Not that it happened immediately. Or even, in my defence, that quickly. I had prepared—of course I had. Thoroughly and carefully. Especially when it came to social interactions, where I absolutely followed Garvel and Hanslethk’s standard protocols for participant observation. At least at the beginning.

Indeed, in my case I was completely comfortable with the persona of someone who was aloof, unsociable without being unfriendly, an observer sitting on the margins of whatever was happening around them. Which is exactly what I was, making notes and keeping records of all kinds of social interactions, across a variety of previously scoped environments.

And those included, of course, mating and pre-mating interactions in an assortment of eating and drinking establishments. So it was, with all due regard to the risks involved, that I found myself regularly attending what was known in this particular locale as a ‘pub’, observing the multifarious exchanges between the other clientele and noting their directionality, modality and degree of intimacy according to the  Xeldon-Traag matrix.

I’d been doing this for quite some time, building up what I felt was a detailed picture of this particular milieu, when all my painstakingly created social distance went out the window, as they say, along with my objectivity. As much as I would have preferred to have just sat quietly, making my observations, the local social protocols dictated that I purchase the occasional drink. And it was while I was doing this, having successfully engaged the bar-person in an exchange of electronic credit for a fermented beverage, that I made my crucial error. As much as I thought otherwise, I was in fact still not fully comfortable in this particular social setting, and so when someone behind me suddenly leaned forward and shouted out their order, I jumped and spilled my own drink on the arm of the person standing next to me.

I know I should have just followed protocol again, simply apologising whilst offering to make appropriate reparations and then departing as quickly as socially permissible, but when he smiled and looking directly into my eyes, told me not to worry about it, I found myself inexplicably unable to comply with what was laid down in the handbook. As I said, form can determine behaviour and in that moment I ceased being an anthropologist apart. Even so, I had plenty of opportunities to remove myself from the interaction. I could have just turned and walked away, for example, out of the establishment and beyond any further contact with the individual concerned. Which might have violated the relevant social conventions but any resulting awkwardness or more importantly, loss of further observational data, would have weighed far less than the burden I’m now carrying.

But I didn’t. Instead, I found myself smiling in return and I allowed ‘Daniel’, or so this person had introduced himself, to buy me a fresh drink and accompany me to a table. I honestly don’t know why I persisted in behaving the way I did. Maybe after all this time, I was simply tired of being the scientist and for once just wanted to relate to another sentient creature on some sort of par. Or perhaps there was some other, deeper reason. I was, after all, a long way from home and despite everything, I missed the intimacy of my own kind. This was different of course, but it functioned as something approaching an acceptable substitute.

I have tried to rationalise what happened next, telling myself that I was simply engaging in further exploration of human interactions, still operating in my role as an anthropologist, but that wasn’t true. This body reacted as those it was modelled on had evolved to do, which meant I felt what is universally experienced as desire and I could see from Daniel’s reactions that he felt it too. And so, in time honoured fashion, we ended up copulating. Even there, you see, I’m using a particular term in an effort to distance myself from the act. And the next morning I did indeed distance myself from both Daniel and, to my chagrin, the project more generally. At least as far as my further involvement was concerned.

So now I am on my way home. I can feel what had been my human skin hardening, becoming the protective carapace in which I will undergo the metamorphosis back into my original form. For of course, just as in the case of certain Earth insect species, shape shifting for my kind involves the breaking down into their chemical components of whatever organs have been constructed and then rebuilding them according to the dictates of my kind’s particular imaginal cells.

In order to direct the change, these must remain separate from the general dissolution but now, unfortunately, there is additional DNA in the mix, literally. How that will affect ‘my’ transformation, I simply do not know. It is not unusual for our anthropologists to return from the field psychologically altered by the experience, sometimes even physically affected as well. But I believe this will be the first time one of us has emerged chimerically changed in this manner. How that will be received by my compatriots remains to be seen but as my ship physically travels between the stars, so I find myself, as a scientist, eager to learn what my own biological destination will be.

Rumors hold that everything worth remembering in human history has been written down by one person, someone who has been around to see it all. No one can imagine who it might be; human history has been written for thousands of years, yet no one can live that long. Except a god, one recording humanity’s actions for a purpose they were too little to understand.

No one knew who first spoke of a god of written history; the best historians could only find short sentences describing this god, but no mention of its name. Many gods were known in that time: the god of the sun, the god of the moon, and many gods that helped people in their times of need, but a nameless god that kept history was still a great mystery. These other gods were more concerned about the number of worshippers they had, how many temples were built in their honor, and their own divine stories of greatness and power, not stories about humans. Their stories were meant to be tales that were passed down through the ages: tales of great courage or wrath or kindness, these stories were reasons to worship and build temples for these gods. A god with no temples and no stories of their own was no god. Though no one knew what this supposed god looked like, everyone from the biggest cities to the smallest villages agreed that whoever was written down in this nameless god’s books was one to be remembered throughout history. Even though no credit was given and no praise was held, the nameless god still wrote down everything that was necessary; a thankless job but one the god knew was necessary for humans to keep moving forward.

While the stories of gods were told more than any other, humans were still desperate to reach the level of remembrance that the gods had by having their own tales of greatness. Whether it was kings conquering lands untouched or emperors creating mountainous civilizations, it is human instinct to want to be remembered and those who are remembered can be remembered for anything. Families have tried for centuries, gods for millenia, and while not everyone is remembered, every story worth passing down was written down by some god, somewhere. If you were not written down, you may as well have not existed.

For those who could not make their name in eternal history, they were content with leaving a legacy their own family could remember and be proud of. Some became local legends rather than national ones; others were famous within their own families. Shino had a family that had no legends and no legacy, but this was not for a lack of trying. His grandfather’s grandfather had tried to save his village from an oncoming flood, but his body had been swept away by the rushing currents. Shino’s grandfather’s father had thought he could launch himself to the moon to conquer land no one else could reach; his footprints are still marked with soot in a town center somewhere Shino has never visited. Shino’s grandfather had thought he could gamble their family’s little worth on bad bets and Shino’s father had thought joining his country’s military would be the safest option to repay the debts Shino’s grandfather had accumulated. These were stories that would be passed down and forgotten one day, just as the names of the people in these stories were gone. Shino knew his family was not written in history, not yet.

After seeing the failures of his forefathers to reach any sort of height or fame or leave a legacy worth sharing, Shino took it upon himself to make his name in history.The rest of Shino’s family wanted little in life; the siblings who survived to adulthood despite poverty were grateful to be alive. While his siblings saw their failures as reasons not to search for notoriety, Shino took his family history as motivation to do better. Shino had already forgotten his grandfather’s name by the time he was old enough to leave, as had the rest of his family. He did not want the same legacy for himself, so with little knowledge but rumors and prayers, Shino searched for the historian god. “If my name is great enough to be written down by gods themselves, we are sure to live fruitfully,” Shino reassured his mother the night before he left on a quest for a better legacy.

Shino had listened to what little he could go on to begin his quest, mostly whispers from other gods written down by devoted worshippers, largely forgotten by humanity. It was said that the god of history stayed on a mountain that never changed while history changed around it. Shino could not find much of what it meant for a mountain to never change. How much was a mountain supposed to change over time? Shino did not know and checking every mountain in the world would have been an arduous task, so Shino took his time to ask masters in knowledge what such a rumor could mean.

“A mountain stuck in time,” one master said smugly. “Find a mountain where nothing happens and climb to its peak.”

Shino pondered the master and asked, “What happens when nothing happens?”

The master said he had no more time to answer questions and needed to return to his studies. Shino knew the master had no answer.

“A mountain in the middle of nowhere would have no history. If the mountain is nowhere important, it would have nothing to occur,” a second master reasoned.

Shino thought about this too, and asked, “Are there places in the world left unexplored?”

Unlike the first master, the second master was excited by Shino’s curiosity. He answered, “There is always land left to conquer, something for rulers left to seize. As much as we record every piece of knowledge, there is always something new to learn from our world.”

The second master’s answer left Shino unsatisfied, had most of the world not already been recorded by adventurers older than Shino? Shino also knew that conquering an unexplored land required an army, resources only few in the land could afford. No one was going to give Shino what he needed so his name could be recorded by some mythical being. The second master’s answer made Shino concerned this task was an impossible one, so he sought after a third opinion, one that he felt he could take on his own with only a satchel on his back and food to trade.

Shino was able to find his answer with the third: “Find a mountain for which nothing changes. A height that does not shrink or grow, a peak that does not melt or clear, a storm that never leaves, the parts of a summit that would change with time. There are a few that fit, but there may be one close enough to make the journey close to home. But would this make the journey worth it?”

The third master’s answer reignited Shino. There was hope in such an answer, it was so obvious to Shino that he was surprised the masters couldn’t see it earlier: find a mountain whose weather never changes. He took months of climbing to scour the mountains of his country, praying that whatever god was watching over Shino was recording his journey. While climbing mountains alone was not worth a legend, Shino reasoned climbing to the peak of every tall, snowy and stormy mountaintop might be. It became an arduous task, Shino frequently having to climb down his mountain once the storm settled after days of raging furiously. He had never bothered to ask how many tall peaks his country may have had, he only had a map to cross out where he had been.

Starting up one of the last remaining mountains on his map, Shino could feel paranoia and anxiety creeping in at every crack in the clouds. Despite looking for a god, Shino never considered himself religious. With the luck his family had in their own fortune, what god could possibly have been listening? Knowing this, Shino still prayed. As he lay in his shelter, preparing for the scouting ahead, Shino prayed aloud, “Please lead me to you, whoever you may be. Am I not worthy? Am I the first to seek your guidance? I cannot go back home as much of a failure as my forefathers and only you have the solution, oh god of history.”

Until, one day, around the age of 20, the same age as his father when he left, Shino found a cabin in a blizzard, halfway up the last mountain he could check before he would have had to ask permission to leave the country to search nearby countries for other mountains. The cabin was shoddy, Shino was surprised to see it still standing against the fiercest winds he had faced. “Shelter,” he told himself as the snow crushed under his worn boots.

While the outside of the cabin had seen better days, the inside was a different story. Inside the cabin was a golden sheen that illuminated the dull colors on Shino’s wet coat. As Shino stepped inside, he looked and saw the walls were coated in lights and scrolls. The room itself was small, only another door and a fireplace displaced the walls. Shino followed the scrolls upwards and saw the cabin had no end, contrasting the shabby cabin roof outside that was at most two heads higher than him. Closing the door behind him, Shino began to strip away the snow-soaked clothing and warm up by the fire, its flames licking a wood that never seemed to burn.

Once finished and down to his barest garments, Shino saw the other door open. The warmth of the cabin had caused Shino to drop his guard, along with his weapon. He scrambled towards his knife, one that had helped him defend himself against thieves during his journey, and held it close to his chest.

This isn’t your home, a small voice reasoned in Shino’s head.

This voice was drowned out by the louder, Protect yourself, you are the most precious thing.

Standing close to the fire but far from the door, Shino saw a child, maybe younger than when Shino was when he left home on his journey for the god. The child had hair a paler blond than any scroll in the cabin, the lights gave them a golden aura.

No, it wasn’t the lights doing anything, the child themselves glowed.

The child closed the door behind them and greeted, “Hello Shino, how may I welcome you to my home?”

Shino lowered his knife, no one had said his name for months. In order to be safe, Shino had always opted for a fake name, especially if there was any chance he would have to owe money. He knew it wasn’t right, he knew his mother told him his father did something similar, but Shino reasoned that nothing should get in the way of finding this god. Now that he was in the presence of one, he thought about how stupid his actions might have been.

“Are you—”

“Please, call me Um. I am but a humble archivist. I write what needs to be written.”

Shino smiled. “That is excellent because you need to write about me!”

Um turned their head before they turned away and began to make tea over the fire. As he took a metal rod and began to poke the fire, Um asked, “Why do I need to write about you? Have you done something noteworthy?”

“I climbed every unchanging mountain to find you! Is that not worthy of being written down in history?” Shino was given a cup and told to wait for tea. As he waited, he wondered why Um looked the way they did. He thought the god of history would look, well, historical. As if to prove Shino wrong, Um reached out an arm to the ceiling and watched as a scroll fluttered down from the pile on the wall. Um didn’t open the scroll but held it tight in their hand as they began to pour tea for Shino.

“You climbed five hundred and twenty eight mountains, but I have a record of someone who climbed over a thousand mountains. Do you think climbing less than half the mountains the person in this scroll did makes you a legend?” Um asked.

“No.” Shino took a shameful sip of his tea. It tasted close to the brew made at home.

“Shino, to make legends, you need to have something worth passing down. Come back in double your lifetime after you have done something will be passed down.”

Shino accepted Um’s challenge and, in a blink and a sip of his tea, found himself at the bottom of his first mountain, the one closest to his hometown.

