Involution Ocean

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We all have some emptiness in our lives, an emptiness that some fill with art, some with God, some with learning. I have always filled the emptiness with drugs.

Because of this I found myself, duffel bag in hand, ready to go on a whaling voyage on that obscure planet, Nullaqua.

Hie Nullaquan dustwhale is the only source of the drug syncophine. At the time of my voyage, knowledge of this fact was becoming more and more widely spread. Because I had learned it, I, John Newhouse, was living with nine others on 488 Piety Street in the Highisle, Nullaqua’s larg­est city.

The two-story metal building was known simply as the New House to us, its inhabitants. We were a motley group; the only tilings uniting us were our extra-Nullaquan origins and our connoisseur’s delight in Flare, the initiate’s term for syncophine. We were all human beings or close facsimi­les thereof. First among us was white-haired old Timon Hadji-Ali. Timon never told lis his age, but he was ob­viously at that period when the body’s own subconscious wish to die begins to take precedence over the ego’s desire for life. I often heard him speak of his friendship, centuries ago, with Ericald Svobold, the legendary discoverer of syn­cophine. Now, however, pessimism had overcome old Timon, and for years he had refused any rejuvenation. He wanted only to spend the last of his life depleting his slowly amassed capital and savoring Flare’s fierce brain-kick. In matters of policy concerning bur little group, we usually deferred to him as he still had the most money.

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