82 Halley's Comet

Tales to Confound: The Misery of The Methane Man. I landed in Fete Noir, Ohio. February 28th 1877, Standard Earth Day. I was 93 years of age

and I could not understand why my antigravitaneous veins did not provide me lift, I assume it was because of the pure pre-Industrial oxygen.

I nudged the fecund dirt, a rusty blimp expelling from a grave, oh I knew lots of words, the innerguide taught me as we passed asteroids.

I spun and bzlfedd, hurfing. Silicon-based, I am. Encased as gas in this suit of reddish-orange. Rust on steel. Then the circus caught me.

I had been on Earth for a week, veinnotes in neon filling microns in my suit. I had been sent as a warning scout from beloved Saturn:warning

Mars was planning an attack. I needed to plant the seeds of a novel into a young boy named Herbert George Wells, a cautionary nightmare.

During the day, I soared high, artist drawings rendered in Midwestern newspapers of the strange airship, the blimp before there was a blimp.

At night, I would revel in the scents and touch, wind through grass electrified my synapses, I spoke to cows, and found myself held tight.

Two tiny men pulled me towards a tent, oh why had the cow not warned me? I now know, or suspect, that the cow was blind. A human spoke to me

twirling a white moustache that looked like the radio waves on Jupiter. "Ho, what manner be you?" Fancy man asked me in an amused tone.

I huffed a greeting: "Askk your nmme," I tried my best at English. "What, you say? My name is Barnum and, why, you say you are an astronaut?

I must tell this word to my friend Jules, he went on. And then he caged me, I had been tricked. I became the Industrial Astronaut for years.

We crissedcrossed America, I made friends with those near me, a boy w/ dog ears, a pig that spoke backwards, a woman with a tail touched me.

The crowds oohed, a woman in Omaha thought I looked like fried butter which made no sense, I saw Chicago recover from the meteor strike:1871

Mars' first controlled maneauver, the giant asteroid moved with lazerious bursts for weeks, burning Manistee & most of Chicago to the ground

Thus was I sent, and I was happy the city was regrowing, I stored images in my stemuling, uploading images to be seen in seventeen months.

In Zenith City, Oregon, I received eye pulses that my partner in our space program, Jsslyyyn you might pronounce her name, would join me.

She would ride the tail of Halley's Comet, Earth would pass through it in 1910, now just three years hence. The airships of 1877 now a myth.

I brainwaved HG Wells bombastic, he wrote news articles, nothing more. I tired of this place called carnival, shrank through my bars easily.

My love never came, the comet passed by that summer as the world panicked then sighed relief. The Martians never came, either. I had hope.

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