Light dimly beams up from the hover plate across the room to the opaque sphere rotating a few milometers up. Green misty blocks phase across the surface shifting between two patterns as the glass picks up speed. A dull hum adding the bass to your snores. The eggshell light from the panel fades and it leaves a stationary orbit snaking its way along magnetic pathways, compliments of your parents after one too many missed commitments, directing it to your headboard. The forest green shimmering highlighting your skin extinguishes once it reaches the docking panel and resumes its silence for a breath.

Hello hello to all the Western Proto-Pretties! The sound breached the tranquil silence of your room with an explosive awakening that startled you out of dreamless slumber. Core, chest, and shoulder muscles ache in protest and you groan; rolling around reaching blindly into the darkness for the comfort of unconsciousness. You only find the corners of your pillow but that’s enough in this moment to cover your ears and bury your face in the mattress.

Your hosts Des and Yuliro are finally back to spice up your cycle with cosmic news, celebrity ‘gos’ and anything worth doing that isn’t you happening on our side of the 88! You’re listening to the BRRN, your sixty-ninth reason why. Des was clearly such a overwhelming shock of excitement every initial waking hour should be cautioned against before injection, the irritations more than confirming you shouldn’t have taken the joke recommendation from your family hours earlier. Having been vehemently stonewalled from sleep at a decent hour, a justifiable mix milking every second out of vising friends and family and being woken up to tell someone new about the old plans for your Graduation Ceremony, the shrill and sandpaper voice was not appreciated. The blessedly cool mattress does it’s absolute best to not stifle the stream of vulgarities you unload vacillating between drowsy apathy and vengeance.

“End Transmission.”You plead vainly knowing it would only go quiet after the proper menu sequence; another feature at the behest of your parents no doubt. The glass was warm to the touch, no doubt from having to compensate for playing the explosive energy, as you brave the darkness to retrieve the orb. Swallowing a microphone to capture the dying embers of vocal fry shouldn’t have warmed it this much. You think on for a few more minutes, chuckling at any and every gurgle and pop of his voice. We’re entering into Xezx’s fourth cycle. That means it’s tizzity-time to tittily bounce your way to a panel center for the once in a system vote on a supple youngling’s star! Will she be a white dwarf and tease us with a little light show? A dominating red giant threatening to crush us? Or will she be packing a juicy brown thick curve, like so many of Yuli’s ‘dates’. Des leaned in on the jab to his cohost, swallowing his microphone as he talked. Yuliro’s gruff and deep laughs warmed the sphere more in your hands.

Sleepy rage took a seat to bewilderment as you listen on. You lovely supple fruits out there get them sexy ARE-SES down the second best poll this side of the B8. Come see me after in Panel 12’s Party District. Double pleasure points if. You’re. Twins.

You retreat deeper into your shoulders and snort with each emphatically grunted word. His unabashed astrological and social norm butchering may tickle a craving but you realize all too late that you were too greedy when Des joined in on the laughing.

He dared to start from his chest and cursed your ears with a breathy and chirping sound that clutched at your asshole in an uncomfortably new way. The sound clawed and gnawed its way so deep that when he gasped to shift into a higher octave, it was leaving your lips in a hiss.

The radio had started pirouetting the razor between comfortably warm and impromptu projectile in your hands. The only thing keeping you entertained while your home is filled with 20 additional bodies for the next month and you were wasting its charge exploring how deep his strange new madness went. A decision you regret when lip licks and tongue rolls captured so crisply you could ear the watery exchange of phlegm as Des’ tongue bounced around his mouth. Panicked swipes and taps silences The BRRN and you groggily slide out of bed.

Hidden doors opened as you neared the baths and lights behind the vanity oscillate rainbow colors, brightening until a white light fills the room. Your crusted eyes examine puffier parts of your physique. Florescent lights revealing weighted bags under your eyes. Graduation Ceremony on its own was enough to pale a hair or two when a family wasn’t as large as yours, but six generations crammed into one panel had pushed you to add a few extra sweets and shave off some hours of sleep. Youth’s divorce of your features wouldn’t be for a few more cycles though you do contemplate ending your days sooner.

“Display Mode.” You repeat after clearing your throat a few times so the microphone registers your voice. The bathroom door shuts somewhere behind and you watch the your body fade into the blackness. The settling nebula was still thick and packed with particles that filter everything in a satiny red and orange as the exterior facing wall let in the universe.

Bathing on the edges of creation. Your time to sit and gather your thoughts.

You couldn’t get views like this outside of your room. Your parents were the types of people who had left the walls as they were, empty silver walls. 88 has plenty of splendor inside. Your father always preferred to look inward, the stars claimed your eyes cycles ago. The molasses crawl of planetary birth was a comfort. Humanity had once looked to the stars with curiosity and fear but here, in this moment as raw and as potential as the beginning of infinity, how can anything matter?

Perfection #53 plays in your mind: Control is never given to the needy. Urgency is to remain the currency of madness.