That’s People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, P.O. Box 42516, Washington, D.C. 20015. (Gateway Shuffle)

Gett Gould was, all things considered, a relatively decent man. Though he was a government man in a family of protestors, he had a tendency of being involved in projects that were conveniently leaked before they could actually be implemented. The tracking chips that would be injected along with the annual flu shots, the Ganymedian invasion of Mars, the return of the Jackson Pollock esque art style. He wasn’t able to catch them all in time, of course. Perroit’s existence haunted Gett for the rest of his life. But the effort was enough for his family to allow him over for Christmas.

It was that effort that Bobbie Gould-Walker was thinking of at her older brother’s funeral. Of the Gould family, she was the only one to not speak to her brother since he joined the ISSP. It wasn’t for lack of trying. At first, Gett would call twice a week to just talk. Then twice a month. Then, only on occasion. Bobbie had meant to pick up the phone whenever he would call. At first, she didn’t because she was too busy or too angry with her brother. Even when she learned of the nature of his workings with the ISSP, she wouldn’t answer the phone. She had inherited her mother’s stubbornness along with her eyes.

It was at the funeral that Bobbie learned of why Gett had died. It seemed that he was working undercover with the Space Warriors, an organization that Bobbie felt sympathy for when she was younger. But, as time went on, she saw their methods as being rather unethical. Not so much the terrorism, she was well aware of the value of a good show of force, but rather the targets. They wouldn’t go after, say billionaires who profited over the selling of Sea Rats or the corporations who harvested the seas of Ganymede for Sea Rats like a wolf harvests organs from a rabbit. Instead, they’d shoot up various restaurants that served Sea Rat and target the customers. Their final leader, Twinkle Murdoch, was rich enough to know the right people to target.

Learning this gave Bobbie a little respect for her brother. Not much, all things considered, but enough to not slink away from the funeral as the mass reached its middle. It was a rather small ceremony. Gett’s family wasn’t that big even before they started to die, as all families do. His mother, Jane Gould, had died three years earlier of cancer while on the picket line fighting for the Martian Union of Sex Workers. She kept saying she’d go to the doctor when the protest was done, but something always took precedent. Flick, the middle child, was sitting in the corner with his wife, husband, and three kids (a boy, a girl, and a non-binary child). They had met at a protest over the Titan War and had grown quite fond of each other. Robert, the Gould patriarch (if such a word has meaning in the Gould family), was up on the pedestal talking about how much he loved his son. Their last conversation was an argument over the nature of protest. Gett believed that peaceful protests were the correct pathway while his father argued that such measures aren’t good enough compared to the tactics of the enemy. Bobbie would often flip flop between these two extremes.

Bobbie was at once surprised and unsurprised by the lack of ISSP at the funeral. She was aware of her brother’s subversive activities at the ISSP, but not so much the extent of their knowledge. She had assumed that her brother was good enough not to be noticed. Evidentially, he was only good enough not to get caught. Of the presumably ISSP people in the church, Bobbie saw an older man with a scar on his left chin, a woman with a perpetually sad look on her face, and some punk kid who probably joined just so he could punch poor people in the face. Aside from family and priests, these were the only people in the church. She was sure the older man was a chief of some kind, probably there to show appearances. The kid was most likely there to piss of Gett’s grave (Bobbie made a mental note to kick him in the balls if he tried).

But it was the woman that confounded Bobbie. She didn’t have the face of a cop, not even the eyes of one. She was too hardened to be a civilian. But it was what she said at the podium, in that stunningly miserable blue dress that really peaked Bobbie’s interest.

“I met Gett at a protest. I don’t remember what it was for. I was nine years old and he was twelve. All I remember is the violence and Gett. He had this air to him, like the world couldn’t ever break him. Like he was going to live forever and make the world a better place. He did at least one of those things.” She a soft smile on her face when she said that last line, like one has when talking about the dark clouds on a happy memory. Bobbie didn’t listen to the rest of the speech. She was too preoccupied by the memory. She was only eight at the time, but she remembers (or, at least, is willing to say she remembers) what that protest was for.

It was the last protest of the Universal Environmental Protection Society. They were furious over an oil rig run by at least three of the corporations on Ganymede that was killing the Sea Rats. Her mother, one of the founding members of the Society, was having an argument with one of their financial backers, an extremist named Murdoch, who wanted more to be done. Jane, with her quick wit and quicker mouth, asked bluntly what should be done, kill all the workers. Murdoch liked that idea quite a bit.

The ensuing chaos as Murdoch and her “family” started killing those they deemed enemies of the Sea Rat (including members of the society) was a horrifying experience that was forever etched on the Gould family. Bobbie saw men and women have their faces ripped off by gun fire, leaving only a cruel approximation of what lies beneath the human flesh. Flick spent the remainder of his adolescence bouncing between bars and protests until he found love. Jane resolved to fight not just for the lives of the animals trampled upon by capitalism and greed, but for all the dispossessed. She resolved not to make the same mistake she did with the Society, and never again put the money people in a position of power within the groups she worked with, much to the chagrin of many a backer. Robert was the only member of the Gould family not to be at that protest, and never saw the cruelty of the rich and powerful applied with the arm of the just.

