Mars

Looking at Mars is different now. Through the telescopes, you can see patches of green and purple where the algae is taking hold. New shapes are spreading. Year to year it changes. There's a patch at the moment that the kids are calling the green man, not unlike the man in the moon.

Some of the teens have had the inserts downloaded to their iEyes so that they can see Mars without telescopes. The macro and micro on the most recent patch is amazing. Cops can do fingerprint identification just by looking closely at crime scenes and cycling through the spectrums. Doctors can operate at a new level, fingers like tree trunks sewing up microscopic wounds.

But Mars. Twinkling up in the sky as a new atmosphere grows. It's a war up there. The algae is fighting each other to make sure the most dominant strain wins. The colours are fighting each other for supremacy.

They say in fifteen years that the first private construction modules will be ferried over and fifteen years after that, the commercial flights will begin. Homesteading on Mars will be a thing.
I can't wait.


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the ghost of halloween

With all the recent changes to the darkness that I've seen.
The edges that were sanded off, the dirty made pristine
The safety and awareness and the need to be serene
The growing sense of friendliness and shunning the obscene
The Brothers Grimm made not so grim, the fairy tales made fair
The online hashtag victories enlightening the air
The value placed on human life returning bright and strong
The grey reduced, the right enlarged, the shrinking of the wrong
The evils of humanity that we all hope to cure
I think perhaps one holiday is losing its allure
October's bachannalia. The costumed autumn fete.
Although it's taken lots of hits it hasn't been killed yet.
And if it dies then that's okay 'cause it's the only one
That doesn't need to be alive to have its season's fun
Because a zombie works just fine, a ghost works just as well
A vampire or a demon up vacationing from hell
It's my favorite holiday, the best one that I've seen
This year I think I'm dressing as the ghost of Halloween
The Halloween that's not allowed. The Halloween taboo.
The Halloween that moral, righteous, good people eschew
I'll dress up as a sexy, sexist, racist, ableist male
A twitter nazi holocaust denier. With a tail.
I'll fake and accent, wear a head dress and a turban too.
I'll layer so much ignorance they won't know what to do
I'll work in sexy condiments and sexy flower bed
and sexy lamp and sexy tree and sexy severed head
Kimono, sari, big sombrero, khaftan, high heel shoes
I'll get thick glasses and some crutches to complete the ruse
Vocally my ignorance will match my outer gear
I'll be pro-Trump emphatically for everyone to hear
And if you try to challenge me about my costume choice
You won't believe how loud I'll raise the volume of my voice
I'll talk about free speech and how our country is a free one
And how I hate the knee jerk left and wouldn't want to be one
I'll rail against political correctness run amuck
And loudly claim quite proudly that I do not give a fuck
You know what? Wait. Just wait. This is a really bad idea.
If this poem has offended you, it's culpa mea
I admit that even as a joke that this is dumb
That where we're going has to be improved from where we've come.
Perhaps the chunks we've protested against this time of year
Are actually good parts to lose. It's actually quite clear.
That Halloween should not be seen as opportunity
to be a racist, sexist ableist with impunity
I take it back. The holiday is not in need of saving.
Halloween could use some rules to help us in behaving.
The day is dead! Long live the day! Our Halloween lives on!
Just make sure to double check the costume that you don.
True monsters live beneath the masks of flesh we wear all year
We need a holiday that is a holiday from fear
So let's all try to make October safer than it's been.
So everyone can have a safe and happy Halloween.





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Karroway

Coming home to your planet is always such a bittersweet experience.

Visiting simpler locales always leaves me feeling thankful for Karroway, my home planet. Simpler systems leave me in wonder at how the locals can even function. I had just gotten back from a recent addition to the galactic council. The inhabitants referred to it as Earth. I hate to call them primitive but they only had one mind state with a small percentage capable of two. The current minimum for intelligent life was at least five mind states but an exception was being made in their case because of their accomplishments. These one-state mammals had created basic silicate life, broadcast technology and even brushed with higher math. And not only did they suffer from one mind state, they had finite life spans! The definitions of membership and the galactic definition of life were being revisited. Earth was currently a pretty big tourist destination as a result.

That's why I went. I needed a distraction. Life on Karroway could be boring just with sheer noise. I turned three of my minds towards the porthole.

Karroway's four-planet heliod system came up bold and backlit by its three differently coloured suns. A red giant, a blue dwarf, and a yellow star sparkled brilliantly through the 8 ring systems interacting with each other. Our orbit-locked planets stood out beautifully. The gas-giant fuel center Leptus, the turquoise cloud-covered Reena, the temperate volcano paradise Cheng, and the startlingly Earth-like Rhoodus. Together the four of them orbited tightly around each other in traffic controlled ellipses and all four in turn orbited as one around the three suns. Each planet had a moon system of at least thirty moons, all inhabited. The rings collided through each other on the ecliptics, throwing sparkling dust out in constant rainbow fantails. Borealis sparkled along the gravitational bridgepoints between the four-bulbed shared magnetosphere. Unsuited travel between the four planets was possible as their atmosphere was also shared.

3 suns, four planets, 128 moons, and 8 rings. Overpopulated with complicated eclipses, dawns, and sunsets.

You can imagine my boredom at seeing Earth. No rings, one moon, one planet, and one star. Hard to believe complex life evolved on that rock at all. But my time there was relaxing.

It was contemplative. My multicolored body was of great interest to them. The fact that a good percentage of my biology inhabited the quantum was unbelievable to their scientists. There was a buzz of activity with every new alien that visited them. I was the first of my kind to be there, they said. My frilled tendrils blushed with the memory of how much I was fawned over.

I felt aggrandized and god-like, sure, but I was also humbled. These backwater rock-dwellers had accomplished so much. What had I done with all of my gifts? All of my insight, all of my dimensional awareness? All of my engineered biology? I had the ability to move single molecules with my tentacle tips and zoom in to watch it happen. I was immortal, having my choice of when to ascend. I had the capacity to speed or slow time, to access higher levels of energy life and talk to them.

For what? Idle fun. For all my complexity, all my afforded privelege and advancement, I was boring and lazy.

I felt invigorated.

When I got back to Karroway, I was going to write a book.



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