Fremder

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In the deep chill and the darkness of the Fourth Galaxy, in the black sparkle of deep space, oh so lonely, see a figure in a blue coverall tumbling over and over as it comes towards you: no space suit, no helmet, no oxygen. Is he dead? He can’t be alive, can he? What’s in his mind now? Are there pictures frozen in his mind?

Pictures in the mind! Words also. Again last night I had the dream, the one in which it was made known to me, perhaps by a written message, perhaps by the sound of distant weeping, that the rats were lamenting the removal of their sacred objects. I have never dreamed this dream on the planet Badr al-Budur but perhaps one night I shall.

Badr al-Budur (everybody calls it Badru) in the Fourth Galaxy is a little off the beaten track: because of El-Niño variables in that sector you can’t flicker to it, you have to go to Hubble Straits and jet from there. Badru is a place you stop at on the way to somewhere else, an in-between place, a middle-of-the-night scene change where you breathe bottled air that smells like LavaKleen and wait for the next jet to Erehwon or Xanadu or wherever.

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