VI-Leaves Of Grass

Journal entry fourteen seven five,
Our nation's ruler has granted me my life,
To lead this vessel and show him what I saw -
Upon the distant planet Eleutheria...

I upload thoughts into the host disc acting as guide
My console flares, I drive the captain's knowledge inside.

The stretching space reveals the path disguised in the charts
I fold the map, the stars connect, a phasing now starts.

Through warping space our ship emerges out of the air
A synapse pulse shuts down the Drive of Alcubierre...

But as I peer out,
The landscape seems strange,
The shores are a wasteland,
the planet has changed.
And here, where the rocks lie
In broken profusion
The slain Pilot's body,
I turn in confusion.

(CREW MEMBERS:)
...the planet's a desert...
...nothing is here...
...murdered the Pilot...
...he's led us astray...
...killed all his crewmen...
...the Captain's insane...
...lied to the nation...
...grasp him and bind him in chain!

Something's wrong! / What has changed?
cliffs and shore / rearranged?
Must have made / a mistake
Something lost / route I take
to this place / difficult
phase is wrong / not my fault
passage through / Second Sea
It was here / Listen to me!

Abstracted, I whisper excuses,
Injustice, their judgment effuses.
They watch me, but they will not see me -
A pattern, moving so precisely.

Then thousand is still not enough time
Remembrance the sentence for my crime
The endless, the faithless, the cities
The foolish, the sordid, the pity...

A leaf of grass, one blade completely,
holds worlds and suns - but size defeats me.

O me! O life! What good amid you?
The play goes on - my verse contribute.

"I open the scuttle at night
and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher,
edge but the rim of the farther systems.

Wider and wider they spread,
expanding, always expanding
Outward and outward and forever outward."

- from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (1819-92)