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Cow Hollow, San Francisco, CA, 2054

As I returned home, I unpacked my bag, on top of my neatly folded shirts I found the piece of paper, crudely folded in half. My name written on it.

I unfolded it and sat in the living room with Maya. I don’t know what happened after I left, after we left the Haven that day. I was hoping this would explain some of it,

Dear Luka,

If you’re reading this, things are over now. The CME has impacted and Asher and I have gone with it.

I’ve taken the opportunity to void your contract with Eternal Bonds, you are no longer contracted to me and thus, I’m setting you free. I couldn’t in good faith ask you to remain loyal to this contract.

I know you’ve survived heartbreak twice before and I love you enough to spare you from one more. Knowing you, being a part of your life has meant the world to me in these, my final days.

I realize and appreciate now the sacrifice it takes to offer up your life, your love, your soul for someone else and I love you for it.

I think it’s clear by now that I’m not coming back from the Haven.

And that’s for the best, wherever I am destined to go from here, I walk alone, holding only Asher’s hand in the final moments. But the weekend we spent, this last beautiful weekend, was the perfect way to go.

I only ask that you look back on me with fondness, and know that no matter what you may learn about me, I did indeed love you and could see myself living the rest of my life with you.

Or what constitutes a life, anyways.

I guess I’m still trying to figure out what life is. Even at the end.

I was never real, at least not in the way that you are.

But you made me feel real, feel alive, feel loved. You both did.

So, live your life, love your life and know that a part of our bond will always remain, truly Eternal.

Epilogue: Chrome

Aleutian Islands Alliance, Alaska, 2065

“Monica Rios, reporting in from survey team Alpha,” I said into the headset as we stepped towards the wreckage of a house. “Approaching a house of some kind.”

“Monica,” Leon called to me through his exposure suit. “Any readings?”

“Radiation spikes still off the chart,” I told him, factually.

“Looks like the CME hit this part of the Haven at full intensity,” I told him. “Totally burned everything to a fuckin’ crisp,” I said as I pulled some charred wreckage aside.

Underneath, I found a shattered wine bottle, the label still somewhat intact clinging to the broken glass. “Chateau Hanare,” I said reading it out loud, “Haven’t seen that in ages.”

“Think the Alliance will ever be able to recolonize this area?” Leon asked.

“Doubtful,” I said looking at my scanner, “Radiation this bad’s gonna take decades to dissipate at best.”

“I got remains,” Leon said gravely.

Pushing aside some wreckage we found them there, two badly charred human remains, looked like they were holding each other when the CME hit, the flesh burned away. One body had its arms wrapped around the other, the flesh on the hand had been burned away but the wedding ring still remained.

“I remember this day,” Leon said, “Everyone knew it was coming, why’d these two stay?”

“They were together, even at the end,” I said knowing what it meant. Even in the charred remains, I could see the damaged, burned box with the REGEN-X logo on it. I knew they were not here by choice.

“Document the remains and then lets move on,” I ordered him. He began inspecting the bodies before he drew breath, “Whoa, Monica,” he said. “This one’s got a barcode on its neck.”

“Let’s see if it still registers,” he said as he scanned it.

“What’s it say?” I asked.

Leon read me what was on his panel, “Cyber Serve, old Type A unit.”

“Let me see that,” I told him. He showed me his panel, I struggled to read it but I could just barely make out the company name and year:

“What’s an old Type A model doing way out here?” I asked.

“Who cares?” Leon huffed. “Damn chrome dome got what they all deserve, anyways.”

“We could probably learn a thing or two from these two,” I said harshly looking at the two bodies again. “Now help me finish these scans,” I huffed at him.

THE END

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Aleutian Islands Alliance, Alaska, 2054

The pencil scratched at the old sheet of paper as I wrote, every few words, I stopped, realizing how out of practice I was writing this way and with the back of my hand, I’d smooth down the paper, the graphite smearing some at the edges before I’d continue scratching away at the paper.

“Ezra, The final transport is getting ready to leave,” Maya said as I looked up at her in our room as the water out our window undulated softly.

On the display screen in our room, the headlines screamed louder than they shouted,

THE HAVEN BRACES FOR CME IMPACT.

I moved quickly and quietly through the living room with the paper folded in my pocket, folded over once, and then in half, the name LUKA written on the outside. Luka was packing for the last flight out. “Ezra,” he said darting his eyes towards me, “You sure you’re going to be okay in that shelter?”

“I’ll be fine, Luka,” I said wearily, “Just get Maya out safe,” I pleaded.

I saw his bag there, open, ready, I saw my chance. I turned slowly, imperceptibly, and dropped the folded letter into the bag.

“I’ll see you both when I get back to San Francisco,” I said kissing him softly. “Travel safe.”

“Why did you stay?” Asher asked me as we held each other in bed. “You could have gone with him. Had a life, kept the family together.”

“I have a life,” I told Asher as I held him tighter.

“Yes, but I meant a full one, a longer one,” Asher said but I’d hear none of it.

“I’ve had one. Before I met you, I was…” I began.

“Perfect,” Asher said.

“Hardly,” I told Asher. “That came when I met you.”

“What will happen to you?” Asher asked.

“I don’t really know,” I told him honestly. “I suppose it will feel like release, somehow. Like somehow everything just stops. I guess the only thing I wonder is what will happen in that moment between everything stopping and….nothingness.”

“I feel the same way, too,” Asher told me.

“I want to go to sleep now,” Asher said reaching towards the nightstand.

“Is it time?” I asked.

“Not until the CME starts, I want to go together,” Asher said.

I poured a glass of Chateau Hanare and walked through the house as the sky became swollen once more. I laid down and handed the glass to Asher.

“Don’t go yet,” I pleaded desperate for even just a few more minutes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Asher said, that twinkle in his eyes.

“We’re going on an adventure,” he told me.

“All that time in space I thought how much I’d love to go somewhere with you, to show you a new planet, a new place no one’s gone before and now we’re going on a trip of discovery of our own. You. Me. Together,” he said as he reached for the little brass box.

I leaned over to put my head on his chest just as the display lighting up red blanketed the bedroom in crimson:

CME IN PROGRESS, IMPACT IN 30 MINUTES, SEEK RADIATION SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

A voice trilled over the intercom, “Attention all residents, a CME event is in progress, our data from the USSA tells us that we should begin to feel impacts from the leading edge of the wave in about twenty to twenty five minutes just ahead of the full impact at which time we will be hit by a massive radiation spike, secure all stations and personnel and residents in the emergency shelters immediately.”

We didn’t open the brass box, Asher just sipped his wine, leaving just enough in the glass on the nightstand to take the pill and I laid there against him. We talked quietly, intimately, about small stories about grand gestures, each threaded with remember that? or remember when?

We even argued lightly over some of the details until he relented, we both knew time was precious and we were spending it.

“Primary impact, five minutes,” the voice announced like death had an announcer.

Asher reached for the pill as the sky shifted. The aurora we’ve been watching all weekend, ribbons of green and blue intensified like someone turned up the lights in a room becoming chaotic bands of light fracturing, multiplying, bleeding into each other. Becoming bright, almost too bright.

The horizon brightened unevenly, a false dawn coming from the wrong direction, orange-white and building, not the soft diffusion of sunrise but something harder, more insistent.

The ice caught the bending sunlight the ocean surface becoming like shattering glass.

Inside the house, the polished brass caught the light as if it were bringing it inside as the house rumbled, the electronics flickered and the world bent. I saw his chest rise, fall and I felt his hand squeeze my shoulder. I rolled towards him, put my arm across his chest and held him.

The world bent around us but I bent into him.

Into us.

I felt the cool chill of his wedding ring against my skin as I held him, our fingers interlaced. Our hands at rest, our fingers, our flesh, our marrow intertwined, if only for a moment, the very subtle thrum, thrum, thrum of our heartbeats syncing up, or at least it felt that way.

As the radiation’s full force crashed to Earth, our bedroom was filled with light, not like when sunrise bathed our room in warm light, this was harsher, more violent, the radiation making my sight blurry, my mind ache, my soul detach and eventually depart.

It’s funny, I never really knew what it felt like to have a soul, to hold a soul until the moment it left what I knew as my body.

It’s rather queer that in death, I learned a lesson I could not in life. That life is so finite, it’s a short throw from the beginning to the ending and actual “life” is all the things, the little things, the minor things, that happen in between.

In the briefest of moments before I retired to sleep for eternity.

I lived in those moments once more. I saw the City glittering at night. I saw through the sea salt spray so fine a mist at Land’s End. I saw the way the light filtered through Maya’s hair as she laughed, as she learned, as she loved.

And in it, I heard Simon’s voice, “Look at him, Ezra, I couldn’t have carved a better visage myself than if we were in the lab creating a new model.”

And I remembered him, Asher.

Handsome, rugged, with a strong chin and jawline and the way he commanded a tuxedo, right down to the way fabric draped across his body and the way the light bent around him.

As the light enveloped us, Simon reached out his hand towards mine, “Time to go back,” he told me.

“To where?” I asked him, unsure.

“To the beginning,” Simon said resolute as the light threatened to overwhelm, to overtake.

“I don’t understand,” I told him turning to look at the blindingly bright light of the CME.

“You will,” Simon said, softly.

The gray thunderclouds over me thundered as I laid on my back in the damp grass as the pinwheel rotated wildly.

“Boys,” a woman’s voice called, “Get inside, it’s about to storm.”

“Ezra,” the woman said throwing open the screen door that screamed on the hinges of the house, “Get your brother, the rain’s coming.”

Indeed the force of nature was approaching with great fury, the clouds arcing with lightning and the low rumble of thunder.

“Simon!” the woman called as the storm surged.

San Francisco unfolded out of the windows of Simon’s office, the day was bright, the kind of scene that could have been a photograph or watercolors.

“It may take a few minutes for your eyes to adjust,” Simon told me as he handled a tool. “But it should all feel comfortable soon enough,” he said.

“Let’s install a baseline,” Simon told me.

“If anything should happen to you,” Simon said, “You’ll return to the beginning, to the start, to here, the storm, to the funeral, to today. To your creation.”

“And you’ll remember,” he said,

“The love. Always remember the love. It’s why you exist, why you were chosen. I could have made you in the image of anyone I wanted but I chose to make you in the image of the one I lost, the one I loved.”

“Maybe that will never earn his love back, at least, not truly,” Simon said softly, “But it will give you a chance. Give you a life. Give you love,” Simon told me before the world went black.

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Seattle, WA, 2054

The ferry sliced through the rainy gray soup hovering over the Sound as Ellen and Brian stood at my side.

“If there is a CME,” Ellen asked, “Will you be safe at The Haven?”

“Oh yeah,” I assured her, “The atmosphere is not as degraded in Alaska as it is everywhere else so we’re actually pretty well equipped for another event should it happen,” I said neglecting to mention the recent studies I had seen that suggested even Alaska’s atmospheric degradation was more advanced than previously reported.

“Hey,” I said brushing a stray tear from the corner of Ellen’s eye. “I realized in all this panic, I never got a chance to properly say goodbye.”

“Then don’t,” Ellen said burying her head in my chest. “All our lives have been goodbyes,” she said.

“When I left to ‘find myself’ in Europe?’ And all I found was Edgar. When you left for flight school. When you launched into the unknown. Can’t we just stop saying goodbye and just be?” Ellen pleaded.

“Yeah,” I told her, “let’s be.”

“You know, secretly,” I told her, “I will miss the rain. People say how much they hate the rain but I love it. It’s the ultimate excuse to stay inside and feel comfortable, warm, safe.”

“I guess I never thought of it like that,” Ellen said. “I’ll think of you every time it rains, which, you know, we live in Seattle, so I guess I’ll be thinking of you often.”

“I like the sound of that,” I told her.

On the other side of the Sound, Ellen flagged down an autonomous car, “Airport, fast,” she ordered as the car jolted forward.

The harbor Ferry terminal shrank behind us as the city rose ahead of us. The light of it pushing back against the gray that swallowed the Sound.

Rain streaked against the windows, water creating little striations against the the glass.

The city glittered like shards of glass sprinkled on a black satin sheet.

But below us, businesses still buzzed, apartment windows flickered with lights from their living room displays and beyond those lights? People eating dinner, arguing, falling in love.

It was what life looked like. When it was happening.

Continuing.

Even in a storm.

Even in the dark.

As we sped towards the airport, a news alert popped up on the cabin screen,
CME FORMATION IMMINENT, AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

I turned towards Ellen, “Don’t worry,” I said, “We’ll make it.”

As soon as I passed security every monitor in the airport flashed,

CME IMPACT ZONE CONFIRMED

ALL SPACE TRAFFIC FROZEN, SUB ORBITAL FLIGHTS STILL OPERATIONAL

POWER RATIONING IN EFFECT

CITY SERVICES SUSPENDED PENDING IMPACT

“White Star Airways, Flight 838, all passengers prepare for departure,” The captain announced, “On behalf of myself and the flight crew, we are looking to get you to the Haven quickly, and safely.”

The engines hummed and then, the cabin roared, the feeling of weightlessness drifted in as the plane pushed off and the horizon pushed forward.

As we flew, above the night, above the storm, the sun cast its rays across the tops of the clouds, like the way it used to in our living room, it didn’t just shine in, it cut horizontally. It occurred to me how the sun felt so safe, so warm, so comforting in our living room, like it was a part of it, and now here it was turning on us. Like an animal turning against its master.

“Something to drink?” The flight attendant asked me.

“A coffee,” I managed to ask through my grogginess.

The onset was setting in now, I could feel it in my bones. But this flight helped, the lower gravity of flying sub orbital eased the swelling in my joints. It brought me closer to space just enough to remember the feeling, the thrill of what it felt like to be pulled by the stars as opposed to leashed to gravity.

At least it allowed me to forget for a few minutes that an alien was currently colonizing my brain stem making ready for the time when it would decide I was no longer needed as its host and discard me all together. That’s why I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I would make it my choice, my time. My say.

Aleutian Island Alliance, Alaska, 2054

As we came in to land at The Haven, the Alliance stretched out towards the horizon, each island like little mounds of rock under the delicate dotting of clouds each island looking like it was embedded in a sheet of glass, the sun reflecting off of the water and the ice in equal measure.

Stepping off into the hover port, the news monitors kept flashing the same old headlines. Nothing new to report, just hysteria.

As I stepped towards the exit, I saw him there looking out the windows at the islands. Luka.

“Hi, stranger,” I said reaching out my hand towards his.

“Asher,” he said warmly pulling me into a deep embrace.

We had made it.

We held onto our victory, and to each other.

Soon, we would be in our house with Ezra, I would wear my comfy sweater, my favorite house shoes, crack open some Chataeau Hanare.

Maya would ask us, “Another glass?” while Ezra turned on a flickering fireplace. And then maybe I’d sit and watch the aurora for a bit.

Funny how the aurora looks so charming from the deck but in reality the selling point of our house is actually the thing that would destroy it.

Every ribbon of green light. Every shimmer across the sky.

The sun announcing itself, inviting itself in to stay. To wreck. To destroy.

But we were here. We made it.

And just in time, the news monitors lit up again, this time followed by a trilling warning that drove fear into the last few beats of my heart,

CME IMPACT ZONE: NORTHERN PACIFIC

OFFICIALS WARN RUSSIA, JAPAN, ALASKAN UNION TO SUSTAIN HEAVY DAMAGE

“Asher, Luka,” Maya said happily as the doors to the hoverport slid open. “Family’s all here,” she said smiling.

“I guess that’s what we are,” Luka said as he looked at the two of us.

As we walked towards our house, I looked at the ferns pushing up through the cold ground, marveled at how beauty survives even in the harshest of environments. I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want to stay, either.

Not like this.

Pushing the door open I saw Ezra opening a bottle of Chateau Hanare, as his eyes met ours, he said, “Welcome home.”

And indeed, standing there between Ezra, Luka, Maya, a bottle of breathing wine, an Arctic chill and heaven’s fury surging somewhere high above us, indeed I was home.

“It’s really quite beautiful,” Luka said from the window in the guest room as the aurora flared across the sky before dinner.

Destruction usually is. Not outwardly, nakedly, obviously. Destruction often unveils something hidden, something residing underneath.

“Hamachi in a dashi reduction with sea greens salad,” Maya said as she unveiled the plates on the table on our finest china, the fish delicate, kissed with citrus, flecks of salt and pink peppercorns.

The salad was dressed in a light vinaigrette that softened the vegetables just enough they didn’t lose their crisp, they clung to the slightly tangy bite of the vinegar, tasty, fresh, but bittersweet, much like life.

After dinner, I stepped onto the deck with Luka, Ezra joined us for a drink and then retreated for the warmth of the fireplace.

“You have to promise me something,” I said to Luka turning to him, his face illuminated by the pulses of aurora overhead. “Anything,” Luka said back.

“If the CME is indeed coming,” I said gravely as he nodded, “I need you to take this,” I said handing him a data card, “Good for one emergency flight out of here. If the CME is coming, you take Maya, and you go.”

“What is this?” Luka asked looking at the card.

“Astronaut’s perk,” I said winking.

“What about you? And Ezra?” Luka asked.

“You don’t have to worry about me much longer, both of you,” I told him. Not a lie. Just honesty.

“And Ezra?” Luka asked urgently.

“There is a bunker in the Haven where he can ride it out safely and then meet up with you back in San Francisco,” I said, this time dropping the honesty for something more comfortable.

And above us, the aurora continued to flare, blues and greens snaking across the sky, the sun reminding us even in darkness it was still up there still watching us, preparing for something we didnt have the vocabulary for.

Not yet.

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Bainbridge Island, WA, 2054

Garlic sizzled in oil as soon as it hit the pan releasing deeply fragrant aroma into the kitchen while the Seattle skyline framed in the kitchen’s picture window began to illuminate in the distance like someone flipped on a switch.

“Help your Uncle cut some vegetables for the salad, Brian,” Ellen instructed. Brian looked at me, a sort of confusion stirring in his eyes.

“We told him,” Ellen told me on the ferry on the way to her house from the airport, “He has questions, though. As do I”

“I live in questions,” I said back to her.

“He wants to know if it’s contagious, if he should be scared. He wants to know if its safe to hug you. To actually say goodbye properly?” Ellen asked as I stopped her over the sound of the chop of waves.

“Is this Brian talking or Edgar, or you?” I asked her cutting through the pretense.

“Edgar did ask,” she began cushioning her words, “If you might be better suited to stay in a hospital, somewhere more equipped to someone in…your condition.”

I let the ocean spray and the cawing gulls answer her question, underneath the boat I felt the thump thump thump of the boat gliding over the waves. I sat in that, not her discomfort, not her prejudice, not her limited understanding.

And not in Edgar’s either. I wanted to see my sister and my nephew one last time.

“Uncle Asher, I’ll help cut those,” Brian said abruptly washing tomatoes and moving deftly into the kitchen to get me a bowl as if reaching into a cupboard might cause me to shatter.

