Welcome to Boneyard Town

There's a place where the birds all come to rest
Where their turbines spool down
Hydraulics bleed out
Gust locks are put on the flight controls
And the tires get chocked
When the pilots skip out of town

In this fabled place
The tails are lined up as far as you can see
This row is Boeings
And over here a long line of Lockheeds
Yonder is a pair of Convairs enjoying retirement
All mostly complete
Only missing the odd accouterment

I've got a few Douglas' left near the entrance
People like to buy them for anvils
Since they were overbuilt when new
And use has only tempered them to be harder
Some guy in Hollywood hammers out swords for the movies
Upon the back of a DC-8
While a smith in Kentucky fires horseshoes atop a DC-6
Whose propellers provide air for his furnace
And provides storage for spare steel inside of it's cargo pits

A stack of Merlin V-12's are in that back barn
I keep them out of sight and safe from harm
They live inside of their Rolls-Royce shipping crates
Covered in cosmoline
Which the rats say tastes great
No real use for them anymore
Made as they were to win an old war
Though the racers and restorers knock on my door
Begging to buy them till I tell them the score

For there is no price upon anything here
And the only way you'll walk out with whatever you hold dear
Is by answering twelve questions and staring me in the eye
Convincing me in no uncertain terms that you truly understand the why
Of the men and women who sell their souls daily just to make old things fly

Seaman First Class Hardaway ( A Tale of Earth 52.5)

The once white now grey mop head pushes the water around the endless curved corridor

The one centimeter slot that opened up as needed wherever cleaning was going on drained the excess water that found its way to it

Located dead center in the floor of the corridor

With a one quarter degree slope to the floor on either side

All the better to guide liquids where needed

The simple Maple wood handle attached to the mop was gripped in uncertain hands

That were not willing to lose their grip

Seemingly relishing the raising of several blisters from repetitive motion upon the wood grain

Water dripping into the drainage collected in small catch basins

To be gravity fed into the processing facility in the center of the ship

Which meant a vertical drop of 300 meters

Only fifteen meters shy of the radius of the ship sphere proper

Which would be measured properly from the other side of the thick bulkhead skin that formed the ceiling of the corridor

Gravity

Yet another relative luxury afforded the crews of the Pythia class ships

Equipped with powerplants based heavily upon those found on the Deimos a century ago

And having as a byproduct of their operation that little thing called gravity

It was artificial

Sure

But that almost made it all the more magical from an engineering standpoint

Need to have an area with low gravity or even no gravity for some reason?

No problem

Just adjust the prismatic controls in the deck plating

Which flies in the face of reason and logic

But no more so than a powerplant that emits a limited radius gravitational force

None of that mattered too much to our Janitorial Grade Seaman First Class here

(I know, the Naval ranking system makes little sense away from Earth sometimes; but the designation 'Spaceman First Class' never quite caught on)

As he was feeling some pretty serious pangs of homesickness

The Pythia was now sixteen folds out in her journey to an adjacent arm of the Milky Way

And currently in a fairly empty part of space

At the conclusion of each fold

Which was a fairly simple operation in and of itself

No different than going from Earth to Venus or Mars

But it was the magnitude of going one whole astronomical unit* at a go

Was what was giving everyone on board a bit of pause

Scout ships were sent to the destination coordinates each time 

Spaced one ED** apart

To take 360 degree readings and immediately return with the data

And after the area had been cleared the Pythia followed

After arrival

A minimum of seventy two hours had to be spent fixing their new position

Since the relative position to reference stars had changed so dramatically

To say nothing of the subjective position of the stars due to the change in their apparent positions from the hundreds of light years worth of position shift

After the present position had been approximated

A new bearing was taken to their destination

And a point two hundred light years further on was chosen

Scout ships sent out

Data verified

Fold performed

It was determined that they were taking a slightly curved approach to their target

But due to time and distance distortional relative movements of the Galaxy

Such a path couldn't be helped 

And all things considered

Was the safest way to go

Bringing us back around to our intrepid man in the corridor once again

Cleaning the floor

And now wiping away a tear

Feeling so far from what was once home that he gets a little dizzy trying to picture it

So he stops and puts the mop into the bucket firmly

Sitting himself down purposefully in the middle of the hall next to the drain slot

Bringing his left hand up to tap a light practiced rhythm on his earpiece

Calling out quietly "Janice?" as he did so

"Hello Jerry!" a perky brunette voice answered "How's it going?"

