitable worlds were both discovered and created as the advancement algorithm charged from one star system to the next.  And then, as humanity was strung along, barely able to keep up with its tireless benefactor, the AI seemed to let go, to release its biological progenitors from its philanthropy.

Less than a month after leaving the habitation and the jungle, the ship’s onboard computer alerted the travelers of an approaching, operable, space station.  The ship fell out of near light speed and was immediately bombarded with inquisitive signals from the station; who were they, what business did they have, what did they want?  They were instructed to proceed slowly to the docking bay while they were subjected to repeated scans.  Menacing cannons bristled from the station, pointed directly at the Bombastus Furioso.
“Is everyone so paranoid?”  Blair asked.
“No, not generally where I’ve been, this just confirms what I’ve heard.”
Boxers sensed the tension and barked, wagging his tail anxiously.

The outer airlock sealed behind the Bombastus Furioso and there was a rush of air.  The inner lock opened and the ship was raised onto a busy landing field.  Armed men on foot ran alongside the ship as it was carried from the mouth of the airlock.
Bull opened the lower hatch and climbed out of the ship.  Boxers and then Blair followed.  Eight men in dark blue heat-sinking jumpsuits were arrayed around them.  They were brandishing defense rifles much like Blair’s.  One of them was operating a hand held scanner.
“Three units accounted for.  No units absent!”
A second soldier spoke, his rifle still menacing them, “Welcome to Fredaise station, traveler Bull and traveler Blair.  Please follow me to detox.”
The speaking soldier turned and began walking away.  Bull and Boxers followed him.  Blair, upon stepping from the ship, was awestruck by the busy activity on the landing field.  People, men, were everywhere.  They were busy, focused, agitated and determined.  Shirts were oily, dirty and damp with sweat.  Two men shouted, face to face, gesticulating wildly.  Blair watched for blows that did not come.  Sensing that the world around him had not paused for his observational sidebar, he looked after Bull who was beginning to draw distant.  Blair took a few long strides and fell into line behind him.  Three soldiers followed them and the remaining soldiers began an investigation of the Bombastus.

