Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction

I went to the asteroid to bury you

because the world had too much color in it.

I took a grimy tourist shuttle,

where the seatbacks played grainy footage

of the moon landing

and androids named Buzz and Neil

served tubes of orange juice.

When I tore mine open with my teeth,

the juice escaped as small wobbling suns.

I unhooked myself to swallow them

like I swallow your name. Buzz glared; Neil

asked me to return to my harness.

I docked over Yorick’s Crater and saw

new biodomes bubbling in the bottom.

At the duty-free, I bought the vodka

that made you sick. I rented a spacesuit,

boots and extra arms for digging.

The neurolink fizzed in my brain

like a soft drink

and the arms did a preprogrammed

dance to limber up.

You’d have laughed. I filled my O₂ tank

at 35c per liter, enough for us both,

and left the airlock.

I walked through a stellar night vast

and gray. Tethered halogens lit the way

and at the city limit, cubes of trash

floated in a minefield. I walked

and walked with loping steps,

staring up at a star-spun sky,

until, like Orpheus,

I turned

to look for you.

Your voice must have been static

in the suit, because all I saw were my

cracked footprints.

I stopped when I felt I no longer existed,

and told my arms to drill. They churned

in rhythm, displacing untouched rock

into a swelling cloud, but it was

too smooth and too easy so I

drilled the rest myself, until

sweat beaded and froze

inside my suit and fogged

my faceplate.

I kissed your vacuum-sealed ashes

through cold glass. With vodka, I christened

the new crater after you.

I knelt in the frozen galaxy of dust and

pushed your urn down like a bobbing magnet.

That was when I realized I

had no way of covering you, no way

of returning dust to dust

and smoothing you away.

I couldn’t bury you

with a hundred thousand motes

haloing my head

or the hundred thousand words

in my desiccated mouth. So I said your name,

and it shattered on my tongue, it

latticed my faceplate with ice.