Captain's Log: Extracts
by Michael Sanchez

Firewood had recently become abstract and therefore more plentiful. Our leader’s image was foremost in our minds: he provided the tracks, we provided the ideas. Living in an epic had obvious advantages. We soon learned that maxims are delicious only in the context of fine erotics.

*
* *

Our cargo was not exciting enough for highwaymen to attack. It was becoming a routine mission. We played mutual advice – which is to say, group therapy – on our shiny new portable harpsichord; it was as beautiful as the poppy fields we stared at through the windows, and without a doubt more beautiful than any cottage in the woods.

*
* *

Several brothers were lost to perfunctory illnesses. Lit from within like saints, we were left with no alternative but to worship them. A telegram from headquarters confirmed our decision. Games of cards lasted for days, stopped only by the suspicion that their outcomes were preordained. Always on the verge of winking, the leader’s face printed on the recto of each card became like a mirror into which we poured our hearts.

*
* *

“The traveler weaves a cocoon around himself, yet still blushes for fear that it is a failed trick, that all the world looks out onto him,” wrote the cabin boy one morning, thinking himself an imposter. He was in fact a model of legitimacy.

*
* *

New orders from the central office: no confetti, no dancing. We whited-out the colored backgrounds on our official identification portraits. An inspector appeared in hologram to survey the vessel. Despite our best precautions, we were docked twenty points for “bad timing.” Our angel, I believe, has been smacked one too many times against the windshield.

*
* *

Once, we drew tiny circles instead of speaking to each other. They seemed at the time like equivalent actions. Now we can see that the circles had more in common with a polished tetrahedron.

*
* *

The corridors kept folding such that no spot could ever be reached twice by the same route. We were extremely suspicious. Was this Leningrad? No. What was happening now was the opposite of what had already happened to the scenery. Breadcrumbs are of no use, only sonar is effective.

*
* *

From inside the carriage, everything seemed encrusted with rococo. This was perhaps our first instance of collective déjà-vu; we were slowly realizing that we were far from home, that we were not pedaling in place, that every new vista was in fact new, and that it was indeed impossible to cross the same pass twice.

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