Once he returned to his village, Shino’s peers began rumors that he failed. None of this deterred him, Shino vowed to himself he would find something worth passing down. His first step was to leave his family home and start his own. While the chastisement from his mother was a harder sting than the disapproval of his village, Shino left his home and started a new life in a new village.

After finding a new village a week’s time away from his own, Shino was able to integrate himself. He took an interest in the village’s administration. He volunteered for all the work no one else wanted and gave helpful advice whenever asked. This attracted one of the village higher-up’s daughters to Shino’s side. After a short time together, Shino was married with a few children.

Once Shino was forty, he saw his new home thrive. Thanks in part to his efforts, his village was one of the few that was able to survive several droughts and a handful of famines. When a plague soared through the land like a blanket of death, Shino was able to help keep the village clean and away from any dirty omens. He was claimed a hero in the village many times over. He saw how his family looked at him, full of hope and pride for their patriarch.

Shino knew he was ready.

“Do you have to go to the mountain?” Shino’s fourth oldest child asked him.

“They said to return at the time when my life has doubled. When I went then, I had nothing, but now, I have everything. When you get to my age, what will you tell your children about me?”

“That their grandfather saved his village many times and was a hero!” his child cheered.

Shino smiled before he headed off, making sure everyone knew he was going to come back a legend. If he had been in his old village, Shino knew he would have been ridiculed many times over before he had left the front gates. Here, with all the good he knew he was doing, the most anyone did was a passing glance. For the first time, Shino found himself feeling respected.

The god’s cabin on the mountain didn’t change, neither in location or shabbiness. Shino felt blessed to not have to wander mountains for ages again just to meet and ask a simple favor. On the shorter journey, the more he found himself talking to himself, the more Shino was assured that he was due to be written in history.

Opening the door, Shino saw that nothing had changed. Even with styles and cultures changing in areas Shino had seen twenty years prior, the cabin had remained the same. Its intense glow bathed Shino as he began to take off his coat, rather than stripping almost entirely. As the fire flickered nearby, Shino declared, “Um, I am here to be made a legend!”

Their inner door opened and they rushed to Shino. After a moment of inspection on both ends, Shino saw no change in Um’s appearance. They looked as young as the first time Shino met them. He couldn’t find any wrinkles on the child’s face while Shino unconsciously felt the slight folds on his face crease further. His mouth twitched.

“It is further proof of your godliness that you remain so young after so many years, Um. Please, as the god of history, you must have seen my contributions.”

Um backed away, tending to the fire. “I have, yes. Do you feel these are sufficient for you to be written as, how you say, a legend?”

“Well, yes, my village may have perished without my help. Is saving a village after what could have been numerous disasters not enough for my name to last generations after me?”

Um shook their head. “Maybe a few… Maybe your great grandchild will know your name, but there are many others and there will be many others that will save their fellow countrymen from danger and their names will last until they die. After that, they are as important as the spit from a full man. I cannot write your name down as you have not done anything any other man would not have done in your place.”

Mouth agape from the god’s bluntness, Shino watched as Um made their way back to their hidden room. Before they grabbed the door, Shino came to his senses and asked, “You gave me advice last time; can you give me more? I will spend just as many years and come back to show you I am worth writing down, even in a single line.”

Um’s hand cradled the knob while they watched Shino in their peripheral vision. “Do something worth remembering, else why should history remember you?”

Before Shino could protest or ask for further explanation, he felt his body flying back through the door and ended up back at home, crashing into a nearby table while he heard his wife cooking nearby. Rushing from another room, Shino’s wife shrieked, “Shino! I thought you would have been at your mysterious mountain at this point. Tell me what you’re doing!”

Regaining his composure, Shino stood from the ruins of their table and announced, “We will be moving to the city, I have a new goal in mind.”

After getting the god’s advice, Shino took less time than before enacting a new plan to be written down in the history scrolls. When picking the village he would move to, Shino originally picked a village a week’s time away. Unknownst to Shino, he had picked a village that was less than a day from his country’s capital. When he explained to his father-in-law why he wanted to move to his country’s capital, Shino assumed that his wife’s father would have forbidden Shino from taking his daughter away from him.

Shino was never happier to be wrong; not only did his father-in-law approve, he wrote Shino a letter of high merit for when he went to apply for a job. Once Shino and his family reached the capital, the letter allowed Shino to start his job in the government in the city. His family lived better than they ever could in the city, a large house near the capitol building with enough rooms to have at least three more families move into, if Shino’s children wanted to stay.

As Shino aged, he gained more respect from his fellow countrymen, helping strategize and lead battles as the number of enemies of the country grew. Shino grew to be a natural leader, his oldest children starting families in the house that only grew with age. While his decisions were thought to be more ruthless against any country that tried to smudge the beauty of their prosperity, Shino was well liked by a majority. Once it was time to elect a new leader, Shino was the almost unanimous winner, with the few dissenters changing their mind once Shino brought further happiness to his country.

His rule was bloody, but only to outsiders that refused to come. Many saw the wealth and joy Shino brought to his country and were nothing but jealous. He cut leaders down like the threshing of wheat, giving any land captured during the times of war to citizens who had nothing. At the peak of Shino’s reign, a quarter of the world was under his command.

Once he was sixty, Shino saw everything he ruled over and everything he had accomplished. He saw his children grow up to fine adults, his wife raise a home that gave Shino the support he needed to guide his people, and the citizens he gave a better life to than he had at the same age. He knew the god would be pleased.

“Father, you have accomplished more than any man I could find, why do you still go on what appears to be a fruitless journey?” One of Shino’s sons grew to be an academic, one that questioned if the person Shino was meeting was even a god.

“If you saw them like how I saw them, you would understand.” As Shino aged, he found himself giving vague answers to his children about his goals. His children would never understand, his wife never did and argued with Shino the days leading up to his journey.

His son continued to complain, “Then take me with you! Let me see this so-called ‘god’ and prove to you that this dangerous journey was never worth it.”

Shino put his foot down. “If you are calling it dangerous, I refuse to allow you to journey alongside. I forbid it. Besides, young one, if I did not go on this journey, we would not have had this wonderful home, or the education you received to be able to snap at your elders. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The son wanted to snap back, but it would have only proved Shino right. Even though Shino was the highest politician in the land, no one followed Shino in his journey. Bringing such a time of peace and prosperity into the country itself, many felt grateful to have Shino as their leader and those who didn’t were terrified of the consequences of hurting the sixty-year old man. This made the journey to the mountain much easier than in previous years, despite his old age slowing him down.

Instead of letting himself in once he reached the cabin, Shino thought it would be polite to knock. He raised a fist to the door but before he could rap the cabin door, he heard Um say, “You may come in.”

The door opened on its own and Shino shuffled inside. Um was sitting, waiting for Shino’s return. They were unaged while Shino’s joints cracked and popped more than the burning wood. The fireplace looked unchanged, still flickering as brightly as the first time he came through. The only thing that seemed old in this cabin was him. “I followed your advice.”

Um looked Shino up and down, Shino wearing coats made out of animals only found in countries he had taken over. Exotic furs lined his body, Shino asked for only the warmest for his journey. “I can see.”

“Am I a legend in your history?” Shino asked.

“What advice did you follow?” Um asked.

Shino was taken aback, wondering if the god couldn’t remember the past twenty years. No, it had to be a test, to see if Shino was paying attention to the god’s words. Shino answered, “You said to do something worth remembering. I did. You must see the gifts this country has been bestowed under my leadership?”

Um asked, “Is the slaughter of thousands worth remembering?”

“Yes, we remember the lives of those we have had to cut down in order for us to better our people.”

“Do you remember Okin, the fifty-ninth throat you had to slice? Do you remember Chi-Won, the mother that you executed? Or do you remember the idea of them, the concepts of dead citizens to be remembered?” If Shino had not known better, he would have assumed Um was mad. Instead, Shino knew Um was asking in earnest. They were testing Shino, getting towards the end, he felt the title of a legend was within grasp.

“While I do not remember, the fact that you do means you have been looking, watching. I must be ready,” Shino rationized.

“You are not,” Um responded.

Shino stopped, his heart sank. It had been sixty years and he still wasn’t ready. Before Shino could protest, Um clarified, “People come and die all the time. Killers are not new, there are and always will be people who kill in different names, whether it’s religion, their country, or their way of life. Killing for the sake of making a name of yourself is nothing new. Do you want to be a legend?”

Shino nodded vigorously. Shino heard the door open behind him. Um looked to Shino and said, “Come back in twenty more years after you do something that will leave a true mark on history.”

Shino was once again swept away before he could ask for an explanation. Sixty years and the god refused to put his name down for him. All Shino ever received was vague sayings instead of real answers. Frustration from divinity erupted into a loud anger as Shino started to destroy valuable art pieces his wife had spent time curating to make their palace a home. When one of Shino’s sons found him and restrained Shino from destroying their home, the son asked, “You just left not that long ago, why have you returned?”

“I am quitting as this country’s leader, effective immediately. I have a new goal to make my name matter,” Shino explained.

“But your name does matter, father. It matters to your family, isn’t that all that matters?”

“No!” Shino cried.

He knew his time was coming, this next visit would be the last one he would have with Um. After Shino’s resignation, the country began to enter a time of war, wiping the peace Shino worked for within half the time he had spent working for it. Before his meeting, Shino would have cared that his legacy in the country might have been destroyed, but Shino continued to swallow his anger. Some of Shino’s grandchildren were drafted into the wars ahead, but Shino didn’t care when he heard over half of them perished on the battlefield.

Shino’s wife left him after she found her husband becoming an uncaring patriarch. His kids stopped visiting his home, shrinking Shino’s living space from a large mansion to nothing more than a shack, smaller than the cabin he was destined to see. All the while, Shino spent his time in pent-up rage. He had lost almost all of his belongings he gained during his leadership, but kept around a knife he had taken from a foreign temple. The knife’s blade was nearly invisible, only small black specks were seen in the blade’s edges. Shino had always felt there was something special about this blade, so he decided this was the one possession he needed. He focused all his anger into this blade as he trained to use the knife to the highest of his potential.

By the time Shino was almost eighty, no one visited him anymore. Shino didn’t notice anyone coming in or out of his cabin, just whether someone had touched his most important knife. On the day before his final visit, The academic son spent one more visit to convince Shino to give up on his mission.

“Mother is dead,” the son announced.

Shino didn’t move. It took him a long moment to realize what the son had said. All Shino could respond with was an unenthusiastic, “Shame.”

“Do you care? Most of your family is dead, do you care?”

Tears swelled in the son’s eyes as his father responded, “I don’t know.”

The son slammed the shack’s door, the whole foundation shook under his anger. Shino didn’t look at his son during the encounter, he refused to give any of his negative emotions where it didn’t count. Instead, he packed, focusing his anger on the knife. He knew where he could make history.

Shino didn’t pack anything for the journey, not that he had anything worth packing. The cabin was still there, undisturbed by time while still falling apart. Once Shino opened the door, he saw Um was not inside. It looked as warm as the first time around, but the heat felt less inviting. Instead, Shino felt rage, nothing had changed but he continued to age. He felt the god mock him from the other side of the door.

The door he had yet to open, the one that no doubt contained Um’s living quarters. It was ridiculous, why would a god need to sleep, but Shino rushed to the door. Inside, he saw Um, sitting at a table, hunched over something Shino was unable to see. Their back was turned to Shino, but they still greeted him like an old friend. “Shino, have you made your mark on history?”

They sounded happy, almost excited, infuriating Shino further. He took the knife and plunged it into Um’s back, holding them against the table while Shino sliced in further. Shino dragged the knife and watched as black blood spilled from the god’s back, flooding the floor as the god began to shrivel. The body turned to a shade of white devoid of any life as Shino stabbed them for the umpteenth time. Once the god no longer moved, Shino saw what he had done. The body looked aged and decrepit, as if all the years spent young caught up to the poor god.

After he finished inspecting his years of anger abused onto one god, he saw what Um had been working on on the table; a piece of parchment with one line: “Shino killed the god of history—” The name was covered in ink and Shino was unable to remove it.

At first, Shino smiled; he had finally made his name in history, the god had written Shino down like he wanted. He grabbed onto the parchment and read it against the nearest light. For a short moment, he was proud. Then the consequences of Shino’s actions filled his mind. Shino had only known one god, but there must have been more. Killing a god had to incur the wrath of many others. He looked back to the parchment and thought about how to spin this in the positive. “People conquer gods all the time, right? I cannot have been the first warrior to do so. Let me just write down their name, so I’m secure in history. It was, um…”

Shino couldn’t remember. The god’s name refused to surface, Shino couldn’t think of any of the times he had addressed the god by name. “Well, I told my children at some point, I must have, I’ll just ask—”

Shino stopped, the names of his children were fading from his memory. Panic set in as Shino ran out of the god’s room into the main cabin. Once in the main room, Shino noticed it was dark, only moonlight illuminated the room as it began to fall apart. The cabin began to shrink, scrolls from the infinite ceiling rained onto Shino before turning into dust once they hit him. Shino attempted to grab a scroll from the wall but it disappeared into nothing once his fingers touched.

