Ostraphobia

Hook :

Good evening, 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Your Captain again.

Please do not allow 

this minor turbulence 

to disturb you.

For now, please sit back, relax. 

Enjoy the remainder 

of The Flight.

Thank You.

Peter Pan's Wife :

Look what Jack drew.

Peter Pan :

That's very nice, dear.

What's that?

Peter Pan's Wife :

Fire.

Peter Pan :

Fire. Really?

Is that Our Plane?

Peter Pan's Wife :

Yep.

Peter Pan :

Who are these people?

Peter Pan's Wife :

That's Jack, that's Me, 

that's Mom...

...and that's you.

Peter Pan :

Where's my parachute?

I won't make it to 

my next birthday….

Peter Pan's Wife :

You won't die without A Phone 

and a fax machine

Peter Pan :

I got The Phone, 

and The Briefcase.

Peter Pan's Wife :

Talk to him.

Peter Pan :

…why didn't I have 

a parachute, Jackie?

Jack :

Take a wild guess.

Peter Pan :

Jackie. Jack.

Will you stop? You can 

break a window.

Jack :

They're double-layered. 

You can't break them.

Peter Pan :

Give me that.

Jack :

You're afraid you'll 

get sucked out. 

Peter Pan :

I'm not afraid of being sucked out.

Yes, you are. You're afraid 

you'll be sucked out.

Peter Pan :

Just stop.

Jack, next season, I'm coming 

to six games. I promise.

Jack :

Yeah, be sure to buy 

enough videotape.

Peter Pan :

Hey. Jack.

My Word is My Bond.

Jack :

Yeah, junk bond!

Peter Pan :

What's the matter with you? 

When are you gonna stop 

acting like A Child?

Jack :

I am a Child.

Peter Pan :

Grow up.

Still Small Voice

“I’m in the middle of my fantasy when I hear Him, loud and clear in my mind. 

“Jennette, I, the spirit of the Holy Ghost, command you to cross your name out on the sign-in sheet, go to the restroom, touch your underwear band five times in a row, twirl on one foot, unlock and relock the bathroom door five times, come back, and re-sign in on the sign-in sheet.”

I’m elated. He has spoken. The Holy Ghost, aka my Still Small Voice, has finally spoken to me. 

I’ve been waiting for Him to speak to me since my eighth birthday when I had my baptism. 

The Gift of the Holy Ghost was definitely the gift I was most excited for. A friend from church did get me some gooey slime, though, which was a close second. 

The Holy Ghost is a great guy up in Heaven who helps out Heavenly Father and Jesus. He’s kind of like them, in spirit and attitude, but He’s different, too, because He lives in each and every one of us Mormons.”

Loser Sons

What Is Called Father? 

(A Fissure in Familialism)

Freud at one point wonders about the victory of Patriarchy —  something we still have to contend with, he says. I am contending, but barely. On this point I orient myself toward Kafka’s work, its starting point and endpoint on the crevice of Paternity. 

An unfinished project of Kafka’s, titled “The Sons,” was meant to house the horde of loser sons who could not get up from the incessant destructions suffered at the hands of unwitting fathers. A savored innocence, an unconscious motor, seemed to drive the paternal machine. 

Herein lies a principal quality of tension for Kafka : to a certain extent the fathers he examines, no matter how persecutory, remained impervious to transferential fantasies that saw them as the ruling CEOs of psychic plundering, spoliation, incessant familial and political defrauding. Instead, pushing back tyrannical projections, they managed these fantasies by upgrading themselves to the function of loving and tender sovereign brutes whose practices meant little harm and far less damage than they nonetheless prompted. 

The Kafkan fathers weren’t out to smash their kids or send them to Kingdom come, as may have been the case when the ancient predecessor, Laius, deliberately sought to quell baby Oedipus. 

Kafkan kids were bound over to another set of lethal circumstances, less calibrated by intention or mere power play, less mandated by the so-called instinct for survival. Still, they could not avoid being crushed under the weight of powerful language assaults and the expanding girth of the paternal body, no matter how figurally situated. 

In the Kafka family, sexual difference decided whether or not you would be voided. Some girls got away, were somehow stronger, more rebellious, or more compatibly dependent on family rule. 

