16:18
Give it up to chance again, if you like. Fool yourself once more. Just don’t come back whining afterward. That icebox full of tools? Get me one. Now close the drawer. I said door. Close the door. Look, we can’t go on like a couple of characters in a magazine story. We can’t hang our hopes on repetition. So whatever you’re implying, stop it. This is a real cancer. And yeah, our chances are diminishing, but it’s just a different way of life if you really think about it, not any kind of end, not even close. To whom are the voices in your head speaking? Obviously not you. If you'd listen things would be different. It’s your inbetwixedness that’s killing me. Here's a length of pipe. The thread's stripped but we can jam it in and caulk the shit out of everything. And don’t go checking your precious internet. It’s free and open like water in pipes or air recirculating in Biosphere 2, “sealed from the earth below," as they say, "by a 500-ton welded stainless steel liner.” Them on the fog desert last night bathing in bioluminescence? Yeah, us, in so many words.
16:28
You can’t give it a second look. Just slap it in place, check it once, move on. It’s how we build things here. You can’t worry about the other ones and whether they match or complement one another. I do, and we can’t afford two of me. Look at how slow I am. There're beautiful details, everything’s level, I recheck the stitching almost compulsively throughout. It’s as if we were living in a freshly hatched fairy tale with no hope of ever being told, still and cold in the brain of a comatose fabulist. It’s a matter of time and timing and you need to learn that. Otherwise we have a long slog ahead of us. You wrote: “Google pen. The straightaway beckons. Engine revs. A fresh apple. No dice. A crooked hour. The lead exhumed.”
16:38
No fair looking! I was talking to the back of your head, having a perfectly good conversation. Keep walking and nobody gets hurt. Stop and meet Bad Cop. So show me the way to the hermit on the ridge. Show me the way to your kid’s drone messiah. The next few steps lead to the place I’m telling you about. It’s a jungle creek orange from tailings and home to a few midget crayfish eking it out under blast rocks. It’s best if you take off your shoes. It’s not like spelunking where you come from. Forget the clay and mud. There’s no soil around here to speak of. Now cross. Now get in the canoe. No, the aluminum one. That’s Matthew. He’ll be our guide. Don’t talk to him. He’s ex-Marines. Don’t refuse a piece of dried fruit or handful of trail mix if offered. There’s only dwarf crayfish and moss where we’re going. Albinos. The natural product of this research is technology directed at getting us out of here. Like off this freakin’ planet. As soon as we can, we’re gone. And you’re coming with us. It might not happen with you, but it sure won’t without. You? Important in ways you’ll never know.