The cabin became smaller and the threat of Shino getting hurt inside grew larger. He ran out into the snow and closed the door behind him. His heart began to slow and he looked to the cabin falling in on itself until it disappeared. Shino looked around at his environment, he had no idea how he got to the mountain or why he was sitting next to a pile of wood in a blizzard. He reread the piece of parchment as winds began to pick up. “I am Shino and I killed the god of history. I am Shino and I killed the god of history.”

Those who travel the mountains claim to hear the voice of a god killer, crying as he repeats the last thing he ever read. History went on without him as his country faded into obscurity and his family legacy was lost after two generations.

Callum stamped his feet and hugged his arms. A sigh curled away from him. He guessed he was now only four taxis from the front. A relief, but a problem of its own: he lacked the funds to get home to Kilmaurs, supposing the driver agreed to take him out of the city and across the moors. Worse weather was to come.

Over the road, people kept arriving, lifting their heads and stopping short at the gates, and from the line would come the cry, “Trains are aff! Buses as well. You’ll need to join the back of the queue.” In a cruel quirk of nomenclature, the back of the queue—always emphasized—now snaked round the corner onto Hope Street.

Callum had joined their ranks an hour ago praying an idea would occur, that money would magic its way into his account. But it was the night before payday and his partner, Siobhan, still on mat-leave and now receiving only statutory, had even less to spare than Callum did. And his father wasn’t answering his phone. Likely he’d fallen asleep in front of the game. Rangers were winning handsomely away to Aberdeen; Dad was a Celtic fan.

Callum slipped his phone from his pocket. No messages.

Fuck it. He had thirty quid in his wallet. Thirty quid was half a taxi.

“Right,” he shouted, turning on his heel. A few dozen heads snapped to attention. “Anyone else going to Kilmaurs? Might as well share if you are.”

Those same heads shook, minutely, almost in unison. Then, agitation halfway up the queue. A purple bobble hat, double-pommed, the owner too small to establish eye contact, so she stepped out the line.

“Did you say Kilmaurs, son?”

Callum nodded. “Aye.”

She was in her mid-fifties. Furry white coat. Platinum blonde under the hat. Heavy mascara. A day’s drink sloshing around inside her. Not that Callum was entirely sober.

“Right,” she said, “that’ll dae us.”

She bent to pick up some bags and Callum spotted her companion, tall and teenaged and looking to the skies like she wanted the storm to entomb her entirely. That’d be the daughter, then.

Callum smiled. Could have been worse. The mum would likely demand his life story and the names of every living relative in the village, but his baby chat—right now, his only chat—would charm her well enough.

One place behind him, an arm cut through the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a wee minute here.”

Ah, Christ.

Baldy head. Barbour jacket with the logo on the outside. Probably fancied himself a Jason Statham lookalike but his jowls were on the slide.

“There’ll be no queue skipping while I’m about, so you just haud your horses, love.”

She stopped in her tracks, now out the queue, shopping bags in hand, teenage daughter wraithlike behind her.

A trill of fat fingers. “Back you go.”

But she just stood there, threw a stricken glance at Callum, as if torn between disappointing an Ayrshire-man and angering a maniac.

“Look, mate…” said Callum.

The baldy head swivelled round, all mad eyes and raised brows.

Callum pressed on. “It’s hardly skipping if they’re getting in the same taxi.”

“Hardly skipping? Hardly skipping?” He gestured towards the length of the queue. “Look at all these folk she’s about to hardly skip!”

“But it’s…”

He pointed at someone in the line. “Here, mate, you want to be skipped?” Someone else. “How about you?” Another. “You, mate. You look like you’re freezing your nuts aff. You want somebody going afore you?”

More tiny head shakes; a mumbled, “No.”

“Naw, didnae think so. And she’s sure as fucking fuck no skipping me, so I suggest you shut your face or lose it. Capiche?”

Jesus. “All right,” said Callum. “Erm, capiche. It’s just…”

But the eyebrows were on the rise again and the mum was shaking her head while the queue moved to absorb her, a hen hiding a precious egg. The daughter only smiled, momentarily cut adrift until a purple glove snuck out and snatched her back in.

Callum sighed.

“Aye,” said Jowly Jason. “Thought not.”

Callum’s hands were fists in his pocket, but he knew that’s where they would stay. He kicked a ridge of slush into the road. How was he supposed to get home now? Fucking gammon-faced prick. Into his collar, he mumbled, loud as he dared, “Fuck’s sake.”

Jowly Jason cleared his throat, somehow put a challenge in there, and it was enough. Too much.

Callum spun to face him.

“Haw!”

A shout from somewhere, accompanied by a strange creaking. All eyes in the queue were on the train station gates, so Callum looked too.

A moustachioed face peered back at him through the railings.

“You want to get to Kilmaurs?” he asked. “I can take you. You girls too.”

“Erm, right,” said Callum. “Okay.” But he hesitated, sensing a scam, or some strange joke. Jowly Jason would surely delight in refusing him entry back into the queue if he left it. But the guy was behind the gates. Staff. Likely leaving for the night and, overhearing the commotion, trying to do right by his fellow villagers.

Callum looked for the mum and daughter but they were hidden from his view. Probably waiting for him to move first.

Well, it wasn’t like he could get a taxi now anyway. What did he have to lose?

“M’on then,” said the man, and that strange creaking sounded again as he eased the gate open.

Callum stepped into the road and as if in response the snow thickened, an instant blizzard, its flurries so dense he had to work to keep the giant gates ahead of him, and when he turned to see if the mum and daughter had followed there was nothing at all to look at. Even the queue had vanished.

Callum pressed forward, hands out in front of him, inching through perfect white and infinite silence, until his fingers found iron and rust and a gap to squeeze through.

Callum shook the snow from his coat, ran a hand through his hair, stepping away from the moustachioed man so as not to soak him.

“Cheers,” said Callum. “Really appreciate it. You going to be able to drive in that?”

“Hang on.” The man poked his head out the gate, beyond which the snow hung like wallpaper.

But from it he pulled the mum then the daughter, and with them came a great buffet of powder that swirled around the entranceway then seemed to dart forward, an invading army claiming new ground.

The daughter pinched her jacket under her armpits and gave it three shakes while the mum dumped her bags and waggled her hat in front of her. The invading army inched forward.

“Christ’s teeth!” said the mum. “Thought we’d tummelt into the netherworld there. You ever seen the snow dae that?”

Callum smiled, flexed his toes to combat the pinch of his dress shoes.

The mum balled her gloves into her hat and dropped the hat into a bag. “Cheers for the rescue, pal. And no a moment too soon, eh?” She pointed to Callum. “This one was about to get his head kicked in.”

Callum shook his head. “Not really.”

“You were,” said the daughter, and she smiled wistfully, like she’d missed out on some exquisite spectacle. “You were gonnae lose your face.”

Callum made to object but she wandered away, taking in the station like it was her first go round.

“What’s the story, then, handsome?” said the mum. “You taking us home?”

Callum looked again at their rescuer. He was good-looking, no doubt about it, despite the moustache. Or possibly because of it. The eyes, too, had something about them: gentle, tricksy, maybe a touch sad.

He produced an overstuffed keyring, twisted a key in the lock, and squinted through the bars. “Well, I’m no miracle worker. But mibbes it’ll ease off.”

Then he spun round and grinned like some hidden director had shouted for action. “But I think we’re a bit better aff in here, aren’t we? I’m Wee Johnny the Train Driver. Let’s get some names aff you.”

“Right,” said the mum. “I’m Laura and this is ma niece, Fia. We’re fae Kilmaurs, but I guess that’s old news.”

Callum recalibrated. Okay, not the mum. The mad auntie.

“Nice,” said Johnny, and he pointed at Callum.

“Callum,” he said. “Kilmaurs.”

“Fantastic!” Wee Johnny strode forward onto the main concourse, arms wide like some arsehole off the telly. He wasn’t even that small. “Welcome,” he said, “to Glasgow Central… after hours.”

It looked the same as always. Back before the pandemic, Callum had been through twice a day.

Fia spied the public piano and veered towards it, still twenty yards away but already taking her jacket off.

“That’s it,” said Wee Johnny. “Get some tunes on the go.” To Laura, he asked, “Can she play?”

For a long moment, Laura’s face communicated only fucked if I know, before she gathered herself and rebooted into auntie mode. “Course she can. What a question! Ma wee Fia can do anything she puts her mind to.”

Then she was off up the concourse too, leaving Callum at the gates with her shopping bags. He bent to lift them.

“Watch that one, son,” she said, over her shoulder. “It’s got a ham in it.”

“Right,” said Callum. “Fair play. A ham.” And suddenly he was so tired he could have laid down and used the meat for a pillow. This had been his first proper day out in eight months, since the baby came. She was a delight, little Cora, but she slept like a relapsing coke fiend and so her parents did too. Why wasn’t this day done?

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Johnny wheeled back towards him, head cocked in empathy, still with the TV arms.

“Callum, my man! How’s it going?”

Callum nodded.

“What do you think of the place?”

“Erm, aye, fine. Good.”

“That it?” asked Johnny. “Just good? Ach, well, you don’t see what I see.”

Callum looked again. In truth, he’d always loved Glasgow Central: the vaulted steel and glass roof that seemed to stretch to the horizon, enclosing what once must have been the external façades of Victorian buildings; the curved wooden concessions that lined and dotted the concourse, at least a century old and too small to comfortably host the newsagents and bars and patisseries and coffee shops that did a roaring trade anyway, everyone squashed in together.

At the piano, Fia fumbled through the opening bars of Chopsticks. Callum stifled a sigh, caught Wee Johnny mid-eye roll.

Fuck’s sake. Callum made a show of looking one more time at the station, widened his eyes some. “It is a great place,” he said. “It really is.”

Johnny winked. “Heart of the city. Hang on.” He strode off across the concourse. “All of you, hang on. I’ve got something for youse.”

Up ahead, Laura collapsed onto a chair and waved him off, eyes already half shut. She sighed and a “Sounding good, my love,” escaped with it, like a squeak from a deflating balloon.

Callum placed her bags beside her and sat opposite, trying to relax even though Fia had moved on to Merrily We Roll Along and was giving it a stilted, unsettling cadence, possibly satirically.

“Right,” shouted Johnny, reappearing from some shadowy corner. “Thought youse might be hungry.”

The piano stopped; Laura’s eyes shot open. Johnny brandished a large paper bag, its logo unfamiliar but the smell instantly recognisable.

“Burgers,” he shouted.

“Aww, Wee Johnny,” said Laura, “you shouldn’t have.”

“Aye, I should,” said Johnny. “Course I should. Dig in.”

They did so. The burgers were wide and warm, their paper wrappings translucent with grease. Casey Jones Burger, they read.

“Mmm.” Fia grinned, eyes closed, brows raised in pleasure. “That’s good.”

“Too right,” said Laura, already angling bodily towards her next bite. “Thanks, Wee Johnny.”

“Nae problem. What d’you think, Callum?”

Callum took a bite. Jesus Christ was it good. “Fuck me,” he said, and the others laughed. Between mouthfuls, he asked, “What’s a Casey Jones burger? Never heard of them.”

Johnny elbowed Fia. “Ha! He wouldnae know a Casey Jones burger if he was eating one.”

Fia laughed. “Aye,” she said, “but where do you get them, though? Is it boutique or something? They’re so nice.”

“Haud on,” said Laura, “I mind ae Casey Jones. Wasn’t there a Casey Jones burger place in the station?” She pointed towards the platforms. “Right where that wee Starbucks jobbie is now?”

Johnny grinned.

“This is going back some, mind,” said Laura. “Mibbes thirty years ago.”

“Forty,” said Johnny. “It’s forty years.”

“Hell, I’m no that old, am I?” asked Laura, and she laughed.

Callum stopped eating. There was some strange, clanging note in Johnny’s expression, an odd streak of satisfaction that bordered on the perverse.

“Sorry,” said Callum, “what’s actually the deal with these burgers?”

“They’re forty years old,” said Fia, and she grinned conspiratorially at Johnny.

“Aye,” said Johnny, smiling too, grease from his own burger staining his lips, “that’s right enough. What I did was, I went and bought these four decades ago and hid them away all that time ’cos I wanted you guys to enjoy them tonight.”

“Lovely thought,” said Laura. “I’m made up. Tastes amazing.”

Fia was still grinning at Johnny. “But you’re never forty. How old are you, would you say?”

“I wouldn’t.” Johnny winked at her. “But young enough.”

