The Cryptogoddess and the Astronaut

Joel the astronaut should have known the sea monster would be expecting him. They had been dreaming of each other – Joel and Señora Colbert, the beast, lush by choice and omniscient sentience of the fourth dimension by obligation – for as long as things have been. The young astronaut met the Chilean Cryptogoddess on the day he quit his job.

It was the 2032nd year of Western Fable.

The United States government sold NASA to NBC Universal in 2029, and his stint as a tour guide on Universal Studios: Earth Orbit Experience paid for deli sandwiches and a room above the Paint Palace. Daily he saw the old Marble in storms of dust and wind, turning at the will of money and love, sifting it’s surface in travel and tides, and he never once in his career felt like Kate Muglrew, his grandmother, who told him in her senility that he could be whatever he wanted to be. He became a bearded man, sitting in the shuttle narrating continents and having a beard growing contest with every bearded man on earth.

On the day Joel the astronaut quit his job, the Irish heritage foundation booked the 2 p.m. shuttle to celebrate the 103rd birthday of the last natural red-head on the planet, who had a heart attack and died somewhere between seven gs and “ladies and gentleman we have left the atmosphere.” The tragedy caused the women to wail and ask why, the men to forge a bagpipe jam session, and the old men to climb into the employees only booth and beckon Joel in morbid warnings: “do not waste your days,” a rickety limey in plaid said, “have you done it all? Seen Titans? Felt the salty breeze of venture on your wretched face?”

“Not recently.”

“Then GO!” the old man charged him in freckled fury.

So the young astronaut manned the escape hatch, nodded to the plaid prophet, pressed the appropriate switches and fell at a rate of approximately 9.89 m/s/s into the southeast Pacific.