an instant photo of a pile of zines on a bed [https://i1.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Instant-15-min.jpg?w=1500&ssl=1]

“It’s gone,” he says. “I didn’t think it would move so fast.”

Oli nods. “It goes around the earth like fifteen times a day. Every hour and a half.”

Lark isn’t sure why, but he had assumed the station only went around once a day, specially tethered to the earth. He imagined a rocket going straight up in the air, sticking in its orbit like it was captured in jelly, hovering always over the place it had launched from. In orbit, to his mind, was some fixed place, a destination.

“That’s a geostationary orbit,” Oli explains. “Some satellites are like that. I had a roommate that specialized in orbital station-keeping. It’s a whole art to keep satellites at the right speed, the right height. Everything needs regular correcting.” Lark didn’t entirely follow what Oli was talking about: thruster burns, directional maneuvers. He stops Oli when he starts talking about premature re-entry.

“You mean it could fall out of the sky?”

Oli nods, though he obviously thinks Lark’s language is hyperbolic, a bit dramatic. “Especially when something’s in a low orbit, like the space station, there’s still a lot of force—it’s still getting pulled back towards the earth. Think about it,” he says. “The earth’s pull is more powerful than you think, even up there. It’s why you need so much energy to reach escape velocity. And there’s all this drag—”

Oli keeps talking about space and satellites and non-Keplerian forces, a reassuring explanatory patter accompanied by the electric whirr of the telescope as Oli directs it towards something new. Lark lays down in the grass and tries to feel the force of gravity pulling him down. He imagines the earth’s dense core dragging him through the dirt until he reaches its super-hot center—a white flash of light after all the darkness.

He thinks, maybe, he can feel it. Barely, though, and maybe imagined. It’s strange to him that a force that could rip the space station out of the sky is exerted on him all the time with no ill-effects, no pain or heaviness. He’s not crushed into the ground.

It makes Lark grateful for how adaptable life is, that it evolves to survive the pressures regularly exerted on it. Even he is able to live under certain patterns of stress. Perhaps, though, that’s the same quality that makes it so hard to change. There’s a kind of emotional escape velocity required, more arcane than Oli’s chemical thrusters.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Are you okay?” Oli asks, after a while. “Are you tired? Or just bored?”

Lark opens his eyes and sees Oli has come to sit next to him. “I was listening,” he says. “I was thinking about gravity.”

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a pile of zines [https://i1.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Mayhem-min.jpeg?w=1500&ssl=1]

Max called me almost three weeks after we’d arrived in Portland, and announced he had found us a place, told me he was coming over to pick up cash for my share of the deposit. When he hung up, I awkwardly shuffled into the kitchen to ask if it was alright for Max and Dana to stop by.

I explained badly: He needs to pick-up something. From me.

Quinn gave me a questioning look, but Jules just shrugged, said it wasn’t a problem at all. They also, for the first time, brought up the gig Max and I had played the night we arrived. I hadn’t asked Jules what they thought about Squires of Gothos, and they hadn’t mentioned it to me, either. What I had assumed was a silence just to spare my feelings turned out to be a compassionate stay from work-related thoughts.

I haven’t wanted to stress you out, but with Max coming, I’ll have to bring it up, they said, then offered to work with us to develop a full-length album. Promised they would start finding us gigs when I was feeling up to it.

Talk about it with Max. I’ll call him. Send you both some paperwork. I opened my mouth to express a kind of wonder at the opportunity, but Jules waved their hand to quiet me. I will expect you to take it seriously, they said.

Dana hugged me in the doorway, burying her face in my shoulder. Max swept past us, slapping me on the back and making himself comfortable. He was talking non-stop, planning recording with Jules already, throwing some zines he’d picked up on the table.

Max looked different somehow, even though it hadn’t been that long since we’d seen each other. His hair was unwashed and snarled, but he was newly shaven, and his familiar wardrobe was reassembled with a different flare. Beneath his neon windbreaker, he was wearing all black and an old Mayhem shirt. The combination, finished with white high-tops, looked ironic, cynical.

Max asked for a coffee before anyone offered it to him. It was a small thing—Jules had made me a coffee most days—but I felt my face flush, embarrassed. Jules, of course, started filling the V60, offered Dana a drink as well, and didn’t seem annoyed.

Max used to tell me I should ask for more.

People can always say no, he said. You don’t have a gun to their head.

While I thought there might be some truth to that, I heard a demand in all of Max’s requests and I didn’t like to risk a fight.

Max showed me photos on his phone of the place he and Dana had found. A pre-furnished three-bed squat with a tiny living room, a hot plate on a shelf that apparently counted as a kitchen. I had not been expecting much—we hadn’t come with enough money to be choosy—but after the light and space of Jules and Quinn’s house, it seemed particularly squalid.

Happy? Max asked. Should I put the deposit down?

I said yes, because I didn’t feel resilient enough to say no. I thanked him, washed the coffee cup he left on the table.