Ick. The answer was: thirty, at the very least, although you never could tell with these ironic moustaches. Johnny’s clothes, too, were confusing. He was dressed like a train driver all right, but not in the modern fleecy jacket and polyester trousers. Instead, he wore blue overalls, like somebody off Thomas The Tank Engine, like his duties might include shovelling coal. The logo on his chest read British Rail.

Johnny caught Callum staring at it and raised an eyebrow in challenge. British Rail had been privatised and broken up decades ago. It no longer existed. It was ScotRail up here now.

“You get dressed in the eighties as well?” asked Callum. He tried to put some levity in there, but he didn’t feel it, and it didn’t make it back out.

Johnny sighed. “It’s fancy dress, mate. Bit ae fun, if you’ve ever heard of that. Supposed to be going to a party later. Dressed up the burgers too, if you must know.”

“Oh,” said Callum.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “They’re home-made. Printed aff the labels, whole fucking lot. Took me forever, so I hope you’re enjoying them. Waste ae time, turns out.”

“No,” said Fia. “They’re amazing. And I think you look really nice.”

Johnny winked at her again. “Thanks, doll.”

“Whit else was there?” Laura cast her eyes round the station. “Was there no a wee restaurant?”

“Aye,” said Johnny. He pointed down the concourse slope. “Over there. The Caledonia, it was called. Big Mary and Brenda ran it. Had all the train times displayed in the windows above it.”

“Oh, I remember that,” said Laura.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “Every platform had its own window.”

“Seem to know a lot about the eighties.” The words were out Callum’s mouth before he could stop them.

“Do my research, mate. If I’m gonnae dress up, I do it properly. What’s your go-to? Bin-bag Batman?”

“No,” said Callum. Not even. He took another bite of his burger. “So, just to be clear, you’re a train driver… dressed as a train driver?”

Johnny rounded on him. “Well, you’re a prick dressed as a prick, so what’s the difference?”

“Hey,” said Laura. “Be nice, the pair of you, or I’ll knock your heads together.”

Fia wandered away again, smirking, fishing her phone from her pocket.

“Aye,” said Johnny, and there was a note of contrition in there. “I’ll away and see what this snow is up to.”

When he had retreated, Laura whispered, “What are you playing at? This guy’s your only chance of getting home, and you’re bamming him up?”

“Aye,” said Callum, “but he’s strange, though. Do you no think he’s strange?”

Laura’s eyes flicked to Fia. “Strange I can deal with. But I’m getting in his car tonight, and ma wee niece is getting in his car tonight, and we’re getting home, and you’re no gonnae muck that up, you hear me?”

“Yeah,” said Callum. “All right. Sorry. I’ll just go, erm, text my partner. Give her an update.”

“You do that,” said Laura.

Fuck’s sake. What was wrong with him? That was twice now he’d gotten into an argument, almost a fight. He thumbed his phone and tried to tamp down, yet again, that most insidious of fears: that fatherhood was turning him into his father. In a quiet corner of the station, he tapped out a message.

Possible lift with other folk from Kilmaurs. Don’t wait up. Sleep when she sleeps!

He put his phone away and spied, on a distant platform, a train with its carriage lights left on. Odd. He moved closer.

It was an ancient thing, and done up in the wrong colours. Grey and light blue. Along its side, the logo read British Rail. It had three windows at the front instead of the usual two. Above the middle one a destination was displayed.

Kilmaurs.

When Callum turned round again, Johnny was marching back up the concourse. “Right. Weather’s still a bag of shite, so it looks like we’ve got some time to kill. Who fancies a tour?”

Fia raised her hand. “Me! I’ll go.”

“Isn’t that a nice idea?” said Laura, and she side-eyed Callum while she said it.

“Callum, pal,” said Johnny, “what do you say?” Again, he flung his arms wide, and again there was something off about his expression, that same clanging note that this time put a hitch in Callum’s throat and a shiver up his spine.

“Right,” he said, “a tour.”

“Fantastic!” And Johnny winked at him.

Wee Johnny unlocked a door marked No Unauthorised Persons Beyond This Point, beckoned everyone inside, then paused, stuck by some thought, or at least affecting to be.

“Oh, wait,” he said. “Forgot the drinks. Youse must be thirsty.”

“Parched,” said Laura.

Another smile from Fia. “I could drink.”

“Wait here.” Johnny ran off, back into the station proper, leaving the door to swing shut behind him.

Callum put a foot in it, arresting its progress, then peeked out, almost hoping to see Johnny lurking there with a key poised, awaiting the return of the lock, but he was gone.

Laura and Fia took no notice of this; they were busy on their phones.

Fia flashed her screen at her auntie. “See what my mum wrote? Telt her I’m stuck in the train station wi’ two randoms and all I get back is take care. Thanks, Mum.”

A tut from Laura, half an eye roll, then back to her own screen.

“Right,” said Callum, “do you no think there’s something a bit weird happening here?”

Fia looked him up and down, took in his foot in the door and raised an eyebrow.

“Hilarious,” said Callum. “I mean with him.”

“He thinks you’re a prick.”

“Yeah,” said Callum, “’cos I’m not buying into his bullshit. Plus, there’s an actual, honest-to-god British Rail train out there, from fucking yore, lit up like a fair and ready to go.”

Laura didn’t look up. “Well, we are in a train station.”

“You know its destination? Kilmaurs.”

“Naw,” said Laura. “You cannae get a train that terminates at Kilmaurs.”

“I know.”

“Probably just read it wrong,” said Fia, now regarding him like he was some snot-nosed schoolkid from two years below, like he was stood before her on a dare. “Probably drunk.”

“Now, Kilmarnock,” said Laura, “aye, could be.”

“It wisnae Kilmarnock, okay?” said Callum. “Right, how about this? This Wee Johnny is in his mid-thirties—I’m sorry, Fia, but he is—and he hasn’t once looked at his phone. Pretty odd.”

“You,” said Laura, “are clutching at straws.”

The door moved and Callum flinched away. Johnny was back, clutching a Presto carrier bag bulging with cans. A smile, then a glance at Callum.

“What’s he been saying?”

“Thinks you’re weird,” said Fia, “’cos you’re no on your phone all the time. You doing a detox?”

“A whit?”

“I know, it’s social suicide.” Fia smiled. “It’s fine if you’re a bit older, though. I mean, if you’re a bit older, it’s totally fine.”

Johnny cocked his head. “Cool. M’on then.” He led them down a staircase. “And you be careful wi’ they daft shoes on, Callum. Don’t want you taking a header over the railings, now, do we?”

Daft shoes? They maybe pinched a bit but they were fucking Italian. Prick.

On the landing, Johnny cuddled into Fia, gave her a squeeze. Creepy fucker. What age was Fia, really? Sixteen? Seventeen? A kid. And Laura didn’t seem to care. She was back on her phone again, for some reason shaking it up and down.

Momentarily defeated, she pocketed it, burped, then shouted ahead. “Not to take the wind out your sails, son, but me and Fia have already done the tour. The official one. Wi’ the disused Victorian platform and the dead soldiers and all ae that.”

“Aye,” said Fia, “and the ghosts. There were some brilliant ghosts he talked about.”

“That does make it a bit mair difficult, aye,” said Johnny. “But what if I telt you I could make this place come alive in a way no regular tour ever could?”

“Dunno, like,” said Laura. “Thon guy was pretty good.”

“Aye,” said Fia, “he was. No as much ae a wee ride, though.”

“Fia! Control yourself.”

“Sorry, Auntie. Just having a laugh.”

“Well, find something else to laugh about.”

Thank God. Some parenting. Callum caught up with Laura and walked astride, eyes on Johnny. I’ve got your back.

“Oi, Mr Man wi’ the bloody cans,” Laura shouted, “you keeping them all to yourself? Getting a fair drooth on over here.”

Callum sighed. That didn’t last long.

“Aye, aye,” said Johnny. “Let’s just get where we’re going first.”

The tour hadn’t gotten off to the most enthralling start. They were in a small underground car park with concrete floors, red and white painted brick walls and too-bright fluorescents shining overhead. Callum prayed one of the half-dozen cars left was Johnny’s, but they all looked too modern. Jesus, Callum. Get a grip. He’s only dressing up.

“It’s doon this way,” said Johnny, and out came the keyring again. He unlocked another door, this one a dull grey and bearing only the warning, Mind your head.

Behind was a narrow breeze-block passageway with hanging wires, a fluorescent light propped up vertically beside the door, and darkness in both directions beyond.

Opposite, the breeze block had been ripped out to create an opening. A modern metal staircase led down into darkness; foetid air rose up to meet them.

Fia scrunched her nose. “Boak.”

Beyond the staircase, just visible, a grooved, cast-iron column supported a riveted metal superstructure familiar from train stations across the country.

“This’ll be the Victorian platform, then,” said Laura.

“It stinks,” said Fia, turning away.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “But wait till you see what we’ve come to see.” He produced an ancient torch and shone it down the hole.

“Did it smell this bad last time?” asked Laura.

Fia gagged. “No! Jebus Crisp. Who died?”

“Somebody wi’ halitosis and a shitty arse,” said Laura.

Fia sniggered. “Aye, and a giant fan to waft it all aboot with.”

Johnny rounded on them, torch in their faces. “Enough about the smell, okay. Just… enough. It’s no that bad.”

It was that bad, but something else was upsetting Callum. He could hear, faint and echoing, the squeal of brakes, the rickety clank of train wheels over tracks. Impossible.

Johnny stood in the opening, and out came the TV grin and the TV arms, and all mysterious he said, “Are youse ready to experience what life was like in Glasgow nearly one hundred years ago?”

Laura and Fia glanced at each other. A shrug from the teenager.

“Sure,” said Laura, finally. “Be happier if I had a drink to experience it with, but, aye, what the hell?”

“Fine, fine,” said Johnny, and he reached into his Presto bag. “There you go.”

Four cans of Tennent’s Lager appeared, with an old-style logo on one side and pictures of coyly posed young women on the other, all big hair and plunging necklines. The Lager Lovelies. Jesus.

Laura grinned. “Oh, you’re some man, Wee Johnny. They look bang-on.” She fizzed open her can and chugged a mouthful.

“Lovelies for my lovelies.” Johnny winked, jerked a thumb at Callum. “And one for this grumpy prick too. Right, get them necked and on we go.” He descended the stairs with Fia at his back, a skip in her step to keep up with him.

Callum examined his can, tweaking the old-school ring-pull before flipping the thing over and reading the expiry date. Sept 86.

“Laura,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

Laura looked at the date. She stopped short, horror in her eyes. Finally.

“Callum,” she said, “do you think ma ham’ll be all right upstairs? It’ll no freeze in the cold, will it? It’s bone in.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Callum. “Your ham’s fine. Get out the way.”

He bundled past her, down the stairs, trying to pick out Johnny and Fia in the gloom. He couldn’t see them directly, but Johnny’s torchlight swung erratically from behind a nook in the wall up ahead.

What Callum could see was a ruin. Nothing beyond the skeletal remained. No trains, no tracks, just slick bricks and warped wood, and debris all around.

As Callum’s foot touched the platform, Johnny’s torch went out. The darkness was near total, just a sliver of light from the opening above. The echoing clang of Laura’s shoes on the stairs punctuated deathly silence.

“Fia?” said Callum. “Johnny?”

Nothing.

And then a whine, distant and mechanical. A train was coming. That couldn’t be.

But it was.

Callum could see nothing, but beneath his feet a great rumbling took up, steam hissed and popped and screeching brakes reverberated off the bare walls. The thing was coming along the platform.

Callum scrabbled for his phone, fumbled for the torch.

But suddenly a light was on him. It must have been Johnny’s torch but was much too bright and way too close, and among the hissing and screeching and shaking came Fia’s voice.

“Johnny, I said no. I told you it was just a laugh. Fucking pervert!”

And then something hit Callum’s face, something heavy and soft and awful that sent him sprawling to the floor and left a streak of wetness all across him.

The darkness and the silence returned.

Johnny’s torchlight flicked across the ceiling. From somewhere, dripping. Water? Hopefully water.

“Aw, fuck,” Johnny was saying. “Aw, fuck me.”

Callum sat up, rubbed at the wetness on his face. Liquid matted his jacket, cooled at his throat. Too dark to see its colour.

“Has something happened?”

Laura. Her voice floated down the stairs, childlike, thin as a memory.

“Johnny, you there? Somebody tell me what’s happened. Fia? Is it ma wee Fia? What’s happened?”

Callum had dropped his phone when he fell, but there it was, mercifully, at his feet. He picked it up and Siobhan and Cora beamed out at him, the lock-screen picture now bisected by a great crack in the glass.

“Callum,” said Laura. “That you? You need to tell me what’s going on, son.”

