Ian Badcoe
We all are always never going home
What fools these mortals are and this is good,
but dull. They run their lives on humdrum tracks
from work to bar, to house, to spouse, to car,
to grave. There's nothing to redeem a one –
although those few with mystic swords or rings
of blue invulnerability... they can amuse
me for a while. But here, I smile,
keep my hood up and cloak pulled tight,
to be nobody's worst nightmare – not now
in any case; not on this bus. I am so tired;
it's late. We lie––weaving protective colouration
around our secret lives––so there's no monster
radar can reveal who has what darkness hidden
in plain sight, but I’m sure that I am right to say
I am alone. I do not mean literally here
upon this late-night transport with students:
one stoned and two pissed; three old ladies
so deep in chat, plus one who does not speak
but knits and knits: a touch of obsession there
––of which, of course, I'm well equipped to talk––
and a youngish woman with a book. Which one?
Oh, I read that! The hero was not "anti"
enough for me, but she looks engrossed. May I
sit here? Thank you.
I mean I am alone beneath
the ancient stars; or brooding, street-lit overcast,
as is appropriate, because I'm certain I’m...
the only super-villain on this bus.
Girl with degenerate matter earring
Jo doesn't sleep with anyone these days: sleeping is for the baseline flock. Jo doesn't sleep, she rocks
every second the universe sends; always a quorum of self-engines humming. You don't know what you'll
miss if you take your cool eye off the ball; the city of deals and dealers; the whole thronging world... It's
about the business, she tells herself;
but really, it's the women whose muscled backs cantilever into sportswear, older men with that curve of
jaw––so many possibilities––extreme augments with branching-law manipulator arms, fingers fading into
fractal haze, who can caress you at the molecular level. She hates the idea she might miss someone,
some unique experience. And here's today's brand-new obsession:
an Art Deco elf in brushed Aluminium, lightly female, ornate in a restrained sort of way, and doesn't Jo
want to stroke lapis lazuli inlays, and stroll beside that sway that speaks of fundamental things. Those
artfully engineered limbs could be wrapped around her own, plugs seeking sockets, panels flowering
open...
Jo goes for it. Pings servers, reads a public profile to find common protocols for sexing/romancing, and,
progressively advancing, finds overlaps in orientations, proclivities, kinks, does the math––for half a
millisecond––and negotiates a date. If "now" is a date.
It turns out her new belle is Oona, and in the mood for a man. Well, no problem... The earring can spin,
float off to the side–if you'd looked, you'd know there never was a chain; it's difficult to hang twenty
tonnes of condensed matter femtomachine from slender silver links.
In fact, the earring is only here through constant use of fields and beams to make it bounce and dangle as
if it weighed a gram. If that ever failed, it would drop like more than a stone through Jo's body and the
floor below, but that can't happen and, anyway, new bodies can be made. As she does now, the earring
emitting lasers and coherent matter streams, to print, fresh from the shelves in her library of selves, a
muscular male with four arms...
...and there could be a moment of confusion here, two bodies who are both "Jo" face to face but... they're
used to the multi-life rat-race and, anyway, their sense of self lives somewhere else: inside a device which
is not a pearl.
So he strolls off to meet the woman he was made for, without a backward glance at the place from where
he sprang:
Earring with base matter girl.
Do you have the ticket & We all are always never going home
as read by Ian Badcoe
Ian Badcoe (he/they) is a nonbinary poet living in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK. He is a strange hybrid of poet, game-dev, gardener, husband, father and geek. He likes to write "genre" poetry–especially SciFi and Noire–as well as science and technology themed work. He has a long-term song writing collaboration with German indie composer/performer Hallam London and they are slowly releasing an album. He has been published in various places, including: Antiphon, Riggwelter and recently in Streetcake Magazine.