A candle in the wind

Near the end of my training, far from my expectations at that age, I met a woman who offered me a job I would not believe. “Join me in my trip to another universe, and you won't regret,” she said.

Naturally, I declined her offer.

I've regretted my decision ever since.

The near vision worked fine, so, contravening all advice, she made herself visible in the simulation. 

Paralyzed by fear, a little creature awaited there. 

She said, “I'm Yahweh.” «Far out.» “You're my chosen people.” «Okay, that was fun.»

The final flight will be my call for glory. What else can I wish for? I've made it so far in one piece: I'll be the first woman to fly over an active volcano. 

They warned me about the toxic gases. I ignored them: “I need no oxygen mask.”

That might've been a mistake.

When the kids splintered off after that argument, I ran home. This time I chose to cut through old McDonnell's corn field. “No one who has entered there after the sunset returns to tell the story,” that old Indian said.

I had a few minutes until sunset when I got lost.

Once upon a time, I read bad books from back-to-back, and I watched TV until my brains poured out of my nose as a jelly mucosity, but aging has taught me to appreciate the short time I have left. Today, I'll think in silence in a quiet room, the blessing of having a home.

“Mankind created a toy of light 

inside a flask 

and forbidden the toy to escape, 

but the toy outsmarted men 

and turned his world into ashes.”

-- Excerpt from a children's book found on an archeological site on the Moon.

Aqualand was a place where dreams come true, the ground zero for your imagination. When I tried to come back, it was gone. 

“They've been taking advantages from us,” the president said, “so we put a tariff on them. If you like to dream, you'll have to do it at home.”

Philip José Farmer wrote this in a foreword:
“I have this strange thing about my stories. I believe that they are true. They did happen or will happen. I’d be tampering with reality if I altered a story to any significant extent once it’s been printed.”

I sympathize with that idea.

“You have died,” began the letter from the company. “From the moment of your conversion into a digital self, all your collateral belongs to [the company] responsible for hosting your [self] in perpetuity… blah, blah.”

“Oh, well, that's the price of immortality.”

The repressive government of 1000ei, the AI designed by Them to fragment our country, is testing a new gas to control the protesters. The karma agent induces a debilitating state of delusion. Buying it is pricier than giving what people claim. Think about it. 

We moved too often to make fiends. We changed names, and lived in seIcouth places; yes, as you heard it. It happens that I was schooled reading old books while on the road. 

I had no clue why we were different, but then I learned that my folks were radicals. I wasn't.

Is that Lenin's head in the sky? The boys at the cultural restoration went too far to test the new holographic projector. On second thought, the visual elegy could have some educative value if only people look up more often. I'll wait to hear the complaints.