Dad and Mum appear on a screen, I disappear.

I've got over fifteen dollars left. My room costs me a penny a night, and for a
foam coffin, it's okay.

#

Someone stuck a paper flyer under my coffin's door this morning. That's unusual
-- who thinks that the people in the coffins are a sexy demographic?

My very own father is giving a free lecture on Lasting Happiness and the
Galactic Federation, at Raptor Stadium, tomorrow night.

I make a mental note to be elsewhere.

Of course, it's not important where I am, the fricken thing is simulcast to
every dingy, darky corner of the world. Pops, after all, has been given a
Governor General's award, a Nobel Prize, and a UN Medal of Bravery.

I pinball between bars, looking for somewhere outside of the coffin without the
Tyrant's oration.

Someone's converted what was left of Roy Thompson hall into a big booming dance
club, the kind of place with strobe lights and nekkid dancers.

It's been so long since I was at a bar. Last summer. When they first ascended to
the mothaship. I feel like an intruder, though I notice about a million
half-familiar faces among the dancers, people who I met or shook hands with or
drank with or fought with, some time in another life.

And then I see Daisy Duke. Six months have been enough for her to grow her hair
out a little and do something to it that makes it look *expensive*. She's
wearing a catsuit and a bolero jacket, and looks sexy and kind of scary.

She's at one of the ridiculously small tables, drinking and sparkling at a man
in a silver vest and some kind of skirt that looks like the kind of thing I
laugh at until I catch myself trying one on

We make eye-contact. I smile and start to stand. I even point at my knee and
grin. Her date says something, and I see, behind the twinkle, a total lack of
recognition. She turns to him and I see myself in the mirror behind her.

My hair's longer. I'm not wearing a bathrobe. I've got some meat on my bones.
I'm not walking with a cane. Still, I'm *me*. I want to walk over to her and
give her a hug, roll up my pants and show her the gob of scar tissue around my
knee, find out where Tony the Tiger's got to.

But I don't. I don't know why, but I don't. If I had a comm, I might try calling
her, so she'd see my name and then I wouldn't have to say it to her. But I don't
have a comm.

I feel, suddenly, like a ghost.

I test this out, walk to the bar, circling Daisy's table once on the way and