I especially cannot keep writing the same thing at the same time that everyone else I know is expected to write the same thing. Behold, the widows of the Peloponnesian War! The survivors of the Titanic! The last remaining original cast member of Carrie: The Musical! Anniversaries are a curse.

I understand that rituals are important, comforting, cleansing. I also understand that they’re meaningful only when we imbue them with meaning. I’ve left plenty of rituals behind (smoking, religion), and I’ll happily add the the High NOLA Day of August 29 to the pile.

I have expressed my gratitude repeatedly. 

I have expressed my biggest regret repeatedly. 

I have documented the miracles and the mundane and the missed opportunities (too many to link). 

I don’t think I have much more to say. Just put it on a loop. I have other work to do.

The real problem with venerating Hurricane Katrina is that our stories have long-since ossified into 60-second highlight reels. The minutiae of our everyday lives for those two, four, eight, 52, 520, 1,040 weeks after the levees caved under the water’s weight have been washed away, forgotten until someone else brings up peculiar memories of their own: “Do you remember that smell?” or “The days without power?” or “When the whole neutral ground on West End Boulevard was stacked 30 feet high with debris?” or “The water lines four feet high at one end of a house and eight feet at the other?” or “When we could only shop on Magazine Street because everything else ain’t dere no more?”

Each of those is V8 moment, which is old people slang for a lightning bolt of memory, a gobsmacking “How could I forget that?” But then those fresh memories become ossified too, a litany of their own. Or more likely, we just forget about them again. 

So, is this the last you’ll hear of it?

I wish I could say yes, but no, probably not. Not even from me. 

But it’s an old story now, and my role in it was never more than a supporting one at best, interesting to those my age and older, and there are fewer of us nowadays. I don’t even listen to old music, why should I live in the past of this one, giant, overwhelming swamp thing?

Best to let it drain away. Best to let others assess and analyze and tell the tale, others with the time and talent to tell stories in new ways.

Best to let others read it too. 

So it’s no surprise that I’m no fan of the war in Gaza. Israel’s “war on terror” is likely to go about as well the one that America began waging two decades ago and may still be waging, but who knows because we’ve stopped talking about it because fighting a concept is a great way to keep a battle on the back burner without having to give daily updates.

More importantly, conceptual wars have excruciatingly concrete results, like the countless casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq or, in this case, in Israel, Gaza, the Westbank, and neighboring regions. It looks very much like a lose-lose situation, and I would like nothing more than to see it end. (I can say that while simultaneously acknowledging Israel’s right to exist and also Palestinians’ right to exist.)

But honestly, who cares what I would like? What standing do I have to say anything about the war in Israel? I’m just a guy — a guy who is not a politician, a guy who does not work for the state department, a guy who has only a vague sense of the complexities involved in the history of the Levant leading up to today. I have neither the expertise nor the authority, much less the power, to call for one action or another with regard to the war.

Along the same lines (and this is my real point, apologies for the prologue), can someone please explain why a school board has called for a cease-fire in what is essentially a civil war in a foreign country? Why do the members of that board feel entitled to make political suggestions or demands? Why do they feel qualified to propose plans?

I can’t say for certain, but like other olds, I feel qualified to shake my fist in the air and blame social media. Now that people, companies, and governments are forced to be transparent about absolutely everything — and now that everyone with a smartphone has a voice to urge them to do so — people, companies, and governments (and school boards and unions) feel compelled to make a statement about everything, whether or not they have any expertise on the thing in question.

Look, you want to feel a particular way about the war, great. Root for Palestine, root for Israel, call for an end to war, or simply refuse to have a pat opinion about a political situation that has been byzantine since Jewish immigration to the region began surging over a century ago and became exponentially more complex once independence was declared. (Would things have been better if Herzl et al. had made Uganda their homeland? Doubtful.)

But for the love of Christiane Amanpour, stop insisting that every coffee shoppe and quilting influencer make bold statements about this and other world events. I know that you want to understand the brands you buy, that you want to feel allegiance to them on a deeper level. I also know that you want their statements to be bite-sized and easily digestible, with no room for nuance or context beyond the logic gate of yes/no, black/white, good/bad. You crave something short and sweet to sum up something that is neither.

Maybe you should stay in your lane and let others do so, too.

Stoic philosophy has a long set of beliefs and doctrines, but my second favorite of them all is the principle of “amor fati“, the love of fate. There are several interpretations of “amor fati”, but to me, it means facing and accepting the things that come your way: a long line at the grocery store, an unexpected ruling from the Supreme Court, or finding a quarter on the sidewalk.

