Episode 39

Zeo Genesis Travelogues

Greetings, star-nomads! You can call me Trev. (You can also call me Trevallion Franklin-Ridgeway III, but I’d rather you didn’t). I’ve left behind my shallow executive existence to explore the Hundred Suns, to re-connect with insignificant voiders just like you. These are my travels. You’re welcome.

“Woo! What a party! Those sisters Jules and Jyl, they’re pretty wild! In the aftermath of the Little Aether Disaster, with all the gruelling, depressing rescue and reconstruction work, the immense grief, bewilderment, and anger consuming this huge space station, people need to blow off serious steam. Makeshift bars like this sometimes get really rowdy.”

“Hello, who’s that? Looks far too harrowed for this hootenanny. One moment…”

…

Trev: “Didn’t know your drink preferences, so I’ve brought alcoholic, non-alcoholic, terrurtic, gluten-free, vegan, and retro-zambandic. Name’s Trev Franklin-Ridgeway III, you might’ve heard of me?”

Layl: “I can’t say… erm… Layl. Sabsi.”

Trev: “Why so glum, chum?”

Layl: “I don’t…Adjustin’ to a new reality.”

Trev: “Aren’t we all.”

Layl: “Not just...this. A matter of the heart…” 

Trev: “Share the load? *cough* on-public-broadcast *cough*”

Layl: “Wha…Never mind. I dated the most beautiful lady I ever saw…Boav. Three cycles before the disaster, here in Zoashi. When the ship hit, I was in Kort, next district over, few cycles with my sports zeo...Totally cut off.”

Layl: “No help was comin’. Organized my boys in our zeos and started diggin’. All this time…talkin’ with Boav…omninet textcomm. Lots in common...total nerds, ha ha! Fantasy novs, weird art...a good game of knocksticks! Chattin’…kept me going…hopeful. A real, beautiful, goal. Dug like crazy for three oncts…talkin’ away.”

Layl: “Got through double cycs ago…first thing, visit my dad in medblock. Then I see her…the canteen. Boav…another fella. Romantic…undeniable.”

Trev: “She led you on?”

Layl: “No… no. I did. Situation…need of hope…me…all desperate. Lookin’ at the messages…she was just bein’ friendly…two people talkin’…no different to you and me. Read into it what I wanted…what I needed. Hung a lotta importance on one initial connection.  Built this whole future…assuming reality would just cooperate. Imagined or not, it was kinda reality to me…now…vaporized…leaving just…black and stars.”

Trev: “Can you be friends?”

Layl: “Not… while she’s gotta boyfriend.”

Trev: “There are more fish, my friend.”

Layl: “But I only want one.”

Trev: “You’ll be OK one day, Layl. Sometimes, though, there’s no shortcuts. One just has to sit with their sense of loss, dear listeners.”

Layl: “Listeners? Wait, whaddaya say earlier?”

"Stay zippy, star-nomads…"

  • Extract from Little Aether Super-Govt. report on the spreading occurrence of ‘crash bars’ in the wake of the Little Aether Disaster.
  • “…with the widespread disintegration of civic services across Little Aether in the aftermath of Impact Day and emergency services stretched to breaking point, standard policing activities have become unprioritized if not impossible. As a result, products served in so-called ‘crash bars’ include both regulated and unregulated varieties. A survey of one such crash bar, The Rosy Rosie, served products that included:
    • Regulated
      • Cremonrasp tongba – mild alcoholic beverage brewed from fermented cremonrasp millet.
      • Skeshers lager – traditionally-made, macro-brewed, mildly alcoholic lager beer.
      • Levibool – moderately alcoholic and mildly caffeinated biscuits.
      • Yaspops – strongly alcoholic lollipops made from compacted perenges.
    • Unregulated
      • Rhyme Slime – sweetly flavored, gelatinous slime, taken orally, produces mild-to-moderate euphoria and all speech to rhyme for variable times depending on strength.
      • “Zuno pruno” – strongly alcoholic drink made from various fruits, sugar, bread, and water fermented in plastic bags.
      • “Bath Water” – highly alcoholic, unaged clear spirit, distilled from fermented Juan Hoola grain mash in bathtubs. Some batches suspected to cause temporary or permanent deafness.

These journals were recorded via Tymphony Aural Augmetics… TAA: Listen Up!