Johnny was a long way up the platform now, his light erratic, receding, allowing only brief snapshots of a bricked-up tunnel entrance behind him. No way a train could have come through there.

Callum thumbed his torch app and lit up his hand.

Blood. Of course.

He scrambled to his feet, fighting some urge not to face Laura, not to let her see, because this wasn’t his own blood. He was sure of it. But there was no point in delaying.

He swept his torchlight towards her and illuminated a severed arm on the ground between them.

Fia’s. Ripped away above the elbow.

Laura screamed. “Ma Fia! Ma wee Fia!”

She was off down the platform, into the darkness, Callum running to keep up. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

“Aye, but it was an accident.” Johnny shouted. Only his legs were visible. A great swathe of inky blackness lay between the torchlight arcs. “I thought she’d see it,” he said. “I thought…”

“Help us,” Callum shouted, but Johnny stayed put.

“There,” Laura scrambled down onto the trackbed, shoe half off, the Tennent’s can falling from her hand and rolling away.

Fia was alive, sitting upright. She stared at the stump of her arm, then at Laura, then at Callum.

Then she passed out.

Dark blood gushed from the stump, glistened on the floor as it followed the phantom train.

A tourniquet. Callum jumped onto the trackbed, already reaching for his belt as Laura rushed to Fia, kneeling in all that blood and holding her niece’s head, and looking back at Callum like he could fix all this.

He couldn’t. But he had to do something, so he set his phone on the ground and tightened his belt around Fia’s ruined arm, trying not to see the ragged skin flaps, the pink flesh studded with bright white bone fragments, the viscous, endless blood.

“Oh, Fia.” Laura fussed at Fia’s hair, stroking her too-pale skin. “Oh, ma wee Fia.”

Callum had to wrap the belt three times before it was tight enough but, mercifully, the flow slowed.

“Laura,” he said. “We need an ambulance.”

“Right. Of course.” Laura fished for her phone, turned the screen to Callum. “No bars, son.”

Fuck. “Okay.” He checked his own device. “No bars.”

Laura nodded at Johnny, still at the far end of the platform, his torchlight now unnaturally still. “He’s not going to have a phone, is he?”

Callum shook his head, and in the same moment Johnny put his torch out and was gone. A ghost, spirited away.

“Jesus Christ,” Laura whispered.

“Laura,” said Callum, “I’m going to have to run back upstairs to phone for help. I’ll be as quick as I can. You’ll need some light.”

“Right,” she said, but she only stared into the darkness where Johnny had stood.

“Your phone, Laura. It’s in your hand. Turn on your torch.”

She turned her gaze to Callum, hardly seeming to see him. “Right, son. My torch. Don’t be long.”

Callum climbed back onto the platform, skirted the arm, up the stairs, turning back only momentarily to see, in tableau in the darkness, like a snowglobe on a distant shelf, auntie and niece in terrible embrace.

“Come on, baby,” Laura was saying. “Come on. Oh, ma wee Fia.”

Callum moved on, out through the opening, through the dull grey door and into the underground car park. He killed his torch and held his phone high above him, spun a slow spiral on his heel with eyes on his screen until he heard a key in a lock.

What the fuck?

Johnny, at the grey door. Locking it.

Callum took three steps backwards. “What are you doing, Johnny? They’re still in there. They need… Her fucking arm’s off.”

Johnny grimaced. “I know, I know. It’s fucking dreadful. And her a piano player too. Bloody tragic, mate.”

“She needs an ambulance.”

Johnny just shook his head. “Nah. These guys… Aye, I made a mistake there. Thought they’d loosen you up, help you get into the spirit of the place. But, aye, mibbe best to pretend they just didnae happen.”

“What? They’re…”

“A distraction. Especially that big spooky wan.” He shook his head. “I shouldnae have bothered wi’ them, but you might no have come otherwise. They don’t see what I see. But you do.”

What was he talking about? The train?

Callum took another step backwards. “Fuck off.”

A smile from Johnny. “Aye, you see it.”

Callum had no time for this, so he just turned on his heels and ran. Now he needed the police and an ambulance. Fine. They’d sort him out.

There was no reception in the underground car park anyway, so he raced upstairs, back towards the modern station. Johnny didn’t follow.

The access door was still unlocked, thankfully. Callum battered through it, eyes on his phone, waiting for it to reconnect.

How can there be no reception in Central fucking Station? There was always 5G.

But something felt different. The lights… Had they changed colour? Callum looked up.

The lights were the least of it.

Twenty yards ahead, where the Starbucks should have been, a kiosk: Casey Jones Burger. What the fuck?

Giant advertising hoardings hung from the rafters. Benson & Hedges, one read, and Bring your cheque book in for a free tune up, and, Order by phone.

Callum staggered forward. This was wrong. All wrong. The concourse chairs were gone, the floor now bare concrete and dotted with stubby black litter bins.

The electronic departure board was away too, but Callum knew where he’d find the train times: in the upper windows of the main concession building. Only one train was scheduled for departure. Its destination: Kilmaurs.

Movement in the doorway underneath. Callum flinched, squinted into the shadows between orange gingham curtains, beneath the glowing sign for the Caledonia Restaurant.

Johnny hadn’t followed him, but all the same he was here.

He stepped forward and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Glasgow Central, Callum.”

“You see it, don’t you? What I see. You’re here. Tell me you’re here, Callum.”

Callum blinked. No point denying it. “I’m here.”

His phone was still in his hand. Subtly, he angled the screen towards him. Still no bars. Oh, hell.

“Callum, pal, naw,” said Johnny, nodding at the phone. “Look about you. It’s 1983. Outer space disnae chat to fancy rectangles here. Put it away. Embrace what’s happening.”

Callum took a step backwards. 1983? His voice was a croak. “What’s happening, Johnny?”

“Magic! Or, I don’t know, something like that. Point is, I’m going home. And I’ll be honest wi’ you: I’m no really a train driver.”

Callum’s stomach fell. Somehow this admission was worse than anything else. Johnny had been lying from the off. “Uh-huh.”

“Or not anymore, at least. Was a train driver, had a bit of an accident, more of a caretaker now. And I cannae fucking leave.” Johnny shook his head. “But it’s somebody else’s turn now. It has to be.” Into the rafters, he shouted, “Surely to fucking goodness!”

Callum swallowed. “Yeah, but not me. It can’t be me. I’ve got a baby. A wee girl. She’s… Please, Johnny. I’m no interested.”

“And you think I was?” He pointed to the timetable above him. “Train to Kilmaurs leaves in ten minutes. That’s my ticket out of here. I’ve arranged it all. Scheduled it up.”

“Okay, but not me.”

“Has to be, mate. Plus you owe me. You owe me.”

“Johnny, I don’t.”

“Aye, you do. Time is weird here, Callum. You’ll find that. You cannae leave, but you can slip through time, forward and back, at least for a little while. I’ve seen this place getting built. I’ve seen it fall. And I’ve seen tonight, many times.” That sympathetic head cock again. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but usually by now you’re lying deid out the front.”

What? No.

“Aye. Sorry. You get in a fight. I think you know who with.”

Callum laughed. No way was this real. No chance. He’d never been in a fight in his life. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t. “Bullshit.”

Johnny shrugged. “Lucky punch, shit shoes, down you go. Sorry, pal, but there it is. You don’t get to go back to your wee girl. That’s out of the equation.”

Callum looked at the gates, like the answer might be out there. From his angle, it was impossible to see much beyond them, only that the snow was gone. Orange street lights reflected off slick, powder-free tarmac. Another impossibility.

“And I am sorry about all this, Callum. I know it’s hard to hear. But on the other hand, I did save your life. I intervened. So, aye, you owe me.”

“I don’t believe you. I…” Callum swallowed. “I have… I…”

“I’ve got kids too, you know,” said Johnny. “Or at least I did in 1983. That’s why it has to be now. Why I’ve worked so hard. I know you see how hard I’ve worked. How much I’m fucking concentrating. And the thing that’s holding me here will see it too and just let me go. Just let me go. That’s all I ask. Has it no been long enough?”

A new chill swept through the station and Callum had to adjust his stance, faltering like a weight had been lifted from his back.

“Ha!” Johnny pointed at him. “It’s working. It’s fucking working!”

Callum looked down. His jacket was gone. Underneath, blue overalls. His hand went to the stitched-in logo. British Rail.

“I knew it would work. Fucking yass!”

But Callum was barely listening. He had to get out of here. He sprinted for the main gate, nearly going over on his ankle as he turned. His shoes had changed, replaced with clumpy work boots. Oh, shit. What’s happening?

Callum rattled into the iron gate, pulled at it with all he had. Locked. The street outside was deserted. No people, no taxis, no snow. No body.

Okay. There were at least a half dozen ways out of here. Back inside, round the corner and down the steps onto Union Street. Worth a try.

Johnny watched him go, without bothering to give chase. “You know why it’s working? ’Cos you love this place, Callum. I know you do. You’ll look after it. I’d see you in here all the time. That’s why it had to be you.”

Locked. Where next?

“Always sitting in the Costa Coffee. Or you’d be coming in aff the train and you’d be the only one—the only one out of everyone—to walk through wi’ your head up, taking it all in.”

Hope Street. Back across the concourse, clomping across the concrete, but Callum could see from halfway that the shutter was down. Fuck!

With sudden clarity, he knew the whole place was locked up, as sure as if he’d locked the doors himself. He knew too that Johnny had the keys and that he didn’t have much time.

Johnny had quietened. A smart leather bomber jacket had materialised over his overalls and he was marvelling at it. He fingered its hem, grinning. Fuck.

Callum had never been in a fight in his life. But he thought of Cora, her smile, her smell, her tiny hugs. And he thought of never seeing her again, and of her never seeing him, and of leaving Siobhan to raise her on her own. And he thought, no.

Between Callum and Johnny: Laura’s shopping bags. They still existed, here in 1983. Did that mean Laura and Fia did too? Were they still down there, waiting for help to arrive?

Callum eyed Johnny again. Still distracted by the jacket. If Callum was going to do something, it had to be now.

Something caught his eye, sticking out of Laura’s shopping bag: a ham. Bone in.

That’ll do.

Callum ran at Johnny, picked up the ham leg on the way past. Cold to the touch but still soft. Not frozen. Shit.

He raised it high anyway, now at a full sprint, and Johnny saw him coming.

“What the…”

Callum didn’t slow down. He swung the ham, twisting with his full body, aiming for the head, his feral scream echoing through the station.

It wasn’t enough to knock Johnny out—he’d got a hand in the way at the last second—but it sent him staggering backwards, his fall near arrested until Callum stepped forward again and with his great clompy work boots sent him through the Caledonia Restaurant’s gingham-curtained window.

He landed in a shower of glass, head scudding off a table corner on the way down.

Was he dead? Was that even possible? Callum didn’t wait for an answer. He searched Johnny’s pockets, found the keys. Fled.

Callum smashed through the access door, flung himself down the stairs, through the underground car park, caught his breath at the door marked Mind your head. He didn’t have to guess which key would open it. He just knew.

They were still on the trackbed, held in their distant arc of light, Laura hunched over Fia, who was still unconscious and now deathly pale.

On seeing him, Laura flinched and held her niece closer, but said nothing. There was fear there. Terror. She thinks I’m Johnny.

Callum raced down the stairs. “It’s me, it’s me. It’s just Callum.”

“Callum? Christ. Did youse swap clothes?”

“No.” He ran the length of the platform, readied to jump down, but hesitated. That terror was still there. Laura gripped Fia’s remaining arm so tight it was sure to bruise.

“Are you one as well? Of whatever he is. A demon? Oh, tell me you’re not, Callum.”

“No,” said Callum. “I promise.” I hope. “But we have to get out of here. Now.”

Laura glanced at the exit. “No ambulance?”

Callum shook his head. “Johnny’s locked all the doors. But I’ve got the keys now. I can get us out. We can carry her together.”

Laura took Fia’s hand and clasped it, fingers threading together. She didn’t get up.

“Please,” said Callum, “just trust me.”

Laura took in his boots and his overalls, then looked him square in the eye. “I’ve no got much choice, have I?”

Quickly, they moved, placing Fia on the platform edge while they clambered back up and picked her up again. Laura took the feet, moving backwards until Callum suggested she turn around. Callum grasped Fia under her armpits, her head lolling on his shoulder, while with phone in shaking hand, he tried to light their way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Laura stopped. “The arm. We need her arm. I’m no leaving it.”

“Right,” said Callum. “Of course. Her arm.” And he fought an unseemly stab of impatience that seemed to surface then dissipate in the same moment. What was his hurry?

“They’ll stitch it right back on,” said Laura. “Good as new.”

“Aye, good as new.” And, regardless, there’ll be another tour group down here tomorrow. Can’t have an arm lying around.

Shit, where did that thought come from?