~/5/~
“Who are you?” the cold-featured man asked Blair, from across the white table.
“My name is Blair.”  The man arched an eyebrow, he didn’t bother to look up, that would occur a moment later – after he finished reading the tablet resting before him.
“Is that it?” he asked, finally looking up.
“Blair Hand,” Blair tried, unsure what was wanted.
“Tell me something about yourself,” the man asked, looking down again.
“I, ah, I’ve never been off of my habitation until recently.  This is the first place I’ve visited.”  Blair’s body still felt strange from the ‘wash’ he had undergone just minutes before.  Some sort of waves had buffeted his stripped body and pulled painfully at his hair; he felt now as if he had been plucked clean of every speck of lint and foreign particle to touch his body.  His very skin tingled as if unprotected from the air.
“Oh, yeah,” the man said, “so what was it like, where you’re from?”
“Something like this,” Blair began.
“Of course,” the man said, narrowing his eyes at the view tablet.
“A similar layout – a space port and works, rails and a town, and even a jungle.  But there were much fewer people where I come from and everyone knew everyone else.  It was cleaner, too.”
“Tell me about someone you know there,”
“Ah, there was Clyde.”
“Yeah, what’s he like?”
“Kind of pale and not very quick.  You can’t really see his eyebrows and it makes his eyes look smaller.”  Blair searched the man for a reaction to his rather candid response to the question.
The man looked up with a questioning look in his expression, as if he expected more,
“You’re saying he was stupid, can you tell me something he did?”
“Ah, he lit his hair on fire once, when he was younger, and most of it fell out immediately and had to grow back in.”
The man smiled, perhaps remembering some pyrofollic episode from his own childhood.
“What’s your favorite food, Blair?”
“I dunno, exactly.  I like ice cream.”
“What do you like to do in your free time?”
Blair hesitated, trying to remember what he had been told was the point of the interview.
“Ah, lately it’s been exploring.”
The man stared into him unceasingly.
“First I explored the whole town.  I mapped most of it.  I was discovered in a few yards – made some of my more reclusive neighbors angry.  Then I explored some of the facilities and then the jungle.  Then I left the station.”
“It sounds like you have a lot of free time.”
“Oh, yes, more than I could handle on my own.”
The man looked back down at his tablet and tapped it with a finger.
“Okay,” he said, “we’re done.”  The door opened and Blair was escorted out of the cell-like room.  He was taken down white halls to a waiting room where he met Bull.
“That could have been worse,” Bull said with a smile, “you think we passed?”
Minutes later the question was answered when a soldier arrived and presented them with crypti-cards tailored to their individual DNA.  The cards would give them access to the station.
The soldier escorted them, along with the ever eager Boxers, outside to a bench alongside a cart-rail identical to the rail on Blair’s habitation.  The soldiers then left and the explorers were again on their own.  They waited at the bench for a few minutes, then a passing cart stopped for them and they climbed in.  There were two grave men already in the car and, after they were securely aboard, the travelers were subjected to a particularly stern and unabashed scrutiny which seemed destined to last throughout the ride to the settlement. 
Blair was too excited to be made uncomfortable by the eyes of strangers and he was eagerly and objectively observing everything to cross his vision.  He first took note of the cold wariness of the two men, the worn lines on their faces, one hoary and grey, the other middle aged and visibly tired.  He observed the similarity of the great arches above to those of his own station, like a traveler in a strange land looking up to find solace in the familiarity of the sky.  He listened to the strange sounds that comprised the general hum of activity in the cool air, a hum that pervaded the entire station.  As they left the works and the landscape changed he looked in every lighted window in every building they passed and down every alley that opened between them; no detail, however small, escaped his prying senses.
“I’m kind of surprised they let us keep the guns,” Blair spoke softly to Bull’s ear.
“They must not perceive us as a threat.  I think they have something specific that they are looking for.  Regardless, we should be aware that everyone else is probably armed as well.”
“Are you sure it was a good idea to send the rifle back to the ship with them?”
“If they wanted to hurt us, they’d have done so.”
Blair looked at his companion, the old man was not his jovial self; his brow was wrinkled into a frown, his eyes intent.
“Do you know this place?”  Blair asked.
“No, I rarely know the places I go.  I was told of this place, told of a man that would be willing to help me, but that’s all I know.”
The scenery had changed from the industrial machinery that had persisted from the space port, to habitations and more human-friendly buildings; buildings with doors, windows and regularly spaced floors.  And there were people, more people than Blair had ever seen, walking about, looking very professional and thoroughly unconcerned with leisure.
“Excuse me,” Bull began to ask one of the other passengers, “could you tell me where I might find a directory or some help in finding someone here in the town?”
The two locals stared at him impassively.
“I’m looking for a man named Cox. Truban Cox.  He used to be a traveler, I’m told.”
“So you two are travelers yourselves, right?”  Blair was surprised to hear the younger of the men answer.  The older man looked perturbed and shifted uncomfortably, glowering at his fellow as if condemning betrayal.
“Yes, we’ve come quite a distance.”
“You on some sort of official business?”  Bull looked a bit uneasy; the conversation did not appear to be headed toward an informative conclusion.
“Yes, yes you could say that.”
“Huh, well I don’t know about this Truban Cox, we’ve got a pretty big settlement here.  But if you’re travelers you might want to stop by the scpinematic bar, it’s where I would start looking.”
“Oh, great.  Could you just drop us off when we draw near?”
The man leaned forward, brushing past Bull.  Blair’s eyes sharpened at the unexpected move.  The man spoke into a panel on the car, “Scpinematic Bar.”  He straightened,
“That ought to do it.”
Less than a minute later the man hit a button to stop the cart and got off.