"Not great" Jerry replied

Sinking even deeper into his funk

"I need to talk"

"Always, honey" the disembodied woman reassured in a way that would have made anyone a believer

Jerry started pouring his problems out to Janice

His voice echoing softly down the corridor

Unapologetically sharing his fears with his personal AI

Pythia hung in featureless space

Her main flight deck alive with technicians tending to the slowly dwindling fleet of scout ships

Readying them for the next scout out which was only twenty two hours away

Six computers worked with each other across three decks

Networked with an ad hoc data cable system

Crunching the data imagery

Observations becoming numbers

Numbers becoming predictions

Placing the ship upon the map relative to points of reference

All the while

The mop water drained into the recycler

Going through strainers filters and tubes

Heated

Evaporated

Condensed

And poured into a glass for the Captain to drink

Held in a light grip

As his old eyes looked out at nothing

Waiting

*One astronautical unit; is simply a literary device at this point and a more realistic term and distance will be found

**ED = Earth Diameter

Bats and Balls

Do the words drag at you too?

Catching in your throat no matter what you do?

Catching on everything with their cruel barbs

Building up inside until you are fat

As if they were made of carbs

Flinging fast in enclosed environments

Speed of sound word bullets seem synonomous 

With bad intentions and not so idle threats

Has the sort of slow kid pulled the fire alarm yet?

If I bare my shoulders will it break your concentration?

As you know only so much is included in your ration 

Eye contact, not picking your nose, and now my shoulder too?

Whatever were we expecting when you rape us too

Boys will be boys when playing with their toys

And as long as we train them that their dick and balls are just such

We can't be surprised at the trouble the cause

At least not so very much

Little Shoppe of Typeset

Old typewriter keys tumbled from my fingers
Like Scrooge McDuck letting gold coins fall back into his vault hoard
Making random words on the way down
Or at least the illusion of such
If an image could be snatched from every angle at every synchronous second

W-H-Y-Shift-?

That's a big question
One that I'd be happy to make up an answer to
Just like millions of charlatans before me
But I just don't have it in me anymore
As you should know

W-H-E-R-E-Shift-?

That one is easier for sure
Because the where is right here
Amidst this hoarder's wet dream of typewriter parts
All stowed in military surplus bins and Folgers coffee cans
And not the coffee cans that are foisted upon us these days either
But proper metal ones in both blue and black
With added patina scratched into them
Garnished with just he right amount of rust and coffee smell

W-H-O-Shift-?

As much as I wish it could be someone else
It really has to be me who sifts through all this mess
With enough on hand to repair one hundred Royal Silent Specials
And several crates of factory new body shells for Remington Rocket Typesets
Some roller rubber sleeves and cotton cloth bags of molded feet
Along with restoration decals for brands I'd never heard of
In materials so old they turned to gold and white dust at the touch of my fingertip
I cannot escape the fact that this should have been you doing this
Just like your father before you and his father before him
Which was exactly why we had such a multi-generational pile of things here
Bowing the shelves and buckling the walls with their weight

W-H-A-T-Shift-?

And that is the question of the day now isn't it?
What to do with this glorious cornucopia of outdated office technology
In this age of Retina smart screens and voice to text artificial intelligence
For in this city of dreams that never should have been dreamt to begin with
The gutters still needed to be cleaned when those dreams failed
Lovers needed each other
And jealousy needed its green like the emperor needed new clothes
Under these broken lights I'll hang up my hat and fix typewriters for awhile
The work table seems to be the right height
The chair looks just the right amount of broken in for me
Perhaps even the customers will come
If I only turn on the OPEN neon sign for a spell

I wasn't a very good private dick anyways
The noir always got to me in the end

Middle Aged Mus Musculus of Mars (A Tale of Earth 52.5)

Eight long whiskers split evenly side to side
With the second to the bottom one on the observed left being a hair shorter than the rest
Centered by a pert pink nose with tiny nostrils that flared in rhythm to life's steady beat
Topped by two beautiful evenly spaced black shining eyes
All just barely visible over a small mound of rust colored soil in the furthest corner of the decagon shape walled town center

