A steel and aluminum insect, its carapace dotted with seams of light, skated along the translucent film between the sphere and the void. Waves of vapor rolled beneath, vast and unbearably close in the gray, diffuse light of the waxing moon. My eyes were fixed on some uncertain point on the horizon, an ice-feathered sheet of clear plastic detaching my senses from the ecstasy of freefall beyond. A mousy brunette slept fitfully at my shoulder, almost touching yet unfamiliar. Dog eared pages of Lovecraft lay flat across my knee, their madness intensified by the gin in my blood, the frayed nerves that drink sought to dull, and the black velvet infinity draping the upper half of my window.

In my shirt pocket rested a tiny handmade dreamcatcher, fashioned from glass beads and brass wire by a sun-warmed, effortlessly smiling jeweler with lapis eyes that not even her own handiwork could match. It had been a gift, given to me on her birthday (some weeks after my own), when she and I had shared a rare opportunity to return to our childhood home from the distant corners where we led our separate lives. It would likely be years before I saw her again, and my fingers traced the bauble’s concentric lines as though it might somehow make up the lost time. It mattered not; with the rising of the sun would come new challenges, and I would return once more to the algorithmic depths.