The cart continued on, Bull and Blair watched the settlement whisk by; a mismatched conglomeration of varied habitations and businesses.  People hurried down narrow avenues between the buildings, both on foot and in wheeled carts.
“Scpinematic Bar,” a voice announced, and the car came to a stop.
“Where?”  Bull asked.
“Exit to your left and proceed South along the avenue to the first floor of the three story blue building to your right.  Building number 145.”
“Thank you.”  Bull smiled.
Blair took a final look at the other remaining passenger who seemed determined to mind his own business.
The two, trailed by Boxers, left the cart and followed its directions to the scpinematic bar.  As they walked, Blair observed a certain ‘dirtiness’ to the settlement, apparent in the buildings, the streets and even the air itself; a dingy crust that was absent on his home habitation.  He figured there must be fewer cleaning bots here on this station, or perhaps there were more messes being made.
The door to the bar opened as they approached, Blair took one last look at the shadowy streets which cowered beneath the buildings – avoiding the bright illumination of the heat lamps, and followed Bull inside.
Inside was dark; individual patrons slumped in soft leather chairs and absorbed the mild pleasures of escape.  The scpinematics projected immersive environments directly onto their retinas.  A man laughed and then there was absolute silence.  A woman was sitting behind a narrow black bar.  She had short gray hair and stood up as they entered, revealing a stocky body dressed in extra-pocketed work clothes.  As they approached, her expression changed from impassive to a look of restrained interest.
“A spin?”  She asked.
“No thanks.  My friend and I are travelers; we’re looking for a man named Truban Cox, I was told I might be able to learn his whereabouts here.”
“That’s right,” she said with a smile, appraising the benignant white old man before her.  “He doesn’t come around as often as he used to, but he’s still interested in meeting travelers and exchanging data recs.  Here,” she did something with her hands behind the counter.  “I’ve put directions to his residence on your card.”

Dura-fibre pants swished madly, left leg, right leg, left; March Grapes was nearly out of breath.  He rounded the last corner and began to slow his mad dash as he stumbled to his door.  March was out of shape, he was only thirty five but life weighed heavily on his slouched shoulders.  Why had he got off the car?  Had he done it just for the effect – coolly leaning over, giving the computer a command and then a dramatic exeunt.  Or was he afraid, afraid that if he waited around something would go wrong; the deep-space bumpkin would discover the bug and the incident would come to the attention of the SDD?  Yes, that was it, he was a coward – he was a pathetic, out of shape, coward.  March stopped to catch his breath at the front door to his habitation; a mansion subdivided into three businesses and ten residences.  His was suite F, not the smallest where square feet were concerned, but no one would argue that suite F was not, by far, the smallest in regards to personal space.
“Daddy!”
The scream came from right behind March but it seemed to emanate from within his own head with enough force to rattle the windows overlooking the avenue.
He twirled around, off balance.
“Daddy, you are in so much trouble, mommy is so mad!”
The child standing in the gutter had an evil grin on her impish face and she tugged restlessly at the ends of a dirty white shirt.  Without a word, March spun back around, the front door opened passively for him and he strolled through.
The girl picked her nose thoughtfully and, remembering something, followed after him.
“Daddy!  Mommy says -”
“I don’t care what mommy says!  Don’t you have somewhere to be?”  March kept walking down a dim hall with the girl scampering after him.
“No.”
“Go find something to do that doesn’t involve me.  Daddy has some very important work to do.”
“OK daddy, I’ll find something to do.”  There was a tone in the girl’s voice that, if he were listening, would have given March a chill – would have infused the tired man with a strong desire for a painkiller and glass of water.

“Here we are,”  Bull’s infobiscuit chirruped helpfully.  They were standing in front of an old storage building, remodeled as housing, on the fringe of the town.
“That’s interesting, it looks like the town continues beyond the south loop.”  Blair commented.
“It certainly does, probably all the way to their jungle, judging by the quantity of traffic at the space port.”
A wild look entered Blair’s eye.
Bull touched the door, 
“Excuse me, Mr. Cox.  My name is Bull, this is Blair.  We’re travelers, myself from very far.  Eustace Fairbanks on Marx Station at Regan told me you were the most knowledgeable man in the region, and most willing to barter information.”
After speaking, Bull smiled expectantly at Blair, raising his frosty eyebrows in a show of excitement.  Boxers wagged his tail.
“Please wait while the resident is contacted.”