The boys were either killed off from the start — Kafka refers to two dead brothers who bailed on him, leaving the young Franz to fight off paternal brutishness on a solitary spin — or they were chronically prone to power failure, as if switched off, suddenly depleted and emptied of being. 

Their fate, though responsive to Father’s sprawling shadow, was by no means planned or designed by the largely hapless creature who came equipped with special effects and liquidating features that were, Kafka contends, for the most part absolved of guilt or any wrongdoing. 

Paternal power surges in the Kafkan world were by some measures inadvertent, offering the only sign of innocence in the material-familial environs. The sons in the world he pulled together thus suffered, among other things, from an exquisite Nietzschean injunction, disallowing any enactment of ressentiment. 

It might have been easier to hate and resent the Persecutor, to push back and mark succession, calling upon finitude’s vindictive edges. But Kafka plays it otherwise. He scores essential points on the outer limits of Freudian ambivalence, subduing the urge to strike back at the ever-encroaching debilitator. These tactics or abolition of tactics serves to keep Father alive and kicking.

Queen Katherine

“….For they judge it a great point of Cruelty, that anybody in their most need of help and comfort should be cast off and forsaken, and that old age, which both bringeth sickness with it, and is a sickness itself, should unkindly and unfaithfully be dealt withal.

But now and then it chanceth, whereas the man and the woman cannot well agree between themselves, both of them finding other, with whom they hope to live more quietly and merrily, that they by the full consent of them both be divorced asunder and married again to others.

But that not without The Authority of The Council, which agreeth to no divorces, before they and their wives have diligently tried and examined the matter. Yea…”

Split Open and Melt

assimilation (n.)

early 15c., "act of assimilating," in reference to The Body's use of nutrition, from Old French assimilacion, from Latin assimilationem (nominative assimilatio) "likeness, similarity," noun of action from past-participle stem of assimilare "to make like" (see assimilate). 

Meaning "process of becoming alike or identical, conversion into a similar substance" is from 1620s. 

Figurative use from 1790. 

Psychological sense is from 1855.

Entries linking to assimilation

assimilate (v.)

early 15c., in physiology, "absorb into and make part of The Body," from Latin assimilatus, past participle of assimilare, assimulare "to make like, copy, imitate, assume the form of; feign, pretend," from assimilated form of ad "to" (see ad-) + simulare "make similar," from similis "like, resembling, of the same kind" (see similar). 

Meaning "make alike, cause to resemble," and intransitive sense "become incorporated into" are from 1620s. In linguistics, "bring into accordance or agreement in speech," from 1854. 

Related: Assimilated; assimilating.

assimilationist (n.)

"one who advocates racial or ethnic integration," 1900, originally in reference to Hawaii and possessions obtained by the U.S. in the war against Spain; later with reference to Jews in European nations; see assimilation + -ist. 

In Portuguese, assimilado (literally "assimilated," past participle of assimilar) was used as a noun of natives of the Portuguese colonies in Africa who were admitted to equal rights and citizenship.

malassimilation (n.)

also mal-assimilation, "faulty digestion, imperfect nutrition," 1840, from mal- + assimilation.

Definitions of assimilation from WordNet

assimilation (n.)

the state of being assimilated; people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family;

assimilation (n.)

the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another;

Synonyms: absorption

assimilation (n.)

the process of absorbing nutrients into the body after digestion;

Synonyms : absorption

assimilation (n.)

a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound;

assimilation (n.)

the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure;

Synonyms: acculturation

assimilation (n.)

in the theories of Jean Piaget : 

The application of a general schema to a particular instance;

From wordnet.princeton.edu, not affiliated with etymonline.

Dictionary entries near assimilation

assignation

assignee

assignment

Lois Falling.

