Episode 01 - Through The Portal

Songs For Phaeton

Episode 1 Transcript I want so badly to apologize. But my experience cautions against it. I need your trust, and you must give it to me. I woke up on a rock in the sky, a galling light cast by a strange eclipse, where sixty colored moons hung above me. One visibly spinning, some jeweled with satellites, another like an egg . . . I trembled so much that I could not stand. I didn't know if anyone was still alive, if Earth were near, if it were real—I didn't know . . . if I was still a man. In heaven was a donut sun, and I was leashed to a rock and all alone. You must find yourself confused, much as I was. But all will become clear. Just stay with me." Song for Deep, on the night of first breaking Within the stillest canyon in the deep, light in silvery curtains drifts over steep-sloped reefs and regal, janit fish. Where hundreds of debrained medusas dream upon a wasted, massy iron wing, the spirals of the ghostly bubble bridge entwine the graphene cylinder and thicken to three ten-foot, roiling, compound lobes of pink. Now night, now stainless blades cut one great daughter from the unbroken chain to find the stars beyond the small machines, the neat, expansive mysteries of space, the undreamt void, the unspun seas, the unchained dark, O!, terrible release! Songs for Phaeton: Chapter One It looked for all the world like some rat-snake-headed hydra was getting fat on a dozen canaries. Yellow petals stuck out at off angles from each bud, and each bud was trying to bully its way through the door, if that's what it was. At intervals, one Daisy would burst open, releasing a cloud of some peculiar substance or a mist of acid. The others would freeze, then unfreeze, and then the process would start again, some new bud popping open with some new useless idea. I was in a dawdling mood. I'd earned it, by rights! And so I pondered there for a long hour, just pondering. These vines were the deadliest things going, and they looked like vegetal Stooges, or Oliver Twist knocking sheepishly at a rich man's house! The Daisies' only hope was that some fool might open the portal for them, carelessly, and that they'd win out in a rush. Seemed utterly unlikely, that. I stepped forward mildly, serene as a ghost in the Vatican, and presented myself for their inspection. The vines began to probe me wildly for any chink, absolutely mad with aggression. Before my eyes was opened a tiny blossom, gowned in fat whorls. Its anthers stretched like snails eyes and then crashed against me, exploding and incinerating their petals with what I'm sure was whitey pete. Dewy cones matured in seconds and excreted Delacroix Meade. (I'm sure if I'd been able, I'd've licked the stuff dry and gone mad. Captivating notion, that.) Then these cherubic little strawberries wreathed about one another and breathed mercury gas in little smokey arrows, right at my nose! As I watched, all manner of other wildly fatal weapons were tried—hogged beans popped pink, cambered cherries bled some noxious hazel goo, silica needles rippled and rattled and broke themselves on my skin . . . The Daisies themselves stayed back, and I admired their humility for it. What gods must be for them? In its way, the assault was the most relaxing experience I'd had in months. And so I began to weep: tears for those I'd used, and abandoned, and loved, and betrayed to death, for myself and my forgotten family, for the growing hope that my soul had not left me in its entire, for my uncertain future, and finally, in fear of whatever lay beyond that door—even for you, in a way. After savoring the beauty of the scene, and still a bit lachrymose, I destroyed them, vine, root, and all, and watched them wither. And I was suddenly lonely. Very lonely. Within me surged the key, and the portal swung open, soft as batwings, quiet as a wish. This way, too, must you go, and I will guide you. But hush now, and hide me! Soon enough we shall begin, and you shall come with me to the stars!