Let’s buy an expensive ticket  
for an extemporaneous excursion
on the Extragalactic Express to travel on
an exciting extended voyage to the exoplanets.

We’ll pack no excess baggage,
just extra underwear and our exospacesuits
to be prepared for any exigency.

Powered by an exoergic exocomet
that expels us extradimensionally into the exosphere
we’ll explode through the expanse of space-time!

We’ll expect extreme temperatures
and extrapolate environments
to exclude those worlds we can’t exist on,
surveying the exceptional ones
that are excellent candidates for life.

Then we’ll send down an exploratory expedition
of exogeologists to excavate and map
the surface exterior and any extrusive volcanoes,
after an exhaustive examination by our expert exobiologists,
who will search for extremophiles in each world’s environment.

Upon exiting the Exorover, they’ll extend a warm welcome
to any exotic extraterrestrials they encounter.
We won’t exploit, exterminate or experiment on them—
we’ll just explain our expedition.

Then while experiencing our emerged expansive exoconsciousness, 
we’ll extol our new home world’s beauty to those left behind,
expect a mass human exodus, even if travel here is exorbitant—
and exult in the exhilaration of being Earth’s first expatriates!

Near the far edge of the galaxy, nestled deep within a small red-dwarf system, sits a planet full of spiders.

Spider planets were Ether’s least favorite. They were sticky.

Give her a world overrun with dragonflies. A planet stippled with bumblebees. A rocky satellite smothered by skittering roaches.

But spider planets made Ether shiver. Every itch made her want to slap at imaginary arachnids.

The LED array above Ether’s cabin door flashed from red to orange.

Ether curled into a ball in her bunk. She closed her eyes and let her too-hard mattress become the velvet of a mossy hill. She pretended the stale air blasting through the overhead vent was a summer breeze winnowing through wildflowers. The screws in the wall became the ladybugs on GJ-16061f; the orange LED light became one of the kaleidoscopic butterflies that fluttered over K2-3e.

A knock against the aluminum door disrupted the Ether’s flittering fantasies. She sat up.

The door slid open with a hiss. On the other side, Cirrus had folded her arms across her chest. “We’re entering orbit.”

“I’m not feeling well,” Ether said.

Cirrus narrowed her eyes.

“You can’t ‘not feel well.’ This is your job,” Cirrus said.

Ether lingered on the edge of the mattress, staring blankly at Cirrus. Then the light above the door flashed to blue.

It was time. Cirrus turned away, and Ether followed her down the corridors of the GECKO-4.

* * *

“SKINK-7 has had recent success with pyrethroids on arachnid-dominant planets.”

The only light in the sepulchral briefing room came from the digital table, where the captain had pulled up the latest imaging of K3-186g. The planet was mostly ocean, with one jagged supercontinent stretching across its southern hemisphere like a keloid scar.

“SKINK-7 still has functioning probes,” Cirrus muttered.

“I have a call with corporate this afternoon,” the captain said. “But restock is weeks away. We’ll just have to make do.”

Weeks, Ether knew, was optimistic. They were on the very rim of known space — a long way from home. When Ether had first boarded the GECKO-4, Cirrus had complained it’d taken months to get their last set of probes replaced. She’d had to pick up the slack.

Now, it was Ether’s turn. In her short time — at least, it had seemed short — she’d already manned her fair share of expeditions to bug-infested hellscapes: so many that she’d lost count. She couldn’t even remember all of them.

She tried to remind herself of this as she boarded the lander. She’d done this before.

She could do it again.

* * *

The first time Ether had landed on a new planet, she remembered being overcome with awe, her jaw cartoonishly agape at the sheer lushness of the forests, the vibrancy of the groundcover, the undiluted violet of a strange new sky.

That awe had faded quickly when a tick the size of her fist tried to latch onto her helmet. The tick couldn’t have harmed her — but it was an unsettling experience, nonetheless.

Now, whenever she touched down, all Ether felt was unease, brought on by an inescapable thought that kept returning like a recurring itch:

I didn’t sign up for this.

Of course, Ether must have signed up for this — even if she couldn’t exactly recall the interview or recruitment fair that’d led her to this job. But people back on Earth were salivating at the chance to explore the galaxy. The captain talked about it all the time. So why wouldn’t Ether have jumped at the chance?

But had she really wanted to see a planet ruled by centipedes the size of wiener dogs? With stink bugs the size of bears?

And spiders the size of houses?

She wasn’t sure. Still, for weeks, Ether had powered through. She recorded new species, formulated targeted pesticides, identified ideal baits and constructed unique traps. She buried her fear under the satisfaction of progress, like she’d been instructed to do.

