"Ha!
Yeah,
all right.
Call you back
later."

He walked away then,
one soul
lost in the sea
that flowed and ebbed
and hurled itself in white-capped waves
against the metal hull of Alzir,
one soul
trying to make
his way.

And then there was dark.

-----

In the wilderness of space,
it was the tough who survived.
They did not thrive,
for that was a luxury
forever denied
the water-fat children of Earth.
But for those who could brave
the unchanging void,
there were livings to be made.

-----

She walked on emptiness,
nothing below her feet,
a trick even the son of God
had not managed.

She'd heard
that that place was
eternal,
forever,
unchanging.
But
she didn't believe it.
Because if it was,
he would still be there,
standing,
smiling,
waving,
like in the photo
she kept
in her locker.
But he wasn't.
She had gone back
and checked.
He was gone.
And one day
it would be gone
too,
she supposed.
One day
when men had vanished
and the vines and weeds come
to reclaim what was once
theirs.
That was the way of the world.
Change came
to all things.
Death gave birth
to life.

But not here.

-----

Every day he passed them,
the Starbucks and Subway and McDonald's on the corner.
Every day the same faces,
circulating
in their tightly
choreographed dance
behind the counters,
exchanging goods
and services
for money.
When he was young he had gone on a road trip
and he remembered wondering about the life
of a worker in a rest stop off the highway,
every day different faces, each fleeting human contact
gone forever, never to be repeated.
Well here was the opposite.
Every day the same faces,
slaving in their specially-designed zero-gravity kitchens,
whose astronomical cost had already been paid off many times over
by the crowds of those
like him
hungry for a taste of home,
circulating
in their tightly
choreographed dance
through the metal halls of Alzir.
Every day he passed them.

He was
hungry for a taste of home
but what did home
taste like?

-----

No!
she screamed in
despair
at the void
but the void
acted as if
it had not heard
her

-----

He stood
with his hands
pressed against the
glass
the thin layer that separated him from cruel death
and said nothing
but merely stood.
That world
outside
was one he could
never touch
never inhabit
never experience
for the glass would always come between them.
For which,
make no mistake,
he was grateful.
He was no seeker of cruel death.
But sometimes,
he would wonder --