He sat—alone, now: as he preferred—scanning data and listening to the EM-chatter of local space. He’d filtered star-noise, and the booming, crackling, operatics of local gas giants from the day’s scan-sample. All that remained were ships: Centralist ships...Nemaean ships: different, but all linked in their habits. A dozen or so Nemaean supercruisers had fallen out of superluminal transit, dropping back into normal space/time amid a storm of inquiries and scans. A dozen or so Centralist ships did the same, interrogating time-base buoys in a manner he recognized; it disturbed him that Nemaeans did the same, in whatever language those ships spoke. It disturbed him that here—in the cold heart of WS-248, he could distinguish Nemaeans from Centralists only by their transponder calls. Out here—in the dark—it didn’t matter what ships belonged to what governments, and in a moment of dread and confusion, he thought of his opposite: a Nemaean, perhaps recently promoted, and sent into the Frontier Regions of Nemaean space. He wondered at his opposite’s name, and what good-byes he (or she) didn’t have the chance to say, because departures (as with all humans) were horrendous and troubling things. He read data, alone and in silence, skimming it for disturbing patterns. * I rather like the idea of Science Fiction from everyday things, and in this case, Science Fiction derived from a photograph of my friend Kristofer at work. Well, he wasn’t working when I took the initial photograph, if the retro-sounds of Pac-Man were any indication. He was waiting for pizza. We all were. Quest Internet Services was closed for the night, and Kris, Corey, and I had a few episodes of Star Trek: Voyager to watch; or as I like to put it, we had a hot date with 7-of-9 in that silver, ribbed catsuit she always wore. The initial photograph is one that I liked, but I was hesitant to post it. I felt that it needed something. What, I didn’t know...until last night. As I went through recent photographic files, I was struck by the prodigious number of printed circuit shots I’d taken: some with a flashlight, some with ambient room-light, and a few illuminated by the glow of my laptop screen. I saw unexpected connections and asked myself what a decent photograph would look like if I’d “redone” the walls, and maybe made a filing cabinet or two look a bit less like filing cabinets. This is the end result: layer upon layer upon layer of unrelated photographs. Kris’ keyboard is a drawing I made in Microsoft Paint: that near-useless freebie that comes with nearly every computer. It’s not useless, if you’re in the mood to make Star Trek style control panels, and well…I was in the mood to give Kris something a bit more Roddenberry-ish than the conventional keyboard originally before him. I also discovered that there was an almost invisible piano in the shot. I left it, just because I love the incongruity of it. As I looked at this image, I thought of Nemaea; I’ll be returning there soon. I liked the way the circuit boards in odd-colored light reminded me of Cross Club, in Prague. Cross Club is where all good computers go when they die; there are entire walls in Cross composed of…well…circuit boards and LEDs. It was in Cross that Nemaea was born, or at least the Nemeaean aesthetic, and so I thought it only fitting that I tip my hat to the Nemaean Universe so ubiquitous in the earlier pages of my gallery. Needless to say, there will be future trips to Nemaea, and yeah—Ilya, Aleo, and Doranna (for those of you who remember them) will finally get their promised “third tale.” Until then, here’s my friend Kris, a few circuit boards, and a primitive digi-doodle all kit-bashed into a single image. Thank you for viewing, reading and commenting, and I hope you’re all on the verge of a great weekend.