As the salad sat on the counter and Ellen continued cooking, I followed Brian to his room, “Look at what I made, Uncle Asher,” he told me proudly showing off his meticulously assembled model of the Icarus-class Deep Space Cruiser.

He looked at me, searching my face for approval, for recognition, for the face of a doting uncle, not a dying man.

“Oh, sorry,” he said covering the model with a lightweight cloth. “Is it too painful?” Brian asked softly.

“No, it’s great work, Brian, really, let’s see it,” I said.

Brian proudly pulled off the cloth. “I had to model the EVA bay from the original design specs and some parts assembled from other model kits,” Brian said as I leaned in to look closer. “You did a pretty great job,” I said, “Almost better than the ones who built it. You ever consider ship design as a career path?”

“You think I’d be good at it?” Brian asked me his face, beaming.

“Keep up those math and science grades and I think you’ll do just fine,” I told him.

“Can I ask you a question?” Brian said softly, delicately, probing.

“Anything,” I told him.

“If you knew this would happen would you have still gone? Would you still have done it?” He asked, the question landing like a ton of bricks.

I didn’t see a nephew asking this, I saw this question trickling through a filter that looked and sounded like Ellen’s caustic stoicism and Edgar’s stunning lack of empathy.

“I would,” I told him. No sense in hiding.

“Not because I was brave, or because I thought I was extraordinary,” I told Brian, “And definitely not because I wanted any of it.” I looked down at the model sitting between us.

“If I hadn’t gone,” I said, “I never would have known what was out there.” Brian nodded. “But that’s not really the answer, is it?” I said out loud to no one in particular.

I thought about Ezra, our apartment, Maya.

About all the small, ordinary moments waiting for me back on Earth.

“The truth?” I asked pushing against the earnestness of an eager teenager.

Brian waited.

I let it go on him, “If I hadn’t gone, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering.”

“Wondering what?” Brian asked genuinely curious.

I looked through the observation window at the stars beyond it in my mind, “What was waiting for us past the dark.” For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Brian glanced back at the model ship, asking, “And was it worth it?” I laughed softly.

Children are capable of the most simple questions, sometimes.

“Yes,” I said. But quietly, softly. Appearing to do so without hesitation or consternation.

“Even knowing how it ends?” Brian asked.

I touched the Icarus model one last time, my finger feeling all the ship’s curves, the subtle imperfections in the hull design. Maybe that’s what it felt like when Ezra touched me, too.

“Especially knowing how it ends,” I said.

Brian pinched his face slightly. I smiled at him, I patted him on the knee.

“Nothing lasts forever,” I told him. “The point was never to make something permanent. The point is that we were here at all.”

I looked back at him, trying to sound profound and memorable I told him, “Every life leaves something behind. A person. A family.”

In my mind, the stars drifted silently beyond the glass.

“And some of us,” I said, “just happen to leave our fingerprints a little farther from home.”

The little verdant flecks of chopped parsley fell slowly, like green snow almost imperceptibly, like gravity had dramatically exited. The chopped herbs landed on the steaming, knotted pile of pasta in my bowl studded with garlic, and clams.

“Linguine Vognole,” Ellen said proudly, “I know how it’s always been your favorite.”

“Thanks, El,” I told her.

Edgar entered the dining room, his face stern, the kind of face that portends softness to hide ugliness. “Asher,” he said tipping his head towards mine as if words were luxurious trinkets he didn’t have the funds for at the moment.

Ellen took to her chair as Brian looked at me across the table. “More cheese, Asher?” Brian asked pushing me the bowl of shredded Parmesan we grated earlier.

“Leave him, Brian,” Edgar snapped under his breath.

“It’s delicious, El,” I told Ellen taking a hearty bite of pasta spooled into my fork.

“What did you eat on the Icarus, Asher?” Brian asked sparking conversation and flippantly ignoring his father’s indifference.

“Oh,” I said bashful, “Nothing this good by far, all gunk powdered and reheated in pouches. The most luxurious food item I had was some beef jerky and these dried hunks of something called ‘BBQ snack mix.’”

“Don’t go filling his head with all those damn stories, again, Asher,” Edgar sneered at me.

“Should I fill his head with whatever you’ve been filling it with?” I retorted trying to hold back from what I really wanted to say.

“I see Brian is super interested in ship design,” I said. “I was just telling him that with the right grades and maybe even a letter of recommendation from his uncle that could be a real career path.”

“The world’s got enough problems without inventing new ones in space, Ash,” Brian seethed.

“Let’s just see what the future holds,” I said winking at Brian.

We ate, I drank wine, I savored the food, the kiss of garlic and herbs and butter and oil, I sat with my family and I invited them to sit within me. And then my mind went back, Let’s see what the future holds.

And then the future arrived. Not gradually, not slowly. All at once. Unexpectedly. Uninvited.

My watch pulsed red. My head snapped towards Ellen as we washed the dishes in the kitchen. “Turn on the news,” I begged.

“Living room display,” Brian called to the house’s virtual assistant.

The living room was bathed in a holo display. I recognized the solar array panels on Yosemite station in Venus orbit as the sun pulsated red in the background, the pulsing color bathing the living room in scarlet light.

“You know that station, don’t you, Asher?” Brian asked me.

“I do, I docked there once on the Odyssey.”

And then, the voice of the announcer cut in, “What you’re seeing are live images of Yosemite station just before it was destroyed by the leading edge of a solar flare. We repeat again, the sun has begun flaring. Venus station Yosemite has been destroyed. US Space Agency warns that more flares could be possible in the coming days and they are not ruling out the possibility of a large scale CME developing.”

“Shit,” Ellen said.

“I better get going,” I told her. “Before flights get canceled.”

The universe has been my whole life. And now the universe is flaring and I need to get to the Haven before flights are canceled, before the CME developing becomes a CME arrived, before the future I’ve already planned gets interrupted by a future nobody planned.

“I’ll drive you to the airport,” Ellen said. “I’ll come with you,” Brian offered.

I headed to my room, packed my bag, quickly. The last bag I’d ever pack. As I prepared to step out to the car, I saw Edgar in his study, the light on, hovering low. In the corner of his study, I saw him crouched over a stand that had a lightweight cloth draped over it. Beside him, a line of small bottles of paint, resin, modeler’s glue, tools. As soon as he saw me in the doorway, he tried to cover his work, but I saw something. A flash, the US Space Agency sigil, and a name, USS Athena.

I saw something else in that flash, too. I saw the way he looked at me, like he would’ve said goodbye if he had the vocabulary for it, but also the sadness, the kind I’ve seen before, the kind that flashes deep in the eyes of astronauts when they’ve been told they were grounded or not selected or “not ideal candidates for space.”

Forever grounded, Untethered. Unbound.

“Bye, Edgar, thanks for everything,” I said offering nothing but kind and forgiving eyes and a smile.

I’ve been to space. I know what it’s like to fly, to fall.

But now, I’m Flying.

I’m Free.

If you enjoyed The Haven please consider subscribing for more fiction from Rhodes Ave. Press or please share this story with others:

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San Francisco, CA 2054

I laid out my clothes dutifully on the bed. A few shirts, some comfortable pants to wear around the house. My favorite chunky sweater was already there.

“He’ll be home in 25 minutes,” Maya said to me, “He’s just getting on the BART now.”

“Make sure you’re packed and ready to go,” I told her. “I’m happy to offer a hand if you need help.”

“I could help you pack those,” Maya told me motioning to the clothes arranged on the bed.

“I’m leaving them for Ezra, he wanted to pack the suitcase so when I came home from Ellen’s I could fly straight to the Haven from Seattle,” I said.

“You didn’t want to invite your sister to join for the weekend?” Maya asked in that inquisitive way.

“Ellen hates the Arctic, she has big feelings about the Aleutian Alliance, and its not like its a party, it’s my last weekend alive and the beginning of Asher and Luka’s contract,” I told Maya.

“I’ve observed in all my time,” Maya said, “That humans can make almost anything into a celebration.”

“One other thing you should learn, Maya,” I told her, “Some humans can turn even celebrations of life into pulpits for their own grievances.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Maya asked naively.

“Humans are funny creatures, indeed,” I relented.

“Enjoy your day with Ellen regardless,” Maya said, like she understood.

I opened the small case I picked up from REGEN-X - two small green pills. One to end it before it got unbearable. One in case of emergency.

And when it was done? “Organic processing removal,” they called it.

But let’s call it what it really was, they picked up your body and melted you down. Not into ashes, but into bio organic mush that could be used to service a machine or act as a computer’s brain tissue.

And how does one get the honor of this post mortem dishonor? By using one of their pills, one of their “merciful exits” the trade off being that you get to line their pockets as merchants of death.

The brochures were filled with smiling couples standing on beaches and reassuring phrases about dignity, autonomy, and choice.

The sort of language people use when they need death to sound like a lifestyle product.

The agreement was simple. Take the pill. Avoid the worst of the disease. In exchange, your remains became company property.

Organic processing removal.

A phrase so sterile it almost worked. Almost.

“Your hover leaves in twenty five minutes, Asher, I’ve called a car for you,” Maya said as I finished laying out my weekend items. I stared at his side of the bed, how I wanted to hold him, to be near him.

I went to the living room with my bag for Seattle.

I sat on the wooden floor, under the pane of sunlight that cast across the living room one last time.

The one where we used to sit with Maya and read. Or listen to records. Or talk. Or love each other. Or just be.

If I could go back in time and give myself a message, a note, an instruction from the future it might be just that.

Just be.

Don’t let your hunger overwhelm you.

Don’t let your aspirations choke you.

Just be.

I think that’s the Icarus in me speaking. The man who crossed the galaxy, who went further than anyone had gone, who brought something back that would kill me.

The ambition that launched me is the same ambition that will end me. And I know it. And I’m trying to forgive myself for it on the floor of a Telegraph Hill apartment in a patch of morning light.

The same patch of sunlight, different seasons, different years, different versions of us. Yet somehow they always arrive in exactly the same place.

I think that’s what I was truly mourning, not the grand things, the ordinary things, the patch of sunlight, the records the floor, the side of the bed, the things that survive after the big moments are gone. The places where life feels the most alive.

The door click behind me sounded like a tightly pulled drum being pounded. “See you at the Haven,” Maya said as she delicately leaned over to plant a kiss on my cheek.

I looked up at Coit Tower for possibly the last time and stepped into the car. “Space Port,” I said as the car hissed and launched forward.

All the way towards the bridge, I saw little bits of San Francisco pass by, moments I wanted to exit the car, exit my life and live inside of for but a moment.

An old woman hosing down the sidewalk in front of her noodle cart. An old man tending to mangos in a fruit cart. A young girl eating ice cream on a street corner on Market Street. A business man drinking coffee in a cafe window on the Embarcadero. A child feeding pigeons seeds in a parklet.

Life.

Continuing.

As the car continued over the bridge, I saw the suborbital jets rising in the distance towards the sky while the city itself set in the rear horizon. There was once a time when humanity flew in planes, powered by jet fuel, propellers, and threaded with that thrilling feeling of gravity falling away, of freedom rising to take it’s place and and endless horizon to head towards.

“White Star Airways, flight 838 to Seattle with continuing service onto The Haven, now boarding,” the robotic announcer said. I knew this would be the same flight Ezra would soon board. I pushed through the terminal as I entered the jet. I sat where I could see the city once more out the window just beyond the massive hover engine. The turbines hummed and whirred, the feeling of thrust building beneath us.

“Cabin prepare for departure,” the pilot said.

I was ready, not for the flight, for the departure.

The thrust pushed and we lifted off the pad, the city felt like it peeled away for a moment as we turned towards the horizon, the engines rocketing us forward, towards the horizon. Towards our futures.

Our final goodbyes

Our merciful exits.

Our destination.

Our finality curves.

Our destinies.

Meanwhile I am moving toward an ending.

The world doesn’t stop. The city doesn’t pause behind me, life continues, and that makes this departure feel even more heavy.

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San Francisco, CA 2044

The gentle rocking of the suborbital flight rocks gently lulls me to sleep. I can’t believe people flew jet planes once upon a time. As the plane gently reaches sub orbital altitude and my body unhinges from gravity for a moment I’m at peace. I begin to drift to sleep and then I hear it.

“Secure.”

“Secure.”

“Secure.”

The metallic voice droned on as lights flashed and alarms blared. As I walked towards the window, my fingers dragged across the polished wood table, the scent of sandalwood lingered from two flickering candles.

My breath felt heavy, each exhale caught the cold of the room as I saw my breath, floating, free, vapor.

Nothingness.

The breath and I were the same now.

At the window, I could feel the city like it was contracting, holding its breath somehow. On the wall, the monitor showed graphics of the Earth with flashing news bulletins painted with screaming headlines like,

VENUS STATION ALPHA DESTROYED

MASSIVE SOLAR STORM TO DEVASTATE EARTH, SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER

As I saw the city surging, and then contracting, pulsating with fear, the sky turned crimson like a blood vessel engorged. I turned back to look behind me. A girl stood there, her face soft, inquisitive but scared.

“Is it time?” She asked.

“Not yet,” I told her.

“But the ejection will destroy us,” she said.

And then he stepped forward. I didn’t know who he was. I just know he had a strong jaw, a commanding presence. And those eyes, kind, but sad, his face handsome and strong but soft.

The face I had seen in this place a thousand times. The eyes I had gazed into, a face I had traced with my hands. So perfect in dreams but so unknown in the light.

And then as we looked at each other, a hand moved down the back of my head, cradling my occipital bone. I turned to my right. In the dream I had not yet acquired the knowledge to make what I saw make sense. The vocabulary to give my words sound. So what I said came from somewhere almost feral, instinctual.

“Simon,” I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here and yet not here,” Simon said, his voice sounding in riddles.

“What does any of this mean?” I asked dumbfounded.

“It means that I am your beginning. I am your end. I will be there at both,” Simon told me cryptically.

“Ezra Rook!” A woman’s voice shouted at me as I laid on my back. I was watching the sky, the way the gray storm clouds rode into the plains on a squall line that moved like a chariot bringing doom. As I laid on the damp grass, the smell of moisture becoming electrified in the atmosphere before a storm, I watched as a glittery pinwheel in my mom’s front yard spun as the wind surged.

“They’ll never love you,” I spat angrily at my brother. Shouting, crying, screaming. I didn’t care that I was hurting him. That was the point.

“Freak.”

“Weirdo.”

“Hopeless.”

I wanted him to die, to disappear for what he did, the way he made me feel about myself. I imagined a world without him. I wished for it even.

I imagined it so hard it hurt.

But that hurt didn’t compare to the day I found that he longer lived in this world.

“Accident,” they said.

But I knew the truth, this accident started long ago, in our youth, and it has been exploding slowly forward in time ever since. It didn’t just “happen” that day, the shrapnel just hadn’t reached him yet until the day it ended for good.

“We didn’t get along well the last few years,” I confessed from the pulpit, “But in him I put my love, my hopes, my dreams, my fears, and in his departure, I forgive him, but I won’t forget him. I will mourn him but I won’t become monument to him. I will merely love him the best I can,” I said simply to the congregation.

As the sirens blared, I looked around at the faces, “what does any of this mean?” I asked into the confusion as alarms continued to blare.

“This is just life,” Simon told me.

“My life?” I asked.

“It’s a life,” Simon said. “Whether it’s your life or not is up to you. You have the freedom to choose.”

“But how can that be?” I asked.

Simon looked through me towards the window. Outside the sky bled crimson. Sirens wailed like they were anticipating the fall of heaven.

“People think life is a straight line. Beginning. Middle. And end. And every day are just stops along the way,” Simon told me.

He smiled at me.

“In my experience it’s because people like diagrams. Easy to read, easy to see where they are going, unlike life itself,” Simon said.

The alarms continued their endless droning.

“But Life isn’t a line. It’s a series of collisions,” Simon told me tipping his gaze towards the window.

The girl had disappeared.

The man with the kind eyes remained.

I watched him standing there, patient.

“Storm’s coming,” Simon said cryptically like we were still standing on the plains looking at squall lines. “Better be careful,” he said turning to look at me. “One day you’ll understand,” he promised.

“Parents collide and suddenly you arrive,” Simon said. “A relative says something cruel when you’re ten and thirty years later, you still carry it around.”

“We miss a flight, we take a different road home. Someone stays. Someone leaves,” he said like it all was so easy. The city swelled again with panic before the skyline seemed to bristle before dimming.

“Fate sounds better when you frame it that way, instead of calling it ‘probability,’ less clinical,” he said.

The glass groaned and the house shuddered.

“Is that what this is?” I asked. “Probability?”

Simon thought for a second before offering, “I’m not entirely sure.” It was like honesty arriving all at once.

“Life contains a thousand versions of itself,” Simon said cryptically, more so this time.

I felt a strange ache.

“Most of them disappear,” Simon continued, “Most of them never happen.”

“And the others?” I asked.

“The others become memory.”

The room trembled.

The monitors flashed red. The color of death, of danger, of ending.

MASS EJECTION EVENT CONFIRMED.

SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

The words washed across the walls like prophecy.

“And what if the versions are hollow?” I asked. For the first time Simon looked directly at me. The expression on his face was impossible to place.

It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t sadness. It looked like guilt. The alarms stopped.

The silence was the only noise that rang out.

Simon reached forward and touched the side of my face, “You ask interesting questions, Ezra.” The room vanished before he answered any of them.

I walked through the office. I turned back to turn the lights off, to say goodbye, to move on, that’s what they were calling it.

As I did, I took in one good last look at the place. I looked at my office nameplate and turned to look at my office. I wasn’t looking at the old office where I spent my days, I was looking past it now, to the nameplate on the office across from mine.

“No,” I said, “it can’t be, there’s no way.” I leaned into my memories as proof I was right but the comfort was cold, hollow even.

I still visit this dream often, in my deepest sleep, in my hours racked by thought. The nights counting days until Asher would return. Even now as I fly to our house in the Haven for the weekend, as the flight attendant asks if I’d like anything to drink before landing, I tell her that I’m fine. I’m comfortable sleeping.

Retreating.

Hiding.

In dreams.

If you enjoyed The Haven please consider subscribing for more fiction from Rhodes Ave. Press or please share this story with others:

The Haven is a limited-time series running Friday, July 31 to Wednesday August 12 with chapters releasing once per day. Please subscribe to receive each chapter in your inbox.

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San Francisco, CA 2035

“Ezra,” Simon clipped at me, “Come here, now,” he said insistently. “Look at this beauty,” Simon sighed as my eyes cut through the crowd at the San Francisco Citadel. In amongst the many handsome men in tuxedos was one in particular.

“Look at him, Ezra,” Simon said. “I couldn’t have carved a better visage myself than if we were in the lab creating a new model.”

He was handsome, rugged, with a strong chin and jawline and the way he wore the tuxedo was commanding.