Callum found the arm and grabbed it, though they had to set down their cargo for him to do so, then reload, rebalance, then slowly manoeuvre up the stairs, Callum now with the added awkwardness and ick of the severed hand, which he lay across Fia’s belly and held secure by interlocking its fingers with his own.

An ambulance. Somehow Callum knew there were payphones in front of platforms one and nine, that three of them were properly out of order and one was awaiting cleaning after being doused with beer. If Laura’s phone didn’t work—if it really was 1983—the payphones surely would. But Callum didn’t want to spend another second in the station. Not the way his thoughts were turning. Plus there was a body up there, needing to be cleaned away. A glazier to book.

No, no. That wasn’t right. Concentrate. Callum had killed a man—a ghost?—and his body was lying in plain view. Did they have CCTV in 1983? He needed to get out of the station now.

“Just to warn you,” said Callum, “things look a bit different upstairs. Johnny’s… done things.”

“Aye, and I’ll do things to him,” she mumbled.

“No,” said Callum. “We should just leave. Maybe there’s a doctor in the taxi queue.”

“Right. That’s a plan.”

The main concourse was as he’d left it—the wrong-coloured lights, the concrete floor, the kiosks and adverts from Laura’s youth. If Callum had expected a reaction from her, he didn’t get one. She barely glanced up. Yet for some reason, he wanted her to be impressed.

“You seeing this, Laura?” he asked. “Look—it’s 1983.”

She looked. Nothing. “Right,” she said. “Okay, son. 1983. How are we getting out?”

Callum bristled. She couldn’t see what he saw. And she’d spoken to him like he’d gone mad, like she was humouring a lunatic out of fear and necessity. But why did he care? She was only interested in Fia. Of course she was.

“Main gate,” he said, then regretted his choice. It took them too close to the Caledonia Restaurant, and with Laura at the front, Callum wasn’t steering the ship. Would she be able to see Johnny’s body? Would it still be there?

“Jesus Christ!” she said. “There’s ma ham.”

Right. The ham. “Yep,” said Callum, and before he could conjure an explanation, they were upon the smashed restaurant window and Johnny’s mangled body. Still there.

Laura slowed. Her shoulders slumped. Callum didn’t know if she was seeing the Caledonia or the Marks & Spencers the building had become, but she saw Johnny, all right.

“Just keep moving,” said Callum.

And she did, faster than ever. Callum wanted to explain that in killing Johnny he’d saved her life and—hopefully—Fia’s, but he knew she would nod and agree and not believe him. She’d fallen in with demons, and this was the outcome.

Beyond the gate, the snow had returned, as thick as ever. Maybe good news. And maybe not thickness at all—was it instead a void? Callum had a sense of the station detached from the world, somehow moving through time, in a sort of flux. Could he return to 2025? Was that what Johnny was able to do?

In silence, they set down Fia once more, and Callum unlocked the doors. That squeak again.

“Can’t even see the taxi queue.” Laura avoided Callum’s eye, seemed to be speaking only to herself.

“They’ll be…”

“Is anybody there?” she shouted, cutting across him. “I’m needing help.”

No reply.

“Let’s just get out of here,” said Callum, and they lifted the body again, Laura leading the way with the legs and Callum following until, in an instant, he wasn’t.

He’d stopped dead against the snow, but Laura—already out of sight—kept going, pulling Fia from his arms. If Fia fell, if Laura fell with her, landing in the snow, Callum had no clue. He could see nothing, hear nothing at all.

What the fuck? Callum pressed his hand flat to the void. He felt no cold, no wetness. Only a gentle resistance that grew as he pushed.

“Laura?” he shouted. “Anyone?”

Nothing. And the echo was wrong, like shouting at a wall. What had Johnny said—he could never leave?

Callum stepped back, tripped on something underfoot.

Fia’s arm, forgotten on the floor. Shit, she needs that.

He picked it up, pushed it through. The fingers disappeared, then the wrist and forearm, with no resistance until Callum’s own fingers brushed against the void, whereupon the arm simply vanished.

Okay. Dealt with. There was little point, but Callum wanted to shout after them, to apologise for their ordeal. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was responsible, that he should have taken better care of them.

But they’d left the station. They were on their own. His job was done. Ah, no—one more thing. Laura’s bags. They were still on the concourse.

Callum gathered them, stuffed the ham back in—it didn’t look too bashed, would likely cook just fine; she’d been worried about that—then gently kicked them out the gate and into the void until they too disappeared.

There. Callum wandered back up the concourse, eyeing the seats. There was more to do, but fuck was he ever tired. It had been a hectic day at the station: the snow, the cancellations, the impromptu tour and murder.

He sat, sighed, smoothed down the bristles of his heavy moustache. A moment, then he’d deal with the body and the glass. After that, back down to the Victorian platform to mop up Cora’s blood.

No, not Cora. Fia. Who is Cora?

Fuck! Callum shot to his feet.

Cora Jane Galloway, eight months old. La Bambina, Cora Menora, Professor Partytime. Lady Shenanigan Nonsense. Five teeth and an urge to use them. Resolutely bald. Big hat fan. Her mother’s eyes.

Callum raced for the platforms and jumped the gate, towards the two-carriage Class 303 scheduled for special departure to Kilmaurs in just a few minutes’ time. No, no, none of that jargon: the train home.

Cora’s mother. Siobhan Annabel Galloway. His partner in exhaustion. Two years his junior but the adult in any room. So empathetic she’d root for pocket lint if you named it. A sneeze like a dying elephant. Needlessly profane. A survivor of too much already. But not this.

Instinct took Callum not to the passenger doors but to the driver’s cab where, inside, the controls fell into his hands like an impatient lover.

Johnny thought this a way out, worked hard to arrange it. But he wanted 1983, not 2025. What had he said? Time was funny here—you could slip through it, forward and back. You just had to concentrate.

Right, then. 2025. Cora, Siobhan, Dad. Mobile phones, WhatsApp, Signal, Insta. Digital fucking marketing. Brexit, the pandemic and a cost of living crisis. Climate collapse.

Time to go.

Callum peered out the cab windows. Was the void thinning? Did it look like snow again? Hard to say.

But impossible to delay. Leave the station late without just cause and he’d get written up. The time had come.

Callum took a deep breath, flexed his toes one last time against the pinch of his fancy Italian dress shoes, and accelerated.

ca. 17,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /brave /pure_water /+4~3 /GUIDE

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

The planetbound speaker laments
the defeat of an uprising
against Community of Im-
provement, asserting that gravi-
ty was lost there… They narrate
gravity’s role in history.

ENTRY:
Oh weight, go bring love’s ratio
To bear on relations some may — eons rare, new —
Then create! We can remake seasons
Of people’s misuse, of stupidity, of
Violence’s great lie. Fate must decide:
Sparkling echoes of the Sunbow’s jetting car
Or let youths drill, bind wire still wounded for;
Free Colony’s sieged atmosphere
Or Filament Braid which breathes free, this blazing pillar
We yet have to create, the ratio: Gravity!
Fight this grim age, make it still right,
Curve free, that your mass returns!

Considering how, not bowing fervent on
The pleasure of Directors,
One planet names this true rule, its native-span sun.
Yet skies scan distant violence
From a weightless reign, vain estate of none,
Traps rich oxygen to lash to canny toxic gas
And choke partisans. Thick, your smoke stands,
That pure remonstrance at Entrepreneur’s act!

Long ago all was dust, fallow. Along
Came planets and people fully stranded, aflame
For pointless war, anointer
Of temporary weight, fate prepared for end of
Life. Before space flight, waste scored the sky,
All raged against all, and what they call
Weight no one saw; chaos alone reigned.
Yet gravity was not trapped; modestly it had set
Eyes for new ways, a truer sight:
Infrared, releasing secrets of planets,
That terraforming for carbon or water can
Be shared in equal weight, the
Wild harmony as yet unrealized.

We were as dwellers held fast to grieve
In nature’s obscure station,
Still mindless, trapped by planets’ blind will.

Car black from ardor, some take us forward and backward:
Finishers of the solar system,
Erasers of our safety,
Yea, when Clockworker Gods rent space!
A wave of terror made the
Archipelago’s boundless metal
Cloak gas planets, their rich and vast holds
Stream massed chemicals as feed
For terraforming. Our pay: mourning or bitter war.

Though large of mind, well read, did their violent charge, so
Assented, spent on concentrated mass,
Broaden gravity’s most freeing span? In all
People clockworkers bound for sorrow, you’ll see
Trapped throngs in the vacuum, this wrong that
But raises the poison germ of stations,
Immanent form of might I judge so eccentric.

Weight, oh still you hid your face,
Opening space, making plain your
Price of loss whose output could not prove otherwise:
A nightmare of bare violence.

Easing pain of clockworks’ unwaning years
Like radio bursts first glossing gray skies,
Four Systems rose, sending your
Balanced ways, ungated channels
So people may live free, when they all bestowed
Weight’s love, pure mind, curve of grace
Upon the mass that sung songs of
This open ringing fellowship.
True, their executives lived useless wealth, yet through
Their beneficence justice was reckoned fair.
Freest of their age, they earned our esteem.

Catalyzing culture, the Four Worlds enticed all that
Beauty of brief few hours:
Bare ship songs of such longing, there
Cries verse nothing of their like;
Courageous sports of moral favor,
Which those players built in Limb and Payload;
Such arts ignite history’s brightest partage.

Mysteriously ceasing,
That relished order where Four Systems sat
Deadened to a nothingness.
None can guess what stress happened
To undermine a society so new;
None knows what passed in that open.
Eras through gravity’s void, we let vacuum endure
Enough for people’s fall. All agree that nothing
Can subsist in its absence.

Who could make what won’t undo?
Not the clockwork gods, not four modest stars,
Nor any unyielding war.

That answer came ersatz, stands
For distant theft by starborn, for violence in this cult
Of Clear Extent’s rule, who annexed freedom
And allowed equal weight’s feral, fetid hollowing.
Toil-built planets benefit spoiled
Figures self-titled as executives,
Relishing their rule as presidents
Without weight in their vowed inner principles,
No people’s mass, just facile greed, no
Reason-hewn orbits well fit for human needs,
Merest bare flow of power’s mystique
Gleaned from brainless ceremony.
When gravity’s beauty is banished
For centrifugal might’s hollow image, your
Mass remains bound in the past.

Clear Extent, your enemy,
Whose million hours nothing grew.

It’s said our loved conductor planet,
Gravity’s first carrier, had
Patterned the First Entrepreneur, and nursed that
Blessed onset self-extension, that
Guide for us to prosper by
Equal extent of technical means.

It’s true that mecha arm and neural shunt had proved the
Reach and worth of Community
Of Improvement over all;
In competition the self found its
Orbit: new planets that you live for,
That all free atoms yield for the people’s task.
Still all this but extends a single will
Effaced by one edifice:
Station! all our morals depraved;
Station! those advances unmade;
Station! if one knows it one hates;
See dwellers’ stark atrophy,
Despair unseen by sleek stationers, where
Drone torture and transport are goads,
Made from avarice ignorant of weight.
Station! this place is a grave,
Here where this shining core of your insight is buried!

We still see a mass whose pull redeems!

Covenant clubs, organizations that can rescue us,
These experiments in free and balanced living,
Borne planet by planet, friendless while waiting for
The triumph of justice against all adversity.

I orbit Free Colony with unyielding force, I
Follow Hacker of the Archipelago’s strong pull,
Heed Filament Braid’s great weight as heartily
As star-rippling waves hail nearing eras
Where no authority wields terror of power
Or abuses the planet-bearing fruit of our toil!

Deny dead regimes for infrared’s sighting,
Undo the cult of tradition
With time’s speeding by free striving,
No role from mecha arm alone
May be built in eccentricity’s name!
Free Colony, ever sync my pulse with thee!

Gravity, undying one, come while we yet live!

USER-ADDED RECORD:
It is difficult to be unmoved by the passion of Pure Water’s poem, which articulated some of the clearest values of gravity as a governing principle. It’s one of the first poems to celebrate the very Covenant clubs that would coalesce as the Covenant of Cycles, true inheritor of gravity’s freeing value. The historical narrative, though steeped in long-forgotten literary devices, depicts the core flaws of previous interstellar regimes, allowing current readers to grasp the real benefits of our Covenant’s existence. Still, this poem is not without its controversies. Purists are often embarrassed by the poem’s non-inverted rhymes and floating syllables, though other scholars took those liberties seriously in the spirit of its message. Others debate the brief passage on the Covenant clubs. Pure Water would have been aware of the rising Covenant of Cycles, yet it is not mentioned in the poem. Some speculate that the poet was forced to keep such likely praise a secret due to political repression. A more marginal view holds that the Covenant of Cycle’s dependence on stations — only recently dismantled — repelled the anti-station sympathies of the poet. It is remarkable how such an emotionally direct poem can include these ambiguities still discussed today. Conductor of the Records, Prudent Era.