Most things in life are beyond our personal control, but we can nearly always control our reactions to these things. And as reactions go, I generally find acceptance more useful than denial or anger or even grief. So, I do my best to acknowledge the current state of things and move forward. It may not be the best life strategy for everyone, but it works for me. It’s gotten me through loads of things that, if I’d had a choice, I would’ve rather not endured—Hurricane Katrina, a few surprise career shifts, and the deaths of family and friends.

It’s also how my partners and I ended up with two puppies.

After Jacques passed away in February, none of us were in a hurry to bring a new dog into the house. We needed time to process everything, and we didn’t want to feel like we were trying to replace him.

But then a couple of things happened.

First, Sebastian started acting weird. Our one remaining pup had never been especially interested in/friendly to other dogs, but after Jacques’ death, he became…well, I wouldn’t call it sad, but maybe different. He was anxious when the three of us left the house. He seemed scared and hesitant all the time. It was unusual and worrying.

Second, two dogs–twins, if a dog can be twins–fell into our lap. They were strays, a few weeks old and ready for adoption. John, Peter, and I had talked about eventually adopting pups from the same litter, and I mean, there they were.

And that was that. The three of us and Sebastian went to an adoption event and met them: Roxie and Velma. The fact that they were clearly named by a theater kid was a great sign (to me, a former theater kid). The fact that Sebastian seemed interested in them seemed even better (to all of us).

Jacques’ death was painful, but it was an opportunity to feel and to feel deeply–something I don’t often get to do, and I’d bet that most folks don’t.

The arrival of Roxie and Cleo (Velma just didn’t stick) was another opportunity: an opportunity to open our home to two animals who needed love and a warm bed.

In both cases, I like to think that we embraced what fate brought us and used it to move forward.

Technically, I met his son first. He spotted me as soon as I walked in the door, waved me over, spread his arms wide in welcome. Then came two sisters—three half-siblings in all. (There’s a fourth who wasn’t able to make it. I hope to meet her soon.)

Eventually, I stood before the man himself: a little shorter than me, trim, smiling, not fussily dressed but definitely put together. He waited patiently beside a sofa in the lobby of the hotel where he and his children were staying on their trip to New Orleans.

I expected him to be reserved, probably a little anxious. Then again, who wouldn’t be? Meeting a grown adult that you conceived over five decades ago during a short-lived college romance—that would be challenging enough, but introducing that man to your children? There’s no chapter in Emily Post for that kind of thing.

Since our first phone chat in 2007, my father had often said that we would meet, insisted that he would arrange it, but I knew right away what was happening. I’ve encountered many men like him over the years, men who say that they’ll get around to something but never seem to. My adoptive dad was like that. So was the president of my Carnival krewe. My old landlord, too: “Sure, I’ll sell you this house. Let’s talk about it sometime.” But “sometime” can be years in coming.

I’ve never understood that kind of behavior. Are guys like this (and yes, they’ve always been guys) testing me to make sure that I really want what I say I want? Or are they trying to put me off because they have no desire to go through with the deal, and they’re hoping that I’ll eventually forget about it?

My father’s case was a little different. I’m 99% certain that the 15-year gap between our first talk and our first face-to-face came down to one simple thing: he was worried about his children. More specifically: he was worried about how they’d react.

I was worried too. I knew his kids were curious about me, I knew they had plenty of questions about who I was, about how much of themselves and their father they’d be able to see in me. But was that the end of it? Was I just a curiosity, a 3D fun-house mirror, a walking, talking, long-term study in genetics? Or worse, would I represent physical evidence of our father’s “wayward” life before he met their late mother, a symbol of something they wish they’d never known?

In the end, neither my father nor I needed to worry at all. There was never any question in his children’s minds about who I was or what my role should be. The three of them embraced me and Peter (John was away at the time) like we were long-lost relatives—precisely because we were, in fact, long-lost relatives. They weren’t just courteous, they were kind, loving, open-hearted. Friendship came like a flood.

None of this would’ve happened without the kids, who brought our father to New Orleans for his birthday. I think he might’ve put off our meeting for the rest of our lives to avoid the possibility of hurting them, but his children were determined, fearless.

