Oobe _top_ May 2026

I looked back.

There is a version of me still rising. Still passing the bride, the firefighter, the man with the tie. Still heading for the dark between stars. I looked back

They hung in the thermosphere like a school of slow fish—fragments of people, each one a thin negative of a life. A firefighter still wearing his helmet. A bride whose veil trailed into nothing. A man in a business suit, tie flapping in solar wind. None of them spoke. But I heard them anyway. Still heading for the dark between stars

He never came back down.

The Earth was a dime. My house was less than dust. My feverish body, that little animal pinned to a mattress, was already being forgotten by the universe. And that was the real terror. Not death. Scale . The absolute, hilarious indifference of altitude. A bride whose veil trailed into nothing

The first time it happened, I was seven years old, flat on my back with a fever of 104. The ceiling’s water stain—a leering map of South America—began to wobble. Then it dropped.