Pet Rocks

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When a trans-orbital cargo ship traveling twenty times the speed of light bumps into large, stationary rocks, it makes quite a scene.

I can attest.

I am witness.

According to the labcoats at NASA, I might be the only soul to see such a spectacle with his own eyes and live to tell the tale. Besides the asshole pirates who caused the ruckus in the first place, I have to remind them.

Up in the business end of my beacon, where the gravity wave broadcaster helps ships avoid my asteroid field, there’s a photo of an old man standing in front of a lighthouse as it gets battered by heavy seas. Some former beacon resident must’ve seen an affinity between our two occupations. And now I find myself wondering if any of those old lighthouse keepers felt this empty, gnawing, hungry, depressed sensation after a ship was lost on their rocks. I wonder if they felt this helplessness, this dread, this sense of duty derelictioned—if that’s even a word. Did they watch for weeks as planks of wood and tangles of rope washed up on their shores? Did they feel as though they didn’t do quite enough? That the blood out there was on their hands?

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