15: Ace Falling

The escape pod whipped around Heaven in descending orbit, little flares of atmosphere skidding off its casing. It was skipping on the edges of the air, bouncing across the sky. But in the end, there was only one place it could go. It would fall into Heaven's stratosphere and plummet towards the planet. If its retros fired, it might make a soft landing. Inside the pod there was something strange. It was Ace, lying curled, her knees up to her chin. She was quite unharmed. Something terrible had happened. Her eyes were wide, the darkness of space reflecting in them. The tiny fires from outside flashed across them every now and then, but they didn't react. Something terrible. When she was a child, Ace had woken in the night to hear owls, hooting in the distance of Perivale Park. The little girl had listened, scared, for a moment. Then she ran into Audrey's bedroom, hurtling under the covers. That was a dangerous thing to do, because Audrey wasn't always alone. All those bitter excuses and barriers. But that night, the owls had woken Audrey too. She just turned over and cuddled her daughter, and the two of them fell back into sleep. Audrey was dead now, in this far future. And who was out there who ever cared for Ace? Sabalom no, he never did. The Doctor? Could he care for her? Was it something he was able to do? Or was she just a piece in his games? She didn't want to think about him. Jan loved her. He really loved her. His love- making had been so complete, so concerned so full of desperate needing. He was the only person who'd ever needed like she needed. Needed love, needed strength, needed some. one to say everything was always gonna be okay. That was why he was a warrior too, because sometimes you had to keep kicking. Something terrible. Ace didn't know what. There was a big piece of her brain that knew something that she didn't want to know. She'd seen something that she shouldn't have seen, that she didn't want to see, and the sight was running away down deep inside her. This time, she wasn't going to run after it. This time, never mind fighting it, she'd let it go. There were some things that you shouldn't fight, some times when you just had to curl up and say yes to death. She really believed that, as the fires grew darker around the capsule. Not a muscle in her body moved, except her heart, and she'd have stopped that if she could. Just death, quiet death, up here without any fungus, up here away from people. Stupid people, stupid little clowns, and he'd sucked at her breast like a little child, a little boy they could have had together and it would have been okay, a family in the TARDIS, a family, a family —

People came and talked to her in the capsule. 

The Trickster was in a clown costume, and he had a completely different face. He told her that Jan was one of his, and it had all been a joke, couldn't she see? Ace cramped and twitched until he went away. 

Christopher came to her and said that he'd been jealous of the living, that he'd sacrificed himself again, and didn't see why Jan couldn't return that. Ace had punched his face in, hitting it and hitting it and hitting it - a clench of the teeth, a shudder and a gasp that stopped her on the edge of insanity - there was just a skull in the black cloak. Just a silly monster. Just a clown. 

In the capsule, as it fell, Mother Mary came to her. Or it was Diana, with her owls on her arm. The Huntress told Ace that she was loved, and that this wasn't the end. There was more life yet to come. A man, no matter how loved, couldn't drag down and end the life of a woman warrior. She'd always whispered in her ear, the goddess told Ace. She'd seen her in the Land Under The Hills. The Trickster was just a stupid little boy and she shouldn't listen to him. Don't run away, Diana told Ace. You already grabbed the rose once, already took reality instead of fantasy. You're much too important to lose, the steward of Time's Champion. But Ace didn't want to be somebody's something. She wanted to be Ace. And at the moment, that wasn't possible, 'cos Jan made her Ace now. 

And Jan was dead. So she wanted to be dead too. And if death wasn't going to come and see her, madness would look after her for a while. This is all flowery nonsense, an old English teacher told her. You're not talking to gods and things, and madness won't just pop up and take you. You'll bite your own tongue, and run spirals into yourself, and never talk normally with anybody else again. Madness isn't about gods, it's about shivering outside Centre Point with a cardboard box and a begging cup. 

Well, Christ, then just death, just let me die. I keep on surfacing for a second, and thinking that I can go on, that everything can be fairly all right. And then I get dragged back under, and every thing's such shit. I can see the next wave coming too, I can feel that I'm about to fall, and I'm never gonna reach land again. This is all there's ever gonna be, lots of pain, special pain, pain made for me. This is hell, isn't it, over Heaven? He was right out on the margins, Jan was. This is an obituary. He didn't want to submit, to the government or to death. So death came out to the provinces and took him by force. 

He never even got to be a hero, never even got to run at something with his sword.

The flames were building around the capsule now. Smoke was roasting off the hull, and colours were blasting across Ace's eyes, still oblivious. Another shooting star had bloomed over Heaven. Ace knew that, way down there below, somebody was watching it go. Maybe they were happy to see it, thought she was pretty. Maybe they knew it was another death they were watching. Maybe the people watching it were already dead, an army of corpses already shuffling towards the towns, ready to grab the living and shove spores into them. Billions of dead beings, the whole ground swelling with death, the air full of white spores. Maybe she was falling into that. Good. 