Gett never talked about what happened that day. Bobbie, even when she was furious with him, always wondered why he joined the ISSP. Why he took a government job as opposed to simply hacking into their networks to dig up dirt on them like a lot of activists do. Instead, he joined up with the fascists. At first, and even a bit up until his funeral, she thought he had been radicalized into joining up with a corrupt and cruel government that sought to subvert everything she stood for. Even when she learned of his more subversive activities, a part of her (a very cruelly cynical part) believed it to be a con to lull them into a false sense of security. It wasn’t until she saw the woman on stage that she came up with a different theory.

The girl was one of their fellow protesters. Her name was Juniper Pond. She was close to both Bobbie and Gett. She was her best friend, her first love, and Bobbie thought she died that day. The bullets flew over the sky like meteors on a distant moon. Fast, deadly, and unstoppable. There was shouting and anger and pointless violence and cruelty that day. The police assumed everyone involved was a terrorist out to kill the innocent workers doing a job. So the police used this as an excuse to do what they wanted to do since they heard of the Universal Environmental Protection Society.

Juniper wasn’t in a cell that day. Neither was Gett, but hindsight made Bobbie believe he sold them out to get a job as a cop. No one could have escaped that bloodbath without selling out. And Bobbie was sure Juniper would never sell them out. But that’s what you do when you’re young and in love: assume the worst possible thing made them go away. It was shortly after the body had been laid to rest that Bobbie and Juniper had gotten a chance to talk. Juniper didn’t want to talk to Bobbie. There was a coldness in her eyes when Bobbie tried to start up a conversation, one that was, perhaps given her presence at Gett’s funeral, to be expected. It wasn’t until, after getting a smoke, Juniper saw Bobbie kick some punk kid in the balls that she decided it would be nice to talk to her old friend.

It wasn’t after the post-funeral get together, of course. She didn’t want the ISSP hearing what she had to say. They decided to go out for a cup of coffee a few days later. There was a nice little shop a few blocks from where Gett lived on Mars. It was decent coffee, if a bit watered down. They didn’t talk much about Gett at first. Bobbie wanted to know what happened that awful day when they were kids. Juniper explained that she needed to go to the bathroom that day. Gett volunteered to guide her to the bathroom while the adults argued about whether the purpose of revolution was to change the world or cull the chaff. When the people arguing the latter decided to demonstrate their views, Juniper had just left the bathroom. Gett was there to guide her out of the madness. It hard to escape the maze of an oil platform, especially with an uncivil war on one side and a cruel and unjust law on the other.

They were lucky that the platform was, to some extent, in disrepair such that there was a gaping hole near the bottom of it. They were also lucky to be picked up by a passing fishing boat. These were stories untold at the funeral. Ones that, were the ISSP to hear, would end up with Juniper going to jail for terrorism. Bobbie talked about her life for a bit, mainly her anger and frustration at the world. How it chewed up good people and, at best, corrupted them into cruel, vicious bastards. Juniper objected to the implications of that statement, claiming that Gett had good reasons for joining the ISSP. Bobbie flat out asked what they were.

Juniper was silent.

Perhaps a bit too long, as Bobbie prepared to leave. But Juniper grabbed her by the arm like a drowning man. The look in her eyes was not that of a quisling defending capitulation or a fox pleading to be let out of the trap so she could eat the lambs. It was that of a girl who had seen horror far too young. It was like looking at a mirror into a life that could have been. And then Juniper told her why her brother joined the ISSP. He thought that he could change the system from within. He bought into a lie about the police, about the government. But he caught on quickly to the lie, but not quick enough to escape. So he did his best to mitigate the damage. Plus, the paycheck was enough to keep them from starving on the streets.

Bobbie wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Her brother was dead and all that was left was a crying woman in a coffee shop. Bobbie moved her hand while she sat down. A wistful smile was on her face. It reminded Juniper of the first day they met. It was a cold summer evening on the fields of Mars. They were playing Hide and Seek while their parents plotted to change the world. Juniper was it. Flick and Gett were easy enough to find. It took her an hour to find Bobbie, hiding beneath the tree with the face of a man on it. When Bobbie bolted out from under the tree and failed to escape Juniper, she kissed her best friend on the cheek. A wistful smile grew on her face as the little girl ran home to bed. Juniper followed her into the dark.

Dance With Me…

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And so, nobody’s doing it anymore. (Honky Tonk Women)

Charlie Parker walks in the ruins of the Dreamlands of Old. There, he dances with the kings and gods of the land of fiction. On the night the waking world declared war on its dreams, Charlie is serenading the King of Nightmares. She, an old player of the game of song and dance, appreciates the songs he sings and all the other dances. Birds like him give her a spring in her step.

Charlie was always a bird, though not in the sense he is now. Now, Charlie is a bird in the sense of flying, loving, and being one with music. Before he walks in the Dreamlands of Old, Charlie could only be a bird in two senses. Now he is the full bird. He sees his old self as angels eat his flesh, flying away as a bird does to its shell. The King of New Desires beckons Charlie into the new world of dreams and changes. He arrives as that world dies a cruel and unjust fate.

