If we can burn 48 times hotter than the Sun, can we pass through it?
Foreseeably, as planned.
Are we that hot, now?
Not yet. But the whip trails of the plasma field propelling this payload module towards our star will shortly achieve 4 times solar temperature. Maybe in another 2 days. Then in a further 4 days, the naked ape sperm enters the celestial ovum. And then…
Kapow! He said, expanding his fingers in front of my stoically emotionless face. His wild eyes and swept sideways hair, the picture-perfect mad astrophysicist. Kapow, he repeated, cowering in a nook of the smooth-walled boilerplate capsule.
I reached into my pocket and retrieved a deck of Aladdin 1001 cards. They’re missing the ace of Spades, I said.
How so?
I sent it back. The deck’s defective.
So we have a replacement?
No. We launched before it arrived.
The scientist sighed. We launched as they wheeled my Moira into the delivery room. She told me by cell.
There was a tear in his eye that irritatingly would not flow. It jiggled into a sphere, separating from his crow’s feet, moving slowly towards my forehead in zero-g.
You see, we’ve been chosen to survive. One of many -the first-fruits, entering into a new Universe of our making, by relativistic mass-combustion.
Yet if by some chance I could hold her, my swaddling child. Moira, oh, she doesn’t have breasts… anymore. He wiped his brow on the back of his hand.
What of the colostrum she’s been missing?
God only knows. There’s a form of kefir they use for those situations nowadays.
You don’t say? Who were you, back on Earth?
I… was the unluckiest man on the planet -apparently.
How so?
They were going to file me into the Guinness Book of Records but then we launched. I had just bought the 4th defective deck of Aladdins.
Were you married?
Technically no.
Oh?
She wasn’t a man.
You mean she wasn’t a woman.
No, I needed a man.
OH! Sorry, I’ve pushed you too far then…
Not at all, you see I’ve a master’s degree in magic.
Hahaha! The astrophysicist wiped his eyes, choking on his spittle.
There’s nothing that gets by me. That’s why I’m unlucky.
Yea, yea -as you’re whacking coins off the heel of your palm into a shot glass and sawing your bearded woman in half -who left you at the altar of a strip mall wedding parlor in down town…
I looked into the palms of my hands, tented downwards. I can bring your Moira’s breasts back, I said gravely.
Sniffling… sniffling, now don’t you be telling jokes on me. She lost her jets because of the damned experiments we were doing with nuclear plasma, 300 feet under the Mojave. Now we’re hurtling towards the core of the Sun to God knows what goddam FATE!
He hung off the ceiling, breathing heavily into his shoulder.
Let’s play chor-tai-dee, Chinese poker.
But you said the deck was defective. It’s lost a card. It didn’t ‘open sesame’ -or was that YOUR job?
I shook the cards out of their box into my palm.
OH, he exclaimed, cowering, as I flicked the cards at his face. Where are they… disappeared…
Then I reached behind his ear and retrieved a neat double fan.
There, I said -a perfect deck.
And the first one was a spotless ace of spades with the inscription, ‘Thank you for buying our cards. We make only the finest mistakes’.
You’re an angel. You are, he said, suddenly attentive as a child. *How* do you play Chinese poker?