Over a long weekend, the eight of us (me, Peter, my father, three siblings, and two nieces) shared meals (some good, some not so much), stories (they’re a close family, with lots of good-natured teasing), and many rounds of comparisons. Apart from our hair (they have tons) and their slim physiques, we seem to have a lot in common. More than enough to build a friendship.

I can’t really describe what I felt during the reunion. I can only say that, just as with my birth mom Callie and my half-sister Tiff, something clicked when we met, something fell into place. The timing couldn’t have been better: I’ve been feeling a little rootless and disconnected since my adoptive father died last year. Meeting a small army of new family tethered me back to earth—not wholly, but it helped.

Just to be clear: I’m not suggesting that nature outshines nurture, I’m not saying that a family can be built on genes alone, that DNA is magic, that it can replace the decades I’ve spent among a family that raised me. I’m only saying that, at our first meeting, my father, my siblings, and I got along like a house on fire.

And I will also say: between my adoptive family, my birth mother and father, and two amazing sets of in-laws, my extended family is large, loud, and loving. I’m a lucky man.

We did not know that when Jacques entered our lives 12 years ago. We only knew that he was deaf and that he’d been abandoned by his owners—presumably because they wanted to raise him for fighting, but a deaf dog wouldn’t hunt (or something). Our friend, Ken Foster, thought he’d be a great addition to our household.

Jacques’ trial play date went well: the humans and the hounds fell immediately in love with him. But we knew he was going to be a handful. “Just look at the size of those paws”, I said. “That boy’s going to be huge.”

Little did we know.

Training Jacques was surprisingly easy. Verbal cues were obviously out, but he took to hand signals quickly, and he looked to us for guidance all the time. It was winter when he arrived, and we spent weeks in the living room, him and the others on their warm tuffets. When the Saints won the Super Bowl that year and the neighborhood erupted in cheers and music and car horns, the three other hounds ran for cover, but little deaf Jacques slept through all of it. He was a joy.

As the years passed, Jacques traveled widely. He enjoyed walks and treats and licking the bowl (whatever the bowl contained). And he occasionally enjoyed cuddles with us. Given his 115 pounds, spooning with Jacques was like spooning with a person.

He was the best boy.

On a Friday night, not long before Fat Tuesday, Jacques lay down after dinner and had a hard time getting back up. He’d been a little sluggish the previous couple of days, but that was nothing new for a 12-year-old dog, so the humans felt okay going out for a bite to eat. We came back to find that Jacques was still pretty lifeless. Peter and I moved him onto a dog bed and tried to keep him comfortable, but something was clearly wrong.

John and Peter woke me around midnight and told me to come say goodbye. Jacques was where I’d left him a couple of hours earlier: quiet and still and taking shallow breaths. His nose and gums were cold. By the time I called the 24-hour vet, he was gone.

It’s selfish to say this, but I have to get it out: you spend so much energy trying to protect the ones you love. You have nightmares and daymares about horrible, profoundly unlikely scenarios, and you do everything in your power to prevent them from happening. My own recurring fear is that when I go for a run, one of the hounds will find a way to get out of the house and follow me. And so, every time I cross Elysian Fields or Esplanade or some other busy street, I take a long, slow look over my shoulder to make sure that none of them are on my heels, ready to rush into traffic.

Of course, it’s all for nothing. The end inevitably comes, and even though it may not be as awful as you’d imagined, it’s still awful. It’s enough to make you wonder why you put yourself through it—and yet we do. And we will continue to.

Two months later, and I miss him every day. Forever the best boy.

Tania came to us a few months before Hurricane Katrina did. She was a foundling, taken in by a housemate who couldn’t keep her when he suddenly decided to move back where he’d come from. For over 16 years, Tania was a member of our pack, a close friend and confidante, and often, the only female in the house. She had endless adventures, and to be honest, she was better traveled than I will ever be.

Tania’s end had been looming for some time, but it was hard to make the call. Animals—including human animals—often tell you when they’re ready to go: they withdraw, they stop eating, they wind down. Tania never did: to the end, she loved walks, she loved cuddles, and she ate like a horse. But no matter how she fought it, her body betrayed her.

I’d hoped we’d be able to say goodbye at home, with Tania surrounded by her entire immediate family, but thanks to Hurricane Ida, our family was split—some remaining in New Orleans, the rest of us running for cover. Thankfully, we landed with family, in Chicago. Tania said goodbye on a beautiful late-summer morning, after a hearty breakfast and a long, long amble around the garden.