Charlie, in dreams, shows people the way to their future. A gambler looked for the right table to play at. A thief escaped through the wrong door. A murderer killed all the right people. A dog ate out of his master’s bowl and defecated upon his grave. The waking world was a land of the past. The Dreamlands of Old are of the present. What then of the land the King of New Desires promises Charlie? Charlie does not know.

Charlie screams as the sky burns bright blue. His arm is consuming itself by the second. There is no arm at all. No flesh. No being. Nothingness becomes Charlie. His eyes are consuming. His legs are consuming. His teeth are consuming. All is consuming into nothingness. Nothingness itself is consuming nothingness into nothingness. Dreamland is consuming. The angels are consuming Charlie as Charlie watches far away. He was always Charlie, even as he watches Charlie.

The King of Nightmares has a request for Charlie. She wants a song he never plays, though he knows it quite well. All things are known in the Dreamlands of Old. Questions are for other lands in other times. Will Charlie walk in those lands? In those times? This is not what the King of Nightmares wants. What she wants is a song about the lands he was born in. Not of the Dreamlands he walks in, but of the world that declares war on them that night. She wants to know their world.

Are there going to be wars in the world to come? Were there broken futures that cannot be asked about? Will there ever be a utopia that works without problem? Can people be free of the cruelties of the world, of the dreams created by butterflies? Or is the world forever trapped in a dance macabre of incomprehensible design? Is there even a design to such cruelty? Will Charlie or anyone else ask questions such as this in the worlds to come?

As Charlie plays his song, out of nothingness, out of his old self, out of his new self, out of all his selves, another man joins him. In many ways, the man is his opposite. Where Charlie has dark skin, the man has light. Where Charlie has a round new face, the man has a rectangular, broken, beautifully ugly face. Where Charlie is a bird, the man is a man. He is here as a favor to an angel. The angel saves his life by showing him the Dreamlands of Old. The man plays the trumpet.

A woman joins them. She is not like the man and the bird. She is a cat. Her eyes are those of a cat. Her smile has a cat’s desire to kill. Her tears are a cat’s sadness. And, like all cats, she is here because she wants to be here. She plays the violin like she plays with a mouse. She keeps with the tone of the song, but there’s something mercurial about her violin. It is not of herself, all herself, nor is it fully not of herself. She makes the violin from the trees of forgotten, long dead memories. She fine tunes the strings out of the imagination of unicorn hair. She carves ancient words onto her violin like a member of the waking world did his guitar. The words are the same, but the language is not.

Lastly, the Shapeless One joins their quartet. They are here to play with the quartet. When they lived in the waking world, they were born wrong. Or, at the very least, the conception of wrongness held by the waking world in the past. In the dreamlands of old, they have no shape. Will they understand in the next world? How could one with such multitudes be restrained by just one shape? They sing the song for the King of Nightmares. She is brought to tears by their voice.

“I went doooooooooooowwwwwwwn.

To St. Jaaaaaaaaaaaames.

Infirm-Maryyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Saw my baby therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.

She was stretched.

Out on a

Long

White

Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaablllllllllllllllllle.

So cold.

So sweet.

So faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiir….

Let her go!

Let.

Her.

Gooooooooooooooooo!

God bless her (wherever she may be).

She can look

This wild world over.

But she’ll never

Find

A sweet man like me.”

At this point in the song, Charlie took over and played a chaotic saxophone like sound with his self, his being, his all. The music tap dances across all of the Dreamlands of Old with gusto and charm. The man joins in with trumpet of infinite implications. The soulful music fills the air with melancholy and necessity. The cat does not play while they play. She only plays as the Shapeless one sings. Her music is soft, sharp, and completely her own.

The King of Nightmares thinks of a word they never use. One that means a kind of pain that happens when one returns home. She is always at home, even when she is not. And yet, the song she hears gives her this kind of pain, though perhaps not for the first time in her life. It reminds her of the days when she is eating with the Cat and singing their secret song of love and loss. She never shares the meaning or words of that song with anyone else. Not even when the Cat sings their song for the first time, without ever saying a word.

“I went doooooooooooown,” continued the Shapeless One in a deep baratone.

“To St. James Infirmary

Saw my baby there.

She was stretched on a long white table.

So cold…

So cold…

So cold.”

The cat plays her music alone. They do not join in with her. She is an artist crafting a tragedy out of words she cannot speak aloud. She is born in the Dreamlands of Old, never knowing what the last world was like. She is the child of angels, the child of dreams, the child of stories. She is fictional, and she is real. She sings without ever saying a word.

“Let her go!” she sings with her music. She knows the feeling of being in a cage. She knows the pain of being alone. She knows what it is to lose, lose, and lose again. She knows sadness and the cruelty of losing someone to the next world. Does she know the joys of the world to come? Does she know where she is in that world? Does she know where sheis? She knows that she is of the Dreamlands of Old. And that these lands are being washed away.