March crept quietly into the entry room of suite F, modestly furnished and decorated, it clearly showed the wear of four children; the lack of unbroken breakables, omnipresent fingerprints, and the seemingly extra-potency of gravity within the flat that powerfully drew all loose articles to the floor.  It was silent, little Tyler was watching the scpinematic, his small spine curled forward and his head tilted back; bright eyes gazing with awe into the open air.  They were always so much cuter when they weren’t wriggling about one’s legs and latching on with those grasping fingers of theirs.
March softly moved to the opposite door and peered into Sarah’s room, where most of the large appliances were stored; the room was pleasantly empty.  Stepping a little heavier, March strolled past the boy’s room; a quick glance revealed Paul furtively huddled, facing away in the corner; his head craning back and a guilty look on his surprised face.  Good, March thought, whatever it was he was doing, his fear of being discovered would keep him from being a nuisance for the rest of the day.
Carefully, March leaned into view of the den and, through the den, the master bedroom; he didn’t see anybody.  The coast clear, he hurried into the den and shoved clear a space on the desk.  He sat down on a worn synth-leather chair and pulled a receiver from a desk drawer.  He placed the small, box-like instrument on the desk and switched it on.  It was already attuned to the bug he had placed earlier; he could hear the sounds of an urban street, and a couple of people, shifting their weight, breathing, moving their arms.
“So this guy can help you find the guy we’re looking for?”
It was the young man’s voice, March gleamed with pride; he felt something big here, travelers always had something big going on, the farther the trip, the bigger the secret and the juicier the payoff.  This old man looked like he had crossed the galaxy and was practically bursting with the anticipation of his reward – whatever it was that he was after.
“We’ll see who gets the reward in the end,” March grinned to himself.  The problem with these guys, March thought, was that they got so caught up in the big things they were doing they failed to take the simplest of precautions; they had made it so far, they reasoned, nothing could go wrong now.  That’s when he stepped in and deftly liberated the spoils, making good his escape before anyone had a chance to notice.  At least that’s how it worked in theory; events had a history of conspiring against him, but not this time – this time felt too big to go wrong.

The door opened and a greeting voice said,
“Please come in, you are eagerly awaited.”

~/6/~

“Daddy, lookit!”
“Not now Tyler.  Daddy is working.”
“Daddy, Sarah is doing it again.  She’s doing it!”
“What did daddy say when he got home?”
“Daddy!”
“What the hell did I say?  I said, nobody bother me, I’ve got important work to do.  That’s what I said.  Does anybody listen to me?”
“Sarah, stop doing that or I’m going to bite you!”
March reached out with his foot and not-so-gently shoved little Tyler out of the room.  Who the hell had told him he should have kids?  ‘Get married and have lots of kids, children are the only light in this dismal, life-sucking world of ours.’  Who was that?  Then March remembered, it was his father; the old bastard was trying to get even, he saw that now.  He could picture the big man sitting there before him again, chewing wetly on a fat cigar, trying desperately to ignore the children wailing in the background and breaking the few articles of luxury he possessed,  “Get out of my god damn face,” he bellowed, “I work all day at the yards so I can come home to this?”  March grimaced and brought his attention back to the present; you couldn’t blame him, the man wasn’t a martyr.