People much smarter than me have calculated that each time we draw breath, we inhale some of the same molecules that Julius Caesar exhaled when he died. I take comfort in knowing that with every breath, I am sharing some of the air that Tania breathed during her magnificent life on earth.

May her memory be a blessing.

Now, daddy had a fairly small repertoire of stories (tall tales, mildly funny encounters, and other short-form, dinner table stuff), so it wasn’t unusual for him to repeat one over the course of a day. But this was something new. I rolled my head to look at him. Same thin gray hair, same ice blue eyes, same mischievous smile, but something was definitely not the same.

I don’t remember the story itself—it was probably about a dumb thing that one of my brothers or I did as kids or about an equally dumb thing that one of daddy’s helpers did up at the farm. All I really remember is thinking, “Well, I see how this is going to end.”

I said goodbye to my father that day. I didn’t know how much he would change over the next six years or the indignities he would suffer at the hands of disease—if I did, I would’ve probably hugged him and my stepmother 25% tighter before I left.

It took daddy and me a while to warm up to each other—25 years, give or take. I was an argumentative, precocious kid. I liked asking questions, pushing boundaries, trying new things. Daddy—a profoundly religious farmer-turned-pharmacist from the backwoods of central Mississippi—took great offense at my disrespect for authority. In his view, children should speak when spoken to and obey orders from their elders in the meantime. To him, I was not inquisitive, I was not curious, I was a smartass.

To be fair to daddy, his worldview wasn’t unusual, at least not where we were from. Nearly every adult man I knew was cut from the same cloth. (Mom is another story for another time.) Their core values centered on god, Ole Miss, saying “yes ma’am and “no ma’am”, and worrying about what the neighbors would think. If you sassed off about any of those items—or quite a few more that fell further down the list—you’d better just stop what you were doing and go pick a switch. Otherwise, they’d do it for you.

The darkest moment in our personal Cold War came as I was graduating from college. We’d never had The Talk about me being gay, but it was clear as a big, pink bell that I was. I told him that I was moving to New Orleans after I got my diploma, and that didn’t sit well with daddy one tiny little bit. The phone call ended around the time that he shouted, “You gonna go down there and catch something you can’t get rid of!” I hung up and didn’t speak to him again for half a year, maybe more.

When we reconnected, things were different. I don’t know for sure, we never discussed it afterward, and now we never will, but I think our brief estrangement made him see that he wasn’t going to change me and that if he wanted a relationship, he’d better start accepting me for the adult I was becoming.

And ironically, that changed me. Around the time that the Soviets’ Iron Curtain was falling, I slowly let down my defenses. Daddy and I stopped shouting at one another and started listening. And before either of us really knew what was happening, we’d become friends. He drove down to New Orleans and helped me pack when I moved to New York for grad school. He helped me buy a car when I returned.

Our friendship accelerated after he had emergency heart surgery a few years later. It was the closest he’d ever been to death, and the recovery process was long and brutal. He never said it outright, but it’s pretty clear to me that the experience gave him a better sense of what was important in life and what was not. A relationship with me fell in the former category.

Daddy and I got into the habit of meeting in Hattiesburg for lunch every few months. And we started spending long weekends at the beach, him and me and the rest of my family, at the house of a family friend. I don’t know if I ever became the son he’d wanted, but I can say for sure that he became a much better version of my dad.

In short, the second 25 years of our relationship made up for the first 25. I’m glad we both lived long enough to see that.

One of the last conversations we had—the last real conversation, anyway—was on February 4, 2017. My uncle had offered me some of my grandparents’ furniture, so I’d gone up to get it, and daddy had helped me load it into his massive F-150. (I should point out that I was driving; a year and a half after the story-retelling incident, dad was already too far gone to be trusted behind the wheel.)

Anyway, I don’t recall how we got there in the conversation, but as we were heading home, I remember explaining to daddy that growing up as a gay kid in the Southern Baptist church in small-town Mississippi was no fun at all. And as I turned onto the long, straight stretch of Wansley Road, he looked over at me and asked—fully sincere and truly curious—“Is there anything I could’ve done better?”

Part of me broke inside. Not just because this one one of the few open, honest conversations we’d ever had; not just because dad was admitting that he was fallible, something that rarely if ever crossed his mind when we were younger (despite all of Pastor Kennedy’s talk about sinning and human frailty in his Sunday sermons); but because in those seven words, daddy made clear that he saw his own end on the horizon. I think he knew that he wouldn’t have many more chances to speak with me so frankly.