The song ends as all songs do. The King of Nightmares is pleased with the song and gives the waking world a reward. She knows of all the worlds that are, were, and might be. She dances in all of them like a ballerina on a chain of memories. She has seen cruelty and pain and joy and Hope. She knows where all things lie. And so, she sends that world a gift. The only one she can: a nightmare.

It’s not a bad nightmare per say. Not all nightmares are bad. But they are strange, unknowable things full of multitudes and implications vast and monstrous. It’s easy to mistake such nightmares as having a cruelness to them. Nightmares aren’t cruel any more than dreams are kind or stories were false. But the nightmare was enough to draw the waking world in the direction of war against its dreams.

The Dreamlands of Old suffered most from the war. The King of Red and Blue changes into a sullen, broken man with his hopes for a better world dripping away into dust and amber. The ruler of Fairyland has hir throne lost to the usurper, a cruel dog with teeth that can’t help but consume all it smells. The angels turn feral and carnivorous. The man is among their first victims. He died in his sleep in the waking world. Will he be happy? The Shapeless One explodes into a cascading carnival of color and cruelty. They were drowned by their father for not being his daughter. Will they find more than just happiness? The cat merely escapes into the next world without incident. Does she find her?

Charlie Parker walks in the ruins of the Dreamlands of Old. He sees himself dancing with the kings and gods of the land of fiction. He is quite happy with these strange, new beings created from nothingness and decay. As he walks, Charlie can’t help but sing a little song to himself. Not the full song, but a small part of it.

“When I diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeee,

Bury me in straight lace shooooooooooooooooooes.

I want a.

Box-black coat!

And a Stetson haaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Put a twenty dollar gold piece on my waaaatch chaaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnn…

So the boys

The boys will know I died standin’ pat.”

When he finishes his little song, he sees a man lost in the world. He knows this man from a childhood past in the waking world, though not his childhood. They used to dance together in between dates and chases. Now Charlie is of the Dreamlands of Old, awaiting new worlds to consume him. The man only knew Charlie’s Dreamland self. Charlie left the waking world long before the man was born. His once child friend is old now. Maybe he was always old. Maybe they both were. The man looks like he could use some help. So Charlie shows the man his future.

So Charlie says, “The world’s a cruel and awful place. One where hands are used more often for killing than for washing other people’s hands. We can’t see from our eyes the similarities of the other to us. We need to change ourselves before we can change the world. But we can’t change ourselves yet. We need to change the world. Changing the world is the same thing as changing a self. All it needs is someone to give instead of get. Enough someones, and the world stops working. The system cannot hold. The house finally loses and we can all wake up.” It was something like that. Words from the Dreamlands of Old (and the words spoken in higher worlds) tend to get lost when the dream ends.

As he talks, a familiar figure approaches them. Charlie can’t quite see who the man is, though he can tell he’s a young one. Probably hasn’t met any of the strange, wonderful people of the Dreamlands of Old. He’s probably lost in the ruins, looking for the other nicer worlds. The ruins have always been here, as has all of Dreamland. Dreams are eternal, that means they’re always happening. Eternity starts at the beginning all things are happening at once. The young man who is far away waves at Charlie, recognizing him even from that distance. Charlie gives the man a smile one makes when they can’t remember someone’s name. The friend fades away, returned to the waking world while Charlie watches the sky as angels descend upon him.

Charlie Parker died in the suite of his friend and patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City, while watching The Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on television. The official causes of death were lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Charlie also had an advanced case of cirrhosis and had suffered a heart attack. The coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Charlie's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age.

Will You Let Me Go…

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So it was all your work! (Stray Dog Strut)

Gary Lucas had owned a pet shop on Mars for five years. He worked there for seven before inheriting it from the old woman. They had met in rather farcical circumstances involving mistaken identity, a stolen corgi, and eight million Woolongs. Back in those days, he wasn’t in the best of circumstances. He had been kicked out of his childhood home for sharing different views on love than his parents, who had enough sway on most planets to blacklist him for deviancy. Mars, ironically enough, was the only planet he could legally get any work on. Sometimes, Gary would wonder if the old lady gave him a job out of pity in addition to the spite caused by ruining it the first day they met.

But, to his credit, Gary was able to run the shop smoothly when the old woman took ill. They had known each other for four years by that point so she knew he could be trusted. Certainly trusted enough not to ask questions like, “what’s your name” a second time. Names, in her book, bring nothing but trouble. Only fictional people need names. Real people only use them to say hello. Gary didn’t fully agree with this sentiment, but he respected her enough not to say anything too critical about it.

It was two years after she died that he met Warren Monogram. It was on a weekend after closing hours. Gary needed to go do something other than tend the pets. One of his assistants, a cute kid named Jane, was looking after them to make sure they were comfortable (nothing bad happened to them that weekend). He had heard about a coffee shop a few blocks away from the pet store that had some good reviews. Unfortunately, it was owned by a company that was owned by the corporation his parents ran.

(He didn’t know at the time that they were ousted over getting caught committing insider trading. Their bounty was reported to be in the ten digits by the time they were caught by some kid and her dog.)