All the human activity was reflected in those twin intense black orbs
As twin crystal balls capturing the present for consideration
One man shouts something
Causing a twitch to the left whiskers
And an involuntary flinch of the eyes
Though they still observed unblinkingly

In this virtually predator-free environment
This particular mouse was practically royalty
Being of the five hundred and sixty first generation spawned from the first seven grey mice to stow away in a crate of supplies just over one hundred years ago
Surviving that seven month trip in storage locker 15F of the rotating habituation ring

If he had been human
There would have been no doubt much consternation as to how many generations exactly counted towards his personal total
And for the purposes of discussion we will say that the generational count began when the crate of flour and sugar was placed upon the high orbit transport at the Ecuadorian slingshot facility
(This of course all taking place before the Enrichment Facility Disaster of 2575 which rendered most of that country uninhabitable)

Upon landing and unloading at the first permanent colony of Homesport just West of Arcadia
Those several hundred initial mouse pioneers made their way onto a brave new world right along with the humans
Whose efforts to eradicate the mouse colony during the flight had served only to maintain a slight holding action at best
As told by the only modest increase in their population numbers in-transit

In all of this particular mouse's one hundred and twenty days
He hadn't seen activity such as this however
With sixty-two of the humans gathered within the town center
Surrounded by the ten sided walls of brown stuccoed black rock that was all too typical of post-Martian town infrastructure across the planet

The one human upon the raised platform directly opposite of the mouse observation point was making much louder mouth noises than the rest of them
Who were all facing him in a semi-circle
And clustered closely and comfortably in that mouse's opinion

Just as the small creature was considering losing interest in this decidedly non-food event
One more human entered the enclosed area just to the left of his corner
Drawing the whisker-nose-eye assemblage to bear upon this new intruder
Who was wearing a much bulkier set of outer covering over his body than any of the other humans in attendance

Screaming the loudest this mouse has ever heard
The new human blurted out a short burst of sound which meant not a thing to the mouse
But sounded like this:
"WE HAVE BEEN JUDGED UNWORTHY OF THIS UNIVERSE
EMBRACE THE INEVITABLE WITH ME BROTHERS!!"

Almost at the same time the hundreds of nerves at the base of all six vibrasse tingled in exactly what fans of a certain vintage comic book hero would call "Spidey Sense"
Causing the mouse to demonstrate one of the unusual facets of their existence upon Mars
And the source of much consternation amongst the human scientists

The fact that the mice of Mars did not suffer the same reduction in strength versus their Earth counterparts that the humans did

Pushing off as hard as he could from the firm mound of dirt he had been resting upon
The small quadrupedal body shot backwards into the only crack in the walls of the town center walls
With a speed that would have astounded his home world ancestors
Immediately whereupon the same mound of dirt was blown backwards as well
Stuffing the crack in the wall with its mass almost all the way to the back reaches of the void
Leaving our small observing protagonist face to dirt and rump to stone
With only six millimeters of breathing room

A small drop of blood formed upon the mouse's left earlobe
Leaking from the ruptured ear drum on that side
Finding gravity at last to fall from the still quivering pointed furry head
To the dry red hard ground
Beading like water upon a waxed surface momentarily
Before finding fissures upon the surface and being drunk eagerly by the suddenly vampiric planet

Leaving our mouse friend to gather his wits and escape somewhat unsteadily down the mouse size passage that would lead him back outside the walls
Adapting quickly already to only having one inner ear to steady himself
And thinking of a small bakery he knew of that usually had bits of bread under the cutting table to eat

Forgetting already of whatever that was that had frightened and injured him only minutes ago
Moving forward and living in the moment
In a now virtually human-free town

That Kid's Got a Future!

You are magical
Now don't let it get away
Think deep monkey thoughts
Dream big every single day

Put on your pants one leg at a time
Or throw them in the air
And jump right inside
Either way is just mighty fine

Your compass is calibrated
Your fuel tanks topped off
There's no telling how far you'll go
With legs so strong and mentality so tough

Wherever you do end up
Remember you can always come home
Though home might not be exactly where you left it
Not being necessarily a point on a map that wouldn't ever roam

Home is a safe place
And out there is not necessarily so
But with your head held on tight
We all think that you'll do all right

Boatman of Mars (A Tale of Earth 52.5)

Greenhouse complex 7B dominated the near horizon
Panes of locally made crystal glass angled just about right upon its roof to reflect a harsh glare into my eyes at this time of day
Causing the black jagged edges of the Hellas Montes range in the distance beyond it to stand out starkly

