Excerpt: Journey to the Center of a Black Whole Son

Gary lived in Los Angeles through the 1980's. All of it. He survived, coming out of it looking like the bastard love child of a circle jerk involving Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Keith Richards, and a reconstituted velociraptor egg. Having moved there from a small town somewhere in Colorado, he had learned how to party like one of the Los Angeles elite and never stopped.

His eyeliner smeared and his fried and teased black hair flattened on one side, he stood outside his back door with his morning coffee in one hand and the other reaching for a second cigarette. One got the impression that Gary no longer even knew that he smoked. His hands and mouth just automatically went through the motions for him. Some program that seeded in his brain and sent roots down deep to that ancient part of the brain, the R-complex. The old reptilian brain did this for him as automatically as it sought out sunlight and food and mates.

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Stepping out onto the pavement like a two ton lizard with crooked knees. Too much time trapped at a table in a reality a bit too small for me. I try to walk and wish I could fly and float, feeling the effects of a low Earth orbit. Too low and too slow. I do my best just to match pace with the rotation of the globe. Some times you have to move very fast indeed just to stay in the same place.

But I don't want to stay in the same place. I want to move up to a higher orbit. A little voice in my head says that I can fly if I just spread my wings and try. Before I make an ass of myself I remember that I don't have wings. I imagine growing some but the cost just to update my wardrobe makes me reconsider. So I move my feet to change my orbital position to match that of the other orbital units with which I have chosen to cluster. Floating off into the night.

Instinctively I gravitate towards my rocket but the Rain comes and reminds me that we can walk there. We'll come back for her later. Jack regards it with confusion and amusion.

Sixty nine?

Sixty five I tell him, with a sixty nine style case. One of a kind. Just like me. Just like everyone.

Away from the main drag the buzz of hive activity quickly dissipates and dampens, lost in the leaves of old trees arching over us. A tunnel of darkness to shield us from the moon light. A guided walk way directing us down a path. A vast difference of constricting propulsion pushing us through the darkness into the unknown, the unknowable, the novel, and the noble. Exploration leads to discovery which leads to creativity which leads to discovery which leads to curiosity which leads to exploration which leads to discovery. Or it leads to death. Either way you know more than you did when you started.