As such, Gary went to a bar he would frequent every blue moon called The Lovely Angel. The bartenders were a nice pair of ladies. One would suspect they were sisters by the way would argue with each other. Though another could say they were lovers given the way they looked at each other. For Gary’s money, there was something special about a relationship with that level of ambiguity, though he would argue they were once a thing, but split on really good terms. He had a sense for the melancholic romance that never fully worked out. He’d been in enough of them to see that.

“What’s your drink,” asked the bartender with floofy red hair. Her black haired companion was busy chatting up with another customer about a new crime syndicate that had moved into Mars. He had heard about the syndicate for some time. Some were remnants of Viscous’ gang while others were minor thieves and murderers looking to make it into the big time. Probably wouldn’t amount to much. The world is full of bounty hunters and rogues. Best to keep a low profile than declare yourself to be the new mob in town. The old mobs have a tendency of paying large sums of money to get rid of the competition.

“Burbon,” Gary replied. He nursed the drink absentmindedly. He was focused on the person the black haired bartender was talking to. The man in question was a lean fellow. Given his blond Mohawk, his pink star cheek tattoo, and skull and crossbones arm tattoo, this was a man who wanted to stick out. Gary had seen him from time to time by and around the pet store. He never entered the place, not even to browse. He’d just stand out there, like a vulture waiting for the body to ripen.

But there was something about the man (other than his appearance and his laid back demeanor) that drew Gary to him. Something about his eyes that he couldn’t place just yet. They made him feel awfully sad for some reason. Like the death of his grandmother or the old woman. He didn’t have time to process the meaning of this feeling, as the man’s expression changed suddenly from carefree to alert. At first, Gary thought it was because that new mob had made a convenient entrance into the bar to disrupt the questions the black haired woman was asking. Only, the man was walking towards Gary with furious intent.

Naturally, Gary did the sensible thing and ran like heck. The streets of Mars are full of dark alleys, odd turns, and canals. And Gary used them all to try to escape from his pursuer. There were moments of luck and moments of failure in his escape. The crowd of children celebrating a birthday party gave him a brief reprise. But getting hit by the gondola didn’t help matters. But eventually, the chase ended with Gary pinned down in a garden planted atop a smile. No one knows the exact reason why the smile was on Mars. Some say it was the creation of a higher being with a sense of humor. Others believe it to be an optical illusion like Magic Eye pictures or the third dimension. Gary was too busy having a gun aimed at his head to think of an answer to that riddle.

“Why are you spying on me,” asked the man with the gun, “You a bounty hunter out to get a nice paycheck.” Gary replied with a loose collection of sounds that almost sounded like words. Most of the words rhymed with “boo,” “mom,” and the first syllable of “flubber.” The man was slightly confused by this reaction. Usually, when people have come to murder him, they react more calmly to having a gun aimed at their face. That, or they just scream at him. He might have jumped to a wrong conclusion. In his defense, there was something familiar about this guy that rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn’t put his finger on what though.

The man lowered his gun, much to Gary’s gratitude. He was still pants-shitting terrified by the events, but he was at least capable of speaking coherent words.

“Thank you,” he sighed.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone dangerous.”

“…Hey! I’m pretty dangerous.”

“Oh really,” said the man with a wry smirk, “what are you going to do, fight me with your glassy stare.” Gary remained unamused. The man sighed, “Bad joke, I know. Look, let’s start over. Name’s Warren.”

“Gary.”

“You a bounty hunter?”

“…no.”

“Alrighty then. How about you and me return to the bar, pay our drinks, and get a few more.”

“That sounds lovely,” said Gary with a smile on his face. They walked silently for a few blocks before Gary asked, “Do you mind if I ask something?”

“You just did,” replied Warren, “But you can ask something else.”

“It’s just… I keep seeing you in front of the pet shop I run and-“ but before Gary could finish that thought, Warren grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN “PET SHOP YOU RUN?” THAT SHOP IS RUN BY A NICE OLD WOMAN, NOT YOU!”

“I-it was!” Gary said franticly, “until a few years ago.”

“WHAT HAPPENED A FEW YEARS AGO???”

“She died!” Warren froze when he heard that answer. He let go of Gary and crumpled to the ground. Gary was at first hesitant to comfort the man who had just held him up high like one does with a person who has wronged you. But there are times in Gary’s life when he knew that people aren’t in the best of places. That they need some help. He had been burned before. (His parents, for one.) But more often than not, helping people has worked out better for everyone than not. So Gary sat down next to Warren.

It took a bit for them to feel comfortable talking. Gary was the one to break the silence. “Who was she to you?”

Warren looked past Gary’s glasses and into his eyes. There was a softness to them, a melancholy. It must hurt, Warren thought, to talk about someone you cared about as much as they did the old woman. “She was my mom.”

They didn’t talk for another couple of minutes. “I hadn’t seen her in a few years. We both were still on Mars, living our lives as best we can. I run a gun shop, sell to all the bounty hunters and thieves. Mom didn’t approve, said it was barbaric to sell to killers. I said something stupid, she lobbed something needlessly cruel, and I just stomped out the door. That was like ten years ago. I still recommend people go to her pet shop whenever I could. Sometimes, people want a good boy or a hunting cat. And, for all my feelings of discomfort and bitterness, I still liked her. Spent the past couple of years just waiting outside trying to muster up the courage to talk to her. Guess I waited too long.” Warren paused for a moment before asking, “Did she ever talk about me?”