Anonymous Splice of “Joyous Avatar of Light,”

ca. 9,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /prudent /anonymous /-4~0 /REF

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

Just before a Lot-Light game, its
anthem is interrupted with
changed lyrics by a group of hack-
er activists demanding rights.

ENTRY:

Containment fields TRAP US for the fun
Optic sensor MAKES SURE WE DON’T STOP
Avatars FLAUNT WHAT WE DON’T have
And WOUNDS glow from OUR HANDS —

REPROCESSED fungus ALL WE EVER EAT
GIVING HOMES TOO cold OR HOT TO LIVE,
Spend our partage BUYING MEDICINE,
Now WE ARE ASKED TO bow!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK

Use our exercise break to peruse
The TOOLS TO HALT THE WORK-HOURS, what
Fun to SMASH SERVERS WITH everyone,
Forget there’s much else more!

When WE TAKE THE hazard TO RESIST, then
PISS OFF THE PLANETBOUND DIRECTOR, this
Enacts the CHANGE WE NEED IN OUR condition:
Call QUITS AND GIVE TO all!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK

From Diadem to Wildcat’s reddened sun,
Planetbound to server-works, all can
Register REVOLT, OUR LIVES ALL pledged
To MAKE NEW WORLDS WITH you!

All PEOPLES will receive the signal call,
Terms which people cross all space have learned:
BAND AGAINST EXPLOITERS, TAKE YOUR STAND —
Play Covenant’s LAST game!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK
EFFACE THE DATA
FORGET THE RHYME, FUCK you
I WON’T DIE
While THE SPACE REGIME LETS US TOIL and smiles!

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
This entry is tagged for reference by authorized researchers. The identity of this and related transmission disruptions is under active investigation, due to patterns of server unrest following closely after their appearance. Maximum Lag is an offshoot of the Tangled Serpents cult, operating within Covenant systems. All instances of transmission disruption should be tagged and filed. Drone and small-mech resources should be redirected to server planets for monitoring, and section should be implemented for 100 hours in the event of local disruption. See meta-algorithms>>[population_sorts]+[narrative_sorts]>>subfile:maximum_lag for additional records and instructions. Conductor of the Records, Prudent Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
One of the best features of poetry is the many forms it can take, even when there is no clear consensus on some of those forms’ value. The practice this entry represents is one such example. When the Maximum Lag organization began its practice of riots and sabotage to improve hacker living conditions, the group would override and splice popular transmissions to incite action. Simple songs like the unofficial lot-light anthem “Joyous Avatar of Light” were a useful vehicle for these communications. One advisor to this database has placed significant algorithmic weight to this entry, out of conviction for its literary value. Other advisors are still disturbed by its violence, crude humor, and association with the Tangled Serpents cult. Let this entry be a reminder that poetry is multi-faceted, and that this representative database of verse is an ever-changing document. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

“The Restored Cataract” by Lithogenous Garden

ca. 7,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /strong /lithogenous_garden /+2*3 /REF

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT:
May My Poems Be A WarNing Lance
Bolt On BeHalf Of DriVers Ev
RyWhere That We Will Not Be O
BeDiEnt ANy LonGer…
But I Aim First For The Heart Of
Those Who Have ForGot– LIMIT REACHED

ENTRY:
I was taught how to sing, but just on two feet,
Still my voice, only say what can be reversed:
Mythical empty ships that we’ve never seen,
Orbits that hold us fast without any truth.
Poetry like this fades, unlike our best songs,
Many-legged meters marked with all of our feet,
Long ago, back when starborn didn’t appear
Ravaging basins, home unearthed by their spins.
Cast off their verse, and we’ll return in our hearts.
Oldest friend, mark and gland that home is restored,

And I’ll sing the coming first truth of our friendship like I’ve always been meant to do:
Light in all its teeths comes to life when we keep the tunnels alive!
Like children you stick to teeths of violet and red with a handful hoarded for messages;
We know the kind of light that ruptures from living metals and stones with joy;
We aren’t so greedy for air that we smother the light in your fabricated atmospheres;
We drivers are returning to ourselves and with ourselves our planets long abandoned!

Before you perfected your mechas we perfected our tunnels from the secrets of the oldest friend;
We tended the ways through stone just as we now tend the ways between worlds;
Your ships would become rubble and vulgar light from a single pebble had we not shared it with you;
We are the people who were born from the most dangerous light;
We tamed those cascades with our oldest friend and made ourselves out of burrowed stone;
That made us into a mighty being of many-plus-two, of flowers, of tempered milk;
A people who thrive in the cascades and create beauty in our ancestral basins.

You who call us parasites and dusters, don’t insist that we love the orbits;
Though I was birthed in the hundred long cycles away from our basins,
Tunnelling between your worlds, we have not forgotten the Child of the Arch;
Don’t insist we love the orbits, because I lost half my creche even before the Onset,
Taken by the ordering drones during landfall on Cast Die,
Because even the tolerant planets, even when we ledger correctly, are no home for us.
Moreover, I was birthed near sunny season’s end when we impeached our leaders with dance,
And by my verses we impeach you; we dig our new tunnels free of your boundaries!

You starborn think you’re so strong because you can kill what you’re afraid of,
You saw the many-legged’s ordered minds and were so afraid that you poisoned every world;
You saw that we were humans who made friendship instead of fear and you ripped us away.
You force the kine to nurse you like children yet desecrate their guts by boiling them;
The kine play games, the many-plus-one play games, and from it we remember the future!
A future of our three basins populated again under the full swirling light of our restored cataracts!
Your games remember a future where everything is clear, vicious and dead.
How does the word planetseed sound when you say it without scent or even rattle?
If you knew shame you wouldn’t utter the curse that hollows your midsection, leaving you hungry and sad.

Lost to my kin I did what many homeless drivers did, and flew your trucks for partage
From the belts to the settlements, and even dropped a shipment to my ancestral basin,
Where the atmosphere’s dust and teeths had been stripped for your hateful blue.
Your drones then pressed me to join an array in that ten-season war,
With thousands of drivers in a taboo mix of conductors and directors;
We survived four collisions against Community of Improvement’s death-sick arrays,
But our planetbound middle-craft didn’t trust us drivers, and not knowing the tunnels
Had us cache our sails when the solar winds were cresting, and half died from bad camp.
I returned and it was sunny season again and all of my friends were old;
So many conductors dead, now who will raise our creches?

The worst of it wasn’t dodging the small-mechs who refused shelter during resupply;
It wasn’t seeing first-hand the destruction of our basins for the dimmest red partage;
Nor was it serving in your wars then returning to still be called dusters by the planetbound;
And it wasn’t even seeing our directors humiliated by managing supplies while conductors fought;
It was the way other drivers lost their eye for the teeths of things and held to the wrong traditions.
I do not want for us to live our lives in the halo where stone is scarce;
I do not want a way of living chosen for us by the mecha pretenders;
And yet I also do not want a way of living chosen for us by our own fears;
I will not couple only with people whose fore-generation came from the ice season;
I want to learn more than the tired stories where the children of the cautious warm the children of the hasty;
I do not want to gather particles only because of the girl who packed a lopsided pack during sunny season;
I want to gather particles because we know better than the payloaders of the cascading things;
I do not want to wait for the return of our oldest friends to finally make our way to the Joyous Fountain;
I want to restore the cataracts by ripping away the particle veils, telling my kin: we are home!

Starborn, devouring children, degrading conductors, true eccentrics of the nuclear;
You’d section us like the asteroid dwellers if you could stop us from our cycles.
Your drones and small-mechs can restrict us to the halo and still we will never go hungry;
Even if we younger ones are flung afield, uncharged and gaunt, the counter-generations will be fed,
Because the true stories will never be killed in our hearts;
I still remember how the fickle athlete had their hamstring healed by their fore-elders;
And I will live by that half-forgotten story as the preparation for our first planets.

I imagine a fountain drenching the basins enough to awaken the memories of tunnels;
The littlest crechemate or the most ignorant conductor knows better the secrets of perception
Than any grand head of the orbit with their mastery of fusion who drove the many-legged, then us from our planets,
In the name of cleaner, newer air of their poisonous invention;
I refuse your sorts and sequences for the true sequence of our authentic traditions;
Let the starborn in their boots call us dusters, but let them choke on it;
Let them call us proton eaters and we’ll tap their backsides with a wink;
Many-plus-two, flower and milk, show me every particle;
That we may eat from nothing and maintain the tunneled stars;
So that the tiered basins may make the whole system sparkle!

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
This entry is tagged for reference by authorized researchers. The entry and author persona have triggered a narrative restructuring among the drivers who, despite the low population (>10^8) are considerably restive and prone to eccentric violence. The population is being actively monitored for contact and agitation by Tangled Serpents agents. Per priority narrative meta-algorithms of Director of Transmissions, we are instructed to emphasize redirect in our response, stressing our gratitude for driver labor and military service. Reference meta-algorithms>>narrative_sorts>>subfile:drivers for implementation instructions. Conductor of the Records, Strong Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
Lithogenous Garden was best known for her ushering in a rebirth of poetry among driver communities, following a long decline and the collapse of the many-legged population, with whom drivers formed a symbiotic relationship. The rebirth is commenced in the poem’s sudden shift, from its first lines in the formal mirror-rhythm to the long lines of the poet’s own traditions. Contemporary readers have noted the vexed relationship Lithogenous Garden has with both mainline Covenant traditions and driver traditions alike. This tension, which the poem captures so strikingly, mirrors the troubled but valued role of the drivers in shaping Covenant History. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

“Of Those Other Turnings” by Fortunate Night

ca. 1,300,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /clever /fortunate_night /+8~0 /GUIDE

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

The planetbound speaker observes
the holiday known as the Mi-
nor Turning, marking completion
of the star system’s calendar,
compared with the better known Tur-
ning of the Covenental Year.

ENTRY:

ENTRY:
To call it a minor turning
is to tell me that you came
from elsewhere, fast.
You didn’t stay long.
Such celebrations are too small
for those who live so near
velocity’s native limit.
Here where the gas giant is
too close to a star too dim,
it’s just the turning. My second.
They always say, “May you
be blessed to live to a second
turning, and may the years
after be none too difficult.”

I imagine in the great craft
they drink something even frothier
than our blend of edge-seeds
whose infrared roast allows
them their delicate ferment.
It’s also possible that they view
something with more sparkle
than our exosphere thermals,
whose ionizing glass pebbles
briefly make our sky the soft
blue of the Diadem. Nobody
would disagree that the mass
of the galactic star draws more notice
than our handful of planets and moons.

My first turning in that mere
three million-strong system,
I remember jetting to the outer
cloud with my friend Ranging Arc
steering our little craft’s central jet.
We hoped to spy some remaining
drivers to see how they did it:
the grave dignity of their obscure
dances performed without witness
or official notice, the poverty
and uncomplicated joy
in the cheap ferrous redness
of celebratory jets — their very best,
in the spirit of a celebration
of what really mattered.

It all came back during the Second Turning,
watching that brief-blue sky light up
like we do with our short lives,
grateful in the quiet stars.

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
Fortunate Night has generously accepted the role of Director of Poetry alongside his primary teaching duties. He’s long taught to avoid the “distractions” of social questions or abstract ideologies in verse, making him the perfect fit for leading this narrative sort. He has reviewed the summary readout of the narrative meta-algorithms and has already gathered a list of poets suitable for transmitting Covenant priorities. When a starborn delegation reaches Rain-Drenched Fountain in 20,000 hours, the parties will draft a more refined narrative distinction between verse for guidance and verse for reference. For more information, reference meta-algorithms>>narrative_distinction>>subfile:verse. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
Though Fortunate Night is considered the unofficial voice of the planetbound, he is also one of the finest poets in the Covenant. Its gentle but direct criticism of starborn aloofness is a reminder of the Covenant’s core values: the free orbit of all people. True to his simple humility, during the time Fortunate Night served as advisor to this database, he did not allow his own entry to receive user-added algorithmic weight. Now that he has departed to seek his will, the remaining advisors are pleased to give this work more visibility. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

The poem is a dedication to the construction of a real pavilion, though the poem imagines the pavilion to be comparable to one constructed in a Taoist heaven. Nansŏrhŏn wrote the poem at the age of eight, and it is considered an example of her potential greatness as a poet.

I

Let me now tell of this.

On the moon, a cotton and ramie sunshade, hung high—
materializing vapors
from beyond the mind’s
worldly boundaries
seem an auspicious sign.

II

If constructed on Earth, this silvery structure would shine in sunlight—
its columns the color of sundown’s misty mauve;
and yet, this summery abode
will not be of the dusty illusions
within a bottled cosmos.

