The universe is vast and beautiful in it's scale and power. A magnificent hyperobject, a set of all sets simultaneously. It is often said that you can never fully understand a system you reside within, and thus it is understood that no conscious entity within the universe can ever fully comprehend it.

The possibility of stepping out of ones self always tantalized the ESP and new-age set for this very reason. A impossible goal to chase for perfect understanding. Mystics of every stripe in every era have claimed to do this, but none have ever had any proof.

Circe remembered she existed. She had though she was a sound wave, and then vector of heat, and then a mote of ozone over the pacific. But now she remembered herself. Who she was and how she got here didn't matter. The name and pronouns just made sense.

After that, it was a trivial leap in logic for Circe to realize she wasn't the cluster of ozone particles. She was just tuned into its frequency. She was a perfect transmission of information without energy. A horrific thermodynamic violation. With no danger of overload, she opened herself up to the whole universe.

The music of it's divine resonances washed over Circe. Every Atom and particle harmonizing in the song of Entropy and Enthalpy- give and take. Circe floated through the pale of existence for 7 lifetimes observing the galactic symphonies down to the quark soloist.

While she was listening to a ballad played on a mercury lake in the left wing of the butterfly galaxies, she was reminded of the sheen of Lake Berryessa back home. It was so different... and yet the oblique angle of the sun was exactly the same she felt like she was having deja vu.

Then, she remembered she had a home. The memory was foggy, but she felt an immense warmth for certain people and the collection of spires and mounds made of Calcium, Silicon, Iron, and Carbon.

Circe realized to live in the home she was remembering, she must have a physical form. Panic filled her vibrations. She needed to return! She had left the stove on for hours... years... millennia! Exploring her newfound entropic freedom could wait. A lifetime if she needed it to.

With a single thought, she found her body, on a beautiful planet in the ass end of a boring galaxy. That was the easy part. She vibrated delightedly to realize it had been minutes since she had been cut free. Her subjective time had been extended by a perverse inversion of relativity.

It wasn't obvious how a being made of pure information could recorporialize. How much would would be lost pushing her new information into a meat brain? Circe was going to have to pair down, a thermodynamically impossible set of information could not fit into a thermodynamically defined head. She worked quickly to assemble herself into a much reduced packet of information, enough for her meat body to get by on.

She guessed that maybe she could force herself into her nervous system. Even as pure information she could easily translate herself into the electrical signals used by her ape brain. The largest nerve closest to the brain was the optical one. Should be as easy as that.

She pushed herself into an eye and felt something pop.

The last thought Circe had before she was reassimilated and lost consciousness was just "oops".

~~+-0-+~~

Jeffery bit his lip. He had let his mind wander as he stutter stopped his car back home. This was the fucking problem with him. He gets an exciting case after all that work on boring stuff, and of course the wolf rears it's ugly head. Tempting him, whispering ugly lies to unleash the predator. There could be no greater reward for a job well done. He's filthy, broken, for needing this, but the yearning in his black soul shouts for it restlessly.

As he peeled off from the freeway, he was fighting an erection. As he headed through the winding roads of his development, he had to white knuckle the steering wheel to keep the sexual visions from distracting his driving. As he pulled into his driveway he was shaking with morbid anticipation. By the time he was safely through the door he was so pent up that he could do nothing but succumb to the compulsion.

Thrusting open his closet, he moves to his gun safe. He tried throwing them away but he just buys more while he's like this. His current negotiation with himself has been to keep them locked up, so he only acts when he's really in a frenzy. The part of himself not completely taken with lust watches, aloof, with disgust and contempt.

Shaky fingers dial in the code. Predator. Trembling hands peel the safe door open. Evil. An arm is stretched inside. Wrong. A mid sized cardboard box is pulled to a chest. Pervert. The box is popped open on a lap revealing its horrific contents. Wolf.

Predator. Evil. Wrong. Pervert. Wolf.

Predator-Evil-Wrong-Pervert-Wolf.

PredatorEvilWrongPervertWolf.

Jeffery never remembers how the lacy women's underwear get on his undressed body. They just do. The self hatred climaxes, then flounders under the tide of pure indescribable sexual desire. He lays on his bed debasing himself.