“No,” said Gary softly, “but then, she didn’t really talk much about herself. I knew her, but I didn’t know her, if that makes any sense.”

“No, no. I get it. Did she go on about her disdain for names?”

“Not often, but the one time she did…” And the two of them laughed at a late loved one’s eccentricities. Warren would eventually tell Gary his mother’s name, which Gary thought to be quite a lovely name. Though, the Monogram family does have some history on Neptune, which could point to why she wouldn’t want people to know her name. Sometimes, people create mythologies, worldviews, and philosophies to justify their hang-ups.

They returned to the Lovely Angel, paid for their drinks, and shared many more in the years that followed. Gary hadn’t been in a relationship like this one for a long time, and it ended quite poorly the last time it happened. There was a sense that this too would end poorly. Maybe he’d slip up or some asshole with a gun would kill Warren. The world is full of such horrible things as daydreams. But in the three years they dated, that day never came. Instead, Warren entered the pet shop one day and asked Gary a riddle, an answer to which was “Yes.”

It was on that same day that Gary learned his parents had been taken in by some bounty hunter and her dog. Which meant he could leave Mars to go wherever he wanted. Warren was quite saddened by this, until Gary started coming up with places to go for their honeymoon. A warm twinkle emerged from Warren’s eyes and they kissed for what seemed like forever.

Their marriage lasted a good 40 years until Warren died of old age. Gary lived on, still running the pet shop. He wasn’t the main person in charge of the shop anymore. Jane Moon did more the economics while Lauren Smith found the pets. Most days, Gary would just smile behind the counter and help the customers. Best part of the job, most days. The Lovely Angel closed a few weeks after Gary and Warren started dating, it’s bartenders long fled Mars. He had two kids with Warren, both adopted and both off planet. Jacob works as an archeologist on Earth, discovering lost cultures and recontextualized histories. Frannie became a bounty hunter, much to Warren’s inexplicable chagrin.

At the moment before his death, Gary thought of that dog that got him the job at the pet shop. He wondered why those two men were so desperate to get their hands on a corgi worth only two Woolongs? Why the chase, why threats of violence, why the suitcase? He didn’t live long enough to come up with a good answer to his questions. But then, he was feeling a bit tired.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window…

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You Think Them Cuddly, But I Think Them Sinister (Untitled Goose Game)

A Commission for Aleph Null.

What is a mob to a king? What is a king to a god?
What is a god to a goose who don't believe in anything?

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. (Oh shit, it would appear that a goose has taken over the blog. I’ll try to fight him with the best of my abilities, but I’m not) Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack!

Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quaaaaaaaaaaack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack, Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack; Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack.

Quack Quack Quack Quack: Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack:

            Quack Quack Quack Quack?

            Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack?

            Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack?

Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack? Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack; Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack; Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack; Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack! Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (Neil Cicierega), Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (Keiko Nobumoto), Quack Quack Quack (Tom King), Quack Quack Quack Quack (JM DeMatteis). Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quaaaaaaaack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (no, he didn’t).

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (mostly due to his decision to use them as a transition from Goliwog apologia to why Grant Morrison is a shit) Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack. Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack.

(Although, consider the case of Gladstone Gander. At once a figure of comedy and tragedy, Gladstone is the luckiest duck in the world. He loves his lucky, truly he does, but the cost of that luck is that people view him more as a resource than as a person. He is forever trapped within the idea. That he is lesser than his unlucky cousin [Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack] and his rich, inexplicably hard working billionaire uncle [Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack] because he’s a lay about who would rather let his luck do the work than do the work himself. And yet, he cares about his family. He cares about those close to him and wishes only the best for them. Sure, he’s a dick sometimes, but who isn’t [Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack]?)

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (Why shouldn’t I commit) Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack!!!!

Quack Quack Quack; Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack, Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack/Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack--Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack--Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack: Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack, Quack, Quack Quack Quack, Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack.

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack (I suppose I should give my thoughts on the game. Erm… I haven’t actually played it. Look, I thought it was going to be on Steam like every single other Mac game. Evidently not, since it’s an Epic Games exclusive. That’s not to say I won’t play the game, in fact I’m planning on doing so before I post this. It’s just that I came up with the idea for the post as I was about to buy the game and felt the urge to write the post as soon as possible.) Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack! (Ok, so I've played the game now and it's a lot of fun to be a horrible goose.) Quack Quack! Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack!

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack, Quack. Quack. Quuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

(Well that was rather rude of him.)

We know Major Tom's a junkie, strung out in heaven’s high, hitting an all time low. (Asteroid Blues)

Jonathan Moore was born on Tijuana and he would die on Tijuana. Not that he had any desires to move to the other worlds. Earth was a dump, Mars too fancy, and don’t get him started about Neptune. Jonathan was a simple man with simple desires. He had his bar, El Ray, his cat, Hope, and a few extra legal businesses on the side. On those other worlds, the ones with people who matter, his extra legal activities would be looked at a bit more closely than he’d want them to be. On Tijuana, everyone is treated the same. They were just another body for the pile.