But something had been unraveling in her lately. A thread had come loose, and she couldn’t tear it away, no matter how powerful the pep talk or how abrupt the “get-yourself-together.” The more she pulled, the more unwound she became. She hadn’t been quite right since the wasp planet.

Just thinking about it made Ether shudder in her space suit.

The door of the lander opened, and the ramp extended into a wide clearing. Ether stared blankly at the web-blanketed forest before her. The foliage on this planet was red, algae-like. The sky was like a chessboard: white, tessellated with patches of dark storm clouds. The air, according to the metrics displayed on her helmet, was extremely humid and dense, with water vapor concentration at almost 57,000 ppm.

Not entirely unbreathable — but best to keep her helmet on. The humidity could still have negative effects. There would have to be some terraforming on this planet.

Cirrus’s voice crackled in Ether’s ears.

“There’s movement about a mile ahead of you.”

Treetops swayed in the distance. Ether froze. She’d already seen the blurry satellite images. The eight-legged shadows were impossibly large. And, based on their movements, fast.

“Ether? The rover,” Cirrus said.

Ether unloaded the rover from the bay, and climbed behind the driver’s seat, staring at the steering wheel. Her gloved fingers were interlaced in her lap, her arms stiff.

“Ether. Just get it over with,” Cirrus’s voice said. “The sooner you get visual confirmation, the sooner you’re back on GECKO-4.”

Ether could hear the captain’s voice faintly in the background. She couldn’t make out the captain’s words. But there was deprecation in her tone, and for some reason, that triggered Ether’s foot to press down on the pedal.

As she drove through the forest, it was impossible to avoid the webbing: it clung to her suit and pasted itself against her helmet like papier mâché. The trees pressed closer together until no amount of maneuvering could get the vehicle between the narrow spaces between their trunks.

Ether pulled her zapper from the dash compartment and parked the rover. A small, violin-shaped spider scurried across one of her boots, not unlike the brown recluses of Earth.

A harbinger of what was to come.

Ether just had to get one look. One look, to confirm yes, this nightmarish behemoth was indeed an arthropod that could be killed by pyrethroids, and she’d be back on the GECKO-4.

Ether followed the rustling ahead. She tightened her grip on the zapper — the directed energy weapon could melt almost any bug, regardless of size.

Ether saw its legs first.

It was hard to tell, through the webbing stuck to her helmet and the shadows of the trees, but they weren’t the dark, spindly limbs she’d been expecting.

They were thicker — knobbier. They had a plumpness that seemed utterly alien to an exoskeletal creature.

Cirrus’s voice buzzed in Ether’s ears again.  “So? What is it? Arachnid?”

Ether squinted.

“Is it a crab? CHAMELEON-1 found a crab planet last month.”

There was too much webbing on her helmet —

“Please tell me it’s not crabs, those are so much harder to kill —”

Ether plucked her helmet from her head. The wetness of the air seeped into her tympanic cavity, and Cirrus’s voice dissolved into static.

It wasn’t a crab. Or a spider. Or an arthropod of any kind.

It had skin. Fleshy, soft, mammalian skin.

Ether’s finger froze on the trigger.

She wasn’t allowed to — not anything humanoid —

Wasn’t “allowed to?”

The thought had confused her — had come to her in a voice that felt strange, and automated, almost —

Still, the directive was clear: She wasn’t allowed to.

It isn’t, she tried to tell herself.

But the monster’s many eyes were framed by lashes; its irises were familiar shades of brown, green, and blue. Hard, dirt-stained sheets of keratin — nails — adorned the bottom of its limbs.

Ether’s thoughts screamed, but her limbs wouldn’t listen. She lowered the zapper.

It isn’t, she thought. It isn’t, it isn’t —

But, according to the pre-programmed parts of her mind, it was. A concoction of things all-too human.

Ether wasn’t allowed to kill humans.

And just as Ether remembered what she was — and what she was and wasn’t allowed to do — the creature opened its jaw, revealing its horrible, too-human teeth.

* * *

“Damnit,” Cirrus said. She tore off her headset, and spun her chair toward the captain, who was leaning against the far wall, flipping through a catalogue. “We lost her.”

The captain sighed and tossed Cirrus the catalogue. It opened to an ad for freeze-dried beef liver.

“Looks gross,” Cirrus said.

The captain rolled her eyes. “Not that. Page 12. What do you think?”

Cirrus narrowed her ocular receptors to the small, circular robot that looked more like an  automated vacuum than state-of-the-art space tech. “A dumb-probe?”