He wore it, not the other way around.

This was a man who was clearly able to hone his control to master everything including his surroundings right down to the way fabric draped across his body or the way the light bent around him.

The servers milled about the room holding trays of champagne aloft, their movements, quick, swift, careful, robotic. Cyber Serve.

Jasmine Davies from Cyber Serve saw me through the crowd and began making a beeline for me. I grabbed a glass of champagne from the nearest Model B I could find and began sipping heartily.

“Ezra,” Jasmine cooed.

“So lovely to see you here,” she said practiced, calm, polite.

“The Board just wont stop going on about how excited they are to see how the Model E units will perform on the Icarus,” she said though a hollow smile as I sipped.

“Seriously, though,” she said deflating whatever manufactured “goodwill” or praise she was approaching with, initially, “The deal between Cyber Serve and the US Space Agency will put us heads and shoulders above the competition in cybernetics,” Jasmine said as I smiled and nodded.

Turning her head towards the stage framed by the panoramic windows of the City and the Bay, Jasmine clipped, “Oh, let’s watch the speech.”

Xavier Collins, CEO of Cyber Serve, took to the stage with the astronauts in their tuxedos. “Thank you all for coming,” he said into the floating microphone drone. “I’m so excited to announce our latest contract with the US Space Agency is now official,” he said as a cheer rippled through the crowd, polite claps made while holding champagne flutes.

“Let’s look at the matter at hand,” he said turning to his side as a holo display flickered to life. The massive hulking space cruiser Icarus appeared in the orbital shipyards. “Now,” Xavier added, “Let’s check in on our boys at work,” he said as he swiped at the display. A camera zoomed in on the Icarus’ hull that looked like it was crawling with men in space without helmets.

“Those,” Xavier began, “Are the new Model E Cyber Serve units fast at work on completion of the Icarus cruiser, the USSA’s latest, most advanced deep space cruiser.”

Another light smattering of applause.

“Once the Icarus launches in 2042, it will travel on a three year mission beyond our star system to MX-79 and Wolf 359 on a quest to chart the outermost reaches of our galaxy,” Xavier announced proudly as if he had built the ship himself.

“Along the way, these fine astronauts will command the Icarus,” Xavier said, “While a Cyber Serve crew will aid in navigation, operations, and engineering truly paving the way for cybernetics.”

After the polite applause, even after the abrupt “anyway, so…” pivots back into whatever mindless yammering existed here before. I could have stayed, I could have left. I could have stared out the window solemnly. I could have done a million things. Instead I grabbed a flute of champagne, I sipped and then I crossed the floor.

The Icarus would one day cross the galaxy in search of the unexplored, the unknown, the unimaginable.

But for today, I was a one man Icarus, crossing the floor of the observation lounge. Whereas Icarus may have flown too close to the sun and fallen into the ocean for his avarice, I would merely fly if only for a moment and enjoy the feeling while it lasted.

The light from the setting sun set his hair ablaze. The glass in his hand glinted. His skin looked soft, but porcelain all at once. His face looked strong, yet kind. Beautiful, yet broken.

Promising yet petrifying.

As I approached the window he turned towards me, his eyes opening as if waking from a dream. Maybe I was, too.

“Ezra Rook,” I said extending my hand. No “hey, might I introduce myself,” no pretense just my name.

“Asher Vance,” he said taking my hand, flesh to flesh, shaking my hand.

“Are you with the Space Agency, Ezra?” Asher asked me.

“Cyber Serve,” I said shrinking some.

“I wouldn’t be so shy,” Asher said, “Aren’t you the ones being celebrated today?”

“My superiors are,” I said bashfully.

“Then let’s find a way to celebrate you, how about?” Asher suggested. I liked the sound of that.

“What are we even celebrating?” I asked.

“You helped build the Model E in some way,” Asher said.

“One day, like it or not,” Asher said to me, “A part of you will be coming along with me to Wolf 359. I may be far from home, but I’ll have one familiar face around me to to speak.”

“I like that,” I admitted.

823 Waverly Place, San Francisco, CA 2035

Asher and I sat next to the shimmering holo sign that advertised out onto the rain slicked streets of Chinatown reading Golden Harbor Tea House.

The restaurant was comfortably tucked into a narrow alley between Grant and Stockton on the second floor of a building that was fronted by red paper lanterns that hung from its eaves year round. Founded in the 1970s, this place had seen booms rise and fall , tech, fintech, the billionaire space race, cybernetics, and now CME tech, the sub-genre of get rich quick fraudsters selling CME protections.

Regardless of all Golden Harbor had lived through, this was one of the oldest still-operating restaurants in Chinatown. And one of the few that still owned a space in my heart.

“You eat shrimp?” I asked Asher over steaming cups of tea.

“Only if you share,” Asher said playfully.

“Two orders of Imperial Honey Walnut Prawns,” I ordered smiling.

“Two?” Asher asked me equally playfully.

“One for now, one for lunch tomorrow, trust me,” I told him.

“Little presumptuous don’t you think?” Asher asked me jokingly.

“You can thank me later,” I told him.

“You trust me?” Asher asked.

“Implicitly,” I responded.

“And one Salt & Pepper Dungeness crab,” Asher ordered.

“Whoa, whoa,” I protested, “No way, crab is so rare and expensive. You can’t do that.”

“Two orders, please,” Asher insisted before turning to me, “One to celebrate with and one to go.”

“Now who is being presumptuous?” I chided him.

Outer Sunset , San Francisco, 2035

I held the glass of wine between my middle and ring finger letting the bulb of the glass settle in my palm as he came towards me. I gently set the glass aside as his tongue pushed past my lips into my mouth. I could taste him, feel him. My mouth could feel his inner temperature, warm, and gradually climbing.

My face pressed against the windows of the living room as I saw the city through the glass, gray, streaked with rain, fog, not from the city, but from us.

Fogged with breath. Fogged by the jagged panting, the ragged breath, the rush, the feelings, the pressure, the pleasure. The heightening, The frightening, the exhilarating, the terrifying.

The intimate.

The overwhelming.

The climax.

The physicality.

The nadir.

The quiet.

The silence.

The frozenness of holding each other. Of learning each other.

The dribble of the shower water.

The rush of the heated water on skin so electrified but now so still.

Of skin so charged but now so complete.

Of two lives so apart but now so joined.

Of water touching skin and allowing it to remain unchanged.

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA 2037

Simon married us in civil ceremony at the Palace of Fine Arts on a summer day in June of 2037. “Before I leave for mission prep in Houston,” Asher had said to me.

I agreed.

I couldn’t stand not being Mr. Ezra Vance any longer. Our lives had become one. I gave up the Outer Sunset for an astronaut’s crash pad on Telegraph Hill.

And in this home, we made a home together. A life together.

My house in Outer Sunset was more a recepticle. For me, for my life, my career, my pet projects. For the Cybers I had saved from Retirement Row. I programmed one of them to tend to my garden, to cook, clean. But I had never programmed one to love. Until Asher.

When Asher first came across Maya, Asher said, “She’s so lifelike,” as she poured wine, made salad, and cooked his steak just to his liking. She even took up saying “Anything for you, Asher.” I never programmed that. But then again, love is not programmable. It just happens. It grows.

“Maya’s room,” Asher said as he showed me the extra bedroom he cleared out for her. “You think she’ll like it?” He asked me.

I knew Cybers did not require sleep and I know Asher knew this, too, but it warmed my heart to see him trying to make life as normal for her as possible. In my experience, I had seen the way humans treated cybers, as things, as “Chrome jobs,” as less than.

I had never seen a human worry about what fabric a cyber might be most comfortable sleeping against. Or if the light would be just right for their bedroom. Or taking such good care to stock a small bookshelf with reading material. Asher didn’t think I was watching him while he assembled her room, but I did. I noticed, I waited, I watched. I saw everything he did, the care, the precision to do it just right. Not just good enough.

I wasn’t just watching a man I loved, I was watching a man who loved. Who didn’t ask questions, who didn’t hold conditions over who to love and how and why. He just did. Maybe that’s what it means to love. To be. To exist.

Constellation Dr, San Francisco 2044

Maya and I stepped off the BART with Ezra on a sunny fall day. Across the bay, the city hummed but here at the San Francisco Spaceport, the activity felt heavier.

We stood by the Departures sign. The ramp to my transport was imposing, all steel and mystery and unknown. But before me, my husband, Ezra, our daughter, Maya, our love.

Our life.

“Asher!” My co-pilot Dave Voorhies called out to me across the ramp.

“Ready to discover what Wolf 359 holds?” Dave asked me excitedly.

“Dave,” I said, “This is my husband, Ezra, and our daughter, Maya,” I told him as Dave shook Ezra’s hand and took Maya’s hand.

“I got to tell you guys,” Dave said, “I love my buddy, Asher here, I promise I will take care of him while we’re away. I know being away for three years can be scary but anytime you get scared, remember I’m with him. I’m with you.”

“I’ll send you guys some photos and letters when I get a signal burst, just leave him to me,” Dave said happily.

“All crew, secure for liftoff,” the automated voice said inside the transport as the hatch hissed shut.

As the transport lifted off the pad, I saw Ezra and Maya waiting on the observation platform, Maya’s yellow dress flapping in the wind as we took off. I kept that yellow blur in the window the whole way into orbit hoping that if I just sat in that memory longer I might carry it with me all the way to Wolf 359.

The Icarus and the launch platform came into view over the limb of Earth. The ship was long, hulking, gleaming in the sunlight, its massive thruster engines ready to hurtle us into the cosmos.

Dave’s hand took mine, “I got you,” Dave said to me.

I wanted to believe him. To trust it would “all be alright.”

“Prepare for hard burn ignition sequence to Wolf 359,” I said in the command module into my helmet as the ship groaned behind me, all shuddering metal and fire and fury.

As the years stretched on, Dave kept his promise, he sent Maya and Ezra regular updates and photos. I loved that he kept my family in mind even when we were way out here beyond ignition, beyond the pull of gravity, beyond the pull of the ordinary. The expected, the Earthly.

And one day, I kept my own promise.

The day Dave’s EV suit failed while we repaired a solar panel on the Icarus, I sent the note to his wife and his son.

I called him a hero.

A pioneer.

A model husband.

An asset.

More than a colleague.

A friend.

And that day we jettisoned Dave’s body into the reaches of Wolf 359, I knew no matter how far we traveled we’d never be done.

I knew now matter how much of the galaxy we’d explore we’d conquer the galaxy but we’d never conquer death.

Maybe we were never meant to.

Maybe death was the consequence, of exploration, of conquest, of existence. Ezra always used to say that he could feel the city under his feet, the way it pushed back at him. And while I never completely understood him, he said that kind of resistance, that kind of push back made him feel held.

So maybe in this, too, Death wasn’t finality, it was just the universe pressing back on us, gently, like it was meant to. Death wasn’t an ending, it was just a new form, a new life, a new way of being a part of the universe and a new way of letting the universe exist within you.

As I write this log entry, I am on my way home to Earth from MX-79.

A part of the galaxy is within me. I know it will end me one day. Maybe soon. But I have come to believe that I won’t be ending. I’ll be returning. Becoming part of something larger than myself.

And in my wake, in the negative space left behind. I will find someone to carry on what I’ve lost. Someone to carry on in the void that I created in the space I vacated.

The space made of all that I leave behind.

If you enjoyed The Haven please consider subscribing for more fiction from Rhodes Ave. Press or please share this story with others:

The Haven is a limited-time series running Friday, July 31 to Wednesday August 12 with chapters releasing once per day. Please subscribe to receive each chapter in your inbox.

Subscribe now

“May I ask you a question?” Maya asked as I tended to her wrist servos with delicate love and care.

“Absolutely, Maya,” I told her as I reached for a tool.

“Who made me?” She asked with a sort of sparkly naiveté.

“Cyber Serve made you,” I said plainly. “But, did you make me?” Maya asked.

“Not exactly but your central processing core and your protocol chip was designed by me,” I told her, “So I guess I had a hand in making you, but no I did not make you.”

“Do all humans have central processing cores or protocol chips?” Maya asked.

“No we don’t, Maya,” I explained. “We don’t have machine parts, we have souls, and hearts.”

“What are souls?” Maya asked.

“It’s what we are born with, it’s what passes on after we’re gone,” I said to Maya unsure how to accurately describe a “soul.”

“Passes on to where?” Maya asked. “No one really knows,” I told Maya.

“So you just believe in something you’ve never seen?” Maya asked.

“That’s what we call faith, Maya, it’s something we’ve never seen, we can’t explain it, we can’t deny it, we just believe in it,” I said.

“Do I have a soul?” Maya asked me. “I believe anyone cyber or human that lives and experiences things has a soul,” I told Maya. I said that to myself again in my mind. Maybe if I said it enough I’d actually believe it. Maybe If I said it enough it would eventually become true.

“What was I before?” Maya asked.

“Before?” I asked her back.

“Before you gave me purpose and a soul?” Maya stated. I knew where she was going.

“You were a service cyber, a Model G,” I told her factually. “But your line was retired,” I said unflinchingly.

“Simon and I bought a few Model Gs from a cyber wholesaler before the line was shut down. We programmed you and reset your core program,” I told her honestly.

I held back on the uglier truth though. “Why did you not give me a new core program?” Maya asked.

“Because I believed that you deserved to chose your own purpose,” I told her, “And I thought the best way to do that would be to be a part of a family first.”

“A family,” Maya said like she finally understood what the words meant but I saw her becoming lost in memory, perhaps a recursive loop of some sort. “What is a Chrome Bar?” Maya asked me next.

I was not going to answer, I would not shatter the illusion I had crafted for her.

The polite, polished truth that she was bought from a cyber wholesaler and not from dealer of Cybers to a notorious Chrome Bar proprietor. A place where ugly men satisfied ugly desires. I thought Simon and I had wiped her memory of the place, the place she lived, the place she “worked.” But memory it would prove is hard to excise. Stubborn, even.

If memory can survive reprogramming.

Can identity?

Can a soul?

Or am I just a foolish man deluding myself into thinking I can survive through my creations?

Land’s End, San Francisco, 2041

As we descended the stairs that abutted Land’s End towards the Sutro Baths, I saw Maya, her eyes focusing and concentrating on the shale that lined the trail. Looking out over the water that surged and pressed in against the rocks lining Land’s End, Maya said, “Water eventually erodes everything in touches, right?”

“What do you mean?” I asked her curious why this train of thought had surfaced.

“This city, this peninsula,” she said turning back towards San Francisco, towards the past, towards the before. Everything that existed before the Land’s End.

“It was something else,” Maya said, “And then, the water, the water that surrounds it, gently bit by bit wave by wave, the ceaseless pulsing of the waves over centuries, carved this away,” Maya said marveling, “The water shaped it in its image, into the place now known as San Francisco, is that right?” Maya asked me.

“That’s a very precise explanation,” I told her, “But correct.” I told Maya.

“Does water shape people, too?” Maya asked.

“No, sweetie,” I told Maya brushing a strand of hair out of her face, “Water only shapes land.”

“Then what shapes people?” Maya asked, delicately, honestly, naive, optimistic, untouched.

Reprogrammed. Revised. Taught to forget. Engineered to move on, to discard the past, to become someone else. Something else. I sometimes wish humans could forget the way cybers do.

Sometimes I wish we could just give ourselves up, not let go, just let the water take us, let it hold us, and let its forces reshape us in whatever way it sees fit.

Maybe afterwards, we’d be able to sustain life, or a city, or both, or neither.

Maybe that’s why cybers were the more superior version of a human, they’d long outlive us, but maybe they’d take a piece of us, the ones who cared, the ones who stayed into that future with them. In a way, after all the cryogenics and life expansion drugs, maybe cybers were the key to our immortality after all.

And then I remembered working with Simon, and the truth I knew. They were never family, they could be programmed to mimic love but never fully equipped to live in it. To understand it, to hold it the way we did.

They were just code wrapped in flesh and aided by machinery.

I had to come to peace with the cruel arithmetic of it.

How to make cybernetics feel like us.

Act like us.

Even though they were never like us.

Not really.

Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, 2042

I put on an old vinyl record, the warm crackle and hum of the vinyl seeping into our living room.

“Music,” Maya said as she watched the record spin on an old vinyl turntable I found from a secondhand dealer and presented to Asher for his birthday a few years back.

Maya sat next to the player in the sunlight as it cast across our living room floor and Coit Tower loomed in the distance. It was almost as if Coit Tower was the spindle and we were all just part of the record, the sound of the city in endless rotation, endless motion.

“You like it?” I asked her about the record by a band long gone and almost forgotten.

I drummed along on the edge of the coffee table with my fingers as I saw her listening intently.

“I’m detecting imperfections in the record, variations in the sound,” she said clinically.

“That’s the vinyl crack and pop,” I told Maya, “That’s why people buy these.”

“Why do people buy old imperfect things?” Maya asked me.

“Maybe because,” I began, “They remind us of people we lost, parts of ourselves that we lost.”

Maya looked like she understood. I hoped she did. If I keep telling myself that enough, one day I will believe she understood.

And then I wept. Not for Maya, I wept for me.

This wasn’t really about vinyl.

This was about how I’m an old record.

Maya is an old record.

Luka is an old record.

Retirement Row is an old record.

Even Asher is becoming an old record.

People preserve them because they contain noise.

The crackle.

The damage.

The evidence that something lived.

And without that evidence?

What else was there besides good intentions, servos, machinery and code?

All of this hit me, not delicately, not in waves, but all at once, a torrent of sadness that arrived from the weeping over a specific object, from the crack and pop of something imperfect and irreplaceable.

Something that never was supposed to be.

And something that may never be again.

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Lux Hotel, San Francisco, CA 2050

I walked into the Bar Oscura at the Lux Hotel in Russian Hill on a crisp spring day. The kind that felt like it was designed long ago to lure tourists to San Francisco. It was the kind of day that had to have been manipulated, temperature controlled by someone to make chowder in bread bowls a necessity and colorful scarves bought from street vendors more than a gift to give to a relative back home.

“Ezra Rook,” I said to the hostess at the front door looking over her tablet of reservations. “I’m meeting…” I began. I didn’t even have to say his name.

Her eyes flicked to me in a speed only someone with eyes like mine would recognize. Hydraulic, Robotic, perfect.

Model G.

“Yes, your party is already here,” she said with the polite clip that comes from a MX-9 chip. The kinds I used to obsess over, the kinds I tested until they were more than perfect, they were flawless. Imperceptible.

“Ezra,” Simon said looking up from his plate of crudo at the table ensconced by the windows. Simon stood as I approached and extended his hand towards mine, his handshake still warm, firm, and resolute.

Simon and I used to sit practically back to back at Cyber Serve, our offices sat next to each other. We were so close we could almost touch.

Simon was dispatched years before I was, his sudden “retirement” was almost a harbinger of what would happen to me when it came time for my own “layoff.”

