Like a drop of mercury in a veil of rain Azad catches the light. Like a firefly in Vegas he is unseen. Like a delta splits a river he confronts the tide—a lonely tree round which the ocean curls. Like a metaphor he is not what he seems. A lost monolith awaiting his calling, he walks through the streets of this synthetic valley.
A group passes now in cheap costumes, drama masks hiding their faces in their hoods. One boasts twisted horns, protruding bone from his forehead. Their chatter is full of laughter, drink and life. A massive explosion rings in his ears and Azad looks to the sky, lighting up in green and blue flowers, designs rotating and blooming on the bottoms of the clouds, now melting inward, until they are nothing again. Now for the lightworks, he thinks.
Liquid blue lights race up to the sky, to clouds tinted purple and rolling in the astral wind. Three birdwomen glide by beneath them, far above him, following the road to their destination. Their raincoats are shimmering and their wings are massive, feathered in gray, spanning a wide glistening arc through the remnants of the rain.
Beneath the dark blue and gray sky, a million green leaves on a hundred brown trees flicker, in the steadying wind, down the road, above the colorful raincoats, walking, riding in electric cars, above the slowly moving blades of grass. Buildings rise organically into the night—cylinders and hemispheres, spires, lights. Rails unfurl as spider-work, spanning the night with their web. A dark bird perches on a streetlight. Always the clouds are moving slowly over his head, shifting and dancing, improvising this song of the night.
He sees a wren nearby, poking it’s head up from the grass. Azad watches as it flutters, landing in the road. One dark eye reflects an oncoming light. A taxi four thousand times its size is bearing down. The bird turns, toward him. Azad expects it to fly, but it does not, and the vehicle passes right over its head. It twitches, with a sudden flap of both wings rising to the night, riding on a strong wind, quickly gone in the thin curtains of the rain.
Our divisions are relative.
He laughs at himself. Billions of years given for you, bird. Every moment of sunlight and evolution, it ends and begins in you. Every spoonful of ocean is yours.
Know your worth.
Be free.
Coming to his home he holds a plastic bag in hand, marked with a chaos butterfly. Walking through the apartment he realizes its vacancy. Maybe she went to a party, he thinks, or to see Orion. Maybe she’s feeling better. Azad hopes this is so, but the empty rooms do nothing to console his imagination. Orion’s manifesto lights on the screen, drawing his attention.
On her bed he finds a red coat abandoned.
In the PT Rail Station he approaches a greeter-bot in a black top hat. “Hello, Azad,” it says. “Happy New Year. Will you kiss me?”
Laughing, he queries the machine, “Where is my sister, Harmony?”
“She is currently in the industrial sector, moving from the SI complex to the Netherlands.” It pauses for a second before it says, “Your train appears to be running late. Please hold. Now it has been rerouted. Now it is thirty seconds away. It will arrive at dock eleven.”
After just a moment he asks, “Where is Orion?”
The bot looks at him, black hemispheres under its eyes. It says, “Orion was killed in an electrical accident during the Team Laser Assault, yesterday. We express our sympathy.”
Azad blinks and says, “Thank you, machine.”
“We express our sympathy,” it repeats to his back as he walks away.