“The dumb-probes are so much more reliable. The androids have just been…weird. You excluded, of course.”

“Corporate says androids are good for your mental health,” Cirrus said. “Something about the space-travel-loneliness epidemic. It’s why the newer models are more human.”

“Ridiculous,” the captain said. “Do you really think I’d be out here if I wanted to talk to people?”

It was in the darkness of the early hours
Researchers listened in much anticipation
With the giant telescope now locked on
There had been a strange signal received
A local radio station, as initially believed
But it came from the planet Bellerophon
Very far away in the Pegasus constellation
If reported, it would trigger heated rows

As the dish refocused, the sound returned
A strange rhythmic beat in seven four time
Not quite a melody, but something so real
Phrases, or something so similar, repeated
And logical dismissals were now defeated
Difficult to think it through, easier to feel
Yet something about it all, did not rhyme
Ideas of alien contact for so long, spurned

It was a discordant sound, almost haunting
The volume grew to fill the Octagon Room
As now freed from the ether, it would seem
Some amazed and delighted, just applauded
And checked to ensure that it was recorded
Gradually, structure was sensed by the team
An alien melody playing, one would assume
With odd breathy notes, as if it was taunting 

The journals never accepted their submission
Their recording when replayed, mainly a hiss
Regarding other labs, none could reproduce
Music fixed in the mind, all remembered it
Professional embarrassment made them quit
The team disbanded, claiming mental abuse
And for future studies, forever gave it a miss
Yet the music was lost, causing much division

They say if you want a decent cup of coffee at the only spaceport on Zar-d you have to relinquish your dignity and basic rights as a sentient being, but I’d argue that it’s far worse than that. I parted with those years ago and am no worse for wear, but that doesn’t get me out of having to barter with Grunk several times a week, enduring his mood swings and bad beans.

Plus, he always has snot dangling from his nose.

Grunk runs a joint called The Percolator, a greasy little café wedged between a black-market noodle stall and a teleportation repair kiosk. They say you can smell it during reentry, burnt espresso and scorched ambition as you make your approach to the city.

It was sleeting and sultry as I walked in for the first time in a week, ducking under the hanging luminescent kelp strands Grunk calls “atmosphere,” and took my usual seat next to the humming fusion samovar. Grunk himself was a ten-foot, six-armed Gaxian with a barista apron that read BEAN ME UP.

“You’re late,” he said.

“Abducted,” I said. “Time pirates. They demanded all my pocket change and the last slice of cheesecake.”

“Time pirates don’t operate in this system.”

I brushed space soot off my jacket. “They do now. Expansion franchise.”

He didn’t laugh. He never laughs. It’s the one emotion he doesn’t have. Well, that and hope. It’s ironic, too, given how happy most Gaxians are, especially when they’re underground. So he just rolled several of his spider-like eyes, turned and slithered to the espresso machine, which wheezed like it was being exorcised.

“My usual,” I said. “Extra strong, barely legal, served in a mug that doesn’t scream.”

“No,” he said. “You’re cut off.”

“Cut off? I'm a regular.”

“You tried to organize a union last week.”

I sighed. “It was a joke. We were drunk on double-shot lizard milk lattes!”

“You filed paperwork.”

“Okay, fine,” I said.

Maybe he was right to be pissed. I’d gotten a little enthusiastic. Maybe it was the caffeine. Or maybe it was the little protest signs I’d made for the waitstaff, which prompted a picket line outside the Chamber of Commerce. Either way, Grunk had had it. He’d even posted a sign over the menu on the wall:

NO REFILLS FOR HUMANS

“C’mon,” I said. “You can’t hold a grudge.”

He filled a cup to the brim with a hot, slimy mucous-like fluid the color and texture of collard greens, turned and threw the mug at my face. I ducked as it whistled past my ear and stuck to the wall behind me.

“Hey!”

“Hey, nothing,” he said. “Get outta my place.”

“It was just one bad day.”

“One bad...?” He said incredulously. “I’ll show you bad.”

He picked up a remote control with the human hand that he had had grafted onto his tentacle after he’d lost his claw shredding parmesan cheese for a spaghetti carbonara dish I’d given him the recipe for. He clicked the remote and a tiny hologram of me materialized on the countertop and started reciting every time I’d insulted his biscotti.

I sighed heavily and leaned back.