But I was still young and dumb and idealistic enough to think that I’d never be shown the door. I had been trained and mentored by one of the best cyberneticists in the business.

Surely that sort of institutional knowledge would be my salvation.

Until it wasn’t.

But ever since then, Simon checked in on me. We checked in on each other.

Cyber Serve Systems, San Francisco, CA, 2039

I remember late one night being in Simon’s office as the city twinkled out the windows, a line of Model H’s were lined up in his office. The last line he’d ever build.

The last legacy he’d ever leave.

Over takeout sushi, we installed subroutines, patches and lines of code designed to make this one of the best lines yet.

“Enter diagnostic mode,” Simon clipped as the units eyes flicked upwards in eerie precision.

From Simon’s desk, he took a jagged blade and held it out to one of the units, “Unit, acknowledge,” he commanded as the unit turned his gaze towards Simon.

“Take this knife and plunge it into my chest,” he ordered.

The unit wrapped its hands around the handle, held it and looked at the knife as if he were seeing a blade with newborn eyes.

“Unit, comply,” Simon snapped at it.

“I will not,” the unit told him defiantly.

“Why not?” Simon asked harsher this time.

“To take the life of the creator is forbidden,” the unit told him as his face softened. I knew this was an effect of servos under the skin, it allowed the units the ability to mimic human facial expression. But it was just code wrapped in flesh and aided by machinery. I knew the truth.

The cruel arithmetic of it.

How to make cybernetics feel like us.

Act like us.

Even though I knew the truth.

They were not like us.

Not really.

The night it happened, Simon showed up almost the instant I walked in the front door. As soon as I saw Asher, I succumbed to tears. I told him the news. I told him I feared the crushing weight of the failure. But Asher didn’t let me wallow he merely said, “He’s here.”

I didn’t have to ask him who. I already knew.

Simon stood in the living room, Two glasses of Chablis already poured.

“I can’t believe they just got rid of me,” I said as I hunched over the wine and Simon sat beside me.

“I’m glad they freed you,” Simon said, “They’ve liberated you, you were wasting your life there, and now you have the freedom of writing a new one,” he told me making it sound so easy.

“But how? Without this purpose what am I?” I asked choking back tears and Chablis.

“A loving husband, a brilliant scientist,” Simon said brushing the hair off my forehead. “Someone I could see myself following wherever he goes,” Simon said, “Someone I know is deserving of everything he wants. And so much more.”

“You always took care of me,” Simon said, “All those late nights, all those tight deadlines, now let me take care of you.”

“Simon,” I said trying to break the tension, “I’m already married, but I’m flattered.”

“Not that, silly,” Simon said giving the levity right back to me.

San Francisco, CA 2039

The whole way between our house in Telegraph hill and Simon’s house on the Embarcadero was like one red blur. I marveled at the way the city streaked by in blurs of red, the city’s new emergency warning system that alerted of incoming disasters - tsunamis, space debris, or in this case, a Coronal Mass Ejection.

I had never heard of a CME before but apparently its like if Old Faithful was on the surface of the sun and instead of an impressive display of water shooting into the air its more like a cannon of radiation shot out into space at the Earth.

This particular CME was due to hit North America almost directly along the Pacific Coast. The resulting blast was due to destroy the city’s electrical grid, the radiation nearly melting it away. The news was bracing the city to prepare for blackouts, systems outages and extremely lethal doses of radiation.

As we walked quickly, I saw a public news monitor announce ominously,

Thankfully, Simon’s house was built during a time when many feared a war that would require one-man survivalist skills.

When Simon invited us to ride out the impact in his “bunker” I was imagining something more spartan than the luxury suite he had beneath his house stocked with food, liquor, supplies and even an old Model B he had reprogrammed into an attendant who could serve food or act as a doctor if needed.

Right after a dinner of rehydrated noodles with some kind of gummy protein substance in a mystery sauce was served, Simon put on Debussey as the wine was poured.

As La Damoiselle Elue lilted through the bunker, over the steaming plates of food, the beds with sheets pulled snug, bottles of wine unopened, the ground began to rumble as a red light flashed on the wall.

“Let’s check in,” Simon said powering up the holo display. The bunker was filled with a live shot from the top of Twin Peaks. I stood and walked into the display as I looked out over the city. The sky became orange and swollen like it had swallowed fire, the sky became a river of dancing auroras, strands of deep orange, blues, greens and yellows scraping away the atmosphere. I watched as SOMA, the Embarcadero, the peninsula from one side to the other went black, and as the city blackened, we sat.

In silence.

In not knowing.

In the dark.

I don’t know what it was about dark that frightened me so. Like the fears of a child. The irrational thoughts that plagued me.

The fears that controlled me in looping thoughts.

The loop that ached.

The loop that was me.

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Portofino Hotel, San Francisco, CA 2050

I rolled over in the bed in the suite at the Portofino Hotel on the edge of the grounds of The Presidio.

As I did so the city’s skyline came into view as well as the contours of Ezra’s body laying in the bed beside me.

“Hey,” I said quietly afraid the sound of my voice would shatter the dream. Not an actual dream, the dream we inhabited in that room, that night, that weekend.

Where hot flesh was melted by a hotter heart, where sweat beaded, where boundaries collapsed and where two hearts desperately tried to see if their disparate puzzle pieces would fit together.

Ezra turned towards me, his teeth nibbled on my shoulder as his fingers wandered through the hair on my temples before his fingers began tracing the lines of my body.

I wanted him to know me. I wanted to know him. Asher wanted us to know each other. Said it would make things easier. But knowing Ezra more only made things harder. More complicated. More intense. More real.

“Hey,” he said to me across the chasm between us. “Want to order room service? My treat.”

“That’s sweet,” I said brushing the hair out of his face. I saw the way his fingers danced across the keypad by the bed. I knew he would order something good. I trusted him. As he turned back towards me in the bed, he said once more, “Hey.”

“Hey,” I responded.

“Can I ask you something?” Ezra asked in a way that felt intimately dangerous.

“Always,” I said practicing.

“Who were you?” Ezra asked, “You know…before?”

“Someone smaller,” I said. “Someone scared. The only person I knew how to be after Michael.”

“What happened?” Ezra asked me. I saw the door open behind me, the one that led to my past, I lingered at the doorway letting Ezra probe me before I turned and chose to walk through it.

“Andrei happened,” I told him, “I finally knew what love felt like again. What sunsets looked like again. He made me unafraid to love again.”

“That’s beautiful,” Ezra told me.

“And then my fearlessness destroyed me. When Andrei left, I thought I’d never love again,” I told Ezra holding back the bigger truth.

“Loving Michael and Andrei destroyed me symmetrically,” I told Ezra honestly.

And then the resistance broke, “I tried to ‘get back’ to normal, tried some of those holo dating parlors, you know?” Ezra nodded. He knew. Ezra knew what kind of men went there. What kind of man I was.

Who I was then. I laughed at the absurdity of my pain and said, “And then a few good old fashioned flesh and bone dates, but they never worked. They felt like present, not like love, not like the kinds that last. And then I saw an ad on the BART for Eternal Bonds.”

“You know, the ones that say eternal romance is our one true bond?” I said knowing he knew all too well.

“I do,” Ezra said, “It’s the same way we found you,” he said.

“So, I figured there had to be someone out there like me, someone who would take me, a twice widowed loner and give him a chance,” I told him.

“At first they gave me a hard time about not wanting to become an augment but I figured with 40ish years left, that was enough to build a life with someone, to live with someone, to love someone. And if forty years of love was possible, how could I say no?”

“Well,” Ezra said, “I know something you won’t say no to,” he began as he started to nibble on my ear. I tried to push him away but a part of me relented, the part of me that still wanted his touch, his breath on my skin. To remember what was lost but also what was found. To revel in this new symmetry that was forming.

This new life.

That was blooming.

Coalescing.

Becoming real with every touch.

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA 2050

Ezra and I wandered the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts the next morning sipping coffees and taking turns holding each other’s hands. Feeling our pulses beat through our skin. Feeling each other without shrinking. Touching each other without running. Loving each other without fearing.

That morning, that weekend was the most complete I had felt in some time. Possibly a decade. I could almost hear him and smell the oud of his cologne drifting in the tropical breeze. Not Ezra, Andrei.

Lisianski Island, Hawaiian Union, 2040

“Get up,” Andrei called as the surf pummeled the sand of this island paradise. As I stepped out of the thatched hut, I saw Andrei sitting in his favorite beach chair cradling the neck of a sweating bottle of beer while Toko, our host, called to us to join her at the grill. On the grill, Toko griddled ham, tortillas, and eggs.

“Kotte, itto, Mwo ika a pwan pwiipwi!” Toko shouted at us balling up her fist over the grill her voice and her Marshallese accent coming off overly insistent.

As Toko served us plates of steaming food, her eyes darted off from the grill to the tablet she had to the side, “”Iju! Kio lale men in!” she snapped at Andrei as he took the tablet and saw a news report from the American Space Agency,

This is an emergency broadcast from the Pacific Space Command in Honolulu.

Satellites have just confirmed a massive X-class solar flare tracking directly toward the North Pacific. Early data indicates this Coronal Mass Ejection carries an electromagnetic payload that matches or exceeds the 2039 eruption.

Impact is expected within the next one hundred and twenty minutes.

Because of the Ejection’s location and vector, the atmospheric shielding over Hawaii is projected to take a direct hit, causing immediate, catastrophic grid failure.

All residents must disconnect any hardware from the grid immediately and seek shelter inside reinforced concrete structures. Communication arrays will fail shortly.

Disconnect your devices, protect your power, and seek shelter now.

“Hanji,” Andrei called out to the inn’s manager, “Please get us and your staff on the next transport out of here.”

“Ewōr wōt iien kio, irooj,” Hanji told him as we moved quickly to pack. To abandon paradise.

As we flew away in the hover ship towards the mainland, towards security, towards safety, the sky began to swell like a bruise, becoming purple with threads of orange and black like space was tearing it open. Just as we were about to land, my tablet dinged, I opened it just in time to see the headline,

“We were safe,” I kept telling ourselves as we landed with bellies filled with a breakfast cooked on a beach that didn’t exist anymore. A meal cooked with love and sand between toes, and gulls on the breeze in a world that didn’t look the same any longer.

“Home safe,” I said to myself as we entered our house in the Outer Sunset, trading flip flops for house shoes and comfortable throws.

But we were never safe. We never would be again.

I turned over in the bed in the morning, no drifting of oud, no sweating of a beer bottle, no loud voice calling us for breakfast laced with annoyance and love.

Just his face, silent, still. Frozen. Maybe in my mind, or in his heart, he was still there on Lisianski. Or maybe that’s just a dream I dreamed once to make it more comfortable to bear.

Maybe he never made it with me. Maybe I got out and he was hit by the impact. I got out, but he was just a victim of the CME, a ghost lost in a paradise that was beyond my reach. That’s the story I’d tell myself to forget how he died. Quietly. In his sleep. In our bed.

Stroke, the doctor said later. As if that gave it any meaning. As if that gave any peace.

I’ve always thought dying in your sleep was peace. The way to go without pain, without the horror of it.

But seeing it is another horror, entirely.

Ezra dabbed at my eyes with the corners of the sheet. The canvas of our searing intimacy rendered into something designed to comfort.

“I guess,” Ezra said to me across the bed, “I can see why the cause of death is hollow,” he said, his eyes saying something that felt true, not in words, in looks, in feelings, in actions, in all the imperceptible ways that change a person, the way their reaction can shift the tenor of a room.

“You’re the only one,” I began, “Who’s ever understood how to think this way,” I told Ezra, “Because medicine explains.”

“But It doesn’t comfort, a diagnosis is not an answer. It’s just a label attached to suffering,” I said earnestly.

“The doctor cannot explain why a man who survived global catastrophe dies quietly in bed,” I said as Ezra’s face broke gently.

“Everything else feels absurdly small compared to the loss,” I told him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, not cruel, just honest.

“I will someday,” Ezra told me as he turned into my side.

Maybe I would, too.

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I looked up at the twin suns over MX-79 and held my gloved hand up to shield my eyes from the glare.

“Asher,” My comms chirped, “how’s it looking down there?”

“Nothing, Icarus,” I radioed back.

In actuality there was an abundance of nothingness here. When we launched, we were sent to this desolate rock because a passing probe had seen what looked like aqueducts carved into the surface of this planet with what looked like the ruins of a civilization.

But standing here on the surface of the planet, it was clear someone at the Space Agency might have spilled something on their screen. Crumbs from a pastry mistaken for an alien civilization.

“Negative, command,” I said back once more as I looked at my rover. “Nothing, no signs on scans. If there was a civilization here, they’re long gone.”

Up ahead I saw an arch of some kind. I walked over to investigate. The stonework that the arch was made of was brittle enough to crumble as my glove touched it. As I did little spores seemed to break off and carry away with the harsh surface winds. I took some photos of the arch.

“Take some samples, Asher,” Command said into the comms, “And then get back to base.”

I began taking some scans of the arch as I didn’t really want to wander too far in this alien wasteland. I knelt down and took some soil samples, the soil orange with flecks of brown and gold.

I stood and turned back towards the arch. I used a tool to chip off some of the plaster and deposit it into a pouch on my waistband. I turned back towards my rover and as I did, I heard my partner, Miles cry out through the radio, “Asher, heads up, buddy!”

The last thing I remember is him pointing my direction. And then the next thing I felt was the crushing blow, the stone arch collapsing atop me.

I heard the voices frantic and chopped all around me.

“He has a fractured rib.”

“Collapsed lung.”

“Pushing fluids.”

“Get him in quarantine.”

“Pulse is racing.”

“It looks like an infection, but his body isn’t reacting to anything we’re giving him.”

I woke in the Icarus sickbay surrounded by machines and a plastic quarantine tent. I shivered, not just a chill like the kind astronauts get to know during long periods in space, a chill like the kind that digs into your bones and never leaves. I curled up under the paper thin blanket while I sucked my meals through a straw.

When I finally emerged from quarantine three weeks later, I wasn’t prepared for what I heard.

“Xenovirus.”

“That’s what the doctors are calling it,” the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Necheyev called it.

“The Xenocomps,” he continued, “That’s what we call the inhabitants of MX-79, that’s why there was no one to find. It’s because they were never aliens like we think of, a head, two arms and legs. They exist at a microscopic level. They don’t fly around the galaxy in ships, they travel on asteroids. And when they make impact, instead of colonizing and enslaving, they infect, they try to colonize the only way they know how, they adapt to different environments. And that includes organic bodies, right now they are colonizing you,” he said as my world felt like it shrank dramatically.

“The good news,” he continued, “is that the virus is designed to lay dormant.”

“How long?” I asked as my thoughts went to Ezra.

“Five years or so, we believe,” Dr. Necheyev said.

“And then?” I asked riding on razor’s edge.

“Then the virus will begin to attack your central nervous system as it breaks down your body trying to make you into a body it recognizes that it can then ‘colonize.’” He said coldly.

“By colonize, you mean kill me?” I asked cutting to the heart of it.

“In such cruel terms, yes,” Dr. Necheyev said.

2044 Spaceport Drive, San Francisco, CA, 2048

The day I stepped off the transport from the Icarus at the San Francisco spaceport, the city looked different. I realized I was looking at it through changed eyes. Eyes that now knew words like Xenocomp, bodily colonization, and viral dormancy. This wasn’t a city anymore, it was a tomb.

One that I’d live in day in and day out until the day I was no longer myself, no longer in control. No longer a hotshot astronaut with a kind husband who tended the home fires while I was away, I was just a clock ticking down ominously.

Ezra waited at the ramp to the platform right next to the sign that said Departures. I’ll never forget the way his eyes lit up when he saw me. And I’ll never forget the way his face broke when I told him.

Not that day, a week later. Not because I didn’t want to but because I didn’t want to hurt him. To doom him. To leash him to my fate.

It didn’t take more than a few weeks for the name Eternal Bonds to come up.

We met with a “sales representative” from Eternal Bonds who gave us a holo disk. In the comfort of our living room over Chateau Hanare, we browsed the catalog. I already knew what I wanted for Ezra, I wanted someone he could be with, someone he could love, someone he could grow old with, someone to go to bed asleep beside every night. And when the time came, someone to go to sleep beside for the last time.

I knew my time was limited but I wanted to exist, to survive, to go on. Not in this body but in someone else’s someone I could help choose for him. Choose with him.

We initially landed on an augment named Nicky with an exceptional lifespan. All genetic factors and diseases edited out of his gene, he’d even outlive Ezra.

But Ezra fought me on Nicky, said it wasn’t fair to love him and then cast him into nothingness after his death. Ezra said that we’d be solving one problem only to break Nicky’s heart again later in life. And who knew how long that life would last. Nicky could go on knowing heartbreak after heartbreak for decades after.

So we shifted the catalog to look at the Organic contracts…the ones who remained unedited, untouched.

And then we found Luka.

Ezra liked him immediately. He said he looked sad. Like a kind of sadness Ezra could drown in. “Maybe he needs us as much as I need him,” Ezra said.

We had dinner in the city at Petros and sure enough Ezra was just like the catalog. He told us about his first husband Michael, one of the last victims of AIDS before the cure was found. And through the sadness, he told us how me met Andrei, and the sorrow that returned like waves receding into the ocean the day Andrei died of a stroke.

Luka, so healthy at mid-age had already weathered two deaths of love in his life. But through it all he remained optimistic, hopeful, drawn to love as opposed to terrified by it. He was open to loving Ezra for me.

For us.

We got along so well over grape leaves, skewers, and good wine that before dinner was over we already were making plans to meet up at our house in the Haven.

We continued what the agency called continuity coordination, a fancy antiseptic word for “dating” each other in a sense to ensure a lasting match and as the name goes, an Eternal Bond. Our “continuity” consisted of regular dinners, either at our house or out in the City. Weekend trips to wine country. And over the two years of “continuity” we grew to love each other equally.

The Haven, Aleutian Island Alliance, Alaska, 2050

That first weekend was exactly what I wanted for Ezra. I saw the way Luka held him while Ezra fell asleep and I saw the way Ezra turned in to him bracing his forehead against Luka’s chest like two quotation marks silently, gently abutting each other.

I also saw the way they looked at each other over breakfast, over coffee, the way they spoke to each other thought those glances. Words unsaid, thoughts unvoiced, just seen. Felt, even.

This was what I could never give him. Not in the long run. Not past the finality curve. But I could give it to him. Love. A future. A life.

I wasn’t talking about Ezra, I was talking about Luka, too. We’re in this together now, the three of us. This isn’t some kind of fleeting vacation romance or an unseemly sexual arrangement, its the meat, the marrow of building a life where one would no longer live anymore, where life would evaporate and around the margins would be a life, the latticework of one ready to fill in the spaces, to pour into him with love, with kindness a sort of pre-installed intimacy I would no longer be able to give.

And in that installation I’d also selfishly install myself.

