Panel one – Daedalus replaced.

Aug. 03 2009 – RANT – Listening to my upstairs neighbor fuck is no fun. It’s a flashback to my ex roommate Ben. He fucked like a freight train. All day, every day. You could hear him from the Mallorca parking lot and the house we lived* in was at the other end of the block.

His girlfriend while he lived with me “didn’t like the cold,” which meant he kept the thermostat on 78 year round. The thermostat was in the living room, the living room had the front door, he worked out in the living room, and he’d open the front door to “catch a breeze.”

In February.

It just so happened that at that place, I had all the bills save gas. When Ben (second of three proper roommates at that address) rotated through, this payed off tenfold – I caught a glimpse** of the gas bill once, changing from wifebeater for (my room – the attic) to sweater (for outside) on my way out. Minimum amount due was over six hundred dollars.

Since I returned to Pittsburgh in September of 2001 I’ve had some perpetual thing in my life that’s driven me out of the house – first to the Beehive, and after the Beehive went toxic, bars. So many bars. Every page of ATC has been written in bars.

The situation has its benefits. Frugality is not one of them, unfortunately. Can’t write it off, either – Dee’s is Cash Only.

Listening to what sounds like hilariously amateur sex when the last date you remember having was around the ’04 election is a bummer. That it sounds like a couple of Yip Yips playing with a toy jackhammer is pretty funny… and I suppose it beats the hell out of watching my boots untie themselves with the help of his subwoofer.

* Brooke lived. Ben lived. Jen lived. I… shut off huge parts of my head until I got my own place. I didn’t live, I huddled. Bunker-style. Waiting for the bombs to stop dropping so I could hit the head without having to talk to anybody. Sometimes I’m good at the at-will conversation thing, but people talking to you or at you when you’re worse than not in the mood for it is about as much fun as listening to the fucking. Or the weird smacking/slapping noises that persisted across a couple of roommates.

** I am not, in the local parlance, “nebby.” I’m not going to go through your mail. You want something kept secret, stick it under something. A post card, a pineapple, whatever. If you leave it out on the counter, well… my adblock only goes so far. This level of privacy-granting seems to have been karmically equalled out by the frequent disappearance of mail addressed to me from the mailbox at my last long-term address.

20090904 (16) – Lettered.

Cast

  • A former United States Army Ranger, Tantek has been with Thule Garrison since the Waking God Protocols field trials of the mid 1990s. He works well with Raven Lockheart, typically functioning as muscle though...

  • A South Jersey punk with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Templar-forged Master’s degree for field work, Raven posed as a high school guidance councillor during the early stages of the Waking God...

  • The first extraterrestrial human to be born on Terra. Home-schooled by Templar, he left the organization in 1997 citing management issues and took the Daedalus with him. John is an incredibly talented Navigator, having...

  • A pink-haired mechanical genius with a full complement of prosthetic limbs (one “bolt-on,” three high-quality synthetics) and no memory of her first twenty years, Xand is the Daedalus flight engineer. A non-terrestrial human with...

Glossary Articles

  • Airbase

    The Airbase, located deep in the Australian outback of Earth 2.0, is home to the crew of the Daedalus and the resting place of the Heirotus FTL test platform Epiphany. Defenses include automated turrets,...

  • Daedalus

    A Javelin class Am-capable high speed cargo transport, the Daedalus is the property of ex-Templar Captain John West. The workhorse of a shady courier service run out of the Australian outback in a nearby...

  • Epiphany

    A Pecora class star freighter used for early Heirotus BTS tests. Presumed destroyed during a premature BTS discharge event in January 1968, though no wreckage was recovered. Status upgraded to “missing” after captain and...