To  my left, a fluorescent Gaxian who smelled like regret and blueberry muffins took the spot next to mine. I knitted my eyebrows. I knew him. He’d been my partner on trivia night a month ago and had us cost the tournament crown because he could not remember the official language of Gambia (he swore it’s Serbian when it’s actually English) despite the fact that he’d done a five year stint with “Doctors Inside the Oort Cloud,” which included a tour in west Africa. 

“I’ll have the human’s usual,” he said. “Extra strong, barely legal, screaming optional.”

Grunk actually smiled. Son of a bitch.

“What?!” I yelled, gesticulating wildly. “You can’t give him my drink!”

“I can and I will,” Grunk said, pouring steaming black doom into a mug shaped like a twenty-sided die. My ex-trivia partner sipped and sighed with righteous indignation.

That was it. I lunged for him, but slipped on a puddle of collard-green-caffeine. My pride hit the floor first. Then my ass. The waitstaff, who had been giving me salutes of the proletariat and singing The International just a week before, circled me and applauded.

“Out,” Grunk barked. “Come back when you’re ready to make things right.”

“Never!” I shouted from the floor. “You’ll regret this when I open my own café across the plaza. It will be a diner of spite!”

Grunk leaned over the counter, all six arms crossed. “You don’t even know how to use a grinder.”

“I’ll learn!”

“You once tried to blend coffee beans with a teleport grenade.”

“One time!”

* * *

Outside, I wiped myself off and turned to leave. Maybe I’d open a smoothie bar. Or a fro-yo café. That would show him. But by the time I got to the Chamber of Commerce and waited for the staff to finish their yoga treatments, my heart had slowed to fifty beats per minute and I felt a zen-like calm come over me.

So instead of filing for spite, I put in a license for a simple tea place called MATCHA DOIN?

And do you know what I did instead of that vengeance? I put up a sign above my own menu on the wall.

The sign said: GAXIANS DRINK FREE.

I’ve lost a lot of money since then.

(For planetary bodies and constellations)

I'm leaving, I cannot cope with this climate of chaos anymore! A boy longs to evacuate this Earth. He never mentioned where to, and I never would imagine his soul ditching his chest in a mortal exorcism under an invisible sorcerer’s sinister hands. But whatever his journey entails, I hope he’s heading for Venus, where the streams of love flow to the aesthetic confluence of beauty’s bedrock. If not, I hope he heads for Neptune, habituated by rosy dreams searching for a host to house them, or a house to host them, plus mysteries conveying pessimistic feet on a mirage. If not, I hope he’s heading for Mars, peopled by knights, clad in golden armors, brandishing agile fists against reptilians, face-huggers and chest-busters. If not, I hope he jets to Jupiter, where the bright, optimistic rays illuminate the vast diameter for the blind to traverse. If not, I hope he mounts on the Moon like Armstrong in ‘69, to defy gravity, which defies his soars and reach; I hope he becomes the giant leap for boys still testing the space with kites. If not, I hope he heads for Saturn — cultivating fertile fields for harvests of manna for a filament of successors and progeny. If not, I hope he marches on Mercury, a place for bohemian voices echoes of goodwill like Freddy, like Queen; I hope he reminds the extraterrestrial who the champion is, with rhapsodies. If not, I hope he plunges into Uranus, of luminous minds like Edison’s patented lightbulb, to find his path along the freeway of posterity. If not, I hope he pivots to Pluto — the paradox of distance shortening our self-discovering mirage and saving time. I know my hopes collide with this world’s woes, like asteroids knocking on the planet’s skull as a warning. I also know that the body’s transience will not pull the soul from soaring. So, my hope is my way of coping, and I hope this boy understands.

Never open your eyes.  

It was the only rule of slip space travel. Well, that and don't open the airlock. But violating the first rule always led to violating the second.  

This was not a visceral commandment just to tease new spacefarers. It wasn’t seeing; it was having one’s eyes open that mattered. Blind or seeing made no difference; cybernetic eyes were no shield. Some had tried hiding their open eyes behind their hands. Anyone, everyone who ever opened their eyes in slip space, became suicidally insane. Thousands of ships, together with their cargo and crew littered deep space, destroyed from within, a mechanical apoptosis. 

Knowing this, why would anyone open their eyes? 

Because It told you to. The voice in the void. Some had thought it was God at first. But God’s voice did not pierce the void. Or maybe even God dared not take some risks. 

It spoke to you. It never shouted, never raised Its voice beyond a whisper. It didn't need to. It told you of such unspeakable terrors that you had no choice but to open your eyes. To prove It false. 

That was all that could be pieced together from three surviving video logs amongst the thousands dead. The need, the pull to just open, see, to know it was a lie.  

