Bags packed, ship fueled up, course plotted in. Charlie Koskinen, temporarily of the Temporarily Autonomous Zoners, was all ready to head out.
It had been a good run, he reflected. He'd first joined the Discordian crew a few years ago in the Erisian Liberation Front, under the name of Saint Gulik. Those were the days... the ELF answered to no one, unless they felt otherwise. He'd flown around with Mal, Finn, Fnordie the Wondermutt, Catch 23, keeping the Chao wobbling right along and shovin' his hind parts in the face of order.
But times had changed. The flock had settled down with the Zoners and started spreading the word of Goddess in other ways. Now it was trading this, Freeport that, restrictions, no-fire-zones, diplomacy... Charlie just wasn't feeling it anymore. On top of that, the TAZ were growing in ways that just seemed wrong to him. He'd taken a peek at the entrance exams of the last two acolytes, and wasn't at all impressed. But apparently a good knowledge of Goddess and Her ways wasn't a requirement anymore. Just fill in the blanks with senseless babble about some arbitrary view of "chaos" and you're in. On top of that, some of the other newer members had begun to get on Charlies nerves. The whining, the boasting, the sheer stupidity was getting old. Not to mention the increasing number of folks with wacky foreheads. Those guys were just scary.
And the Episkopos Prime himself? He was in and out, but always seeming to be a little "out of it".
Maybe the others had lost sight of Eris, Charlie thought. But no, that's between themselves and Eris. She speaks to us all in different ways.
Heaving a sigh, Charlie slowly pulled off his robes, and took one last, long look at them. They just didn't hold the same meaning anymore. Charlie loosened his grip, and let his uniform fall silently to the cold hangar floor. Naked as the day he was born, he climbed into the cockpit of his Arrow, and took off.
Charlie would make one last stop at the Geode, and then head out for Freeport 14 in Yukon. "Zoners within Zoners," they called themselves on that base. Charlie figured he could carve out a life for himself there. And if he couldn't, well, as the old POEE slogan goes...