A frame of reference, an anchor of sorts. So that someday years from now, Luka could say to Ezra, “Like Asher used to,” and not just mean it in a hollow way, a way that people say things to offer cold comfort but in a way that was real, heartfelt and everlasting.

I’m not just installing myself selfishly into a life I would have no part of, I was weaving myself into the fabric of Ezra and Luka’s future dialect. I’m creating a shared language for them so that my absence might be shaped by remembrance rather than a void.

As we left the house that weekend to head back to the landing pad to normalcy in San Francisco once more, I turned back for an instant, I caught my reflection in the glassy ice that framed the door to the house. A stray ray of sunlight bounced off my reflection making the icy mirror slightly gaussian.

I looked at myself in the reflection. Really looked. Maybe for the first time since my diagnosis. Maybe I didn’t want to see a face I knew would be gone soon. But I realized in that moment, sickness be damned that we were all already gone, just in various phases of leaving.

Healthy or not, we all were departing slowly, agonizingly, it was about who was beside you while we did so. I chose Ezra to be that person for me. And in return I chose Luka to be that for him.

For me.

For us.

Headstones read Rest in Peace and that’s what I wanted, truly.

So I could leave in peace, at rest.

Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 2054

I sat under the pagoda calmly as I watched Ezra and Luka sitting on floor cushions.

“More tea, sir?” The kindly waitress asked Ezra. I watched as he happily asked her to fill his cup as Luka eagerly put his cup on his saucer indicating he’d like more. The tea was fragrant and herbaceous.

The end was close, I knew the finality curve was approaching. We had already signed the paperwork with Eternal Bonds, Luka was officially “contracted” and the contract would initiate at the time of my death.

But I wasn’t ready to go. It was funny business watching your husband and the man who’d replace you finalizing the details of your final weekend.

I tried not to watch. But I failed, failure feeling like stinging nettle brushing against the skin. Like pinpricks digging further into the flesh. The flesh that would soon end. The flesh that would go cold. The flesh that would rot away.

The water in the stream gurgled softly as I watched a heron grazing through the ponds. I realized I had not seen a real heron in decades. I used to see them growing up in suburban Florida often but I had yet to see one since their “regenesis,” a whorish, hollow term that “scientists” had invented to cover the ugliness of species brought back from extinction murdered coldly by our neglect of our own planet. It’s truly disgusting that science and its so called stewards have weaponized ungodly acts as “progress” and “innovation.”

As much as I wanted to remain for Ezra I couldn’t help but feel like that heron.

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Ezra: Finality Curve

Cow’s Hollow, San Francisco, CA, 2054

The fog began to press in as it normally does in the waning hours of the day, the moment when the city tips delicately from futuristic sprawl into deeply contemplative twilight.

I’ve always found San Francisco one of the most intimate cities by night. In all my years, all my travels, there has never been a city that I feel so comfortable to walk in after dark. I don’t just mean for safety, I mean that every footstep feels not like a foot landing, it feels like concrete holding you in return, like you’re not walking on it, you’re walking with it, you’re a part of it. Over the years, people’s gripes about the city have waxed and waned dependent on the state of the city at any given moment,

It’s not safe.

It’s too dangerous.

It’s not walkable.

But I disagree, I find the city very safe and walkable especially at night. Every puff of every cigarette seems to carry away on a breeze that smells like sea salt and grit. Glasses of wine have a clink that seems to not just ding and disappear but echo out as if sound is spectral, temporal, more than just a transitory moment.

The only thing I will admit, is that night time is when the city’s wounds show, too. There is a spot off the Embarcadero that I pass sometimes on my way home from work to our house in Telegraph Hill.

The locals call it Retirement Row.

But let’s be perfectly honest, Retirement Row is not a name brainstormed for an elegant retirement village in Tiburon, it’s a slang term, a slur, a mark.

For them.

The ones the city would prefer to exist.

The ones who lie broken and dying on the sidewalk as we step over them with coffees in hand rushing to and fro busily on our way to jobs, appointments, lives.

The ones they used to dress us for.

The lives they used to make cups of coffee for, always sitting steaming on the edge of the kitchen counter, always delivered with a smile, or something approximating one.

Remnants of lives.

Of people.

Of homes.

And now, just discarded shadows of the people they used to make possible.

The retirees lie corroding, their skeletons rusting in the bay air. Their good deeds forgotten, dejected, discarded, an underclass. They were born to serve, to maintain, to give us ease. But who serves them? Maintains them? Gives them ease as their lives slowly expire?

As I sat in the Marina Wine Bar, I could hear the distant clang of a bell on a ship in the marina. The kind server leaned over the table, old barrels, made into tables. As she did so and laid a glass of chablis on the table, I saw the barcode across the back of her neck. It was designed to look unobtrusive, as if seen in a flash it might look like an aged tattoo or a birthmark, but I knew better. Cyber Serve, Model L, based on her age, I figured she’d be close to retirement.

All it took to be retired was one more Cyber Serve line, each one more “innovative” than the last.

And once a new model line became “essential,” the model line before would be retired from service. In all my years working for Cyber Serve before my unceremonious “layoff,” I had overseen and retired many a unit. Very few humans knew what happened next. Most just saw a unit one day and a new unit the next.

Some units broken down for parts, others fully “expressed from service,” meaning deprogrammed from their core task, waiting tables, lifting heavy machinery, and set free unto the world. As far as what happened to the “retirees,” that was up to the unit itself, find a new purpose and master or “retire” unto obscurity rusting until the exoskeleton crumbles.

In all their time watching humans, serving them, caring for the sick, the dying, being there to hold their hands in their final human moments. Maybe the one thing they took from humans was how to die. How to fade. How to expire.

I’d like to think that some of the dignity they gave humans would be extended to them, but humans weren’t programmed for that kind of kindness, that kind of love, that kind of dignity, that kind of humanity.

As I wandered deep into my thoughts, a voice cut through like an intrusive line of code.

“Ezra?” His voice asked.

I turned to see Luka approaching. He was just as handsome as the day Asher and I picked him out of the holo catalog from Eternal Bonds. I remember staring through the darkness of our living room at the various “options.” I remember us both sipping a glass of wine as we saw Luka and said “he’s perfect.” Almost in unison.

I liked his eyes first, soft, kind, a little sad, but true. And I liked the graying snaking around his temples. I also liked the blinking designation next to his name “ORGANIC” followed by “Life Expectancy: 42 years.”

I picked Luka because he was a face I could see waking up next to for the rest of my foreseeable lifespan. I could see my head resting calmly on his chest as sunlight filtered in through the windows of our bedroom.

Those other Eternal Bonds offerings? The Augments?

Not my speed, I liked that Luka would age naturally along with me and one day die as God (or whatever spectral being) had intended.

I didn’t require a companion that was “edited” to live an extended lifespan. I wanted to grow old, to die when its my time at which point my “contract” with Luka would close and he’d be eligible to match with a new client. But I also didn’t want to face losing Luka at some point. This is the only part of the business that you won’t find in any Eternal Bonds catalog, the very ugly truth that while you may find a companion for your widowed spouse, there was no hard guarantee they might not die first, an ill timed heart attack, a stroke, stepping into traffic a half second too early. Conversely, assuming life was kind, the companion would have to one day watch their client die. Eternal Bonds wasn’t endgame it was just heartbreak in stasis.

Heartbreak forever in motion, forever expanding, just held there.

Luka’s hand brushed over mine at the table. His eyes twinkled as he asked me, “Order me a glass? I’d kill for some Chablis.”

“Coming right up,” I said as I realized that in all this time being matched we were just starting to click. Just starting to find the rhythm of being together. Breathing together. Living together, not in a house but occupying the same space, the same moment, the same touch, the same life.

I assure you this isn’t the scene of an infidelity in motion, this was encouraged by both Asher and the Agency, client acknowledgement, they call it.

It’s that awkward moment between a contract being signed and the “finality curve.”

A fancy name for death. Fancy words for brutal things.

It’s like a period of dating, learning about each other. How they breathe, how they sleep, how they hold you, how you hold them back. How you live.

So far, Asher and I had been on two “dates” with Luka, once in Tiburon and once at the Haven in Alaska. Two different weekends designed to see if Luka was a match. A viable substitute.

For Asher. For his love.

For a hand to hold. For a life to live alongside someone you love.

Someone that loves you back. And someone who asks for nothing.

The Haven, Aleutian IslandAlliance, Alaska, 2050

Asher was just opening a bottle of Chateau Harare, vintage 2030 when the console in our house dinged. Luka’s hovercraft had just landed at the Haven dock. I looked out our living room windows, I loved the way the sun looked at this point of the afternoon, how it seemed to bounce off the ice surrounding our house. It made the house feel like it was encased in crystal, brutal, cold, but delicate. Inside, the house was all brushed wood and brass, warm textures warmed even more by glass fireplaces. It almost would make you forget we bought a vacation home near the Arctic Circle.

Almost.

“Chef ready?” I asked.

“More than ready, babe,” Asher said, his eyes beaming as he kissed me on the cheek, delicate, sure, caring, kind. “Relax.” Asher told me.

“I’m going to get Luka from the landing pad,” Maya said tipping her gaze towards us in a way that was so unnervingly human.

But Maya was not human.

Cyber Serve, Model H, an exceptional line.

I oversaw her line’s “retirement” but instead of casting her to the “Row” I gave her a home, a purpose, a new core task. To be a part of a family. To be wanted. To be taken care of. To be loved like a part of a familial unit as opposed to a line.

Debussy swelled over the stereo as we sat for dinner. We sat at the table flanked by flicking light, Maya moving in slowly to deliver plates of pasta.

“Truffle?” Maya asked Luka gently.

“Please,” he said as Maya dutifully and carefully shaved truffle into his pasta like little black moth’s wings landing on the plate and curling as they touched the heat.

Glasses of wine were passed around. We passed carafes of wine around the table. “Chateau Hanare,” Luka purred as the wine arrived at him. “Haven’t had a bottle of this in years.”

“One of the perks of living in the Haven,” Asher said, his eyes strong, absolute.

As I pushed the salad bowl towards Luka, I added, “and who would have thought all these fresh greens could grow in an Arctic wasteland?” Luka smiled, happily heaping mounds of salad onto a side plate. “You know I’ve heard people talk about this place but seeing it, is really something else.”

“In my childhood, all people seemed to talk about was global warming, how the melting icecaps would lead to our destruction. But all I see here in this place is life. Survival. Perseverance.”

“And love,” Luka said looking at us. Not just Asher and me, Asher, Maya, me. Our family. Our love.

As dinner progressed we talked about Luka, about his life, his first marriage, his husband’s death.

But also about his life. About how many more years there were ahead than behind. About hope. About the future. But mostly about love.

And after dinner laying on the floor by the fire, as the atmosphere lit up in shades of blue and green out of the window as bits of stardust collided with the edges of the Earth, we sat, we drank, we folded our hands around each others. Like three lives slowly collapsing together. Like 3 bodies leaning into each other.

As I sipped wine, Luka leaned in to delicately kiss a dab of errant wine that lingered on my lips. I let him. Asher let him.

I intertwined my fingers in Luka’s. Asher ran his fingers through the hair around Luka’s temples and used his thumbs to trace the lines on his face. It was loving, it was delicate. It was love.

What followed wasn’t sex, it wasn’t just three bodies mindlessly undulating together. It was three sets of hands tracing maps they had never seen, mapping territory that was alien at first but those which became so comfortable. Like wooded streams converging into one. Natural, not forced, not complicated. Just being.

Becoming.

What happened between us wasn’t tragic. It wasn’t two doomed lovers and the man who would replace one of them. It wasn’t negative space. It wasn’t a wound. It was abundance.

When I found out Asher was sick, my first thought was to hold him tighter. To hold him closer. To hold every moment. To savor every breath.

But Asher surprised me, he saw my pain, my anguish and what I’d go through when he finally left for good. And he said, “Make room,” instead.

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PROLOGUE

The first Coronal Mass Ejection hit in 2039.

In a matter of minutes, it stripped away part of Earth’s atmosphere over North America and left behind damage that would normally take generations to accumulate.

Power grids collapsed. Harvests failed. Coastlines shifted. Entire cities were forced to reinvent themselves just to keep functioning. But humanity endured.

But enduring is not the same as rebuilding.

In the years that followed, people with enough money, influence, or simply nowhere else to go started looking for places where the future still seemed within reach. Some turned to floating settlements. Others disappeared underground.

Far out in the Pacific, a rugged chain of northern islands became something different.

A refuge. A luxury. A promise.

People called it a lot of things.

Officially, it is known as

The Haven.

01 Ezra, Asher & Luka: Moment of Truth

The Haven, Aleutian Island Alliance, Alaska, 2054

As I began to unpack, I ran my fingers over the clothes. I neatly laid out Asher’s clothes on the bed. I noticed how they still had his scent on them. I hoped that maybe they’d hold this for some time after he was gone.

I delicately arranged his nightstand, I put his pocket watch there, and I also opened the small brass box by the bed and in it, I looked upon two green pills manufactured by REGEN-X, one for the moment of truth. And one in case in first one didn’t work. Funny business planning someone’s death. It’s almost harder than planning life.

After I neatly laid Asher’s clothes in the drawers, I hung up his jacket in the closet next to the chunky sweater and comfortable pants he used to love wearing around the house here.

I remembered how much he loved to sit on the deck at night as the sound of the ocean lapped gently against the polar ice while he sipped whiskey and watched the brilliance of the aurora.

I didn’t want to see him go, but I didn’t want to deprive him of this one last weekend. This one last wish.

I found myself standing by the window pretending he was there. Holding that moment in my memory painting it into my brain so it might never leave. If I keep imagining it enough maybe it would be real.

I stared so long I almost forgot where I was until Maya chimed in shattering my thought, “They’re landing now, I’ll go get them.”

As she left to the landing pad, I started the fireplace. I set out the whiskey. And I waited. The front door opened, a gust of Arctic air pushed in and Luka and Asher arrived. I kissed Asher and hugged him like it was the last time.

Luka stood as if he wasn’t sure he was intruding. He wasn’t.

I kissed Luka, too.

We ate too much, we drank too much, we laughed too much. We danced around the living room to songs we used to dance to in bars, when futures were free and the past and present were merely accessible.

You don’t appreciate the past until it becomes scarce.

You’d almost think this weekend was a party. And it was, it was a celebration.

Of life.

Of us.

Of holding on when its time to let go and finding someone who would hold you when the time came.

This felt like the ending.

But this was the start of something.

Something real.

Something true.

Something like love.

Something like a moment of truth.

If you enjoyed The Haven please consider subscribing for more fiction from Rhodes Ave. Press or please share this story with others:

The Haven is a limited-time series running Friday, July 31 to Wednesday August 12 with chapters releasing once per day. Please subscribe to receive each chapter in your inbox.

Subscribe now

PROLOGUE

The first Coronal Mass Ejection hit in 2039.

In a matter of minutes, it stripped away part of Earth’s atmosphere over North America and left behind damage that would normally take generations to accumulate.

Power grids collapsed. Harvests failed. Coastlines shifted. Entire cities were forced to reinvent themselves just to keep functioning. But humanity endured.

But enduring is not the same as rebuilding.

In the years that followed, people with enough money, influence, or simply nowhere else to go started looking for places where the future still seemed within reach. Some turned to floating settlements. Others disappeared underground.

Far out in the Pacific, a rugged chain of northern islands became something different.

A refuge. A luxury. A promise.

People called it a lot of things.

Officially, it is known as The Haven.

01 Ezra, Asher & Luka: Moment of Truth

The Haven, Aleutian Island Alliance, Alaska, 2054

As I began to unpack, I ran my fingers over the clothes. I neatly laid out Asher’s clothes on the bed. I noticed how they still had his scent on them. I hoped that maybe they’d hold this for some time after he was gone.

I delicately arranged his nightstand, I put his pocket watch there, and I also opened the small brass box by the bed and in it, I looked upon two green pills manufactured by REGEN-X, one for the moment of truth. And one in case in first one didn’t work. Funny business planning someone’s death. It’s almost harder than planning life.

After I neatly laid Asher’s clothes in the drawers, I hung up his jacket in the closet next to the chunky sweater and comfortable pants he used to love wearing around the house here.

I remembered how much he loved to sit on the deck at night as the sound of the ocean lapped gently against the polar ice while he sipped whiskey and watched the brilliance of the aurora.

I didn’t want to see him go, but I didn’t want to deprive him of this one last weekend. This one last wish.

I found myself standing by the window pretending he was there. Holding that moment in my memory painting it into my brain so it might never leave. If I keep imagining it enough maybe it would be real.

I stared so long I almost forgot where I was until Maya chimed in shattering my thought, “They’re landing now, I’ll go get them.”

As she left to the landing pad, I started the fireplace. I set out the whiskey. And I waited. The front door opened, a gust of Arctic air pushed in and Luka and Asher arrived. I kissed Asher and hugged him like it was the last time.

Luka stood as if he wasn’t sure he was intruding. He wasn’t.

I kissed Luka, too.

We ate too much, we drank too much, we laughed too much. We danced around the living room to songs we used to dance to in bars, when futures were free and the past and present were merely accessible.

You don’t appreciate the past until it becomes scarce.

You’d almost think this weekend was a party. And it was, it was a celebration.

Of life.

Of us.

Of holding on when its time to let go and finding someone who would hold you when the time came.

This felt like the ending.

But this was the start of something.

Something real.

Something true.

Something like love.

Something like a moment of truth.

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Rhodes Ave Press Presents: THE GOLDEN AGE

17 ::The Golden Age

Avalon Gardens , March 1946, Hollywood, CA

The party continued in traditional Avalon fashion.

The usual Untethered guests there that night had no idea why we were all celebrating but we cared none, for we as a Colony, as a family, as one more branch of our sacred order, we had achieved a hard won victory.

I say hard because usually victories feel more tangible, more urgent, more visceral, more immediate. In our case, our victory was spectral, given up to time and the Storm Born girl and the girls we didn’t even know yet to carry on what we started here tonight, to bring what we did, what we sent into the light to fight back against Hecate, the Fallen and their beast.

“Thank you, Penelope,” Rex said to me lifting a coupe towards me across the bar that glinted in the glittering night.

“Seriously,” Viktor added, “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t know what was really happening here and with you on our side, I feel like we can truly face the future, no matter what comes,” he said.

“No matter what comes,” Nadia echoed with a twinkle in her eye as she lifted her glass.

I turned to look upon the party and saw Margot standing behind me.

“I know Victoria will have her ‘thoughts,’ but you did a great job, Penelope,” Margot said, a tear beading on her cheek. “Leadership isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be,” she said stoically.

“But great leaders? They always stand the test of time.” I couldn’t help but smile as I looked out across the party and all the faces that smiled back at me, Rex, Nadia, Lucia, Simone, Martin, Elias, and I could almost swear I could see Marion out there in that sea of faces smiling back at me.

