The Colonist, Day 17803

So far, the weekend has been decent. 

The sun is visible in these here parts; now it comes into view earlier and earlier with light from yonder star filtered into invigorating shades of vermilion and other colors that have citrus analogs but begin transmuting into purples and blues once the fiery orb is aloft over the city.

I counted thirty Inca doves roosting on the dead apple tree in the backyard. I'll be good and goddamned if the tree comes back this time. The cold snap two winters back conquered it, mostly. There was one live branch left over, but I reckon those cold early-January mornings did the rest. The birds like it fine as it is, but all of them, in a grey flock like that, make the dogs bark unreasonably.

After watching them flutter and gambol like feathery hands, and when the hounds were done with nature and I with the winter light, we all retired to the atomic stove by the window. It popped a couple of times during the ignition sequence, but otherwise came on just as expected. We were all warm and I drank a mild stimulant beverage common among the planetary stewards of the era. The other animals et processed meat, by the way.

The computer was still on from last night.

For one thing, it glows. For another, it has some sort of tunnel in it. The tunnel connects to a library and information center that is like a circus, but infinite, if you get my drift. You view it all through a glass screen.

There was some snow in the mountains, for instance, but not enough to ameliorate the rage of drought that now follows the yearly solar ascent. It is possible to cross most of the rivers here by walking through them, I thought.

Just then, a woman with a neck tattoo of an eagle, the words "La Perrona" drawn in black ink above the crudely drawn predator, knocked on the door. So, I detuned the nuclear heat approximator, rose and said, who is there, as I spied her, from out the velvet-curtained window.

Well, she goes on about how she is my neighbor from four doors away, and I yell through the door that I know better because I have an electronic tube that sends me information and have heard all about the burglars and cretins combing the southeast heights. They are looking for easy prey.

You have to let them inside for crazy, unforeseen, and potentially life-threatening scenarios to arise says I to the dogs who are going crazy. One of them is biting the door knob like it is a ten pound pork chop.

After a fashion, the inky interloper crawls back to her car and it chugs off, missing on a cylinder and leaving a half-pint of dirty oil on my driveway.

I wander over to the glass screen, say hello and start reading about how two visions of public education are currently at odds and being debated by a legislative body that meets sixty miles north of here, where they still get snow once in a while.

Before you knew what happened exactly, except that it must involve celestial mechanics, it is dark again and so I sit down and type this out to let you know how my stay in your city, on your block, in your town, in your state, and ultimately on your planet, is going, more or less.

Like I said at the start, so far the weekend has been decent.