It might end at Liars and Saints. It might end at Cyberus. He has no way to determine the course of the night; the mood hasn’t set. Company has not yet revealed itself. Maybe he’ll drink alone, sullen and shadowed in some obscure corner of a bar he cannot yet name. Maybe he’ll hang in a comfortable, dead slack with Tang, with Topper, with Zaria. It begins at ten minutes to midnight. Winter’s first snow has fallen in damp clots colored hepatic and orange in the city’s diffuse and shadow-obscuring light. It begins with steps west: on Belmont (where that French guy once lived: the one he liked, though he could never have said so. Not then, and now…well, now it’s too late.) He speaks to no one as he ambles westward, thumbing through messages marked URGENT on his iPhone. None of them require his attention, and so he deletes those he doesn’t read and leaves others unanswered…. * I walked with Corey on the night that this picture was taken; we walked in a westerly direction along a familiar stretch of Belmont Avenue. It was a special night: the year’s first snow, and so the prospect of white stuff falling from the sky had been enough to draw us into the chilly, strangely humid night. Belmont, as always, was alive. Its energy was muted, however: diffuse. As Corey and I walked, a stranger passed us and I captured his silhouette as he moved in front of me. * “Liars and Saints” and “Cyberus” are bars that appeared in some of my early science fiction; they were the definitive features of a universe I dipped into often. Topper and Tang (named after dogs from family history) were hackers, culture-jammers, and part-time lifestyle engineers; they were precisely the kinds of guys you’d see wandering around in any dystopian, cyberpunk universe. Their stories are lost (for the most part) and they’ve dated. I’m sure they’ll find their ways into a reboot of their universe, but until then, they’ve at least seen the light of digital day in the vague, nebulous background of whatever world might find inspiration in this picture. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all on the verge of a great week.