He only ever feels a sliver of bliss after climax. It's still enough to keep him coming back. Something dark within him demands more. He feels like Buffalo Bill.

The underwear goes in the utility sink. Too expensive to waste. Besides, who knows what he would do in the next frenzy if all the panties were crusty. Crossdress? In public? Kidnap a woman and skin her? It wasn't worth finding out.

He showers. He falls into bed. He decides against dinner. He screams into his pillow.

Why couldn't he have been born normal. Why does he have to deal with this curse. Why couldn't he have been born a woman?

~~+-0-+~~

Roger Odenkirk, 68, KB6ZZ, whistled while he worked. He flipped his custom transistor radio to Kksb 93.8 just in time to hear the end of Pyrrhic Defeat's To The Girl I Used To Love. He smiled to himself. Something about their explicitly lesbian twist on traditional American music warmed his heart.

He felt, perhaps inadvisabily, compelled to meet Natasha Conner and thank her. He had spent many lonely nights in his bed hugging a pillow and listening to Pyrrhic, waiting for tears that would never come. Sarah had left, and there was no one else in the world who knew him like that. After 30 years, he was truly broken.

As the last croon of Natasha Conner faded into the background, Get Sad by the Dinky Boyz started playing. Reluctantly, Roger flipped stations. He was never going to understand Skagrass. By now it had become a point of pride. Fucking Millennials and their weird music.

Roger wiped thermal compound on his canvas apron, and began putting the cooling blocks on the CPU and Graphics cards. Custom gaming tower for a local streamer. Things had come a long way in electronics since uncle Joe had taken him under his wing back in '74. Honestly, he missed when he could just butter his bread on radios alone.

The old man blew a raspberry and shuffled over to the coolant lines. He should've hired a successor years ago. Always thought he and Sarah would've made their own. It wasn't his fault he had married a lesbian in denial.

The timer on his work table dinged, loud and hard, pushing him out of his reverie. He muttered obscenities under his breath as he put away the tools at his workbench. His group of fogies were going to be on the 150 Mhz relay network in 5 minutes. He rushed from the clean green resin table sporting a black neoprene workmat, to the cluttered faded oak desk up stairs bucking under what had to be a literal ton of radio equipment.

He hit the large 'ON' button on his equipment, and then dashed over to the kitchen to start his nightly coco. By the time he had finished warming the milk in the microwave and adding midnight moo, the desk was a dazzling display of flashing lights and static.

Sitting down delicately, and setting his coco on a doily, he tuned into the repeater.

"...you know kids these days are far too entitled,"

"Aw yeah, yuck it up k6df, that's what our parents said about us."

"I'm serious-"

"This is w1gh reporting in."

"Oh hey! I haven't heard from you since last year's national contest!"

"Yeah well, my repeater rusted out, it took me forever to get the right equipment back up that hill."

"Damn," Roger finally cut in. "this is kb6zz and I'm sorry to hear that."

"I think we all are, the radio infrastructure really is going to the dogs."

"This country is going to the dogs."

"Can we skip the politics k6df?"

"Listen, all I'm saying is that aa4ev shouldn't've been arrested."

"He was broadcasting about how he was going to kill Mattie Long under his freaking call sign"

"Yeah well, he didn't do anything he said he was gonna."

"I'm not too happy about a friend going dark much either, especially when I was incommunicado, but threatening an elected official is technically not protected speech."

"It wasn't credible!"

"It was."

"Kb6zz you don't mean that."

"He was freaking all of us out."

"Not me."

"Yeah well, no offense k6df, but most of us don't trust your damn judgment on this."

"Roger, you are a gosh darn coward, you know that?"

"Hey now!"

"Freakin' A' k6df!"

"Folks! Let not get too heated on the public relay network."

"Yeah, don't want that FCC fine for all the swearing you old salt cakes did."

"Like sailors, the lotta ya."

Roger smiled and sipped his coco, it was going to be a fun night. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day. Less memories.

FriendlyPastoralist

Who's Circe?? Also who's this kindly old man?? I thought this was a story about two men making awful choices? not some "deep" bullshit about space and an infodump about HAM culture. And the weird sissy shit, gross. Who wrote this???

Hopefully we won't have to remember any of these HAM guys.
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