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

I took a deep breath and told him that he’d done as well as he could, given when and where I grew up. And I told him that I’m fine now, so everything came out okay in the end.

I didn’t mention that he’d been right, that I’d moved to New Orleans and had indeed caught something I couldn’t get rid of. I suppose I have my own issues with fallibility.

Last Monday, May 17, we all got a text from my stepmother. Daddy had gone on hospice care the week before, and she said that he’d taken a turn for the worst. If we wanted to say our goodbyes, we’d best come on.

The next morning, I left the house at 7am and drove up to Laurel to see him. He was unconscious, but I sat beside him and said my piece. The last words I said to him were “thank you”. I said it four times.

That night he passed away, and two days later, we buried him. I didn’t care for the pastor much (then again, I’m wary of religion, so part of that’s on me), but otherwise, the ceremony was simple and lovely. And for the first time in maybe ever, our family felt like a family.

If you have the means and the inclination, you can make a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association here.

I mean, is something, right?

I don’t know how yours went/is going, but mine was not good/is better now. Maybe. Probably.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have anything to complain about. Not really. I was lucky. I kept my job, I had a steady income, two partners and three hounds to keep me company. A small circle of friends I saw on a regular basis.

But that’s just me being rational. Pandemic or no, rationality often flies out the window when our routines are disrupted, when we’re ejected from our comfort zone, when we face adversity. We all know that chronic complainer who probably experienced a garden-variety aborted lane-change on the freeway but won’t shut up about “That idiot nearly ran me off the road!” I mean, that stuff can be nerve-wracking and all, but rationally speaking, they have a car, probably a house, and they’re still alive, so they should count their blessings, am I right?

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this.

I’m saying, that the past year+ was stressful and is stressful and even though none of my close friends died from the disease, none of my immediate family died, it was a lot. And I didn’t deal with it well.

My stress-management process usually plays out in one of two ways. If I can fix the underlying problem, I do. As a rule, I have no aversion at all to facing conflict head-on. If I were a character in a horror film about a homicidal maniac, this tendency would probably lead me to an early grave, but IRL, it serves me pretty well.

Alas, in this case, the problem was a virus, and as I’m not an epidemiologist or a vaccine researcher, facing COVID-19 head-on wasn’t an option. And so, for much of the quarantine, I followed path #2: distraction. I threw myself into hobbies and habits I could control.

Running was one of those hobbies. Normally, exercise would be a good thing, but coupled with some completely unnecessary food anxiety, it wasn’t so great this time around. I lost about 20 pounds that I didn’t need to lose. My clothes didn’t fit. I looked and felt skeletal. I’m eating more now, so most of the weight has returned over the past few months, but my body doesn’t know what to do with it yet.

Playing D&D with my friends was a second hobby. Unlike running, this was unequivocally a good thing. For a few hours a week, I could forget about masks and divisive political rhetoric and focus on leading a group of intrepid adventurers through a little-explored jungle in search of a WMD designed by…well, some of them read this thing, and 15 months later, the campaign is still going, so I’ll skip the spoilers. Let’s just say that I had no complaints about heading off to a fantasy world when I could.

And my third hobby was quilting.

Funny thing is, a week before the country shut down, I posted a photo on Instagram of my first-ever quilt, which I promised would be my last.

Ha freakin’ ha.

In my home office (aka the guest room), my desk sits at a right angle to my sewing table. And I found that when answering emails and taking Zoom calls and dealing with all that uncertainty became just a little too nerve-wracking, I could pivot 90 degrees, put the pedal down, and sew. And sew. And sew. Until I could breathe again.

My fervor for sewing grew in step with alarm around the pandemic. Mask mandate? Let’s make some binding! Hospitalization surge? Wind a few more bobbins!

My obsession was so complete that quilting became a sleep aid. I’d climb into bed, and against all advice from People Who Know Better, I’d open YouTube on my phone and conk out listening to quilting tutorials from Jenny Doan, Donna Jordan, Laura Coia, Angela Walters, and Karen Brown. (Look all of them up.) Their ease and confidence as they described foolproof ways to make half-square triangles and machine bind quilts relaxed me like a mouthful of melatonin.

By December, I’d sewn 18 new quilts. Most were throw size, and two were so botched that they became dog beds, but still: 18. The doctor is out on whether my obsession was healthy*, but I’m proud of the results.

