Home Again, Home Again

The customs officer isn't even human, so it feels like just another R&R, another halting conversation carried on in ugly trade-speak, another bewilderment of queues and luggage carousels. Outside: another spaceport, surrounded by the variegated hostels for the variegated tourists, and bipeds are in bare majority.

I can think of it like that.

I can think of it as another spaceport.

I can think of it like another trip.

The thing he can't think of it is, is a homecoming. That's too hard for this weak vessel.

He's very weak.

#

Look at him. He's eleven, and it's the tencennial of the Ascension of his homeworld -- dirty blue ball, so unworthy, yet -- inducted into the Galactic fraternity and the infinite compassion of the bugouts.

The foam, which had been confined to just the newer, Process-enclaves befor