5: Connecticut

C had been reading your stories every week. “I like the flow of this last one,” he said, “but I think I’ve figured out my problem with them.”

“Yeah?” you asked. “What’s that?” You were sitting in his studio in Killingworth, listening to his remix of the latest Yoko Ono track. The music did some interesting screeching thing.

“It’s like you’re writing these anti-elitist everyman stories, where the characters are all ‘regular guys’ and ‘everyday girls’ from state X, and I’m no populist.”

You were quiet for a moment, thinking. He tinkered with his homemade robots, Alice and Gertrude. T poked his head in the door. “It’s time for milking,” he said.

You followed them outside, to the pasture by the beehives. C led Archipelago over, while T set up the pail and stand. They had just sat down when their neighbor’s biodiesel BMW pulled up.

“Hey guys,” R called out the window. “I've got some fresh kombucha I want you to try.”

“Cool,” said C. “Come on over later.”


You were all standing on the deck, drinking kombucha and absinthe cocktails and eating T’s fresh bread with C’s homemade goat cheese. Your breath escaped in nebulae, rising and converging. All the stars were out. “Leo is at 100%” T said.

“Cool,” said C. “Hit the button, or whatever.”

T flicked a switch and the silo opened up. The laser began to print an almost aleatoric pattern onto the surface of the moon.

“This goat cheese is delicious, you guys,” R said.

“We saw this awful movie at Sundance,” said C, “both as a joke and a kind of self-punishment. Three skiers get stuck on a chairlift. Eventually two of them are eaten by wolves. It takes place in ‘Massachusetts.’ Oh my god was it bad.”

“I’m writing the MA story next week,” you said. “I’ll make sure I put wolves in that one.”