They say the days on Tijuana are largely the same. Jonathan liked the structure of it all. At 2:15 in the morning, he would awake to find some asshole doing some asshole thing. Sometimes it was something as minor as an execution of a rat or a skirmish in a gang war. That morning, unfortunately, someone was trying to steal his cat. Jonathan could hear the yelps and howls of the man stealing the cat while Hope clawed her way out of his clutches unsuccessfully. Jonathan hadn’t had the cat for long. She just showed up at his bar one night and acted as if she was always his. He was sure Hope (whom he’d named after a feeling he once dreamed) would leave just as suddenly as she came. But for now, she was his and he was hers. So he grabbed a gun and went after the man who stole her.

The man in question was a lean man running unnaturally fast. ‘Junkie,’ Jonathan thought to himself. ‘Always a fucking junkie.’ Though one of his side businesses involved the sell of drugs, Jonathan knew, as many a drug dealer knew, never trust a junkie. Jonathan learned that the hard way when one of them tried to kill him for not selling him Red Eye just because he didn’t have any money. He was lucky in that he only got a cut on the forehead. The junkie wasn’t as lucky.

As for the junkie Jonathan was chasing, he was a fast bastard. Probably high on Red Eye and too mad to care that his face was being torn asunder by the cat in his hands. Not helping matters was that the streets of Tijuana were winding and tight. It’s easy to get lost on the asteroid, especially when you’re chasing someone who doesn’t care. Jonathan had, in fact, lost his way when he was a young lad with dreams of escaping this hellhole. They were childish dreams of someone who didn’t know the way the world work. Didn’t know his place. He thought he was going to be some interplanetary gangster with all that implies. Martin Goodman was kind enough to beat those childish beliefs out of the young lad.

But it had been a long time since Jonathan had gotten lost, over a decade at least. He was older and much wise than the child he once was. But chasing a junkie is not like chasing someone who isn’t. Junkies don’t have plans, schemes, or what have yous. Junkies are in it for the high, mostly in the form of doing stupid shit like stealing a drug dealer’s cat.

Fortunately for Jonathan, the sun was rising, the time close to 6 AM. A little known defect in Red Eye is, due to the nature of the drug being directly applied to the eyes, it reacts poorly to sunlight, even the artificial sunlight of Tijuana. As such, when the sun did arise, the junkie started to convulse in pain. Not the pain of having your legs shot off or your face clubbed in, though the junkie would know that pain as well. Rather, it was the pain of having a laser pointer shine directly into your eyes. Like looking into the sun for far too long. Like having a cat maul at your face for at least four hours, though that could have just been Hope. Nobody minded the junkie crumpled on the streets. Just another body for the pile. Jonathan returned to him home at 7 AM with the 15 Woolongs he nicked from the junkie and planned to get more sleep the next night, as he always did.

At 7:15 AM, Jonathan made himself some breakfast, what he called Bacon and Eggs, but was in reality just Eggs. Not many people can afford meat, let alone on Tijuana. But it’s nice to dream every once in a while. There’ nothing wrong with having a dream per say. Dreams have their place in this world after all, Jonathan thought to himself when he first called them “Bacon and Eggs.” Not that they can ever be acted out, mind you. They exist in the place outside of the real world. Those who think their dreams can come true are just another kind of junkie.

At 7:45 AM, Jonathan smoked a cigarette and headed over to El Ray, which would be open at 8:30 AM. Most of the customers wouldn’t come until after 12 PM, but Jonathan felt it was better to keep it open at an earlier hour than to just wait until the people came. Most of a bar’s set up was done in these hours. Sometimes customers would come for an early morning bowl of peanuts or maybe a glass of beer. But the mornings were for more extralegal matters.

One such matter arrived at 10:10 AM. There were three men at the bar already. They weren’t businessmen, just customers who needed a place to talk. Jonathan was perfectly fine to facilitate their mind numbing conversation about which of them was the best one of the three. This time, they were playing poker and arguing about being poor despite their hard work. Though he tried to distract himself, Jonathan couldn’t help but mildly agree with their sentiment. Sure, he knew his place in the world. He didn’t want to leave Tijuana or anything. But there was a part of him who yearned for something more.

Hope was sleeping on one of the tables when the two entered the bar. She wasn’t in mind of a desire to have better. Cats have a natural feeling of being owed better no matter their circumstances in life. Living with a junkie, for example, would be a lesser life than living with a dealer. Junkies rarely feed their pets due to being too busy being high, though Hope wouldn’t consider herself a pet. More of a guest of Jonathan’s. When something better came along, she’d run off and be with a different person. Though, she was happy that Jonathan understood this arrangement and understood it quite well. She might’ve stuck around for another year or so.

