Status Update

It’s been a while since my rocket ship has been grounded. The technicians are reassembling the fueling apparatus, and we should be flight-worthy in a few days. Happy day.

I am giddy. A little high due to the lack of O². A bit of cash in my pocket may lead to bad decisions. Well, not this week, but the ocean toe joy is calling. I’m going to answer it. Most likely alone. No new co-pilots on the horizon. My last crew mate has escaped through the airlock a week ago. I wish her the best.

In this very second, I am back in the captain’s chair of a flightless and powerless craft. I can feel the fuel lines humming. It takes a few days to rewarm a dead system. Some sludge needs to be removed and hauled off. I won’t go into the details, but I need some assistance. I guess, for now, I’ll just make do.

A writing day today, but writing other men’s instruction manuals. Men with more money than they know how to spend. I’m very happy to be loosely looped in on two distinct teams and two different projects. The sky is the limit. Up to me to perform or die. Well, that’s a bit more dramatic. I’m coming out of a very dramatic few years.

We had an escape crash landing a year ago. I was the only survivor. The cats jumped ship upon impact, but returned to the airlock immediately. Foxes and coyotes abound near the crash-landing site.

The yard has done well without my life support efforts. A little rain has helped everyone.

I need this work effort to be sustainable and lucrative. At least until “time + space = love” is discovered for the masterwork that it is. Everything is in there. Time travel. Textual chicanery. Sexual innuendo and loads of women. No, that last part was a lie. I left that in for the vanished co-pilot, may she remain untethered in peace. No women. One woman. The seat is unoccupied.

I am not seeking a partner at the moment, but I’d say I’m not opposed to the idea. I still have the taste in my mouth. Kisses on my brain. And desire as big as the sun.

I have learned over my short lifetime how to delay gratification. Delay payback. Delay gloating. Don’t share the book until it’s finished. My time is coming. The launch sequence will begin shortly. We’re checking for bugs in the wiring, having AI rewrite the navigation system. The entire defense system, however, must be rebuilt from scratch. In coming damage has left my sense of self too grand to be contained. I need to come a few levels down.

Mario falls off the edge of Wonderlandia. Restarts at the beginning.

I am not starting from zero. I am in-flight in my mind already. My heart is slightly slower. No objects of desire. Several reinitiated best friend routines have been requested. Some god or universe is answering my prayers. Or… Time heals all. Or… I earned it.

Patience. Prayer to someone or something, or just yourself and your better-managed life. What I can change, I change. What I can’t change, I fucking forget about it. I leave that shit behind. The girl, she was bliss ascending with a glitch that kept sidelining the drafting of launch sequences. Of course, the ship, my ship, was unable to attain escape velocity. Her ship was nice. Loud, near a rushing stream of a busy airway. My ship rests in a quiet crater, created in the crash. All I hear at the moment are birds. I’ve been learning their calls. My nearest neighbor, Tom the Gnome, has taught me all about birds, migrations, and flora. We are good support system-type friends. We’ve never watched a movie together or shared a beer, but other stuff… We exchange pleasantries and literary ambitions across the tarmac between our two craft. I don’t think his flies at all. He doesn’t need to go anywhere. He’s retired and focused on repairing his eyes and legs for future gravity and health.

I am in good shape. My systems are all functional. I’ve even learned a few new tricks. Now my Facebook feed is full of ED meds. It’s like a new novel approach to the boner pill occurs every 20 minutes. It’s obviously a big industry. Is there something like this for women? Or a birth control pill that targeted sperm rather than eggs? Men! WTF? Don’t we love women? Why do we try to subjugate them and keep them as unequal partners?

A blue storm is brewing. I hope to be launched before the next cluster fk. I think I can vote by wire from as far as Venus. I want Texas to turn blue. It’s for the best. The red wave has killed enough innocent people, enriched the elite, and trashed both the environment and our healthcare and economic systems. It’s hard, this era. I would say, part of my malfunction has been a result of the chaos the administration had unleashed to cover their corruption and sexual crimes. It’s going to be a blood bath. I hope to be escaping the solar system before whatever hell breaks loose.

Where are you? How is your 2026? I am glad you are here, whatever year it happens to be. I think we’ve got a lot to share. I don’t understand much about younger people and their malaise. I know my son, 25 is struggling mightily with his identity. What’s a man supposed to be? We’ve seen the most toxic masculinity paraded across the national stage. Fake assassinations and photo ops. It’s a topsy-turvy upside-down world. How many world powers are there now? And who’s representing my country? I’m sorry. To the rest of the world, I am sorry. I did what I could. Now, I’m leaving. Do you have a room I could rent in Mexico?

Do what you will. Money and wisdom don’t always go together. How is it that the most wealthy are planning escape pods rather than working to repair or reduce the damage of their environmental footprint? They must’ve heard the Sting song, “If the Russians Love Their Children Too.”

We’re back to a nuclear arms race, an AI data center race, and a world theatre that reminds me of the board game Risk, at the start of the game, where you divide up the map and roll the dice to see who goes first. I guess Russia went first with Ukraine. Two years in. Israel went next with Gaza. Now, our president is meeting with those leaders, letting them do whatever they want, and hiding his crypto income. We are no longer a positive world power. We have become the enemy again.

The working class proles are the slaves. I have been a slave for two years now. My ass was busted out of my data center marketing job by a tattooed skater boi who became concerned about my success with projects and motions outside of his purview. He didn’t want anyone else to take credit for the on-time, on-budget website launch that got all of us a raise and a small trophy of appreciation. Yeah, I took the corporate tchotchkes to Goodwill. Fuck corporations. They are not people. They need to be checked back into being just businesses, not NGOs, non-governmental agencies.

When we’re giving oil companies and billionaires tax breaks, but we can’t provide healthcare for our burgeoning population, well… Seriously, what the fuck are we doing to ourselves? Training AI to take our jobs? It’s happening faster than anyone realizes. I just got a two-year taste of the waste land ahead. Data centers collapsing the power grid and the potable water on the planet. Look it up. There’s no future with AI. Humans die of apathy.

Not one billionaire escapes.

That’s the truth.

* impatterning – continuous stimulation with reading, auditory inputs, and various patterns: our minds respond in both dark and light ways.

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The podcast of artistic resistance to AI.

a cloud pilots overview of sorts