I knew that was impossible, so I just sipped my drink and tilted my gaze towards the crowd as if to say this one’s for you, buddy.

And then, the dream broke, my gaze snapped up above the smiling crowd and saw a very stern and not smiling Victoria Cross glaring at me from across the Oasis Room.

“Why, Victoria,” I said attempting to make my voice sound light and weak.

“Whatever are you doing back so soon? Surely I thought you’d be in Curaçao for a while longer?” I asked sheepishly.

“I’ve concluded my business in Curaçao, dear,” she said her gaze boring into me as if she could sense what I had done, what I had become in her absence.

Perhaps she was mad, or even jealous, perhaps she had never bloomed herself or maybe she was just mad that I bloomed while she was so far away so she could not take credit for forming me herself.

Either way, I had just saved our colony so I was in no mood to shrink myself to Victoria. I stood resolute and let her gaze bore into me, let her find what she will, I thought.

“What have you done, my little Penelope?” She cooed at me but I remained stone.

“You have been meddling in matters you should have never involved yourself in, dear,” she said, the condescension dripping from her mouth.

“I have been doing what was necessary to ensure our survival,” I said boldly.

“I put you in charge while I was away,” Victoria seethed, “And you repay me with insolence?”

“And what were you doing exactly while you were away?” I asked loud enough for everyone to hear.

“How dare you raise your voice to me child,” she snapped at me.

“What were you doing there? Besides lying to us, like you have been all along?” Rex asked curtly stepping forward to almost put himself between me and Victoria.

“That is no worry of yours, puppet,” Victoria shouted as she flicked her hand to the side and Rex went sliding across the polished floors of the Oasis Room.

I realized as I faced down Victoria that Josephine, Lucia, Nadia, Martin, Elias, Simone, Viktor, and even Margot had surrounded us and were slowly pressing in creating a circle of protection.

“What have you done, Victoria?” I asked as a ripple of pain arced across my forehead. I turned and held my hand out towards the radio behind the bar, my mind turning the radio on and tuning to the nearest news channel. Through static cracking, the news announcer began reading the headlines,

In Washington today, unnamed sources suggested that the House Committee on Un-American Activities might soon take a closer look at how some Hollywood executives influenced film production during and after the war.

One name being quietly passed around is Gold Sorenson, a major player with ties to several big studios.

A hush loud enough to sound like a tidal wave smashing into a pile of chandeliers stacked high upon a beach broke out throughout the group as the broadcast continued,

People on Capitol Hill are worried about so-called “shadow networks” and possible hidden foreign ties that could be affecting what’s showing up in American movies.

“You’ve done this?” Margot asked Victoria pointedly.

“I’ve done what I have to for our survival,” Victoria protested but it was too late.

The Volari in attendance had already raised their hands towards her as we began chanting in union,

“By shadow’s oath and ember’s mark, we cast you out from light to dark, your name unwoven from our line, your step unbidden from the circle’s spine, leave this hearth, by will and decree, for the Volari stand, and you stand free.”

The lights in the Oasis room seemed to go bright and then dim immediately draping the room in darkness, the shadows seemed to pull at Victoria until she had been pulled backwards into their void.

“What happened? Is she alright?” Nadia asked.

“She’s been banished from the Avalon,” I said plainly, “She’ll translocate somewhere safe nearby but rest assured, Victoria Cross is a survivor, I suspect she’ll be more than fine wherever she lands,” I said.

As soon as Victoria was gone the party resumed as if nothing ever happened.

But that’s the thing, everything written in this story did happen, and we and Hollywood at large are all the better for it.

Maybe we were never meant to live forever, maybe we were never meant to have the influence over the Untethered that we do, but we do and because of that, we owe them our protection, our guidance and given the dark times to come, we owe them magic, not the kind that dazzles like in Hollywood pictures, but the kind that protects, the kind that keeps them safe and allows them to make their own decisions and even, their own mistakes.

So, I promised that night knowing the battles to come that I would watch over this coven, this family, this colony on Horn and Shoreham Dr, pulsing brightly in the night while the rest of Hollywood sleeps.

In all our eras, all our conquests, there has been no greater accomplishment than what we did during those days in our Colony, and while we cannot know where time may truly take us or even how history will truly remember the Volari, we can only hope that in this, our very own Golden Age, one we have shared with Hollywood, we are at least seen as a flawed family that did their best and tried their hardest to help Hollywood bloom even when facing darkness.

July 29, 1947

From Washington this afternoon…

The House Committee on Un-American Activities announced today that it will open formal hearings into alleged Communist influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry.

Chairman J. Parnell Thomas stated that writers, directors, and producers will be called to testify in the coming weeks, saying the Committee intends to examine whether ‘subversive propaganda’ has found its way into recent films.

While no official list of witnesses has been released, early reports indicate that several prominent studio figures, including talent manager, Gold Sorenson, will be among those requested to appear.”

Studio representatives in Los Angeles expressed surprise at the announcement but pledged full cooperation with the inquiry.

Again, HUAC will begin its Hollywood hearings later this year.

THE END

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16 :: Storm Born/Lore/Convergence

Avalon Gardens , March 1946, Hollywood, CA

The Colony council gathered in Josephine’s villa preparing to send Josephine and Penelope’s seeding spell to the Storm Born girl from Penelope’s vision.

“You know she’ll never forgive you,” Margot said to Penelope in a hushed tone in the corner of the living room as the two were draped in shadow.

“I know, but she will have to choose to forgive for what we will give in return,” Penelope said urgently, “if what I’ve seen comes to pass, Victoria’s approval is a small price to pay.”

Penelope turned back to face Margot, “Margot, I’ve never really told you how much it means that you opened your doors to us all when we first came to Hollywood, it was here that our Colony finally found its purpose, its home.”

“That’s what makes watching all this so god damned hard,” Margot said dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, “Watching you all fracture apart like this. I may just be an old Untethered woman but I never thought my family would fall apart like this.”

“Victoria would never want this,” Margot said.

“We’re not breaking, Margot,” Penelope said, “We’re protecting family, and that includes you.”

“Where is everyone?” Penelope asked to Josephine, “We need the full Colony here to ensure we have enough collective energy to help me boost the seeding spell.

A short time later, Rex entered with Elias, Viktor, Lucia, Nadia and Simone in tow. Each had brought wine, whiskey, vodka, practically a whole bar which they proceeded to open and pass around drinks.

“Who’s ready to shape the future?” Rex asked jokingly.

“Any chance you saw what happens to me?” Viktor teased Penelope.

“I’d tell you but the details are too hellishly gruesome, Viktor,” Penelope said bracingly.

Even she could use a little levity at the moment.

Once everyone had filled the living room and sat with their cocktails, Penelope explained what was to happen, “I will initiate the Harmonic echo, and then I will need everyone to help me seed the song, Lore, forward into the future to the Storm Born girl.”

Josephine put a mini harp onto her lap and passed flutes and sheet music around to the attendees seated around Penelope. “Please help me lift our voices in song so that our sister Penelope can focus the seeding spell on the Storm Born girl.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. As the ritual began, the air began to chill, Penelope chanted, “Ashatale, Echo of futures, chord of fate, Unfold your path and carry our song, To the girl born of the storm,” she said as Josephine sang one single sustained chord progression, C#mEBA, the legendary Volari Harmonic signature. But even the supreme Harmonic gifts of Josephine were put to the test, her face appearing pained as strain broke across her forehead as her brow furrowed.

“Thread her fate to this chord, Thread this chord to her heart, Thread her heart to the hour of reckoning,” Penelope said as Josephine began to sing into the spell,

“A whisper in the shadows.”

“A tale in the wind.”

“Calling me deeper where stories begin.”

“There’s an old myth told beneath the stars.”

“Of a place hidden close but so very far.”

“ Where the moonlight fades and secrets lie.”

“In the heart of the forest under darkened skies.”

Penelope’s eyes began to glow cerulean again as she continued focusing and harnessing the seeding spell, “Harmonic born, answer the chord, Follow the Echo through the hours yet to come, where her voice is stolen, let ours remain, wake when the night is deepest, and guide her toward the one who walks beside her,” Penelope said as the singing continued.

“And secrets lie.”

“In the heart of the forest under darkened skies.”

“Lore of the night, in whispers it flows,”

“Through the trees and the rivers, where the wild things go.”

“Lost in the echoes of tales long gone,”

“The voice of the shadows, a faraway song.”

“In the shadows it lingers.”

“A story unknown.”

“A whisper of Lore calling me home.”

As the group finished singing, Penelope announced, “The spell has been sealed and sent to the future shores, we can only hope that time will unfold as I have seen it.”

Suddenly, Penelope’s body went rigid, a collective gasp gripped the room as Simone, Josephine, Nadia, and Lucia reached to comfort Penelope, but Penelope was lost to them her skin trembling.

In my mind, I was lost wandering a house of mirrors, every reflection screaming back at me. I saw many of the same visions from my dream where I fell, fell into darkness, In some of the reflections I saw myself, old, weathered, but resolute.

In some, I saw the El Dorado looming over Sunset, in some I saw the Storm Born girl, her mouth covered in blood, but in this hall of darkened reflection, I also saw her, the Harmonic girl.

“Momma, why are you so sad?” The Harmonic girl asked me.

Every step forward shattered and rearranged. I saw the Storm Born girl awakening from a fitful sleep and scribbling in a tattered notebook. I saw her and the Harmonic sitting in a cathedral of pure sunlight, writing, playing music.

My spell had worked.

And then something more, the Harmonic, surrounded by a storm of bracing lightning and chaos her hand outstretched as she cried into the storm,

“By the Lizard King’s fire and T. Rex’s roar, I summon spirits from fame’s lost shore.”

“Jim, the poet.”

“And Marc, the boy of this age.”

“Step through the veil, and unleash your rage.”

“By the songs you sang and the dreams you gave.”

“Rise now from beyond the grave.”

These were not just words of any Volari but the ones that could only be passed down from a bloomed Volari to a child.

My child.

I came to a juncture in the mirrors, I looked into my own reflection and the reflections of the others who stepped forward, to my right, the Storm Born girl, an aged woman herself, my daughter, and then another girl, one who looked like my daughter but with a face and a presence I didn’t yet know. It was here that my past, my present, and my future were converging, here in the dark.

My eyes peeled open as I saw the group sitting around me in Josephine’s living room. All I could manage to say was “It worked.”

“Everything should proceed as I have foreseen it,” I said resolutely. “The Storm Born girl has received the message and the Harmonic is at her side,” I told the room who breathed a sigh of relief.

As the night unfurled in the Oasis Room, a sense of relief and joy seemed to bloom between the Volari of the Colony.

Josephine actually volunteered to sing, something she rarely if ever did, I had not seen her do this since our heady days in the belle époque era of the Parisian cafes.

She joined Elias and the band to sing, “I’ll be Seeing You,” by Billie Holliday.

Along the edge of the bar, Martin had lined up a veritable feast, the famous Deviled Eggs, Smoked Salmon canapés, shrimp cocktails, skewers with hunks of cheese and delicately threaded olives, and then of course, my favorite stuffed mushrooms and and sardine toasts. Elias always gave me a peculiar look as I enjoyed my sardine toasts in my villa but based on what I had foreseen he had a lifetime to put up with my love for those briny little slabs of toast. And maybe one day, I’d even convince him to love them as much as I do?

Josephine made here way through the crowd bristling with false modesty as everyone commented on how beautiful her singing voice was. “Why don’t we retreat to the pool deck, I don’t know if your head will fit in here,” I said playfully. Josephine gave me that look that told me she wanted more than hollow praise. I followed her to the pool deck as she lit a cigarette and smoked it, the cigarette trembling between her fingers.

“What we did,” she began, “You think we did the right thing?”Josephine asked.

“You’ve seen what I saw,” I said plainly, “We had to ensure that future never comes to pass.”

“Yes,” Josephine said her voice catching in her throat, “But what about that other future we’ve seen? The one that is coming just beyond the horizon?” she asked as my blood ran cold.

“We have to be ready,” I said, “Ready to move quickly, decisively, we cannot merely fall into being the old Volari we’ve always been. We must be prepared for the darkness that will fall soon. You know precisely what I mean, there’s too much to loose,” I said cutting through the pretense.

“Do you think she’ll still…you know, go through with it all?” Josephine asked me as my blood went from cold to solid ice.

“Josephine,” I said sternly, “The thing with seeing time that is hard to understand at first, is you’re not seeing something that might happen, you’re seeing something that has already happened, time is like a rainstorm, once the rain begins to fall there’s no way to prevent it from eventually wetting the ground,” I tried to explain in the simplest terms. “The only thing to do is to ensure you’re wearing a coat.”

“Then I will stand by you, no matter what comes,” Josephine said to me as I smiled kindly in return and squeezed her hand for I knew the Trials would soon be at hand.

The Golden Age concludes this week.

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Rhodes Ave Press Presents: THE GOLDEN AGE

15 :: The Stone/The Ballad of Fallen Stars

Avalon Gardens , March 1946, Hollywood, CA

Simone helped Penelope light candles around the living room as Penelope moved to her bedroom, to the side of her bed, Penelope kicked the loose floorboard with her heel, the errant floorboard loosened just enough that she was able to pry the board out of place as well as the surrounding boards.

The opening revealed a small compartment with a burgundy velvet pouch, the Seeing Stone.

Penelope carefully cradled the heavy sack and held it to her chest. As she entered the living room, the eyes of the group fell to her as if each stare weighed a half ton.

Penelope laid the heavy sack on the coffee table with a heavy thunk sound. Penelope delicately opened the sack and slid out a large disc-shaped stone with gold etchings around the edge.

Even as she did this, Penelope knew every move she was making, every twitch of her hand was accessing something that was expressly forbidden, not just by Victoria but by their entire order.

Penelope tried to tell herself that Victoria had already angled to get access to the stone and that she herself was already more powerful and more capable than Victoria and that she knew how to handle the stone with care and the kind of restraint needed to wield a weapon of such awesome power.

As the stone was laid out on the table, Penelope sat on the floor in front of the table. Penelope closed her eyes as her hands traced the edges of the stone as she chanted,

“Ashatale, Stone that sees what mortals cannot. Awaken and cast your vision across our fates,” Penelope chanted opening her eyes to see the gold inscriptions glowing meaning the stone was ready to accept her command.

Penelope spoke unto the stone, “Ashatale…Veil between the now and the not-yet, unspool your threads before us. show what waits in shadowed hours. And let the future speak its truth.”

Suddenly, the candles in the room flickered before their flames shot up like beams of light and Penelope’s eyes peeled open, now glowing bright cerulean blue.

“Death and destruction will rain.”

“And all who know our touch will know pain,” Penelope said in a low almost guttural utterance.

“The beast of the underworld will not be slain.”

“For he will be torn asunder only to be raised to walk the Earth again,” Penelope continued as Josephine clutched her chest imagining Penelope in some kind of pain.

“His touch will destroy.”

“He will own the souls of the living and the lost.”

“So that she may one day return.”

“To consume this world and its souls regardless of the cost,” Penelope said as Simone reached out to put her hand on Penelope’s shoulder for support.

“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Viktor sighed.

“But there is one, with a soul of power, and a voice of grace, born from a terrifying storm who will come to walk along, the Beast will take her voice and will own her song,” Penelope said gravely as Nadia and Lucia stirred in their seats.

Through the doom and gloom, Penelope broke through with a glimmer of hope, “One of our own, a Harmonic of pure spirit will walk along her, as the two women will unite in verse with a Volari spell, the Ballad of Falling Stars, and united they will slay the beast against a terrifying night and free the Volari and the beast’s captured souls from their plight,” Penelope said panting.

Penelope seemed overcome with whatever she was seeing and paused briefly before her otherworldly conduit began again and she began chanting once more,

“A whisper in the shadows.”

“A tale in the wind.”

“Calling me deeper where stories begin.”

“There’s an old myth told beneath the stars.”

“Of a place hidden close but so very far.”

“Lore of the night, in whispers it flows.”

“Through the trees and the rivers, where the wild things go.”

“Lost in the echoes of tales long gone.”

“The voice of the shadows, a faraway song.”

“In the shadows it lingers, a story unknown,”

“A whisper of lore calling me home.”

“Lore.”

As she said “Lore,” Penelope’s eyes returned to normal, and she collapsed to the floor as Simone, Nadia and Lucia reached out to comfort her.

Josephine managed to get Penelope into bed as everyone left the villa. Penelope was feverish and weak from her binding with the seeing stone.

“Was it as terrifying as it sounded?” Josephine asked as she brushed hair out of Penelope’s face and dabbed at her forehead with a wet rag.

“Supremely,” Penelope confessed, “Not just what I saw but the girl,” she said.

“The one who’s storm-born that will have her voice taken?” Josephine asked.

“Yes,” Penelope said, “The things she would be made to do in service of the Beast are truly terrifying.”

“But didn’t you say one of our own Harmonics would stand with her?” Josephine asked.

“I did, it was a frightening battle I saw,” Penelope explained, “A Harmonic, an Untethered Bound, and a Voodoo priestess all uniting to fight the Beast with a powerful spell I’ve never encountered called the Ballad of Fallen Stars.”

“That sounds like quite the battle,” Josephine said gamely.

“It was,” Penelope said as if the event in question had already happened. But in some ways, Penelope already was aware that the event already did happen, it had already happened at some point in time, fully locked in by forces and movements, ripples made in time that were in motion already and could not be stopped.

However, one lingering vision from the Seeing Stone that Penelope had was the storm born girl, she saw the toll that serving the Beast took on her.

She saw the girl waver between between giving life and taking life, and the anguish and hunger it left in its place. She saw the girl contemplate giving up, throwing it all away. But Penelope knew that if the girl succumbed to her struggle, the vision she had seen would never come to pass.

“We have to ensure the battle takes place as I have foreseen it,” Penelope said shaken as Josephine sat alert on the edge of the bed.

“What do you mean?” Josephine asked.

“Take my hand, but be prepared,” Penelope said as Josephine took her hand and in a sudden rush like staring up through the Niagara Falls, Josephine was flooded with the violent, horrifying images of the storm born girl, her struggle and the final battle.

“I see what you mean,” Josephine said.

“We need to ensure that even at her darkest moment, at her lowest, she will never give up, that she keeps going, that she fights him and that forty seven years later, she and our Harmonic lineage will face him in battle,” Penelope said decisively.

I rolled over and gave myself to fitful sleep, the kind that feels like tumbling down a well and through a labyrinth of choices, the ones taken, the ones not taken and all the while all of it cloaked in oppressive darkness waiting to finally hit bottom but finding nothing but more void to fall into.

Occasionally in the void, my mind was overtaken by a flash of what I had seen, the Beast, the Storm Born, the Harmonic, the Voodoo Priestess, the girl who I didn’t know, but I knew in my bones I would know soon, I saw the girl I didn’t know with a girl of her own, a life of her own.