She'd been to Heaven and hell, without ever having a choice. 

Straight out of the womb into the grave, and it was only the TARDIS that had mixed it up, shown her everything in between, all in the wrong order. Without time travel, maybe she could just have had a normal life. It wouldn't have been like she'd seen in the Doctor's head that time. She'd have been a chemist, or an actress, or maybe she'd have chucked the whole thing and gone off to travel herself. 'Course she would. Those thoughts had taken her out of the despair again. 

Her eyes had begun to notice the beautiful colours that were blazing past the window. Colours born out of gases being ripped apart. That was where most elements came from. Out of supernovae, out of the death of stars. One day, the whole universe would probably end, and then everybody who was left would die. Did anything mean anything at all, then? Clarity let her exhale, finally, and relax the muscles of her mouth. Ace found that she was tasting blood from where she'd been biting her lip. The first gesture of his that she'd seen. Biting his lip at her beauty. Ace closed her eyes as the capsule shuddered. She wanted to remember. It was going to be hard, but they'd been up there together, way up there. They'd been great. Like the universe, like everything, it had come to an end. She wanted to know how. What goes up 'Must come down!' The Doctor shouted. Ace jumped, 'cos she thought she'd got her dreams under control now. But she'd heard it. She opened her eyes just in time to see a strange cube drop on to her lap. Remembering how the muscles worked, hat- ing how the mere act of moving reminded her of him, muscles, moving against her, she reached out and took the cube. It was silver and transparent. It was like . . a door, or a crystal ball. She could see things in it. What she wanted to see . or. 

She couldn't stop herself thinking of it now. His finger hovered over the button. His other hand was scratching his neck. He was scratching his neck because he'd been infected, a long time ago. A spore had con- nected itself to his neck jack, the hole that she'd run a finger around and teased. With an effort, he seemed to steady himself, and looked down the telescope. That's when he realized, and, in a second, accepted it. She had been watching the creatures making themselves out of human flesh, like it was a dream. 'Can't push the button,' he said. He hadn't given them an inch of victory, hadn't let them see any pain at all. 

"I love you,' she said. 'I love you,' he said. 

And then something terrible happened. His body, that beautiful human body, had filled with fungus as the spore in his neck blossomed. His face had gone almost instantly, so there hadn't been any final expression. His head had burst into a bundle of grey nodules. And then the door slammed shut in front of Ace, and the escape pod blasted out of the ship on explosive bolts. 

Ace fell, staring, down towards the planet Heaven. Ace still fell now, clutching the cube tight to her chest. If she started crying, she thought, she'd never stop. But she could cry, and she would. And sometime in the future, she'd be able to start living again. There it was, land on the bloody horizon, far away. The sky outside the viewport had become blue. The shooting star fired its retros, and changed course suddenly, leaving a jagged trail in the skies of Heaven. 

Quimper

‘What was that?' said Rimmer. 'In the middle of the spinning light. Those tubes.'

'The Omni-zone,' said the Toaster. 'Holly predicted we'd find that. It confirms his theory.'

'What theory?'

‘The theory that there are six other universes, and all their gateways converge at the centre of a singularity.'

'There are six other universes?' said Rimmer.

'So Holly reckoned,' said the Toaster. 'He also believed that our universe is the bad apple. It's the cock-up universe. Something went wrong with our Big Bang and made Time move in the wrong direction, that's why nothing makes sense.'

'I'll tell you something that does make sense,' The Cat staggered over to the Toaster. 'You made me eat seventy-three rounds of buttered toast. Check that: seven, three,' he slapped his rump. 'I feel like I'm carrying around a third buttock in my pants. And I just want you to know this - I want you to live with this for the rest of your life - you,' he jabbed the Toaster with his long-nailed forefinger, 'you make real lousy toast. It's cold, it's burnt, and it's soggy.'

The Toaster twirled his browning knob defiantly. 'Hey -what d'you expect for $£19.99 plus tax? Conversation, quantum theory and good toast?'

OPERATION : FREQUENT WIND

“There Must Be Some Kind 

of Way Out of Here,” said

The Joker to The Thief —

NIXON: 

Well, if They're that collapsible, maybe 

They just have to be collapsed. 

