He sits alone, dance-sweat drying to rime on flesh and clothing. His shoes and socks are kept in Jayden's care: over there—at another table, closer to hulking monster speakers that bleed chaotic drum-and-bass at 140 beats per minute...twice the normal human heart-rate. He is happy, though he needs to take a moment. Alone. Away from the others. Jayden is the center of attention—and thankfully so! Let him endure Marianna's endless and sultry flirtations, Petr thinks. He smiles inwardly, damp with dance-sweat, his feet naked to the floor. The club watches him, its unblinking wall-eyes monitoring the ambient mood of the enclosed and smoky room. Somewhere, deep within the half-organic core of the building, the club-brain controls the functions of light, music and temperature. There are ways to please a club like this: things to ingest before a night of crazed dance-floor boogie...things the club will enjoy when it absorbs what sweat dampens shirts and occasionally bare feet. Petr has ingested a witch's brew of minerals and vitamins, Jayden too...and now, alone in the chaos of Liars and Saints at 2:30 am, he feels the faint shift of the bench cushions behind and beneath him. The floor's texture has grown spongy beneath his soles, and when he returns to laughing chatter with Jayden and Marianna, Hanka and Marcella, he will carry less sweat and fewer shed minerals. A waitress will appear with a round of free, frothy beers. An offering of sweat in a club like Headway is enough to get the smiling favor of barmaids and 'tenders. There is quiet comfort in that knowledge... ...but it hasn’t always been this way. When it gets greenhouse hot--enough so for water to sublimate into low-hanging clouds, Petr remembers the way it used to be. He remembers his hermetic solitude. It is hot, tonight—a greenhouse nightmare: proof that Mother Terra's children have taxed land and sky, and the distant, distant seas beyond all reasonable tolerances. He sits now, remembering the habitual walks to the nonstop kiosk on Narodni Trida for sausage or grease-dripping bramburak, followed by cigarettes and Koffola from the potraviny at the head-end of Lazarska. --Remembering the night-trams, because in late, late hours too hot for sleep, he took to the street with thoughts of a walk to the river. His nerves were twitchy in those days, and in need of some calming, existential unguent. Smoke in some cellar bar held no appeal. The throb of live music was equally unexciting. So he walked, sometimes with his kit: his laptop, coils of coaxial cable, extra batteries, and the signal converter he'd built. On those nights, when the urge struck him, he climbed his way to rooftops and mated his laptop and converter to various satellite dishes. He knew which ones to use, which ones were safest. And so he'd connect himself and pirate the dishes. Noise was his target. From Out There. His interests remain—but things are different now. Now, as dance sweat dries to rime, he thinks of the Noise, the hissing, whistling, pop of emission-sounds from stars and the Earth's neighbor planets—the big EM-active ones like Jupiter and Saturn. He will hear them. Tonight With Jayden. He will retrieve his gear and climb, with Jayden to a safe rooftop. Jayden will bring beer, and probably stories of Marianna's sultry flirtations. They will drink. They will listen to the noise of outer space, and weave tales to tell one another. And afterward, when the sun is a smear of indistinct light to the east, they will return home. **** As always, thank you for viewing, commenting, and reading. I hope you've enjoyed this.