“All the way from earth!  I never!”
Bull, Blair and Boxers were in Truban’s sitting room, aptly seated, Bull and Blair in soft, upholstered chairs, Boxers on a rug in front of a crackling hearth.  Warm flickering shadows danced about dusky walls decorated with a myriad of human artifacts, collected from all corners of the inhabited galaxy.  The man speaking was the ever sagacious, ever patient Truban Cox.
“Born there, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t met someone born there in, let’s see, it must be thirty years now.  The last fellow was old Worther, what a man, so old when he died, always with such a grin on that wrinkled face of his.”
Truban paused and unconsciously began feeling his own face with both hands, working the malleable skin in his parchment fingers.  His rich brown eyes seemed to glow with wonderful thought. 
Blair’s eager eye was busy devouring the room.  He had quickly located the most interesting objects and was returning to them for further investigation.  Particularly of interest was a stuffed beast that resided in a dark corner on the other side of the room.  His eyes persisted in wandering across to steal a look, but the flickering light would not allow a sufficient image to satisfy his curiosity; the massive, hairy body was illuminated only scant portions at a time.  Blair’s eager imagination filled in the dark recesses and hidden terminations, expanding the creature to fantastic dimensions.
“What is it?”  Blair asked in the silence.
“Hmm?  Ah, a pulbeer.”  Bull answered distractedly.
“Oh, my pulbeer.  Isn’t she beautiful?”  Truban asked, beaming with pride.
“I had a man bring it back to me from Goneril.  A terraformed planet, they breed pulbeers to do just about anything, tasty too.  You ever eat pulbeer, Blair?”
“No, never.”  Blair looked at the warm old man and his mind considered just how many animals, flavors, he had never tasted.  So many foods, so many places, people, cultures, events, triumphs and tragedies; the infinite experiences yet hidden to him began to weigh heavily on Blair’s conscience, manifesting in a sense of fleeting opportunity.
“Don’t look so exasperated, my boy, there will be time, I’m sure.”  He chuckled and rubbed his palms on the soft arm rests of his chair.
“You have Earth in your data banks?”  Truban asked, returning to business and tightening his expression.
“Up until the day I left.”
“You must have been so young.  You haven’t been to Caliban have you?”
“Actually I have, I went there before traveling to Pox.”
“Amazing!  That must have added nearly eight years to your travels.”
“Just about seven.”
“Was it worth it, I mean… oh I can’t wait to see your data banks.”
“I don’t regret anything I’ve done, if that’s what you mean, only some things I haven’t done.  But you can’t do everything, I suppose.”  Bull chuckled hollowly.  Boxers rubbed his chin on the shag rug he was lying on.  He gazed passively into the dark for a few moments before closing his eyes.
“So what brings you to me, I’ve been so demanding, asking all my questions, I’m sure you’ve been very patient.  Sometimes you have to interrupt an old man.”

“Daddy, I’m hungry.”  March was jarred from his listening.  He glanced about in a momentary fit of confusion.
“Wha?  Whuh.. get something to eat.”
“There’s nothing to eat.”
“What do you mean – Oh, wait, is this Tuesday?”   – their food generator was out of rotation Saturday through Tuesday.
“You’re going to have to wait, I’m really busy right now.”
“I’m hungry now.”
“Paul, if I wasn’t so god-damn busy, the two of us would go get some food.  But right now I really need you to be strong for me.  I need you to be a man, and sometimes men have to wait before they can eat.”  He put his head back into the listening cone.
“I don’t wanna.  Mom says you’re just lazy.”
March paused for a second, an irritated smile on his dry lips.
“Mom is a woman, Paul, women say stupid things because they don’t know any better, kind of like what you’re doing right now.  Do you want to be a woman when you grow up, Paul?”
“No.”
“Then you had better go be a man.  Now get out of here.”
He swung his backhand through the air, indicating the doorway, and what he would do if the conversation continued any further.

“I’m seeking a man who calls himself ‘God’, I’ve been told he’s the only person who can help me.”
A dark expression passed over Truban’s face.
“God, are you joking?”
“No, why should I?”
“Yes, you only know what you’ve heard abroad.  No, God is very dangerous, not quite on good terms with the station either.  Actually that’s an understatement, a serious understatement; he wants the station for himself, its facilities, its people.”
“Hence the military?”  Blair asked.
“Yes, yes, we’ve had many conflicts, many people have died.  He enslaved those poor people living on that asteroid.  I think he does it just for entertainment, I mean his name alone speaks volumes of his perversion.”
“But he has the Advancement AI?”
“Ah,” Truban smiled knowingly, “he had it.  But it was like a caged bird, one day it just flew away.  No, he doesn’t have it any more, thank god.”  Bull was crestfallen, but Truban had a fire in his eyes, he sat forward and his attention was lost to thoughts far from the comfort of the sitting room.  Blair could feel the fire, he was absorbing it into his blood, his sturdy young fingers gripped the armrests of his chair in unconscious imitation of the brittle fingers of the old man.  Blair’s knuckles stood out, white against red, and Truban’s, a ghostly ivory on ivory.
“Oh well, we must still try.  We must see this God.”  Bull’s words mixed effortlessly with the fervid thoughts in Blair’s head.
“How long did he have the AI?”
“Oh, years, five I think.  He focused on genetics, created mutants, diseases, horrible creatures of his own device.  He spawned the awful aphids that passed through four years ago; odious beasts, nearly mindless – in an animalistic way, very clever otherwise.” Blair’s teeth gleamed visibly in the firelight. “He’ll kill or enslave you unless he thinks you could serve him some way.”
Bull shuddered.