And when I’d finished them all, I took the scraps I’d collected from the past year and made a quilt just for me. It looks like a sampler—and it is, in a way, but a sampler that documents a very trying year. I now sleep soundly beneath it at night.

* My actual doctor has been pretty worried about me and is convinced that I’ve suffered from a lot of undiagnosed depression. Maybe that’s just because I didn’t make him a quilt, but yeah, I should get checked out.

Next week, give or take, a new breed arrives. Their parents said, “Oh this is fine, we’ll manage.” Or, “Our child will make the world a better place.” Or, “I’m horny, let’s fuck, and for the last time I’m not wearing a goddamn rubber.”

Or maybe they said nothing at all. Maybe mother and father were overwhelmed, their minds racing from one thought to another: do we have enough toilet paper? did I sanitize my hands? is Pizza Delicious open for takeout or not? Paralyzed by fear, anxiety, and, in many cases, depression, sex was a coping mechanism, a way of tuning out for a few minutes. Or hours, for those who really keep up with their Pilates.

I’m not interested in condemning parents from either group. We do a lot of moralizing these days, but can we please not get all judgy about people who choose to get pregnant or to have a child in the middle of a pandemic? There are bigger fish to fry, folks. Aquariums full of them. (Vegan side note: emptying the aquariums is a fish worth frying.)

No, what interests me is that within my lifetime—sooner than I think—I’ll be speaking to someone, and they’ll say, “COVID? That was before my time.”

It seems so impossible, the same way it did on September 11th, impossible to believe that living memory will run out, that this experience won’t be duct-taped and soldered to our DNA, passed down to generation upon generation upon generation, through an Old Testament’s worth of “begats”. But no, everyone forgets: friends, family, elephants, the owner of the corner store who caught you shoplifting comic books in grade school. Even the internet.

I look forward to forgetting it, too.

I am writing blindly.

I know that sounds melodramatic. Old habits die hard. 

But don’t worry, my love–not yet. My eyes are fine, my vision, perfection. It’s the darkness that’s the problem. I’m straining to find light, any light at all: a glimmer, a spark, a particle, a wave.

I had a professor who used to say that light is a particle on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a wave on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Sundays we just think about it.

That’s a physics joke. A physics dad joke. I’ve succumbed to dad jokes, the kindest, gentlest, dumbest form of gallows humor. 

I’m as appalled as you are. Let me pull myself together.

* * * * *

Mildly better now. I’ll start over.

It’s a shock, suddenly being unable to see, going blind in the blink of an eye. (That’s not a joke, much less a dad joke, just a cliche sideswiped by poor phrasing.) It reminds me of being a kid, when my friends and I played hide-and-seek at sleepovers. I’d curl up in the darkest corner of the pitch-blackest closet of a house that wasn’t mine, certain that I’d claimed the perfect spot. 

But after five minutes of giggling nervously to myself and not being discovered, the strange scents, the unfamiliar silhouettes of boxes and clothes, began to seem ominous. I knew they were just a bunch of sweaters, but they were scary sweaters. 

Then as now, my eyes opened and shut, opened and shut, trying to clear away the darkness like it were a speck of dust. Now as then, my mouth opens as wide as my eyes. If I could see myself, I’d look like a fish out of water, gasping and awestruck. 

Can a fish be awestruck? 

Sorry, I’m avoiding the unavoidable. Give me a minute. I’ll try again.

* * * * *

That took longer than a minute. I did some deep breathing–not a great idea, given the circumstances–then made another attempt at finding a way out. For a moment, I thought I’d located a hatch beneath the conference table, but no such luck. (I think I just wrote “suck luck”. That could be because I’m writing in utter darkness, or maybe it’s a Freudian slip, inspired by thoughts of you. Your choice.)

I’m in Anthony’s office. I came to say my goodbyes. It sounds poetic, saying goodbyes, but speaking to a corpse is like speaking to a rock: cathartic, perhaps, but it makes you feel like an idiot. I stopped halfway through, kissed him on the forehead, and left him with a token of my affection: that tiny set of matryoshka dolls you bought me on our first vacation together. They’ve been my constant companions on these long trips, my muses, my five fair maidens all in a row. (Fun fact: I’ve been known to use the smallest one as a shotglass. I call her Anna Karenina Stolichnaya. She’s kind of a lush.)  They’re not much use now, though. They’ve served their purpose, and I’ve served mine.  

