So Fizzy says, he says to me, “I bet you can’t get your hands on some prismatic comet dust.”

And I says, “Really? You’re sayin’ that to me?”

And like I know he’s baiting me, because yeah, he’s right, ain’t nobody touching a prismatic comet, least not me, like people die tryin’ that shit, but you know, when someone tells me I can’t do somethin’, I’m just gonna go ahead and do it. And right there, I decided yeah, why shouldn’t I be the first person to touch one?

’Course I had no ship, and I’m not really a pilot neither, but Streeter, she gots a fast dart ship and she can fly and there was that one time her Pops found that twelve-pack of buzzies and bottle of starshine and I pretended it was mine to save her bones, so now I ring her up, and say “Hey Streeter, we gotta do a space shot!”

“You frizzin’?” she says, and I says, “No, way, chell, we gonna do this. First prismatic touch in all history! Let’s go!”

“Fine,” she says but I can tell she ain’t all excited-like. “But we’s bringing Vince along.”

“Oh no way, he’s a total deuce.” Vince the kinda guy like says “We should really not do this” all the time.

And she says, “Not askin’.”

So, then there’s like the three of us all up in a two-person dart, and we gettin’ to know each other all personal-like, and Vince says, “I really do not believe this is an intelligent course of action to follow” and me and Streeter says, “Just buckle up an’ shut yer face!”

Well, the “shut yer face” part was just me but anyway.

Turns out there’s a prismatic shootin’ through the system, and I has the idea that we do a Saturn sling to cross paths with it, but I leave the maths up to Streeter—or really Streeter’s ship’s jack.

And holy scotes, turns out my brain’s smarter than me somehow because the jack’s like, “Computing… computing… computing… yeah, that shit’ll work!”

Streeter plugs in the numbers like, and we three all nestle in and wait for the Gs to smoosh us, and we joot across space and holy crows we actually touch the tail, but like, we touch the tail a bit too much, you know, and we gets wrecked and spun way the hell out there, like into the middle of absolute nowheres.

So, the ship’s covered with prismatic dust, like we been glitterjizzed, but now we only gots aux power and there’s nothin’ ‘round, save for Robsey’s Diner of Triton—and I gots no idea how Robsey keep that place runnin’, cuz no one goes that far out for johnnycakes and shit.

And Vince, he says, “Perhaps we should venture out to the diner and get help there” and so I go, like in a funny voice, “Perhaps we should venture—” and Streeter is like “Chool, I think the deuce is right” and Vince says “Thank you, Betsy. Wait, what did you just call me?”

Short story, next thing you know, we’s all eating johnnycakes at Robsey’s, and we ask him how he even get all this golden syrup out here, ain’t that an old Earth thing, and he tells us they ship freighters out just for him. He’s so happy to have customers that he lets us ansible a tow-ship to bring us back to what we calls civil-iiii-zation.

I do have to admit, Robsey makes damn good johnnycakes. But Triton! Shit, ain’t never goin’ out there again.

So anyway, we get back and Streeter’s Pops is frazzed cuz it’s like not Streeter’s ship after all, it’s Streeter’s Pops’s ship, and they bring it to the high-sec reco-yard for repairs before we can swipe any of that dust off the surface. And Streeter’s like, “Pops, we did a prismatic touch!” and he’s like, “You’re grounded Streeter.” Weird he calls her Streeter even though he’s Streeter too.

And Vince says, “Sir, I tried to warn them to the best of my ability,” and Streeter (Streeter Streeter, not Pops Streeter), she kicks him in the moonstones and goes, “We done, deuce.”

But that left me with no proof of the prismatic touch, and Fizzy says, he says to me, “You lyin’ bastard. You got no proof of the prismatic touch. But I bet you can’t steal Streeter’s Pops’s ship back from the high-sec reco-yard.”

And I says, “Really? You’re sayin’ that to me?”

* * *

Ⓒ Christopher Degni