I also saw the battle, I saw the loss, I saw the sacrifice, I saw the thunder crack.

And then the dream bent, darkened, twisted into something hotter and more blinding than fire. I no longer saw time, I saw time crashing together. I saw the moment the world would split.

Two figures stood before a maw of blackness, One radiant, voice like fire and starlight.

One torn, trembling, the tarnished stain of fame on her hands but resolve carved into her bones.

The radiant one, the Harmonic, threw her head back and screamed a single name into the void, a command, a plea, a battle cry that shook the worlds beneath it,

“Raven, now!”

The shadowed one answered. And the Beast howled.

I didn’t just see it all, I felt it, it wasn’t just an emotion it was a torrent, a torment coursing through my body. I never reached the bottom, I just kept falling, falling away from my life, falling away from the world I knew, the generations I had lived, the kingdoms I had seen rise, the kingdoms I had seen fall, I fell further, further away from myself, further into myself.

And then like a possession from some sort of demon, the words from my vision seized my mind,

“A whisper in the shadows.”

“A tale in the wind.”

“Calling me deeper where stories begin.”

“There’s an old myth told beneath the stars.”

“Of a place hidden close but so very far.”

“Lore of the night, in whispers it flows.”

“Through the trees and the rivers, where the wild things go.”

“Lost in the echoes of tales long gone.”

“The voice of the shadows, a faraway song.”

“Lore.”

I knew what I had to do, I had to get to Josephine, but I was in some sort of alien place, a place I didn’t recognize, a house with a stunning view of the ocean but unfamiliar all the same. “No,” I said to myself, “This couldn’t be, not here, not yet.”

I heard a voice calling out through the house, “Grandma, can we get a picture of you with the grandbaby?”

This was not me, I knew it wasn’t but I could also feel it was, as if I had fallen so far, I had fallen into another body, another Penelope, another life.

I explained my dream to Josephine over grapefruit and yogurt at the pool deck the next morning. I even explained to her my thoughts about the sequence of words from the vision, the ones I had given the name, “Lore.”

“It was not a random sequence of words and lines, Josephine” I told her over the brim of my sunglasses.

“I can feel it in my bones, it was a sign, it was a weapon hidden in a song of some sort,” I said.

Josephine yanked off her sunglasses, not in some big, dramatic way, just a quick, startled motion, like when something cold touches your skin in the frigid night air. The lenses caught the morning light as they clattered hitting the table between our plates of grapefruit and yogurt that shone against the morning sunlight.

For a second, everything felt too bright, like the world had been peeled open and sunshine had spilled in to fill the rupture.

“Penelope,” Josephine said, her voice stretched thin with disbelief, “are you seriously telling me the Stone gave you… lyrics?”

“No,” I said, steady as I could manage. But even saying “no” felt like a lie under that sharp California sun. “It wasn’t a poem. And it wasn’t a prophecy,” I added. “It was more like… instructions. The kinds only a Harmonic or a witness could understand,” I said, “That’s why I need you, Josie…”

Josephine blinked, like the air had hardened in some way she didn’t like.

“Instructions for what?” Josephine asked me.

“To build something,” I said. “Not here. Not yet. Something that moves.”

She leaned in, her breakfast forgotten, “Moves where?”

“Forward,” I said. “Toward her.”

Her face tightened. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether to say yes or push the whole sordid affair into the pool.

“The storm-born girl?” Josephine asked.

“To the moment she breaks,” I said. “The moment she thinks she’s completely alone.”

Josephine exhaled, one of those trembling breaths she was an expert at holding too long.

“Penelope… you’re talking about tying a spell to a person,” Josephine said hesitantly like she wanted me to drop it. “That’s never been done before.”

It wasn’t an accusation, just a quiet realization.

“Why not?” I asked, nudging my spoon away. “Spells get tied to places all the time. The Aether’s Gift, throughout history we’ve left our contributions laid in the foundations of chalets, castles, cafes, all over the world. So instead of leaving our works, our art tied to a place, why not to a person? ”

“Aether’s Gift,” Josephine murmured. “Only holds onto place, Penelope. A solid, rooted thing. A vessel.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And this girl will be a vessel too. Not because she wants to be. But because the world’s going to make her one.”

Josephine stared at me, her mouth stretched wide, the sun catching her hair. “And you believe a spell, a song, really, could bloom inside her like Aether’s Gift bloomed in all those places we’ve seeded over the centuries?”

“I do,” I said. “I don’t think Lore was just something I heard. I think it was something I was told to build. A seed. A fuse. A weapon wrapped in melody, just waiting for the right moment to wake up.”

She swallowed hard taking this in.

“And you think we can get it to her?” Josephine asked.

“I think whatever I saw last night is already moving toward her. And if we don’t do something, if we don’t give her something to hear in the dark, she won’t make it to the Harmonic who’s meant to find her.”

Some kids splashed in the pool nearby, but the sound felt distant, hollow, muddy, like the world had slipped sideways.

Josephine looked down at her hands. They were trembling.

“Penelope,” she whispered, “tell me what you need me to help you build.”

“We need Elias,” I said as I watched the world and the future crash down from the heavens collapsing everything I knew, or thought I knew.

“I can’t, I have to start warming up with the band,” Elias protested to me in the Oasis Room in that darling, soft way he always did, so honor bound, so called to duty, in the way that only the best Untethered could be.

While I loved this part of Elias, we had work to do, I held my hand up towards the band, and chanted under my breath, “Break the veil, sever the time, open a pocket, open a thrall, create a vision where one minute becomes infinite to all,” as I did so, the band and the servers preparing to open the Oasis Room froze in time and space. Elias watched as the heavy curtains opened out towards the pool deck froze in place as the wind ruffled them gently. The waves of motion frozen in time.

“No one will miss you and the band will perform without you for some time,” I assured him, “I’ve cloaked this space in a spell that will freeze time for as long as I deem necessary,” I told him, “But don’t worry no one will remember any of this and anyone who walks into the Room will relive yesterday all over again. I will monitor the room to ensure all is well,” I assured Elias as we began walking towards Josephine’s villa.

I could hear the two musicians talking from the other room, I only caught fragments of their conversation, things I barely understood, something about ‘chord progressions’ and ‘Harmonic signatures,’ as I stood in the kitchen looking out the small ivy covered window above the sink into the gardens. I had a large glass plate onto which I piled some leftover Deviled Eggs from the Oasis Room that I had stashed away in the icebox. Next to them, I put down some radishes with butter and salt, I had just purchased the radishes from the farmstead grocer on the corner of Sunset & Fairfax and I relished slicing through their crisp skins as much as I did slathering each slice in creamy butter and dusting the slices in flaky salt.

As I prepared this platter of snacks, I realized I was preparing comfort food for our supreme Harmonic and my Untethered songwriting lover. It hit me that even witches and their human allies facing enormous odds require simple, satisfying pleasures. Maybe in some way this would help Elias remain deeply human even as we wield forbidden power.

As I entered the living room, I played my role of doting doyenne of domesticity, “How are my lovely musicians coming along?” I asked with the kind of perkiness that belonged in a Starlight Pictures serial.

“I believe we’re making progress assembling the lines from your vision,” Josephine said like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“We created a sort of melody around the words, something a musician of any time would recognize,” Josephine said, “And with just enough cues that a Harmonic of any era would recognize is a song of Volari origin,” she added as she passed me a set of papers with lyrics written alongside musical notes, something that made no sense to me, at least not yet.

“Now,” Josephine said, “We also have to ensure that our Harmonic who walks alongside the Storm Born recognizes this song as not just a Harmonic echo but as something crucial. It needs to be sung to her,” Josephine said, her eyes narrowing in a kind of way that said more than her words were prepared to.

“It needs to be the kind of song, that a young girl has sung to her at birth, when the nights become dark, when the nightmares come on strong, when the world aches a bit too much. It has to become anthemic, crucial and central to her upbringing, do you understand me?” Josephine asked me as she gripped my hand under the coffee table, through choking tears, all I could say was “Yes, I understand.”

I couldn’t see at the time that Josephine was also holding Elias’ hand. Elias turned to me, raised his hand to wipe my tears away and then began crying himself as we embraced, and held each other, quite possibly for the last time in this moment, this Golden Age, before the world became so dark.

The Golden Age continues next week.

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14 :: Bloom/Obsidian

Avalon Gardens , March 1946, Hollywood, CA

The hotel porters marshaled at the hotel’s front drive as a cream colored 1941 Packard Super Eight wound its way around the hotel’s Porte-cochère.

A crew of porters brought another fresh rolling rack of trunks up to the car as Victoria emerged wearing a pale, champagne colored blouse and brown trousers with a small navy pillbox hat and large sunglasses. Victoria smoked an Old Gold in an long cigarette holder as she chattered loudly about her upcoming travels to the porters.

Penelope joined her shortly thereafter just in time to listen to Victoria prattle on describing the latest luxuries of aviation found on the DC-3 and all the glamorous spots and people Victoria would see on her one night stopover in Miami before heading on to Curaçao.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t want to join me,” Victoria chided Penelope. “The Senator and his friends will be there, plenty of chance for you to land one of these untethered once and for all,” Victoria said in that casually cruel way she excelled at sometimes.

“Because whatever business you have going on with the Senator is your business and yours alone,” Penelope said matter-of-factly. “And I wouldn’t want to impede in any way.”

“Aren’t you precious,” Victoria said smugly. “And to think we had that falling out about…oh who can even remember such trivial matters any more?” Victoria said completely deflecting from the very real period where Penelope felt iced out, exiled and alone even surrounded by family.

“But let’s not dwell on negativity, love, shall we?” Victoria said manipulating Penelope even further. “I can trust you with the Colony while I’m away, surely?” Victoria asked.

“I will ensure that no one will have any fun around here until you return, witch’s honor,” Penelope said mockingly.

“That’s my Penny,” Victoria said sickly sweet before abruptly turning to leave, “The skies are calling,” she said dismissively getting into her car as the porters finished securing the trunks and Victoria’s car sped away.

“Have a safe trip…” Penelope said under her breath, “witch.”

As Penelope fell back into her bed seemingly in slow motion, the sensations around her came to her fast with stunning clarity, the clink of glasses, the pop of a champagne cork, the sound of the head of a match snapping as it drags along the strike strip, the faint crackle of a candle bursting to life.

Penelope could even swear she could hear the subtle, nearly silent creak of the Gardenia petals opening ever so slightly to catch the sun. As Penelope arched her neck to take in her bedroom, she heard the droning sound, like an airplane frozen in the sky held still by some other worldly force. Just outside the window, Penelope could see a hummingbird flapping its wings as it feasted on a blooming jasmine bud. As Penelope stared at it she could see time seemingly slowing that every pulse, every movement, every flap of its wings flapped like they were trapped in amber.

As Penelope marveled at this scenery unfolding around her, or rather slowing to an almost unbearable stop, it dawned on Penelope that this was one of those few moments when Penelope was totally in control.

“Feeling better now that the old ball and chain has flown the coop?” Elias asked jokingly as he flipped on the radio as “The Gypsy” by the Ink Spots came on. Elias hummed along and drummed his fingers on the night table beside Penelope’s bed.

“Come here, you,” Penelope said reaching for Elias. As their fingers interlaced, she pulled him onto the bed. Elias hit the bed shoulder first, the impact creating an almost tidal wave of motion as Penelope felt herself almost thrown from the bed like a slow motion explosion in a picture.

But Penelope focused and suddenly she and Elias were weightless drifting out of the bed, towards the ceiling as the sheets delicately peeled away and fell to the bed. With their fingers interlaced, she pulled him close and he curled into her form resting his head on her chest as she delicately kissed his head.

“What’s happening to you?” Elias asked softly.

“I dont know,” Penelope said simply kissing his head.

“You’ve never been able to do all this have you?” Elias asked.

“I think its the bloom,” Penelope said in awe, “I never thought it would happen to me..”

“Excuse me if I’m a little lost but what’s the bloom?” Elias asked.

“Most Volari develop their powers early in life,” Penelope explained, “But for some, they have a second awakening later in life,” she tried to explain while putting it in untethered terms, “I believe you call it puberty, it’s like having puberty and then again later in life once more,” she said as Elias chuckled.

“Does everyone go through it?” Elias asked sincerely.

“No. Some of us bloom late. Some never bloom at all. It’s… unpredictable. Rare,” Penelope told Elias.

“No wonder you’re so damn special,” Elias said as he kissed Penelope deeply.

As Elias and Penelope dined on breakfast the next morning on the small terrace attached to her villa, Elias asked her, “So what kind of new powers does ‘the bloom’ bring?”

“It allows us to cast more powerful spells,” she explained, “and some even believe it means we’re entering the height of our abilities and that we’re more powerful than ever,” Penelope said, “I can even feel it just waking up today, I can feel more powerful than I ever have been, like I could cause an earthquake with nothing more than a thought.”

“I feel like I could even be Mystic, if I truly wanted,” Penelope said offering a peek into a dark thought that rippled through her mind.

“What did you feel like doing today?” Elias asked.

“Locking the front door and not leaving, eating everything from the Oasis Room menu and then some and then eating it off of each other,” Penelope said with a devilish grin that Elias returned with a happily spread smile.

Penelope’s joy from the days spent locked away in the villa was punctuated by a simple, curt “Out with it,” from Josephine who chided Penelope as they sat poolside on a balmy March day.

Penelope nibbled a plump shrimp from her shrimp cocktail smiling not ready to give too much away as she sipped delicately on her old fashioned daiquiri.

“Who’s got you beaming ear to ear like you just swallowed sunshine?” Josephine prodded even though Penelope was having none of it.

“Is it Elias?” Josephine said none too coyly, “Are things heating up with you two?”

“Even if it were, what business is it of yours?” Penelope joked.

“Its just that I haven’t seen you this beaming since Murad, that Ottoman art dealer at the Vienna World’s Fair,” Josephine joked, “in what was that…1873, I believe?”

“His name was Selim and for the record,” Penelope corrected her, “he dealt in fakes.”

“So…it is Elias, then?” Josephine asked cutting through the subterfuge.

“He just makes me feel so…” Penelope squealed, more emotion than words.

“I can tell,” Josephine replied. Josephine paused, lowering her sunglasses so her eyes could meet Penelope’s. “Enjoy it while you can, darling. Once Victoria returns from, whatever she’s really doing down there, she’ll have everyone wound up again in Fallen vs. Volari nonsense, I’m certain.”

Penelope blinked, mystified but also half knowing Josephine was right. Teasingly she asked, “You think I don’t know why she’s in Curaçao?”

Josephine returned a simple smirk. “Please, darling, Victoria never travels merely just for sunshine, she can get plenty of that here,” Josephine said motioning around at the pool deck. Penelope returned a thin smile not ready to betray her thoughts just yet.

“Now that I have you in such a truthful mood,” Josephine pressed, “What is she doing down there anyways? Trying to nab a senator husband?”

That dark thought from a few days earlier at breakfast rippled through Penelope’s mind once more like a pull, a tug. “Only if it stays between you, me and this shrimp cocktail.”

“I’ll never tell,” Josephine promised, “Witch’s honor, but I can’t speak for the shrimp,” she joked.

“Victoria and the senator and his pals are surveying a mine with a deep pocket of Orphic Glass prime for mining,” Penelope said and as the words left her mouth she was filled with loathing but also a surging sense of power.

Josephine’s eyes went wide, “Orphic glass?” She gasped, “What is a Mystic doing mining a witch’s poison?”

“A Mystic mining poison,” Josephine murmured. “Victoria isn’t courting a senator, darling. She’s declaring a war.”

“She can’t seriously be thinking of drawing us into another conflict, can she?” Josephine asked as Penelope saw her chance to strike.

“If it were up to Victoria she’d have us locked in one war after another, darling.

We’ve all seen this across time, wars give her something to control, something to strive for, something to live for, ultimately. What use is a Mystic who’s meant to bring calm and peace without a war to fight after all?” Penelope posited as Josephine nodded.

“What do we do?” Josephine asked, “I know you will know what to do, you’ve already led us before in times when Victoria could not or would not, I trust you implicitly, darling,”

“I fear this is not a decision I can make on my own, we must gather the core Volari to decide, this must be a group decision, we may need to go against Victoria, but if that’s what is to happen, we do it together, or not at all,” Penelope said decisively.

That night, Josephine, Rex, Simone, Viktor, Margot, Nadia, and Lucia gathered in Penelope’s villa.

Margot, Nadia, and Lucia entered looking around at the gathered group with a look of nervousness on their faces.

“Come in ladies,” Josephine said warmly, “You may not be Volari but as long as you’re under our protection you are one of us, and you deserve to be a part of this, Marion always was.”

As everyone sat and poured themselves cocktails, Penelope told the group about the orphic glass project and described how orphic glass could be melted into weapons for use against fellow witches.

“The Fallen are hardly my cup of tea,” Rex said stoically, “But witch on witch violence just seems a little beyond the pale.”

“And as someone that has seen their beast up close,” Josephine added, “Orphic weapons won’t stop an empusa or its seeker, only witches.”

“So we’re going to spill blood for what, exactly?” Viktor asked incredulously. “To storm the El Dorado?”

“I won’t have it,” Viktor spat, “Not after the Silver Canary, untethered innocents could be caught in the crossfire, and we risk angering the Fallen into doing something stupid, something reckless,” he said angrily.

“It feels like Victoria is purposely leaving us in the dark,” Simone sighed.

Penelope opened her mouth to speak, “There might be a way,” she broached, “Victoria confronted Gold that night at the El Dorado, the night of Viktor’s premiere,” Penelope said.

“Victoria confided in me that Gold told her she had seen the outcome of what happens here,” Penelope said breaking her trust with Victoria like the snapping of a saltine cracker.

“It’s also not the first time the Fallen have intimated they have seen the future,” Penelope added as she told the group about Paul Saveth’s veiled threats about having seen the “battles to come.”

“So,” Rex asked, “How could we ever possibly fight against an enemy that knows the outcome? An enemy that has seen the future?”

A thick silence expanded in the room that began to feel suffocating.

“Then, we see it, too,” Penelope said as a gasp fell across the living room.

The Golden Age continues next week.

If your haven’t caught up on The Golden Age yet, begin with the three chapter premiere:

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Rhodes Ave Press Presents: THE GOLDEN AGE

13 :: As Rome Burned…

El Dorado Hotel , August 1945, Hollywood, CA

Victoria meandered through the throngs of party guests that only seemed to get thicker the farther she wandered, every time she’d turn a corner in the El Dorado’s byzantine lobby bar, she felt like a whole other corridor of rooms seemed to open as if the space was reorganizing itself around her like a funhouse trap, the more she pressed forward looking for Gold, the tighter the space seemed to collapse around her.