I’d just tucked the dolls into the crook of Anthony’s elbow when the grid finally collapsed. Lights, air, gravity all went at once. Backup systems, too. I was expecting it, but like winning the lottery or losing your virginity, it’s the kind of thing you can never fully prepare for. 

In old movies about space, ships always had big windows offering expansive views of the universe. In reality, ship windows have rarely been that grand. Windows and doors mean seals, and seals mean opportunities for things to go wrong. Even portholes are tricky. We switched to pseudowindows long ago because exterior cameras and interior screens have less of an impact on structural integrity.

On the downside, they don’t do anything at all when a ship’s power goes down for the count.

In sum, we eliminated windows to create smarter windows, meaning that now I have no windows–smart or dumb–and no light–particles or waves.

And I could strangle the people who designed these doors without manual overrides. Oh, well. Maybe they’ll get what’s coming to them. Stay tuned!

* * * * *

You know what’s funny? I’ve been trapped here for at least 30 minutes–probably closer to an hour–but I feel fine. The outlines of the room don’t unnerve me like the ones that lurked in the closets of my childhood. In fact, I find it peaceful here. For the first ten minutes or so, I let myself bounce against the walls, ceiling, floor, furniture. “The Blue Danube” played in my head. I thought, “Oh, this is nice.”

Eventually, I tumbled into Anthony’s desk and grabbed it. The ship’s log is useless now, but I found a notebook in the top drawer with a pen attached. A paper notebook. Like my matryoshkas, it’s an extravagance, so he must have had a special reason for bringing it aboard–maybe to jot down notes? Notes that he didn’t want to share? Notes about me? Well, he can’t really object to me using it now. I just hope that he hadn’t written anything important. This will be hard enough to decipher without you having to read Anthony’s scribbles side-by-side. Then again, it might be fun to compare and contrast our points of view. An extra-credit exercise, if you have time. 

(Heads-up: you may have very little time. Or far too much of it.)

It’s been years since I felt paper. I’d forgotten how comforting the texture can be, like skin, like the vellum medieval scribes used to tell the stories of people and animals who were usually fortunate enough not to have become vellum themselves.

At the moment, the paper is my friend. I have a pen, too, but it is clearly not my friend. It won’t behave in my hand, won’t make the words flow. It is slow and treacherous, moving in fits and starts, stuttering worse than I do. To be fair to the pen, however, I haven’t used one of these things in a long, long time.

Also in defense of the pen, the temperature is plummeting, and I sit here in nothing but my base layer, shivering. There’s nothing to cover me.

Well, there’s Anthony’s death shroud, I suppose. And if things get desperate enough, his corpse. But I’m not ready for either of those. And if I’m not ready now, I never will be.  

I feel him bump against me now and then. It’s oddly comforting, like the paper. Any port in a storm, any friend at the end. If I run out of paper, maybe I’ll write on his skin. Lazy man’s vellum.

I can see the shock on your face from millions of kilometers away. But trust me, I’ve done worse. Stay tuned, I said.

* * * * *

I doubt that you’ll ever read this. It’s likely no one will. But if it’s found–if it survives vacuum, debris, distances that make the mind reel, and a thousand other problems–if it survives all that and is found, you’ll probably be just as much as memory as I am. Maybe your children will read it. (I hope you have children.) Or their children. (I hope they have children.) Or their children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children’s  children. 

What if they don’t speak English anymore? What if by then our language is as dead as we are? 

Someone will figure it out, I suppose. Or more likely, they’ll die trying.

* * * * *

I’m struggling to breathe now. I have maybe half an hour left. I should really get to the point. 

I love a deathbed confession, don’t you?

Everything was fine until 12 hours ago. Then, it became your standard space nightmare: specimens jumbled, ventilation systems compromised, crew members exposed. Death came quickly to everyone but me. Yes, there is a treatment, and yes, I took it. But no one else did, because I only brought enough for one. 

I’ve never been much of a sharer.

That’s probably why I enjoy keeping secrets. Even now, I hesitate to reveal too much. You know what? Let’s not call this a confession after all–let’s call it a teaser. An amuse-bouche. They say a sin disappears when it’s confessed, and I want to hold on to this one for a while. I deserve that much. Perhaps worse. 

Strike that. Substitute “certainly worse”.

So, let the tease begin.

Hygiea is more than just a large chunk of rock in the asteroid belt. Even you, my kind and gentle love, know that everything out here has a military or industrial purpose. Hygiea has both.

Is that enough to give you a hint? Probably not.  