My eyes hurt now from gazing off into the light
So I dropped them to the water to follow the movement of my pole
As it pushed the small canal barge along in a steady rhythm powered mostly by yet another strange system left behind by the Martians when they disappeared long ago

The twelve foot pole which was made of a queer blonde colored semi-metallic material that was about fifty millimeters in diameter with micro ridges cast into the surface right where my hands naturally fell upon it

The pole fit perfectly into a system of holes spaced along the bottom of the three meter deep canal
Roughly conical in shape
They pulled upon the pole at first
Helping to guide it into the hole
Then when the pole was firm upon the bottom and at an approximate 30 degree angle
A force that humans were yet to explain acted upon the pole
Forcing it slowly up to a vertical position
And continuing to the opposite 30 degree angle before the hole released the pole
Both ejecting the pole end and guiding it to the next hole with invisible hands

It was an elegant, if slow, system of movement for a more civilized bygone age
Allowing boatmen like myself to use the force of the poles to push boats along the canals
By simply hanging onto the poles with our feet planted firmly to the decks
Usually braced by small blocks for leverage when loaded with cargo bound for the various villages and towns along the canal systems

If you needed something shipped on the cheap
I was your man
Though for speed, albeit with an accompanying proportional expense
There were self propelled boats of more recent manufacture to provide it

I didn't much approve of those newer boats
Or the other things we were doing with increasing frequency to change this stark alien landscape to better suit us
And to look more like what everyone thought of as home
Though 'home' was more Mars than Earth at this point for most of the people here now

With the first generation settlers growing fewer with each passing year
And the second and third generations taking over the day to day running of the colonies
This was where most of us were born and bred now

I felt we didn't need to be beholden to any notion of what it ought to look like
Unless we came up with it ourselves

Phobos broke the horizon to the West
Rising quickly under my watchful eyes
To the tune of the steady small water sounds of the pole
And the hull gently splooshing the water aside from the stubby prow

Eyes turned skyward again my  mind wandered with them
Out past captured asteroid moon Phobos
To about where I knew Deimos made its much slower way around the planet

Ever since the Houston-Shklovsky discovery of the 20th century
That the smaller moon was an artificial satellite of Mars
(and for a short time the same was suspected of Phobos)
Mankind just couldn't wait to get here to investigate it
Even more than the abandoned canals and cities
Deimos had captured our imagination the most
And it had provided the greatest rewards as well

First with robotic eyes
Then peered at through the helmets of pressure suits
The small moon that could really only be called a spaceship
Had revealed her secrets slowly
And advancing our knowledge of propulsion and design theory every step of the way

I'd visited there as a child
On school field trip
And looking back I can still feel the jaded boredom I'd felt at the time
Trapped inside my barely adolescent body I'd not appreciated what I was seeing
Because after all everyone knows where our current tech came from
It is ancient history now
Especially to a twelve year old boy who knew already that his lot in this life was to grip a boat pole on the canals

But now I yearn for those days
When there were more possibilities
When I actually cared to know where to find the Earth in the sky

At that thought I tried to seek it out again
Looking in the quadrant of sky I figured it to be in
Until I found it
Shining like a beacon ever so brightly

A little too brightly perhaps
With more of a pulse to the light than I remembered

Just then the comm box in the wheelhouse rattled what it thought was an alert
But was really just a hollow buzzing noise
Since I'd long ago removed the guts to the alert mechanism out of sheer annoyance

"Vid relay!"
I called out
And the head sized screen just inside the doorway swiveled to face me
Where upon its face a loop of text was doing a slow march across the screen

~Emergency Notice: Report to your town center for dissemination of information~

This was repeated over and over with no elaboration
Which meant one of two things I figured
Either it was nothing important and the local governments just wanted to puff out their chests to make people show up
Or it was something really big and they wanted us contained in the walled town centers before they told us

Well
I'm half a day away from the nearest town
So whatever it is can wait I suppose

Sploosh - stir stir - Sploosh
The old canal boat made a steady speed upon the water
Bordered by the half meter short walls that lined every canal on the planet
Cut from black stone into blocks
The twin black lines disappeared into the horizon like old train tracks from the picture books
Just as they had before people had come here
Just like they would long after we were gone