We've got to remember, we cannot -- 

We cannot keep this child  sucking at the tit 

 when the child is four years old.

Schrödinger’s Beatles

“The Irish Beatles experts and podcasters Jason Carty and Steven Cockcroft refer to the period between Lennon quitting the band on 20 September 1969, and the news of the band’s split becoming public on 10 April 1970, as ‘Schrödinger’s Beatles’. In the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, a poor cat is both dead and alive at the same time, just as during this period it was impossible to say whether the band was still a going concern or beyond hope. It could have been, as Lennon had told his band, the end of The Beatles. But his bandmates and the staff at Apple knew how changeable Lennon’s moods were. It could easily have been just another row that passed. The Beatles industry continued on as normal after Lennon informed the others of his decision to quit. A new deal with EMI was signed, and work on the Let It Be album continued. Had McCartney given Lennon more attention and listened to his concerns, without the pressure of business differences, it is conceivable that they could have repaired their relationship. Had Lennon regained enthusiasm for something other than Yoko and the heroin that the pair were by then taking, and become creatively engaged with his bandmates again, it is conceivable that he would have returned.”

  “Ironically, Paul was the only Beatle who never left the group. Ringo had been the first to quit, in 1968, when post-Rishikesh tensions between the Beatles first became undeniable, Yoko arrived in the studio, and he felt unloved and an outsider. He flew to the Mediterranean and spent two weeks on Peter Sellers’ yacht. During this holiday, he learned that cave-dwelling octopuses arranged shiny stones, bits of tin cans or whatever they found on the ocean floor outside their caves, like a garden, and a song was born. As he later recalled, he then ‘got a telegram saying, “You’re the best rock’n’roll drummer in the world. Come on Home, we love you.” And so I came back. We all needed that little shake-up. When I got back to the studio I found George had had it decked out with flowers – there were flowers everywhere. I felt good about myself again.’ ”

How Do We Get Out?

Kryten recounted how Lister had followed The Cat into The Game.

'But Better Than Life's addictive! I knew that.'

'You were drunk, Mister David; you thought you'd be OK just to go into The Game and tell The Cat what danger he was in. But once you'd linked up to the Cat's headband, you didn't come out.'

'What about me?' said Rimmer. 'Why did I go in?'

'You were drunk too. You said you had the willpower to drag them both out. You got Holly to splice you into the Game. And that was the last we saw of you.'

Kryten told how they had wandered around Red Dwarf in the twilight zombie state the Game induced. How he'd done his best to feed them, and keep them from harming themselves. But over the months the Cat's and Lister's bodies had begun to wither. Sometimes they'd spend weeks in a single position and develop huge bedsores. They'd tumble down stairs and get up, bloody and laughing, believing they'd made a parachute jump or some such thing. How he'd once seen Lister eat his own vomit with delight, obviously believing he was enjoying some sumptuous delicacy. How, in desperation, he'd begun lasering the messages into Lister's arms to warn him of the danger. This had distressed Kryten greatly. It was built into his software that he mustn't harm human beings. Months of cajoling by Holly had finally persuaded him that not to do it would hurt Lister even more.

But still the three of them remained in the Game. In the end, Kryten had no choice but to enter himself.

'But that's stupid,' said Lister. 'You'll get addicted too.'

Kryten shook his head. 'Holly was right. I'm immune. I could have come in right at the start and rescued you.'

'Immune?' said Rimmer. 'Why are you immune?'

Kryten cracked his face into a hollow grin. 'I'm a mechanoid. I don't have dreams. I don't have fantasies the way you do. I have very few expectations or desires.'

'Very few?' said Lister. 'Then you do have some?'

A Valkyrie appeared, bearing a brand-new, freshly wrapped squeezy mop.

'Only one,' said Kryten, accepting the gift and tearing off the paper. 'Oh, wonderful. A squeezy mop! Just what I've always wanted.'

'OK', said Lister, leaning forward, 'the sixty-four million dollarpound question : How Do We Get Out?'

The windscreen wipers patted the snow into neat white triangles on the model A's window as the car grunted past, the white-coated sign: 'Bedford Falls - 2 miles'.

Lister banged at the dashboard with a gloved hand, and the faltering heater whirred back from the dead, and unenthusiastically started to de-mist the windscreen. Lister craned over the steering column and tried to make out the grey ruts in the snow which served as a rough indication as to where the road might be.