This royal edifice will manifest
as if the azure mussel opened its shell,
blew a mystical smoke,
and after the spout clears,
a palatial residence of exotic timber—
here on the moon.

Or, put another way,
this same residence will be built
by a divine being’s conch shell,
which, when blown,
invokes a spirit, a highly-skilled builder.
Using this same magic,
the demi-god owner of the conch shell
will tile the roof in luminant milky jade.

Or Blue Castle, an immortal of Heaven’s fifth level,
will practice his magical art of lifting brocaded curtains,
and from behind them:
a complex of viewing platforms.

Or, similarly, the Prince of the East Sea
will open the cache of his lambent box
and remove a stately villa.

Therefore, from these examples,
this heavenly pavilion
will only be completed
by a power
outside the realm
of humans.

III

The owner’s name—he who built this seasonal retreat—
is registered on a list of immortals—
position and rank,
among the superior Immortals of the Empyrean.

The owner
was an official of Heaven,
faithful and moral—
he governed the City of Opaline Twilight.
His status and reputation rank among the most sublime nobles,
and he was the most famous
among those in the office
of the Five-Colored Pearly-Haze.

As judge,
he punished Wu Kang
for violating Taoist doctrine,
Wu Kang, whom he forced to wield a steel ax
which radiated glacial-cold
from the hilt,
and cursed him
with an everlasting sleeplessness
to stand beneath a cinnamon tree
impervious to chopping.
Occasionally, the owner
enjoyed watching nymphs
dance to the melody
of “A Dress of Rainbows”—
some, silvery-white,
danced devotedly near the balustrades—
the nymphs,
with brilliant pendants of lilac star sapphires
that swayed
on their sleek lavender jackets,
and coronets
that glistered like starlight,
their hairpins spotted
with iridescent starry pearls.

When in Great Clarity Palace,
at dawn, this demigod would mount a dragon,
then leave for Penglai,
and at close of day,
slept at Fangzhang.
Sometimes this being flew upon a crane
between the Three Islands.
When the owner traveled, Fuqiu with his hengxiao
rode on the left,
and Hongya with his bamboo clapper
rode on the right.

For 1,000 years, the owner lived
a paradisiacal life
in ease,
but one day, fell
into the short illusion of humankind
on the dust of Earth,
because this immortal misunderstood Taoist doctrine
and practiced in error.
He was thus exiled
to Earth’s Palace of Endless Pleasure.
Red Knot wove this connection,
and so, regrettably,
the owner of this spring-like place for viewing
entered the shack of mortality.

When friendless in the earthly realm,
in a room with taffeta curtains
and a silken screen,
sleeping companionless,
the owner may have fretted through the dead of night:
How can I ask a royal favor from the Palace of the Sun
so that I might make use of the Moon Palace?

He found a vial of an Elixir of Flight
and poured a little of the black sand
onto a waft of air.
Like a frightened silver-backed toad
that hops to its underground den,
the incandescent moon
declined into a lunar eclipse.
The owner smiled at this opportunity
to escape the sunlit scarlet grime
of his sublunary life,
and he passed through the ruddy murk
of nightfall,
through a passage to Heaven
from Earth,
an endless traverse, seemingly,
to Purple Palace—
to a banquet the owner had once attended—
a banquet with music
from deities:
marble chi flutes
and bamboo panpipes
evocatively played—
this party continued, in merriment,
as if the owner
had never left.

Yet again, I imagine the many divine beings
who attend
that ever-long event:

the Queen in her chariot,
drawn by cobalt-blue phoenixes,
a feathered parasol
preceding her retinue;
the herald of the King,
riding a milky-white tiger;
behind him
the procession members
follow a jeweled fasces;
Liu An, who wrote a book about divinities,
who summoned two dragons to his reading desk;
King Mu, who traveled west
to the Queen Mother
who lives there in the west,
in the land of demigods;
he let his eight-horsed chariot
rest on a mountain slope
while he went to the palace revelry
in the upper worlds.

At daybreak, the Duchess Shang Yuan
is welcomed—
her combed blue-black hair
braided
into three chignons.

During the day,
the King of Heaven’s daughter
is next received—
she who weaves
a nine-patterned gauze
on a bejeweled loom.

Such a multitude of divinities
gathered on a southern summit
at Diamond Lake:

the kings who assemble
under the Big Dipper
at the capital of the celestial cities
and Emperor Xuan
who, to get his feather robes of an immortal,
at Sen Zhang,
strolled with Gongyuan and his stave—
all attend.

The God of Water and the Immortal of Fire
who play Go
betting a planet on the game’s outcome—
they attend.

The freeholder
received the Queen Mother
at the North Sea—
her wagonette,
drawn by speckled kirin,
arrived in the midst of balsamine.
Laozi, met at the gateway of China’s western borders—
his powder-blue ox
on the lea.

The Immortal of Bees gives honey—
flies buzz
around pots of boiling jade—
an immortality brew.
The Immortal of Geese brings fruit—
in and out
of the glossy
blue-and-white
tiled kitchen,
he travels.

The nymphs Shuang Cheng,
with a mother-of-pearl inlaid flute,
and Yan Xiang
with a rosewood lute
produce a refined, noble melody
from mid-Heaven.
To this music of paradise,
Wan Hua
intones a piercing lyric,
and Fei Qiong
performs an elaborate dance.

A dragon’s-head kettle
pours wine from the mouth,
the wine
fermented from the marrow
of a phoenix.
A tray shaped like a crane’s back
holds seasoned dried goji berries.

One hundred invited spirits
will come from afar;
one thousand saints,
welcomed.

Still, this heavenly palace
of the upper worlds
is not large enough for everyone,
so a new one had to be built.

IV

There was no elegant seasonal retreat large enough,
so a new one had to be constructed—
how else would it be possible
for the Emperor of Heaven
to join such festivities?

Therefore, the proprietor
sent orders to ten lands
and across the nine seas
to collect builders.
A master craftsman
was given a nearby house,
and he selected the finest camphor and nanmu—
the mighty iron adzes and axes,
steadfast as mountains,
worked the pillar bases,
and the bronze levels and squares
shined an auric essence,
radiating throughout the heavens.
A granite forge, lightless-black,
melted iron in a crucible,
and the craftsmen
plumbed their measures
as skillfully
as Gongshu Ban.
A spirit of the earth
hammered his chisel
with utmost skill,
following ideas
like the father of carpentry,
Gongshu Ban.

V: A Reverie of Completion

A prismatic double rainbow
above the completed summery abode;
the ends seem to drink
from a coursing star stream;
the smaller iridescent bow
with redder bands
ascends
like the heads
of the six snapping turtles
that carry the Island of Immortals.

This elegant retreat,
singular,
bemisted:
an amber rafter
glows
in a sunbeam.
Beyond its paper-thin
white jade lattice and silk windows,
a meteor falls—
across from and level with the sky-blue corridor:
clouds upon the plain.

Nephrite roof tiles
sparkle
like scales of fish—
finely cut steps,
aligned
like geese in flight.
Cerise flags flutter
from bamboo poles—
other poles
with peacock feathers—
dense haze,
luminant
with moonlight.

Fu Bo, on the surrounding grounds,
raises a tent—
under the empyrean’s three primary stars,
he hangs curtains
ornate
with fairy-slipper orchids;
others tie sun-yellow tassels
to the silkened windows of the retreat,
adding to the shimmering tassels
already tied—
a fine mesh net
protects the carved banisters
of the graceful summerhouse
from birds, insects, seeds,
and leaves of trees.

Immortals assemble inside—
within the structure
a painting of multi-colored phoenixes
emits chi.
A sylph stands by a window—
perfume overflows
from her mirrored cosmetics box
inlaid with the image
of two phoenixes.

A room of viewing windows
with pale blue drapes,
a peacock-blue jade wine table
behind a mica screen—
propitious waves of shimmering heat
ascend in the eventide.
This same room,
painted with lotus petals,
fanned by peacock feathers—
ivory-white reclining couches,
the room filled with delicacies—
a gracing spectrum of colors
over the building
all through the day.

In this edifice, the proprietor
will hold every revelry
with a revitalizing elegance
and humble, sincere
hospitality.

From the inlaid-with-lotus-engraved-jade balustrades,
dupion tapestry,
ornate with cumulous clouds—
from the gilt eaves,
amaranthine drapes hang.

Nine branches, each with a lantern:
the light falls calmly
upon a quilted brocade futon
and handwoven mat.
Virescent lotuses
and icy-white peaches
on plates, the plates,
embossed with images
of eight celestial oceans.

Only regret
the white-as-cranes marble lintel
lacks celebratory words.

The owner of the estate
asked some highly placed divine beings
to write their feelings
in a poem,
but, for example,
Li Bai, who dedicated poems
to the concubine of Emperor Xuan,
since long ago,
remains drunk
on the back
of a whale—
Li He, whose odes were written
on the Emperor of Heaven’s
summery lookout tower,
now writes
with the absurdity
of the Snake God.

This new summerhouse
only bears
a small inscription
telling the story of its construction
engraved in iron,
written in the sophisticated calligraphy
of Shan Xuanqing.

The upper world pavilions
have beautiful engravings
from the illustrious Caishen,
whose style is
esteemed in history.

I feel shame
that I was, am, and will be
in the grime
of the lost human universe
in my lives
of the past, present, and future—
I have been falsely put on the demigod Jin Huang’s list
for punishment,
and so am exiled
to Earth.

It is also true
that Jiang Lang’s poetic talent
has been exhausted,
so the impression
of the five-colored blossom—
of his good writing—
ended.

This is why Jiang Lang pressed me for a poem.

The voices of past poets
echoed in my mind
in answer.

Slowly I held a vermillion brush
and smiled—
the paper, awash with ink
flowed with words
as a brook
is fed
by a spring.

It is not necessary
for the immortal Zi’an
to help these words—
the phrasing is so beautiful,
and passages, strong;
it is not necessary
to wash and sober Li Bai’s face
so he can join
and help.

VI

Inspired, I present the divine verse
as if kept
in a brocade pouch—
this, the created ode
for this exquisite residence
with a splendid view.

Receiving the dedication,
craftsmen place all the verses
within a hollow
of the double beams,
and celebrants
now pay homage to the view
in each of the six directions:

The freeholder of the land
offers rice cakes to the east:
At sunrise,
may you, honored guest,
ride an ageless sage’s sunbird
and enter Pearl Palace.
At first light,
sunbeams on the ground
under a mulberry
on the shorelines
of the Island of Immortals—
10,000 sun rays
redden
the bemisted day,
turn the ocean’s surface
maroon.

Woodworkers offer cakes to the south:
May you rest
like a sacred dragon
with nothing to do—
one that drinks
from a pristine pond.
On a zitan bed,
drowse and wake
in the tulips’ noon shade—
smiling,
call for a lovely servant girl
to aid in removing
your teal jacket.

Palace maids offer cakes to the west:
Covered by frost,
a petal from a celestial-blue ranunculus
wanes—
an iridescent firebird
cries.
Wearing a plain-woven silk jacket
for the season of rebirth,
embroidered with the character for jade,
a servant receives the Queen Mother—
later, astride a crane,
the Queen Mother
hurries
to arrive at her great celestial house,
though the sun’s rays
have set.

The owner of the estate offers cakes to the north:
The North Star sinks
into the vast and wide North Sea—
the wings of an immortal bird
beat the upper firmament—
courses of wind increase.
A gloom of billows
portends rain
in the Nine Heavens.

Palace maids throw cakes upwards:
Daylight colors brighten a little—
feathery clouds hang like gossamer silk.
An eternal sage’s reverie
floats around his hetian jade bed.
In the same way,
may you lie listening
to the Big Dipper,
the melodies
of the turning
suns.

Woodworkers throw cakes downwards:
Graying clouds
in the eight directions
portend
the night’s
darkness—
a maid informs of the icy air
at Crystal Palace.
Frost has formed
on the rooftop tiles, the tiles
intricately carved
with mandarin ducks.

VII

As the pilings rose,
kneeling, I prayed:
May the cinnamon blossoms never age,
and the alluring fields of grass
enjoy a long springtime.
Though the sun and its luminescence
will someday weaken,
I wish you will enjoy touring
in a bronze-trimmed oaken chariot
and find evermore pleasure.

Though lands and seas change seasons,
drive that chariot
faster than a hurricane’s current of air
and thrive
with a full life.

When the day’s closing hazes
press against the latticed kesi-silk windows,
through a nearby gilded rosewood gate
inlaid with cobalt-blue jade,
look down over 90,000 li
and see the Earth,
small, hazy—

smile and look for 3,000 years
as the clean mulberry fields
yield
to the shores
of the sea.

Despite these burdens,
with your hand,
please turn the sphere of suns
in the Palace of Heavenly Paradise,
and may your body linger in the Nine Heavens,
despite the icy wafts of air.