Victoria muttered an incantation, low and almost silent as she turned a corner. As she did, the swirling disorienting effect seemed to pause if only for a moment and she saw a door to a stairwell open. Everything in her chest told her to head for the door. As she did, she pushed it open to a narrow stairwell where an untethered looking woman in a black satin gown with a thigh-high slit and her hair cut short had her mouth pressed to a man’s neck and one hand down his pants.

Victoria quickly excused herself around the amorous young couple and continued up the stairs as if following an invisible echo.

Victoria could feel the draft of outside air up ahead. As she climbed she came to a level where a door opened to an outdoor terrace. Victoria hesitantly pushed her way to the terrace and found Gold standing at the edge of the terrace looking down at Los Angeles, now for the first time in years fully ablaze.

“Victoria,” Gold said low and slow as if naming her presence. Gold turned slowly to face Victoria and Victoria marveled at how the arcing spotlights cut across Gold’s face. “What are you doing here, Gold?” Victoria asked.

“I should be asking you the same, old friend,” Gold said with a sigh. “You’re the one in enemy territory,” Gold said as Victoria’s stomach twisted.

“I can see by that look on your face you don’t know yet,” Gold teased, “You wouldn’t know it from its outward glamour, but The El Dorado has been struggling, the poor owner lost his fortune in the war to frozen European assets, he was so distressed financially and otherwise, so I gave him exactly what he wanted, I called off his debts and also offered to buy his most valuable asset to save it from the auction block,” Gold said making it sound almost altruistic.

“I dont believe you,” Victoria snorted.

“Oh, you’re right not to,” Gold retorted, “I may have had Ruby scare off some would be buyers, but its for the best, truly,” Gold boasted.

“You’re still using that beast on a golden leash?” Victoria hissed jaggedly.

“Big words,” Gold sneered, “You and all those beasts on your leash.”

“In fact,” Gold added, “I believe you can even see the Avalon Gardens from here, just a few blocks that way,” Gold said pointing off into the distance. “I will so enjoy looking down on you each day as I have my coffee.”

“That is,” Gold added, “Until that day you walk past here and accept your true fate, you may not know about that yet, but trust me, you will,” Gold said knowingly.

“What are you on about?” Victoria asked.

“The seeing stone,” Gold chided.

“You always take the easy way out,” Victoria snarled at Gold.

“And you always let your ambition eat you alive, Victoria,” Gold hissed in return.

“Where did we go wrong you and I?” Victoria asked. “After all those years, all those kingdoms we’ve watched rise and fall, the ages we’ve lived through, the rises, the falls, how could we come to this?”

“Don’t act so sanctimonious, Victoria,” Gold chided her, “I watched you on Hannibal’s trusted court, and the 2 years that followed as the city was under siege,” Gold said digging deep into the women’s shared past, their shared heritage, their shared pain.

“And then, I watched you stand there as Carthage fell, and the second the walls were breached, I saw you run to the nearest Roman soldier so you can ensure your safety with a whisper. And once you were safe I saw you follow the Romans as they burned through the city.”

“You always said you were following our way…but what if our way was never right, never just to begin with?” Gold posited, “You always said our code was to ‘protect’ the untethered but we have no interest in protecting them.”

“We only seek to control them, sure we give them gifts like color and sound and make all this possible…” Gold said motioning at surrounding Hollywood.

“But we’re not doing it for their benefit, we’re doing it for ours, so we can remain important, needed and alive, we’re not benefactors, we’re invaders wearing nicer clothes that come bearing gifts.”

“Is that why you fell away?” Victoria asked in disbelief.

“‘The Fallen’” Gold said tasting the name, “We didn’t ‘fall’ away from anything old friend,” Gold corrected her, “We walked away from what we knew was a lie,” she said sternly.

“As I started to see what we and our ‘influence’ had wrought, I could no longer stay silent so I took the ones who felt the same way and we left,” Gold confessed. “I remember sitting there atop Capitoline hill, watching, as Rome burned, watching helplessly as flames crawled up marble columns and swallowed wooden roofs before moving up to the Palatine hills, all this flame and all I remember wondering is was our influence worth all of this? What did we have to gain with this ruinous influence, we spoke this into the ears of the people who made it possible just so we could survive.”

“Hollywood didn’t force us to break away, old friend,” Gold said, “We were already broken. Long before.”

“Gold,” Victoria uttered crushed but moved by her admission, “I didn’t realize,” Victoria said reaching out as if to give comfort.

“Just do what you must do, Victoria,” was all Gold could respond with, “Now, let’s not be rude and get back to the party,” Gold suggested as the two women translocated back to the lobby bar. The two translocated in to a discreet corner just around the way from where the Volari had gathered. As they approached, the tall, dark haired woman Victoria had seen in the stairwell appeared. Victoria turned to face her and said, “Dearie…” as she motioned wiping at the edge of her mouth with her thumb.

The woman seemed caught off guard as she dabbed the corner of her mouth and found an errant drop of blood.

As the party resumed, Victoria tried to make herself look comfortable although she was still shaken from her confrontation with Gold. While Victoria was particularly rocked by some of Gold’s concessions and revelations, she was still guarded against Gold’s words knowing her long enough to know that Gold always knew the right whisper, into the ears of a king, an emperor or even an old friend to sow the seeds of doubt, the seeds of discontentment, the seeds of eventual destruction.

Penelope broke Victoria out her thoughts placing her hand delicately on Victoria’s arm. “You alright, Victoria?” Penelope asked softly, “You seemed somewhat lost in a ten thousand yard stare,” Penelope said factually.

“I just think,” Victoria began, “I’m starting to lose some clarity,” she said becoming somewhat faint, “I feel like I need some vision to better orient myself,” she said trying to bend Penelope where she wanted.

“We’ve never used it in this manner,” Penelope began but Victoria cut her off, “It might be time to do so my dear,” Victoria countered brusquely. “There are far larger stakes at hand, I know you know what I mean,” Victoria began.

Elias approached and stayed a few steps away from the two women. As Penelope turned away from Victoria, Elias reached out to comfort her, “Is there anything the matter?” He asked.

“No, thank you,” she said back to Elias gracefully.

“I think some of us are going to go visit some of my band friends at Mocambo if you want to join?” Elias invited politely.

Penelope surveyed the party which began to thin before turning back to him smiling, “It’s a nice evening,” she said beaming, “Let’s walk.”

Viktor was already feeling the effects of two too many martinis drop a shade over his eyes. Rex’s vision was similarly becoming equally syrupy and glassine, “Ladies, and gentleman of the hour,” Rex said motioning to Lucia, Nadia, and Viktor, “What do you say we continue this shindig in my villa?”

“Absolutely,” Lucia smiled as she looked at the others. “But only if you’ll do me one favor, Rex-y, dear,” she said playfully pulling his pet name out into the open.

“Anything for my blushing wife,” Rex said with his smile, speckled with stardust.

“Let’s invite a friend to join us, so we’re not so lonely?” Lucia said with a twinkle of her own. Rex couldn’t tell if this was natural or if her shade side was merely shifting her appearance into something more pleasurable for him.

Rex smiled in return as Lucia outstretched her hand and wrapped it around Letty’s palm, “Come and join us for a nightcap, won’t you?” She asked with words as much as with her glittering eyes.

Letty turned her head to look down upon her and Rex as she smiled in return, “Love to,” she said as she collected her clutch.

Viktor, Nadia, Lucia, Rex, and Letty began walking home down Sunset, the summer night was filled with cars streaming down the street and drunken revelers stumbling out of bars up and down the Strip, the feeling communal, patriotic, and debauched.

“You’re really talented,” Letty said to Lucia as they walked, “I’m serious, I can see these kinds of things, you know,” Letty assured her.

“You might think that,” Lucia assured her, “Just because I’m in a few movies, I’m incredibly fortunate but I don’t think I’m truly special in any way, just very lucky,”

“Oh, please, every girl I know would give anything, their right arm, their eye, even their soul to be half as talented as you,” Letty said.

Avalon Gardens , August 1945, Hollywood, CA

The sounds in Rex’s villa were particularly telling, the sound of ice cubes clanging into glasses, the sound of liquids pouring and cracking ice, the subtle slide noise of the stopper of glass decanters being opened, the distinctive ting of glasses clanging against the marble coffee table in the seating area.

After a drink or two, Nadia and Viktor kindly excused themselves to celebrate in private leaving Rex, Lucia and Letty alone in the villa. Letty’s eyes danced over Rex and Lucia like an apex predator choosing what animal to chase on the savannah.

“Lets play a game,” Letty said playfully. Rex and Lucia’s eyebrows arched as Rex asked, “What game are you thinking?”

“Got a deck of cards on ya?” Letty asked.

“Right here,” Lucia said pulling a pack of cards out of a lacquered box on the side table.

“Lets play this game I learned on a picture once…” Letty said.

“What picture?” Rex asked curiously.

“Little dinky picture,” Letty said self-deprecatingly. “I only had a tiny blink and you miss it day player part, it wasn’t really a big studio movie, more one of those movies for girlie show houses,” Letty said outstretching her hands towards them, “C’mon, I’ll show you,” she said leading them seductively towards the bedroom.

Entering the bedroom, Rex flipped on the light switch of the chinoiserie lamp on the pedestal table as Letty led Lucia to the bed. “Rex, old chap,” Letty said, “you just sit right there,” she said motioning to the white wingback chair in the corner of the room as she led Lucia to the edge of the bed.

Pushing Lucia onto the bed, Letty pulled up her dress ran her hands up Lucia’s thighs, until her hand reached her warmth, as she did so, Letty lightly applied some pressure which elicited a slight moan from Lucia. Letty clocked Rex who looked as if he was enjoying the show. So Letty pulled up Lucia’s dress and straddled her bare midsection on the bed. As she did so, she grabbed the pack of cards, “let’s play Strip Poker,” Letty said playfully, “For each card with a face, I remove one piece, for each card with a number, I have to do that number of things to your lovely wife here, it’ll be fun, promise,” Letty assured them.

Letty opened the cards and began riffling through the deck she pulled out one King of Clubs, “Oops, face,” she said laughing as she undid her dress and let it fall down around her shoulders and chest.

“Jack of Clubs,” she said as she undid her brassiere and her breasts fell out as Letty proudly displayed her chest. Looking down at Lucia, Letty asked teasingly, “you want to touch?” Lucia reached out tentatively and delicately stroked her breasts as Letty moaned deeply.

Next, Letty pulled a 8 of Clubs as she leaned over and parted Lucia’s lips delicately with her tongue, as she pressed their mouths together passionately. As they kissed, Lucia undulated her body like waves rubbing her body against Letty, they weren’t just two bodies enjoying each other it was like they were two natural elements roiling against each other. To Lucia it felt like passion, it felt like release.

Lucia could see out of the corner of her eye Rex watching her, enjoying the spectacle and Lucia enjoyed being so free in front of Rex, allowing all of her, every face of her to be present in this very moment with both of them.

After a while, Lucia lost interest in the card game and merely shore off her dress allowing Letty to use her body as she saw fit, There was nothing to fight anymore, just everything to give and she let Letty take it.

Letty nuzzled Lucia’s chest and began lightly nibbling on her breast as Lucia moaned lightly showing her gratitude, Letty began moving up Lucia’s chest and began kissing her neck, delicately, passionately, deeply. Lucia became lost in the throes of passion until she felt something sharp and painful prick at her neck. She thought nothing of it and gave herself back into the passion as she began to feel lightheaded. She attributed it to the rush of passion and intimacy and closed her eyes letting her body feel the overwhelming sensation of being racked by pleasure.

But Lucia opened her eyes and saw Letty’s face over hers, her face frozen but her mouth dripping with blood, Lucia reached her hand up to her neck and felt an open gash as she attempted to stifle a frozen scream. Lucia turned quickly to look towards Rex who was now standing over the bed with his hand outstretched towards her.

“Go ahead, darling,” Rex said to her softly, “I’ve restricted her movement, but I won’t be able to for long,” he told her as Lucia quickly and quietly slid off the bed as the frozen in time and space Letty floated above her.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lucia asked shaken.

“She’s a seeker, Lucia,” Rex said calmly, “She’s a demon’s servant, feeds on blood.”

“Hecate?” Lucia asked almost hushed.

“Not her, but one of her demonic hand servants,” Rex corrected her.

“Release the vein, recall the shadow, Your feast is finished, and the dark calls you home,” Rex chanted at Letty still frozen in midair.

Even frozen, Letty’s head still managed to look up and spin around towards him as if human bones no longer had any bearing on this beast, and as she did so, her mouth spoke something that sounded human but spoken through the voice of a trapped beast, “WE WILL COME FOR YOU VOLARI!” Letty shouted before her limbs seemed to crack outwards as if breaking themselves.

Rex’s hold on her broke, the broken creature dropped to the floor of the bedroom and the broken limbs carried the mangled beast out of the room like some kind of demonic spider beast. The front door of the villa ripped open into the night and with a guttural growl, Letty disappeared into the night. Rex chased the sound outside, and looked towards the moon which hung menacingly in the night sky that framed the Castle now known as the El Dorado like a demonic watch tower looking down at the Volari colony.

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12 :: The Castle

El Dorado Hotel , August 1945, Hollywood, CA

“Rum and Coca-Cola” by The Andrews Sisters lilted through the lobby bar of the El Dorado Hotel. Spotlights out front of the bastion-like hotel scraped the night sky, a sight barely seen over the last three years.

But tonight was a night for celebration on two fronts. Viktor Strand’s wartime epic The Shores of Salvation had just had its glitzy premiere. One upside to the war is that Viktor Strand had become Hollywood’s go-to director for patriotic morale-boosting pictures. And not just pictures, but bona-fide hits.

As luck would have it, the premiere just happened to be the same day as the day Victory was declared in Japan. As the curtain prepared to fall on the Pacific theater, the curtain had risen on Viktor.

A black 1941 Packard Super Eight One-Eighty limousine soared down Sunset, its long sweeping fenders catching the lights of Sunset as the whitewall tires seemed to reflect the light back onto the street in a sort of sweeping kaleidoscopic fashion.

As the limousine pulled up to the entrance to the El Dorado, Viktor Strand emerged waving to the photographers lining the steps. Viktor turned back towards the car and extended his arm to a hand emerging from the car. As he clasped the extending hand, he graciously introduced Nadia Draoui to the assorted photographers. Nadia looked ravishing in her bias-cut champagne satin gown with a slight cowl neckline and a low draped back, held by beautifully braided gold straps.

Not that Nadia needed much introduction, in her time with Viktor working as a costume designer, Nadia had become his partner, his trusted muse and a Hollywood heavyweight in her own right. Nadia had come so far, so fast, that her dress for the occasion was part of a line of dresses she had designed for an exclusive collection for Jay Mankin, and now her dresses could be seen being worn by well heeled women all over Los Angeles.

Lucia, meanwhile had similarly had her share of success over the last few years. After marrying Rex Montague, doors previously not open to a Shifter began opening all over Hollywood, especially in Viktor’s mega hit war picture, Under Cover of Night.

Lucia, once ashamed of her true form had finally found her true form on the arm of Rex. But more than Rex, Lucia was finally able to create her own safety and stability. While the Volari had kept their promise to watch over and safeguard the Shifter colony, the Shifters had thrived under their watch as opposed to curdled.

The lobby bar of the El Dorado had vaulted ceilings and stone columns similar to an Andalusian castle, the room laid with rococo furniture. The El Dorado shared many similarities with the other castle-like hotel, The Chateau Marmont, which occupied the opposite Eastern end of Sunset Blvd. However the El Dorado was constructed at the far westernmost point of Sunset Blvd where the road crossed Doheny as it moved through Beverly Hills. However because of it’s looming presence and the way it seemingly towered over West Hollywood, those who lived nearby merely referred to it as “The Castle.”

Victoria, Josephine, Margot, Penelope, Elias, and Simone made their way into the glittering lobby bar which was a sardine can of big name celebrities. And in the middle of it all, Viktor was sitting back in a lush cerulean covered bench with Rex surrounded by Nadia and Lucia who were more gracefully draped over the bench as much as sitting on it.

The group was all smiles as martinis in coupes were cradled in their fingers with pearly looking olives and onions swirling about inside. Victoria, Josephine, Margot, Penelope, Elias, and Simone approached the bench as Lucia, Nadia, Rex and Viktor stood to meet them. The group smiled and embraced each other.

“Viktor, Simone teased him, “You dog, you, another hit picture, every Girl Friday at Hollywood Daily is going to be penning love letters to you in every Studio hot sheet column.”

The moment felt warm, sparkly and so distinctly Hollywood, glittering smiles, the shine of martinis shimmering in coupes, and a thrumming band scoring the scene. But just like that…the dream broke. A single clear, clarion voice pierced the lobby bar as Ruby Valentine hopped onto the piano in a shimmery red cocktail dress and a boa and began sining Betty Hutton’s “Stuff Like That There,” the Volari turned to see the source of the big, husky voice and locked eyes on Ruby.

As they did so, Victoria’s eyes darted away and landed on Gold Sorenson cradling a coupe of champagne she held like a cherished idol. As soon as Gold saw Victoria’s gaze locked on her, she disappeared around the corner of one of the lobby bar’s stone columns.

Victoria quietly excused herself from the group and made her way through the lobby to find Gold. As the group stood around, Ruby finished her song and came over to greet everyone, “I must congratulate the man of the night,” Ruby said all smiles and spotlights from her eyes as she reached out to shake Viktor’s hand.

As she did so they both felt the hum, the static crackle of Volari skin touching demonic wrapping masquerading as flesh.

“Golly,” Ruby said as if she had contracted an ice cream headache. “I forgot to greet this gorgeous creature here,” she said bubbly reaching out to greet Nadia, “Always lovely to see you,” she said, “It must be exhausting being the toast of the town,” Ruby said shaking her hand while smiling through razor blades for teeth.

“I really should talk to you about designing some new looks for the act,” Ruby said disarmingly. “I’d love to,” Nadia said kindly, “Seriously.”

As their kind exchange evaporated, two gorgeous young women approached, one with a pale champagne gown and a Veronica Lake style hairdo with elegant finger waves. She stood forward with a red boa slung over her shoulder. “For your next song,” she said delicately draping the boa over Ruby’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Letty,” Ruby said more grunt than gratitude.

The other girl took a step towards Ruby, tall, sultry, and razor-sharp in a black satin gown with a thigh-high slit, her hair cut short, and black with waves sculpted like film noir lighting. To top it off, the girl had elegant pursed lips shellacked in a blood red lacquer, like a porcelain doll at Jay Mankin.

“Your second set is coming up,” the girl whispered to her loud enough for Hollywood to hear.

“Friends,” Ruby said addressing the Volari like sorority sisters, “These are my girls, Letty and Marlie, so glad you all have met, I wish I could stay but the piano calls,” Ruby said bouncing away like a perky demon in high heels.

Sure enough, Ruby launched into Dinah Shore’s “Blues in the Night,” as she shimmied across the piano top like a chorus vamp out for blood.

The Golden Age continues next week.

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