The Double Victor

Michael Hessel-Mial

‘The Double Victor’ by Glittering Plume, ca. 14,000,000 hours past
ADDRESS: /records/non-operations/narrative_set/4_system/glittering_plume/-128~4/REF

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:
A fighter witnesses the destruction of a station, and reflects on its significance for humanity, recognizing that asteroid dwellers who died before can’t share the victory.

ENTRY:

1.
An image of a human beside a human
In their presence, and you standing there
Can’t tell which is the projection of which,
Just that both support the other, physically and in spirit,
Standing in the vulnerable pride that suggests
A human standing as human for the first time.

Heaving battered fragments of asteroid and fuselage
That rattle my metal joints and controls,
Even when dampened by jet-shocks,
The starlane barricade slowly coalesces
Only in its completion to become a monument.
I see how I must appear when seeing my fellows in outline,
Dorsal and ulnar lights blinking in the shroud
Of calamity’s dust, and I think of that image of myself
As the figure of a new type of person
Who can only exist with the destruction of the stations,
Having crushed those who throttled and severed us
For moving and living as we wished.

But the cry for liberation and the lives of the liberated do not align.
There is always a second figure, which can and must exist
Only as a shadow or projection of another’s death.
That figure survived only to the close of the struggle,
And looking at the barricade, the lights in the dust,
I see that I am merely the second figure, that hero in outline.

2.
Hacker and Planetbound
Float above the ground,
Never to return to lives so thin
Or be entrapped, or not exist, again.

Dweller, in the rubble
Of the stationer’s will,
Belatedly I join you and your double
Ashamed that I delayed to eat my fill.

My back prickles at the textures of your cry
Amid the chorus of waves in the particle substrate;
Only for your signature would I switch on the audio
To tell me, “On the contrary, we did not die!”

3.
An unmaintained centripetal hall
Is colder than the poles of any planet,
But not as cold as you, Stationer;
A person fouled by a broken waste filter
Is more disgusting than the most fetid animal caves,
But not as disgusting as you, Stationer;
A body broken by years without gravity
Is a greater agony than a bone-cracking fall,
But still causes less agony than you, Stationer;
And for the role you play in people’s injury
It is good that your will was destroyed.

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
This entry is tagged for reference by authorized researchers. The author’s association with the Tangled Serpents cult, with implied support of insurrectionary violence, make the poem a stability risk if distributed for unrestricted access. For more suitable guiding poems, redirect to Ringed Zenith’s “To See A Shattered Creche Repaired,” which stresses the restored unity between former stationer and dweller after the crises of the Just era.
– Conductor of the Records, Prudent Era.
USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
We are pleased to now make available this long-forgotten work, which is a compelling transmission of a difficult time in history. The poem gives evidence for the broad sympathies for ending the Covenant’s dependence on station administration of the asteroids, though the Just Director was disturbed by such violence and strove for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Contemporary readings, attentive to the ambiguities of the poem, suggest that the author was more ambivalent to the necessity of conflict than its strident tone suggests.
– Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

Bio: Michael (he/him) is a writing studies lecturer at the University of Minnesota. His speculative poetry is informed by histories of social struggle and the varied poetry traditions in world literature. Forthcoming speculative poetry is forthcoming from Katabatic Circus. Previous digital poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, The Fanzine, and elsewhere. Michael is Jewish, believes in unions, prison abolition, and free Palestine, and is a father. He’s writing an epic poem called Song of the Participants.

Socials: poemguy at both Bluesky and Substack, michael_bezalel on Twitter.