What the hell, I’ll say a little more. Two words, to be precise: biological agent. That’s two words too many, but what are they gonna do, kill me? Pity I’ll beat them to the punch. I would’ve liked to see the look on their faces when they realized what I’d done. 

I’m sorry, I know you’re confused. I’m trying to be oblique to spare you the pain, anguish, and a possible prison sentence. I’ll be more direct: those meetings I used to have on Wednesday nights? Surely you knew that I wasn’t really going to a book club. In all our years together, when have you ever seen me read for fun?

What you probably didn’t piece together, though, is that my so-called book club friends were a bunch of zealots ready for a fresh start. And, in true zealot fashion, we wanted to force that fresh start on everyone else. 

That’s not exactly what my employers had in mind. Yes, they wanted a fresh start too, but only for certain people. “The best people,” I’m sure they’d say. They wanted me to engineer something that could be targeted, contained, and hidden after the fact. But what I created is neither discrete nor discreet. It is a slaughter in spotlight, and it observes no boundaries–at least not on a nitrogen-rich planet like our barely habitable blue speck. 

You would’ve been the start of it all, my love, my perfect patient zero. So fitting. Our embrace at port would’ve been the kiss that launched a billion funerals–thirteen billion, give or take. I’m not sure if the media would’ve figured out what was happening in time to talk about it, but if they had–oh, if they had, the stories would’ve been spectacular. You think I’m melodramatic? Just imagine. 

Alas, things never go as planned. I’d always wanted to leave a good corpse and a great headline. Now, I’ll get neither, unless I can find a mirror some starlight in this very expensive corporate coffin. (As for the headlines, if there are headlines, please ensure they’re fabulous.)

* * * * *

That’s the end of my story, or as much as I’m willing to tell. I can’t say what will happen to you, but even in this impenetrable darkness, I see three possibilities:

1. Work will continue at Hygiea. The right people (i.e. the wrong people, in my book) will discover what I was up to and shutter the program immediately, in which case, you and everyone we know will be left to suffer a long, agonizing death on a failing Earth. Sorry, I did my best.

2. Work will continue at Hygiea. Thanks to ignorance or a coverup coordinated by my colleagues, no one will question our disappearance, no one will discover what’s been created, the hundreds of malevolent, microscopic Trojan horses we’ve built and cleverly nested. (Do you remember that time we were eating Cantonese takeout at the dinner table and I started gasping and you thought I was choking? I wasn’t. The sight of the matryoshkas on the bookshelf had simply inspired an epiphany. I knew immediately how it had to be constructed. A vision of world destruction, all thanks to you. So, thank you.) The biological agent will be brought back to Earth, where it will be deployed by an angelic chorus of military drones and run amok with jaw-dropping speed. Humanity snuffed out in less than a week, mission accomplished, back to the Garden, you’re welcome. 

3. Work will continue at Hygiea. No one will discover what’s been created, but before they can transfer anything back to Earth, they’ll find us, find this ship, find Anthony’s lost warning, find traces of my work to block the transmission and disable the SOS beacon. Bots will piece together what happened, how it happened, how Anthony’s mind worked too quickly after the initial exposures, made too many educated guesses and killed us all to save the human race. (He was a drama queen through and through. Takes one to know one.) And then they’ll come for you. They’ll show you these pages I’ve written, assume you had something to do with it, that you knew all along, even though I’m screaming to anyone who can hear that you are fully innocent. Unfortunately, I’m screaming in space, and you know what they say. I hope they treat you fairly.

* * * * *

The nice thing about traveling between planets, moons, asteroids, and comets is that you have a lot of time to yourself. (Not me, not now, but I did.) Some people would find the isolation terrifying, but I like myself. In fact, I love myself. Quite literally. During a typical 24-hour cycle, I masturbate every three hours. At least. 

I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you.

But you know what might? I imagined dying like this a thousand times. Well, not a thousand times. And not exactly like this. But a few, and almost. 

Statistically speaking, I was far more likely to die of some terminal illness than here in the vast blackness. But you never think of yourself getting old and you never think of yourself getting sick. Both come as a shock. You wake up, and there it is. Like, “Holy shit, how did this happen?” And so, I thought of other ends. Like this. Variations on this.

On the upside, I’ve beaten the odds. Yay for me. Fuck cancer, et cetera.

On the downside, well, it’s all downside from here.

I’m surrounded by stars but unable to see, my love. Much less see my love. 

Irony and double-entendres get me down.