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the end-all grail and be-all goal since hydrogen first condensed to mist; to overcome the barrier that has been placed by God or Chance or pre-ordained rule.
first-
Know where you are. Know where you're going. Wish upon a star; bring all online and push with legs cross-connected to the vagaries of comp. Squint once, twice; bring lenses back with grav-fields strobing in the dark (arrows to the universe, a turn-signal none can or should ignore) and then taste the different spectrum of the black.
push.
SLAM systems as they jump, the nonexistant nano lights sliding up the tone to green inside your head. Where your head was, at any rate. Glissando in their laugh, ten, twenty, forty-five; a thousand thousand settling down upon your skull a billion points that put all to shame to sing their go-song deep inside the brain.
push.
Slowly, massive, physics jealous guarding its longtime grip. Feel the Hohmann pathways part and listen to the steady silence in the water gap play into your ears. Small blue marble far, far below and then behind; clouds mask its face, the rain weeping to see you go but proud (so proud) of what mankind has wrought. This, you, it, then, now.
PUSH.
Secondaries fully lit, with blazing torches sweeping spacelanes clear. Scything out past the radiation haze, the places back behind alight with glory of the dying matter! Flicker your God-spawned light onto the small dark rocks and imagine (just a moment, then) that small, long-sleeping eyes do blink and open, swiveling to watch you pass. A wordless, soundless, yet still-felt cheer from all the silent denizens of the deep that have watched us for so, so long as you pass by - a rousing hurrah! from planetismals small and large, their winking facets of high albedo pushing back the light we cast. Thinking of them, waiting for those countless years, you sigh a bit and throw a mental wave to all your fellow Solians. Think, then, of the familiar bright and yellowed light that we have shared.
REACH-
The mains have woken now, somewhere behind; unfathomable Murgatroyds of physics born and magic raised are spinning up. Energies that deities both Greek and Goth would have killed in one of their endless operatic spats if only to control for just one minute - here they are, at last, yours, ours, only to exist to help us go. Rhyming doggerel that sounds your path, whispered in the tearing shriek of too-slow particles across front shields-
Feynman, Einstein, Wernher von Braun-
Run for the dark as fast as you can.
Schwartzchild, Hawking, Newton, Kaku
Chandrasekhar and Planck will dance for us too
Pull the string, dig the hole, spin it and call:
"With strangeness and charm we'll jump o'er the wall!"
Put words to deed, channel the strangeness and capture the charm; color us spincycle. There is a blaring in the soul, a shouting in the sea of years, a long slow rupture of the universe that sounds (for want of better term) like a tortured bass violin as a bow some light-years long is drawn across its adamantium strings. Colors that never were will flicker then around the front, as starlight is drawn into a tunnel fore and aft. Wave to our patient silent neighbor Jove as we scream through the old God's front yard, tearing several unknown moonlets into component ice and dirt -
some days later those back home will see the show as particles stream down from upabove into the endless sea of Jupiter, their shining beacon suicide reminiscent of Hale-Bopp lo those years ago
REACH
parting, sliding, twisting in their darktime cells the mains struggle; titans move beneath our skin in ancient dance of stones. With sudden locking into step and place and time, we vow-
...leave nought but footprints across the EM band and deed to those behind your lightshow concert of the unreal, slip sideways out from up and under...
-gone.
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