The Luniferous Gazette #8: Breathing in the Summer Rain

Thoughts from Space Station Sarah 

 

I live in a far northern state, which means I might as well dwell inside a sealed space station for five-six months out of the year with outside temperatures that can dip as low -50°F. The sun may blaze the snow outside my window to white diamonds, but I know better than to stray beyond my shelter and touch them. 

I don’t want to breathe in the cold glitter that can frost my nose hairs and bite my breath in the time it takes to pull my trash to the curb. The days are short and teasing with their wan sunbeams, and the dark nights swathe my mind until I can barely think straight. I try to play it cozy with the winter, but by March, I’m veering into cabin-fever crazy! 

Why am I sharing all this in the dead heat of August? Because the promise of the bright and warm months used to get me through the mandatory icy season. But as our world boils just a few degrees hotter every year, my summers have changed. 

More often than ever, I am driven out of my precious green haven back into the refuge of my house as wildfire smoke drifts in from burning forests. My eyes and lungs sting as I watch behind the glass as a palpable haze smothers everything. Even the sun dims into a different, angry red star from a shadow dimension.

Yet after relentless days of smoke, my state finally got a respite this past Sunday with the rainfall. I was so happy for a chance to go outside and just frolic in the wide world again! Armed with my trusty five dollar yellow umbrella from a 7-Eleven in Japan, I set out—nothing fancy, just a wet walk around the neighborhood.

I took so many pictures of random things, cataloguing spangled spider webs—

 

Ripening seed pods—

 

Dew-pinned rose scraps—

And damp, incarnadine-threaded leaves.

All of nature’s little live jewels that I was forced to abandon because of the smoke.

 

I couldn’t help wondering if all my summers will end up being like this now; something to run and hide from behind air conditioning and fancy filters, with only brief forays into the outside world permitted when the rain falls and cleans the air just enough—

To breathe in a forsaken paradise.

To gulp deep Earth’s atmosphere like a lost astronaut returning planet-side after a far and lonely journey home.

Future/?/INK

TO TECH WITH IT ALL

First, we replaced live circus animals
with cruelty-free entertainment—
Holograms hurt nobody.

And later, when famine, flood
and fire erase the last flesh
and blood creatures

From their natural habitats,
we’ll repopulate with even
more holobeasties!

Turns out, all we ever really
needed from the world
was the IDEA—

Not the thing of it.


*In 2018, the German Circus Roncalli replaced all animals with holograms in concern for animal welfare—a noble sentiment in an ailing world.

INK of Others:

Epic by Conor Kostick

I adore this book because of how the author explores the power of duality. The society of New Earth relies on the virtual game world of Epic to resolve all conflicts, banning violence in their physical reality by allowing it exclusively in Epic.

But by becoming dependent on a game to function as their legal and economic system, poorer citizens are forced to waste valuable time earning wealth in a virtual world to gain a meager allotment of resources in reality. While a person’s entire livelihood can be wiped out with their player’s death, those players who amass enough wealth in the game can become privileged members of New Earth’s elite Central Allocations.

The young boy Erik tries to beat the system by creating “Cindella,” a swashbuckling character who attracts the attention of an ancient electronic sentience in Epic. I could go on, but I don’t want to spoil the story. I think what draws me deep into this story are the simultaneous double stakes—Erik must balance two identities, his own and that of his female player Cindella, and exist in two worlds, New Earth and Epic. What happens in one can have dire consequences in the other. That’s cool (whichever way/world you slice it). Also, don’t forget to check out the sequels!

~*~

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