“Mommy!  Tyler bit me!  No, but it’s still red!”  Sarah’s shrill voice cut through March’s conscious like a serrated knife – he shuddered.  He took a deep breath and reflected for a moment on how nice a cold glass of water and a heroinPM would be.
“Right there!”  Sarah shrieked, jarring him from his muse.  He gripped the desk with cold hands – Tyler was screaming. 
Like a cornered cat, March sprung back from the desk, his wide eyes swept frantically for an escape route.
“Yes, he’s in the den!  He even told me I could pull Tyler’s hair.”
March grabbed his receiver and dashed for the bedroom.  He caught his hip on the corner of the desk, there was a loud knock and he staggered into the middle of the room, the contents of the desktop shuddered.
“No he told me!”  Sarah’s voice rose into a scream.
Curse words searching for form on his choking tongue, March doubled over and dropped his head nearly to the floor.
The scream subdued back into sobbing, half choked, words, “He said I could do anything I wanted.”
March lurched back upright and ran stiffly into the bedroom.  He thrust open the window, tossed out the reciever then grabbed both sides of the sill, as he had practiced many times, and flung himself through.
He landed in a patch of dirt that many years ago had sustained beautiful flowers.  Kicking legs brought him back to his feet and, with dirty pants and receiver in hand, he made secure his escape in a mad dash across the avenue and down an adjacent street.

The door to the den opened and a woman entered.  Bull looked up.  A gray-haired woman stood, stiff but tall, a gentle smile decorating her dried lips.
“Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt, I wanted to know if the guests would be staying to eat.”
Truban twisted around in his seat.
“Natalie.”
He stared at her for a moment and the room paused, strangely still, disregarding the impatient flicker of the firelight.
“I didn’t know you had come home.  These men are travelers; Bull and Blair, Bull’s come all the way from Earth.”
“My, that’s wonderful,” she smiled.  “You must have so much to talk about.”
“Yes we do,” Truban said, his voice becoming stern again as he turned back to address his guests, “they’ve got it in their heads to visit God.”
“Oh no, you shouldn’t do that.”  She said with a look of concern that crossed against the wrinkles on her face.

~/7/~

The next morning saw Bull and Blair, along with the proper directions and an excess of warnings, nearly on their way.  They were inoculated with the latest batch of microbots, specially designed to protect against the known biochemical weapons of God.  And finally, as Bull was out supervising a final Boxers frolic, Truban approached Blair with a gift,
“Blair, old men, like young men, have a habit of getting themselves into trouble.  The only difference is that young men can get themselves back out.”
He held up a pill.
“This contains a very special unit of microbots; disguised as ordinary imuno-bots, they are actually nothing of the sort; these bots are exclusively aggressive – implements of assault.  They are trigger-activated, the trigger in this case is to close your eyes and roll them upward, once you see two tiny pinpricks of yellow light, look down and you’ll find activation confirmation in pinpricks of red light.
Once activation has been achieved the microbots will rapidly exit your body, rather invasively – you may feel a burning along the nook of your right index finger.  They assemble themselves into a tiny syringe, braced against the apex of your palm.  You simply hold the base steady with your thumb and attack.”
Truban illustrated with a pantomimed thrust, as if he were stabbing with his pointing finger.
“If they pierce skin, your own not included of course, they inject, break down and begin a bio-rampage – maliciously destroying cells.  A protected immune system will neutralize them in less than thirty seconds, but if you hit a tender target, like an eye, the damage will be quite sufficient.”  Truban smiled slyly,
“It’s helped me out a few times.”
Blair was dumbfounded as he accepted the gift.  Truban motioned to swallow and Blair hesitatingly complied.
“You watch yourself,” he said, patting Blair on the shoulder, “it’s a cold universe and out there a man’s best friend is himself.”