He was leaving The Game. It was easy to leave the Game. Easier than he'd have thought.

First you had to want to leave. And, of course, to want to leave you had to know you were in The Game in the first place. That was the hard part, realising that this wasn't reality. Then it was only a matter of finding An Exit. Just that. A Door marked 'EXIT'.

'And where are these doors?' he'd asked Kryten.

'It's your fantasy,' Kryten had replied; 'they're wherever you want them to be.'

So there it was. All he had to do was imagine An Exit, and go through it.

He'd pass through the exit and find himself back on Red Dwarf, probably thin and gaunt and wasted from his two years in The Game but, nevertheless, back in reality. Once back, he could remove his headband - no, destroy his headband!

Destroy them all! - then start the long haul back to health.

But it was an individual matter. They all had to create their own separate exits. Alone. You're born alone, you die alone, you leave The Game alone.

The glimmering lights of Bedford Falls twinkled in the valley below as, for the last time, he made his way down the hill to his personal Shangri-La.

Ever since he'd left Earth, every step he'd taken had led him further away from the dirty polluted world he loved. First Mimas, then the outer reaches of the solar system, then Deep Space, and finally here - in the wrong dimension of the wrong plane of reality. It was hard to imagine how he could ever be further away from Home.

The Ford juddered down the main street under the strings of lights that hung between trees down the avenue. He passed Horace's bank, and through the window saw the money still stacked in neat piles on the counter. He passed Old Man Gower's drugstore. How could he have - believed it existed? He passed Martini's Bar, alive inside with joyful revellers celebrating Christmas Eve. He headed the old car down Sycamore Avenue, and slid to rest outside no. 220.

There, in the middle of the street, a pink neon sign hung over a shimmering archway. There was His Exit, just as he'd imagined it. On the other side was Reality.

It started to snow. Christmas Eve.

How could he leave them on Christmas Eve?

What harm was one more day? He turned away from the dissolving exit and crunched up the drive to 220.

One more night of that pinball smile.

Just one.

He couldn't leave them on Christmas Eve.

But, of course, in Bedford Falls it was always Christmas Eve ...

Scorpion

“I went to The Woods because 

I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of Life, 

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, 

discover that 

I had not Lived.

I did not wish to Live 

what was not Life, 

Living is so dear; 

nor did I wish to practice resignation, 

unless it was quite necessary. 

I wanted to live deep 

and suck out all the marrow of Life, 

to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout 

all that was not Life, 

to cut a broad swath and shave close, 

to drive Life into a corner, and 

reduce it to its lowest terms.” 

— Henry David Thoreau

TEMPLE artefact #16

XIII. DEATH

KEY WORDS – 

MAJOR CHANGE. 

ENDINGS AND BEGININGS. 

DEATH.

Death is unlucky Trump 13 

of the Major Arcana.

Death is some say, a card 

of Change, not to be feared...

Colours are RED, PURPLE, 

BLACK and SILVER.

Our Death, like that of Jim Starlin 

and Neil Gaiman in the comics, 

is a female gothic figure, voluptuous 

and fetishistic in that inevitable intertwining 

of Sex and Death that followed 

when some opportunistic eukaryotes moved on from fission cloning.

This is The Empress Death, 

Mother of Skeletons, 

who also culls in 

endless abundance 

what she brings forth.

In many Death cards, 

our POV is at a safe remove, 

watching Death at work in a field, culling Kings and commoners alike.

In ours, there is no doubt 

that the figure is advancing 

toward us, taking all 

the time she needs.

She is approaching, implacably, 

step by step, her huge scythe swinging like a pendulum, 

she gets closer, change by change, 

moment by moment.

In the meantime, on her way, she can be a card of Radical Change, 

a harbinger of Transformation 

and personal growth!

On her head, she wears 

a bishop’s fish-like mitre 

(the fish is related to Death 

via the Hebrew letter NUN attributed to this Card, 

the fish swimming in the ‘underworld’…) 

with an armored VISOR 

pushed up at the front as if 

from a knight’s helmet.

On the mitre we see 

the astrological sign 

for SCORPIO with its 

hooked tail.

A weblike VEIL draping down from the mitre and the raised visor to her shoulders, covering her head. 

