I have been locked inside this rusty old box since before I can remember, hurtling through space at sub light speed. Today they turn off the my Universal Equilibrium Shield. My UE Shield is all that keeps me from projecting myself via the power of my thought, at the speed of my very Universal Will across the light years, maybe even across the aeons.

In three hours I will be in all places in the universe at all times, so the brochure says. I will experience glimpses of passing worlds warping past my consciousness, I will reach out to alien races like a man possessed with Religious fervour. I will rise from the spacegrave like Lazarus and turn the particle physics realm of intergalactic transport inside out. I will taste atoms and molecules and come back to tell the tales.

Here I go.

The UE Shield generator powers down but no hyperlite drive kicks in. I soar onward at the same vector in the same space, a failed first test flight if ever there was one. It begins to get cold. As I die I begin to think of all the things I never did. My broken family in Vermont, the stolen ID that got me across the border into this ultra-modern world and the time I raped my younger brother's wife. With no way to get back to heal the wounds.

I know nothing of science but an innate will to soar along the gossamer paths. Unplumbed galactic space is but a small trail to blaze. I don't understand all this Shield business-I just knew since before I knew, that I could traverse immense gulfs of space. My earthly existence is like some vague trace of reality that never was. I don't remember what Vermont was, or who my brother was, or who my parents were. Something happens to a guy when he gets locked up in a space box; that became my universe, and that is when I knew I could explore vast realms of nothingness as easy as a human could sneeze. I don't even remember what a sneeze is. I don't get tired of flinging myself along astral planes of subatomic particles, or gliding along skimpaths like it was second nature. To tell the truth, I don't know if I am a being anymore. My consciousness is that of being piped into this box and kicking into some phantasm of incredible power to flail along Universal lines of excellence. Who made me do this? What was I before? What is Vermont? What is to rape? Things happen to you when you get transformed into a feral ball of massive energy and harnessed like a lightning bolt to extend oneself between galaxies.

I have unbecome.

You may watch me like Haley's Comet circumnavigator-free-wheeling the cosmos in and out of control of my sense. Shake me from my isolated dementia. It is all I need. I see a planet up ahead - at this speed the dot grows to the size of Jupiter in half an eye-blink and I (in my box) am hurtling to the fiery surface of the planet heading towards a bubbling volcano. How could this have gone so wrong. Then, just the split second before my rusty old box hits the bubbling volcano cone of lava horror flesh burning, I get a cerebro-transmission from Home Base. They say, we have your brother's wife, she has something to say to you - the cerebro-broadcast takes a chemical split second or three, just enough to convey her bliss that my mission has gone so wrong.

Here's what she told me about rape and marriage and vengeance and the child she will abort in three days time:

"I hate you. I know you don't know what that means since they box-trapped you and took your mind away. At one time you were a human, and you were evil. I know you don't know what rape is, because things like you are now don't have anything remotely to do with humans. You impregnated me in a violent act, and I have a foetus inside of me from your essence. I want to keep the child but the controllers have stated that this child has to be in a box too, to do what you are doing now. And I won't stand for that. I hate you more than all the distance you travelled."

He sparked in the box and hit the surface, but the controllers took his essence and yanked on it until he was free of the box the second it impacted. Now he was fragmented, a free state of utter-nothingness but free of the feral box. He didn't know anything anymore. Now he knew he was detached from any reality. The final cut-off point. He was now free of the feral box, but free floating-the travelling had stopped. There was no planet where once there was one. He was disoriented. And he was tired of being manipulated by forces he did not understand.

As the superheat of volcano jism slapped in his cold hard face, a memory clue of resurrection steamed through his BiblioBrain like superfast maggots tunnelling a corpse. He was back in his adopted town of Vermont. On a blindingly sunny street. A cutting wind chilled him to the bone. He felt like a dream image projected by his terror at his imminent death yet he KNEW he was absolutely, totally real. He slapped himself in the face with a cold wet hand. A three legged dog scurried by yelping for no apparent reason. An ancient, giant neighbour passed him by and gave a cheer,

"Good mornin' Master Pattercake... Your mother out of hospital yet?" he realised he was only ten or eleven years old and he had to get home, quickly. He ran where he knew his broken family did their wretched thing to one another. As he ran his stride lengthened and his step became firmer, stronger, more manlike. He was a fully tall teenager as he kicked in his patio door. A pre-man of 240 pounds full of anger and retribution - he didn't care how long he had to spend in jail to pay for what he was about to do.

In the living room he found his dad battering his young brother by the fireplace. By the time he stopped beating him the dad had turned into a foetus. His younger brother turned to him, and said, "You raped my wife."

"I did?"

"You will."

"What else will happen?"

"You are going to be put in a feral box."

"What's that?"

"You'll see."

The father said as a gibbering infant, "This is not Vermont, even though you think it is."

"Who am I?" he asked.

"You are a prisoner of distances. You are a star rover. We do not exist anymore."

"But I see both of you."

His brother's wife appeared. She gave birth to a foetus and put it in another feral box in the white tactile sterile room.

"Is that my baby?"

"Yes. He is condemned to travel with you. He is a star rover as well."

"But what about the abortion?"

"That didn't happen. Now climb back in your feral star box."

He obeyed the orders, but as he climbed back in the box, the people, the family he vaguely remembered loving, turned into mission control.

They shut the door to the box. One mission control illuso-person turned to the other:

"We sure do have trouble with our Star Couriers. I think we fixed this one's mindbox to where he can take the long distances again. I shot him up with some vital sensory info. He's already on his way to deliver the payload to Beta 12 sector."

"They just go nuts. I wouldn't trade my job with his."

"Well, he might last a couple more round trips as a delivery podman, but then we'll have to treat him again."

The man in the box looked up again, and saw that he was hurtling through unplumbed galactic space. He couldn't remember anything else. He felt almost happy for a change.

Mission Control winked and blinked and logged off the system once they troubleshot the problem. All systems go again. The vital supplies to the off-world colonies would get there on schedule.

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