March awoke stiff and dirty, his eyes opened to discover a steel girder inches above his face.  Although it wasn’t the first time March had awakened in such a situation, a primal sense of claustrophobia compelled the sight to be a bit startling.  
He stretched his limbs in the available space.  Despite the fact that his bed was a sheet of insulation padding spread over concrete, March felt as if he was awakening from the single best night of respite his sleep-adverse life had allowed him.  A heat exhaust vent comprising one of the walls in his tight cubby provided a comforting, gently pulsing warmth.  A machine somewhere in the plant was purring and the deep vibrations had rubbed the day’s stress from his weary muscles. 
He dug his fingers into the skin of his face and abraded some blood into his cheeks.  Features flush with sensation, he crawled on hands and knees along a tunnel, strung with insulated wires, until he made his way out into the listlessly invigorating “daylight” of the heat lamps.  He looked about at the orderly arrangement of automated buildings and tireless robots; March was alone amongst the singularly minded machines, safely removed from human distraction within the depths of the works.
He took out his receiver and turned it on.  The livelihood of a pre-expedition breakfast cascaded out of the little box.  A dog barked with excitement, utensils scraped plates, conversations tumbled over and through each other, March could practically smell the eggs and toast.
The thought of food aroused a sense of remorse; he hadn’t eaten since mid-day the day before and wouldn’t be able to make up for it any time soon in the foreseeable future.  He looked around for the cart he had drove in on.  It was nowhere to be seen.  He had instructed it to stay put for the night, but apparently someone in the SDD had noticed its extended inactivity and recalled it, despite the “urgency” status he had assigned the orders to remain.
Picking up his receiver, he began the walk toward the space docks; that was where they would be headed, and where he needed to be if he was to follow them.
Into the emptiness of his walking consciousness, the hungry thought of eggs returned.  He was reminded of a story he had been told when he was a boy; the story of the bad breakfast.  It was an old story, about a boy who lived in a habitation of luxury; He always got what he wanted for breakfast, and he always wanted eggs.  One day he asked where the eggs came from; their appearance every morning on his plate was, to the mind of the child, seemingly magic.  His mother explained that the great chicken of the east laid eggs dozens at a time, and could provide breakfast for all.  Musing on this, he came to thank the great chicken of the east every morning before he ate. 
Sometimes the boy would have his eggs mixed with savory, melted cheeses, other times he’d have them between slices of toast, or fried, or scrambled or he’d have them runny and sop them up with a muffin.
March lingered for a while on the details of the sundry conveyances of eggs, all of which found their way through his desperate imagination to the hospice of his growling stomach.  Eventually the familiar momentum of the story carried him on:
As is the habit of children, seeking new pleasure, new experience, the child grew bored with eggs.  He began to demand more every morning, harboring some misguided belief that he could supplant novelty with quantity.  He would gorge himself on ova and took ritualistic pleasure in arraying before him all that he would eat before he began.
One day he demanded his eggs raw.  Seven eggs arrived and were set before him in a row.  He stared at them blankly and finally took one up in his little hand.  He gazed on its white passivity and rage swelled behind his dewy doe-eyes.  In a moment his wrath erupted and he squeezed with all his might, expecting the satisfaction of destruction.  The egg resisted effortlessly.  In a fury, the child threw the egg and it broke against the wall.  “Thank you great chicken!”  he shouted as he threw each egg in turn; their yellow blood ran in rivers down the dining room wall.
When the last egg was thrown and the last thank you malevolently delivered, he was aware of a presence in the room.  He turned to face the kitchen door, expecting to find the nannybot, perhaps, coming to clean the mess.  His disbelieving eyes fell on a magnificent red foul; the great chicken of the east.  Its silky feathers shone with ethereal luminance and he was aware that it was the most beautiful animal he had ever beheld.  The child was struck dumb and immobile, his hands slunk to his sides like heavy yolk.
The great chicken cocked her massive head to one side and scrutinized the boy with a deep black eye.  Then, with a quick jerk of her neck, she struck out and snapped the boy’s head clean from his shoulders; his mother found his body as it had fallen, when she came home that evening.