Under the mesh we can tell 

there is no face, 

only the sockets and 

grin of a SKULL.

Otherwise, she has a Burlesque 

pin-up body – waist cinched tight 

by a strappy leather corset.

In her black-gloved hands 

she wields a big and formidable 

scythe sweeping back for the cut. 

The angle of the scythe makes a diagonal slash across the centre of the image suggestive of 

a falling guillotine blade.

We can tell where she’s been 

by the swathe of cut blooms 

and floating flower heads 

in the swirling wake behind her.

A GIANT SCORPION 

clings to Death’s back, 

so that see only its 

legs and pincers wrapped 

around her body like some nightmare couture. 

These articulated scorpion legs clenched around her midriff resemble the bones of a corset. The huge, upraised PINCERS at either side, like ghastly wings. 

The thorned venomous tail 

curled up behind.

Death wades through the brackish waters of a LILY POND that come up above her knees to her thighs. We can see the tops of tight thigh boots and fishnet tights above.

Flaring out either side and dragging on the water a SKIRT.

RED HEART-SHAPED LEAVES on black branching nervous systems, we see flowers with black stems and red heads growing from the bloody acrid waters –under the surface in the red swamp water, we can see skeleton fishes swimming among the stems of flowers.

Seen through the misty gloom that fills the background above the lake -

A BOAT - simple punt belonging to 

CHARON boatman of the dead, moored at a rundown wooden jetty.

A forest of five 

SQUARE CHIMNEYS bristle in background. Cremation smoke rising in straight lines from each.

Cypress and weeping willow add to the mournful landscape.

A red, smoky sun simmers behind Death’s head, setting into the miasma. It seems to be held between the upraised pincers of the scorpion riding on Death’s back. 

In the sun can be seen 

the skeleton of an EAGLE.

7 of 9, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix-01 : 

There is only ONE course of Action : 

DESTROY Them FIRST. 

• My subspace link to The Collective has been weakened by the interdimensional rift. 

• We CANNOT signal for Help. 

• We ARE alone. 

We must construct a compliment 

of biomolecular warheads 

and modify Your Weapons to launch them.

Acting-Captain Cmdr. Chakotay : 

I've got a better idea — Why don't you open that rift again and take Us back?

7 of 9, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix-01 : 

If I did THAT, 

• You would NO-LONGER cooperate.

Goo People

Capt. SHAW : 

Of all the stations that 

a Changeling could infiltrate, 

why transporter tech? 

Seven of Nine :

I don't know. I've never 

encountered one before. 

Capt. SHAW : 

[SIGHS] They're goo-people. 

Walking, talking clay-dough. 

They can replicate a person 

on sight alone. 

Voice, mannerisms, 

s-speech patterns, 

but that's it. You... 

Most of the time, you can tell. 

Ask him a question that 

they should know the answer to. 

Simple question, 

wrong answer... boom, Changeling. 

Seven of Nine :

Yeah, but that would require 

a huge amount of knowledge 

about everyone in the crew. 

SHAW: 

Look, you and I got off 

on the wrong foot. 

I underestimated you. 

You have great instincts, 

you're a natural leader, make a 

great captain one day — 

Which is something 

I totally would say... 

Seven of Nine :

….if you were a Changeling 

and not just a dick. 

Capt. SHAW : 

Now you're starting to catch on. 

But you were right. 

Goo people... it's got to be tough 

to snuff out this asshole alone. 

So, so... Maybe you get them 

to come to you. 

Seven of Nine :

How? 

Capt. SHAW : 

Bait them. Steal their pot. 

Seven of Nine :

Pot? I'm assuming you're not referring to cannabis. 

Capt. SHAW : 

Sadly, no. 

Seven of Nine :

I... 

Capt. SHAW : 

So, it's hard 

for Changelings to maintain 

their non-goo false form, and so, 

they have to rest in a-in a... 

in a-in a pot, a vase, a... 

receptacle-thing. 

Sometimes, they leave behind, 

like, residue goo, like, resi-goo. 

You get a sample of that, 

you upload it to the computer, 

you have the ship scan 

for that son of a bitch. 

Seven of Nine :

Thank you, 

Captain.

[GRUNTS] 

Capt. SHAW : 

Whatever. 

[DOOR WHOOSHES SHUT]