The time spent in the nights of the Reef is starting to pay off. I’m still waiting for another breakthrough from Cliff, but for now, today I have a meeting with a truly special couple. (Here I jump in time; most interviews were done earlier, but this one feels more relevant.) We meet at the Pelikan, a club frequented by the Ukrainian-Russian diaspora on the Perem. Club, pub, cinema all in one. Tonight is sold out, and not just Ukrainians and Russians are here, but the very essence of the Reef. A star performer is expected; we wait. But for now, we talk.

ngie, Angela. I met her somewhere in the Outer Zone. I was in bad shape, and she picked me up, carried me home — to her place. Chirp-chirp. That’s how it goes. I collapsed near the docks and woke up at her place. She made a soup that could raise the dead. She really did remind me of my grandmother. My hands were shaking from withdrawal, and she just kept spooning the good stuff into me. Fuck, I’m either going to die here or move on from here. For now, I just have to survive.

Janina’s grandfather was a lieutenant in the PLW (the independent Polish Air Force, Polskie Lotnictwo Wojskowe). They fled as far as England from the 1939 invasion. Janusz, the grandfather, trained the famous 303 Squadron pilots; his son, Stanisław “Stanko,” the squadron’s ace pilot, crashed over Normandy after ten confirmed kills. He left behind one daughter, the only descendant of the McGregors, Janina “Jennie.” She fled to the Reef to escape a life sentence. British governments from Thatcher to Starmer did everything to put this frail old woman behind bars on terrorism charges. I wrote “frail” and “old woman,” but that’s not quite true. Jennie is old, well over eighty, but not frail. She is one of the toughest fighters I have ever met. A terrorist? Who am I to judge. In British eyes, certainly.

Laon — aka DJ Auri — is the perfect segue into heavier territory. I need to recover from the nights I spent bandaged to the Edge, and brace myself for the deeper (pun fuckin’ intended) interviews. Even so, he surprises me: we meet on the northern side of the Reef, far from downtown. I take a rickshaw up; he climbs out of an electric off‑roader. On the Reef, no one but the exceptional few owns what you’d call a car.

He’s short, wiry, and even in the dark night his skin is strikingly brown, almost blending into the shadows of the trees. Thin blade‑like lips, a soft voice — I have to lean in to catch his words. We’re heading up to the observatory, he says. That alone could fill a sermon. The Reef Observatory is the subject of a cutthroat struggle in the international scientific scene. Understandably so: though the Reef itself drifts, it’s one of the least light‑polluted places on Earth.

As we climb, I can’t always tell whether he’s talking to me or to himself. I already see the entrance when he suddenly halts.
“I dropped it,” he says, leaning in confidentially.
“Let’s find it.”
I have no fucking clue what he’s on about, but I shine my phone’s flashlight around enthusiastically. We search. He pants, I pant. We find it — and eat it. Two little packs lying on the path. God is my witness, I have no idea what we’re doing, but I’ve got nothing in me that could say no. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to. I’m dying to see where this goes.

At last we reach the top. The observatory — where they observe stars. We’re looking at gravity, supposedly. And light emission, mass, and life cycles. I’m stunned. We’re also looking at comas. I’m gravitating. But we’re watching something else too: C/2025 A6, my new friend — our mutual friend. It swings by every 1,350 years, so you damn well better appreciate it. Compared to this, the Dog Star’s a fucking joke.

A moment ago I really did intend to interview him, but that’s gone. I don’t even know where Eve is anymore. The golden man talked a hole straight through my gut; the diffuse nebulae, despite the Milky Way, are little pups from Sirius’s Latin name. If the crash of datura serves no other purpose, it’s at least to teach you as much about open clusters as you could ever learn about globular ones.

Holy fuck. I’ve woken up in a lot of places, but this one takes the cake. If you haven’t seen the Atlantic in its true beauty — you haven’t seen anything. The mountain (hill?) wind woke me at dawn. Minutes or hours passed before I came to. Alone, chilled, shaking, I started walking. And for the first time since I’ve been here, the Reef’s trembling and tilting, its swaying in the morning wind, felt like mine. Swaying. Tilted, fucking swaying. Walk of shame, all the way home. Breeze and cold, teeth chattering. I made it home, goddamn it.

 From here, it’s a cat’s jump to Masada — 17 minutes, nothing for the IDF, and even less for Hamas. Less still if they swear their oath here.

Not the first time, not the last, but once again this goddamn pulp-shot saved my ass and mind.