Prologue

I looked into my brother’s dead eyes and knew that I had killed him.

Fuck that, it was over 100 years ago.

I’m on a starship flying to some damn place that nobody has ever gone before. No humans, at any rate. And boldly, I guess. I was born in 1964, but here I go in 2123, on past Earth and Mars and shit.

Freaky.

Have you ever been driving a little Ford Pinto down the street, with a cheap-ass stereo, and been sitting at a traffic light listening to your music and minding your own, when some fool with a massive sound system pulls up beside you playing some thumping something that makes your ear wax drip out?

Probably not, considering how long it’s been since Ford made a Pinto, but I’m gonna pretend just the same.

Here’s a little trick for you. Pop in THE PLANETS by Gustav Holst. I tell you what. Do it now. Listen to the first track.

I’ll wait.

Spronky, ain’t it?

The first track is called "Mars, The Bringer of War," and it’s loaded with brass. It will stir your heart, if you have one, even if it’s a black heart like mine, but that’s not my point.

Here’s my point.

No matter how cheap your car’s sound system is, that particular track will blow the ears off the fool with the amps and the bass going thumpa thumpa thump.

But I digress.

As our little starship left Mars and we watched the red planet slowly shrink behind us on the viewscreens, Commander Adam Weinberg decided that we on the bridge should hear the same track.

I swear, the man is spronky.

The fact that he was fated to kill me later - literally kill me deader than a doornail - is irrelevant. He’s still spronky.

Just don’t tell him I said that.