Dandelion Wine

 

Present memory or future memory or both at the same time. I’m not sure if it is 1066 or the Year 2525 or which planet I’m on if there are such things as planets and linear time which I doubt. What passes for 3D physical reality is totally fxxked up.

 

 

 

 

Random Access Memory.

 

 

The Locusts.

The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green grass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums beating in the night. the rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.

In six months a dozen small towns had been laid down upon the naked planet, filled with sizzling neon tubes and yellow electric bulbs. In all some ninety thousand people came to Mars, and more on Earth were packing their grips …

 

Wheels within wheels.

 

 

 

The Settlers.

 

 

They were coming with small dreams or large dreams or none at all. But a government finger pointed from four colour posters in many towns : THERE’S WORK FOR YOU IN THE SKY : SEE MARS ! and the men shuffled forward, only a few at first, a double score, for most men felt the great illness in them before the rocket fired into space.

And this disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your home town dwindle to the size of your fist and then lemon size and then pin size and vanish in the fire wake, you felt you had never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere with space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men.

 

Releasing the past.