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Monday, December 5, 2011

Paramour, Part 2






Paramour


After drifting another few million light years at the speed of a few kilometers per second, I remembered that I had a pencil in my pocket. Pulling it out, I drew myself a chess set and started playing against myself to pass the time. Not that I didn’t enjoy the view or anything; it was just nice to have something to do. Slowly flying through the endless reaches of space, I played countless games of chess while stopping every now and then to enjoy the view. I drew myself a camera and took pictures along the way, creating souvenirs even though I didn’t know who I’d share them with.


As time passed, I would take moments from my chessboard every now and then to reflect on life. Usually these moments occurred while I was sailing by galaxies; I’d just take time to sit and think about all the useless or pointless things we spent our time on in life as I watched the majesty of a galaxy pass me by. In life, it seemed we made excuses for not doing things, or for doing things that really had no relevance in the greater scheme. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that in reality, there were few things that were really worth experiencing. In the end, all that really mattered were the memories.



I eventually drew a ship, so I had a place to sit down and a place to keep my camera and chessboard. The ship was the traditional kind, with sails and everything, only the sails were a pale, shimmery gold, and caught the solar winds and the breezes of the interstellar medium. Now able to control the direction of my wanderings, I started exploring the cosmos and mapping them out, writing down the location of each and every galaxy, playing chess while I did so. For company, I drew the ship a cat and named him Paramour, after the ship. Paramour had the tendency to walk all over my universe map while I was mapping, and he always stole my pieces when I was playing chess. But he was a good companion, so I didn’t complain.


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Hundreds of million years probably passed; I didn’t keep track of them. After I mapped all the galaxies, I mapped all their stars, going into solar systems and watching planets with life on them. Occasionally I’d take a few books from those civilizations, keeping them in the library belowdecks. Which, I might add, was unreasonably large for having so small a ship as I had. The library I kept defied dimensional physics, but I’m not a math whiz or a computer programmer, so it didn’t bother me that much. At any rate, Paramour enjoyed having so much room to run around in; the library of the Paramour added uncounted nooks and crannies as it continued growing, and had plenty of armchairs, beanbags, and recliners for Paramour to laze around in.

When I had the chance, I’d take the opportunity to soar through nebulas, letting the ionized remains of stars sweep through my hair as the Paramour cut through the warm dust, leaving a trail through the nebula. Sometimes Paramour would join me on the the bow of our ship as we spearheaded our way through the ashes of stars, both of us tourists to a dying solar systems and their stars. More often, though, Paramour preferred to remain up on the mast, watching the nebulas pass him by with dignity. 

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Every now and then, while exploring galaxies, I’d stumble across a space battle. For the sake of later entertainment, I drew myself a camcorder and recorded the battles as I sailed past them. Sometimes I’d figure those battles into the histories of the civilizations I encountered. Other times, passing spaceships would try to attack the Paramour, but no matter what weapons they had, it never marred the Paramour’s well-worn wooden hull. I would always sail on by, wondering what it was that motivated others to attack passersby without provocation.





3 comments:

  1. Great imagery. I like the part about Paramour the cat watching things pass by with dignity. My own cat acts like a sultan, ruling over me and Nikki on his perch on the couch top whenever we sit down to watch Star Trek

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  2. Yeah, I always liked the idea of a ship's cat, and the narrator needed a companion, so it fit perfectly.

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  3. Well, every person on a journey needs a companion. Haroun had Iff the water genie, Huck had Jim, and Dorothy had the scarecrow, tinman and cowardly lion and your narrator has Paramour.

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