Memoirs. Seeking.

[Mona Carter]

Youth.

With every star I pass and jumphole taken I fail to realize it trickling away, imperceptible.

Along the thousands of billions of others I fizzle quietly, gradually and immutably. Yet sometimes, afloat and alone, the tide of time rustles through awareness, distinct in deficiences of the body and memories slipping away.
I wander then through the past and wonder of the futures.

Somehow I never asked where I was born.

I had assumed for years it was the Freeport itself, as moving there dodges rememberance. The earliest, hazy pictures were always that of the Mother, of verdant mezzanines in hydroponics, the coarse glare of the cold-blue star beyond the Domes. The sounds were those of crowded corridors and hums of climate control units, the hiss of sprinklers, the solemn tone of my Father's readings. Years filled with a blissful simplicity of monotony, stationeer rigor and ignorance. Same faces, same routines, same rooms. The only passionate, interesting occasions were harmless in nature - Outsider visits and their stories, educational hypnoband half-trances, tales and histories muttered before bedtime.

I miss this sometimes - less and less, over the years - the time of barely being, of sheltered being,

of complexities of choices and perspectives truly invisible. A life countless masses still experience - as I realized during travels, and often reflected on with silent jealousy.
Alas, as Father likes to say, some are bound to flutter out into the night and be consumed by fire.