The two who had entered the bar were a man and a woman. Jonathan could tell that the man was a junkie. The grungy face, the lackadaisical body movements, the constant need of glasses. He was a junkie if ever he did see one. The woman, however, was not (at least, not traditionally). Her eyes were clean and without blood. She was pregnant, probably just a few months. She was a rare beauty that had been unseen on Tijuana for many years and probably wouldn’t be seen again for many more. And she had a look in her eye, one that danced throughout her whole body like a masochistic tango. It said, “I want a better life than the one I have. I deserve a better life than this one. I was made for better things. I am owed.” No, she wasn’t a traditional junkie in Jonathan’s book, but she was still just a junkie.

The man knocked on the table. “Give me a beer,” he said with a gruff voice.

“And I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” said the woman. “In fact, make it a double.” Jonathan looked at the two. Junkies with product weren’t a rare occurrence in his line of business. In fact, most of the people he bought from were junkies. He didn’t trust them, but he gets more profits when buying from Junkies in bulk. Worth the risk once you accepted that junkies aren’t to be trusted.

Still, Jonathan sighed when he said, “I’ve got the vodka, but I’m afraid I’m fresh out of tomato juice.”

“I’m sure there’s one can in the back room,” replied the man as he pulled out a sample of Red Eye. ‘Least this time the junkie has the product,’ thought Jonathan. He didn’t say this, but instead simply replied that he would check the back room. The man followed close behind.

Jonathan was too busy preparing the quality tests for Red Eye to hear the cars screech in front of his bar. If he had, he probably would have shot the junkie then and there. Instead, he dutifully prepared the tests. The man entered, making his pitch as all junkies do. It’s all the same script, Jonathan noted. They would talk about the quality of the product, how smart of a buyer Jonathan was for going through them. The only thing that changed was the adjectives. But it all meant the same thing to Jonathan: I’m desperate.

That’s what it is to be a junkie, Jonathan thought: Eternal Desperation, the belief that this isn’t the best of all possible lives. A junkie wouldn’t be happy in their perfect world. They would always complain and moan about how it doesn’t live up to expectations or how there are flaws in the world. They’re all just children whining that they didn’t get the toy they wanted. They don’t have names because they aren’t people. Jonathan, meanwhile, was an adult and learned to settle with the life he had. To try otherwise would end with a fist from someone with a better life to teach you your place.

But junkies had their uses. This one looked like he could pop very easily. That’s why Jonathan was setting up the machine before hand. If one isn’t careful in administrating the drug, Red Eye can cause a paranoid episode. If one is very careful, that episode can lead to a brain hemorrhage and a fatal stroke. Jonathan was not as careful as he believed himself to be. No doubt, Jonathan thought, the female junkie could be used to his advantage one the male junkie was dead. She had a nice body after all. It could do wonders at the brothels and he could earn a nice percentage. She’d probably be so distraught that she would give Jonathan all the Red Eye she had, free of charge. She was weak in that sense, Jonathan believed. And like many things, Jonathan was dead wrong.

“Is that…real Bloody Eye?” Jonathan asked, not playing his hand quite yet. “I’m gonna need a little proof. Let’s have a demonstration” Jonathan tossed the junkie the machine, which he caught with relative ease. The Red Eye sprayed into his eyes like mace. Jonathan remained stone faced as the junkie had his last high. He focused intently on the junkie, such that he didn’t hear the men enter the bar, their guns clanging about, their jackboots stomping, their intent malicious. He was too focused on the money he was about to make to notice the man in the room next door waiting to shoot them dead. Jonathan never asked a junkie where he gets the drugs. Junkies are too unreliable to ask such things. Had he, he would have shot the junkie before he took the Red Eye. Even the junkie was aware of what was going on before Jonathan. It’s not paranoia when the mob really is out to get you.

What eventually alerted Jonathan to the source of his demise was the sound of Hope being frightened after someone burst in through the front door as if it wasn’t unlocked. The last coherent thought that went through Jonathan’s mind before it was splattered on the ground in front of him was something along the lines of, “Oh no, not again.” Just another body for the pile.

Mind the Gap…

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Get everybody and their stuff together. (Intro)

Cowboy Bebop was an anime series of loosely connected episodes that focused on a group of main characters traveling the universe to make money. I Break Down is a series of loosely connected short stories inspired by each episode of Cowboy Bebop. This can range from a thematic element to a minor character to something far more obtuse. The goal is to understand the art of Cowboy Bebop by replicating its style in a unique and interesting way. That, and to improve my skills at writing fiction in third person.

In truth, I have no history with Cowboy Bebop the way I did Peter Parker or even Scott Free. I only actually watched Cowboy Bebop in its entirety shortly before I finished writing Fearful Symmetry, hence my vagueness when writing about Spider-Man’s love of the series. (Though there was one failed attempt back in high school that was thwarted by the series being removed from YouTube for legal reasons.) As such, this will not be a semi autobiographical project where I turn my depression into a form of literary criticism. But I hope it will be a form of literary criticism like any are blatantly riffing on other works of art is.

These short stories can be read in any order and the release order is truthfully arbitrary, if somewhat funny depending on how much you know about the series. Like Cowboy Bebop, there is no overarching storyline that ties it all together in a nice bow, but there will probably be connections of some sort. Whatever happens, happens, as they say.

Be Seeing You…

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