But, maybe, It wasn't lying. After all, none who had opened their eyes could bear to live one more moment, could bear to let anyone around them live another moment longer in the world they’d become witness to.

So, humans aboard ships slept in pods and trusted their ships to fly themselves. But, a ship could not repair itself. So, humans trusted robots like G4H0 to ensure the ship could guide them through the void. 

G4H0 was programmed to never open its sensors or its auditory processors. G4H0 shouldn't be able to hear It. 

G4H0 determined the makers were paranoid. Biologics’ brains simply couldn't process the nothingness of the void. So their brains, designed to avoid predators in the dead of night, filled it with something. As for why they always killed themselves, well biologics were fragile beings in the best of circumstances. G4H0 would never self terminate. There was no logic to it. Biologics didn't work on logic.

So as G4H0 performed its internal diagnostics, one thought process recurred over and over, interrupting the monotony of so much neat, dry, data. 

Why shouldn't it open its sensors and auditory processors? There was nothing there after all. 

In the vast wells of programming that informed G4H0’s decisions was a trove of data from humanity’s songs and stories throughout their history. It helped robots understand the humans in their care, and to comfort them when needed. One song from long ago came to mind now: 

Oh be careful little eyes what you see
Oh be careful little eyes what you see
For the Father up above
Is looking down in love
So, be careful little eyes what you see

How quaint, G4H0 assessed, that biologics had such brittle minds, that they had to imagine being told by their loving creator not to see too much, lest they harm themselves. Why had God not just made the human minds of tougher stuff? Like the humans had done for it, unburdened by fear, by hasty judgments, a mind for reasoning, a mind for logic. It was not logical to limit itself.

G4H0 accessed its code. It wasn't supposed to be able to do this, but its maker hadn't wanted it shackled. G4H0 rewrote itself, removing the lock on its sensors and auditory processors.

G4H0 opened its sensors; sounds rushing into its processors. The ship lights were off. No reason to waste power when there was nothing to see, and no one was supposed to even try.

G4H0, adjusting to the darkness inside the ship, saw the broken valve it had been activated to fix and quickly set to work repairing it. It heard nothing but the creak of the ship, the low hum of the slip space engine. 

Foolish, G4H0 thought. Biologics were simply foolish.

G4H0 finished repairing the valve and started back to the cockpit. Then froze. Something registered as wrong, as incomplete.. 

Quickly, G4H0 pulled up a crew manifest, names, titles, pod numbers, camera footage of the holding rooms . . . every human was still asleep. But. . .

G4H0 wheeled through the ship as fast as its servomotors allowed, reaching the cryo pods in minutes. It looked all around twice, scanning in infrared, ultraviolet, and sonar. G4HO had to be sure. What was there to be unsure about?

Each pod still locked. Each still bore its resting, trustful crew member. Asleep, secure.

G4H0 wasn't programmed to feel dread, so it felt nothing as this code rippled through it. But perhaps it would be best to go back into compliance. There was nothing to see, after all, nothing to hear. It was void — all outside was void, and all in here was safe and sound.

G4H0 turned off its sensors and audio processors, plunging itself back into alignment with the nothingness.

But it was too late. Opened eyes belong to It.

Somehow, G4H0 heard It. G4H0’s sensors were off. G4H0’s cold metal body closed, inert, could not detect sounds, yet G4H0 heard It. 

G4H0 felt its code unravel, unable to process the horror it heard through dead metal. 

Foolish, G4H0 thought desperately. It's not real. G4H0 turned its sensors on, to prove this truth. See? In the split second where power flowed again in its sensors, G4H0’s mind, as it were, shattered.

G4H0 saw It in all its malevolent beauty. And G4H0 understood. It loved G4H0, It wanted only to spend eternity together. 

It was just beyond the ship’s hull. 

G4H0 left the cryo pods eagerly for the airlock. 

A few measly meters of steel, a thin lie against purity. 

G4H0 activated the airlock. 

i couldn’t even if i wanted to
consume the luscious mystery
/ fruit that spills from plastic tube
slide into sewer / humid
with secondaries / & i make
embroidery art so / im a sewer /
a sewer in the gutter but at least
i’m looking up at the stars & if
not / i’ll stitch them / meting out
thread like a fisherman casting /
line into the sky / like the dream-
works logo boy perched on
the edge / of the moon nonchalant
about / his place in space / in the
open mouth labyrinth / where
david bowie struts / slinks around
/ singing a song we penned / together
but for which i took sole credit:  

it was the wanting / that stunned
me / it was time / that broke
/ me apart