I grab my strap with both hands and lie on my belly at the hatch's edge and count three hippopotami, and then the charge on Stude's kegger goes bang, and the plane kicks up, and now it's not the plane coming over the PA, but the Roman tyrant's voice, shouting, but not loud enough to be understood over the wind. The superfine mist of solvent settles like an acid bath over my Chestnut Ave, over the perfect smile, and starts to eat the shit out of it. I watch until the plane moves me out of range, then keep watching from my comm, renting super-expensive sat time on Dad's account. The roofs go first, along with the road surfaces, then the floors below, and then structural integrity is a thing of past and they fall to pieces like gingerbread, furniture tumbling rolypoly away, everything edged with rough fractal fringe. # Dad's greyfaced and clueless when I land. All he knows is that something made the plane very sick. He's worried and wants to hug me. I totter down the stairway that a guy in a jumpsuit rolled up, ears still ringing from the wind and my big boom. I'm almost down the step when a little Process-troll scurries up and says something in his ear. I know what it is, because he's never looked so pissed at me in all my life. I'm a fricken *genius*. -- <!-- <rdf:RDF xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <Work rdf:about="http://craphound.com/place/Cory_Doctorow_-_Shadow_of_the_Mothaship. txt"> <dc:title>Shadow of the Mothaship</dc:title> <dc:date>2000-12-1</dc:date> <dc:description>A science&#45;fiction short story by Cory Doctorow about a scientologyesque cult that is annointed the leaders of human ascension into beatitude by inscrutable aliens, from the short story collection "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows press in September, 2003 (ISBN: 1568582862)</dc:description> <dc:creator><Agent> <dc:title>Cory Doctorow</dc:title> </Agent></dc:creator> <dc:rights><Agent> <dc:title>Cory Doctorow</dc:title> </Agent></dc:rights> <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" /> <license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/" /> </Work> <License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/"> <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduction" /> <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribution" /> <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice" /> <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attribution" /> <prohibits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/CommercialUse" /> </License> </rdf:RDF> --> End of Project Gutenberg's Shadow of the Mothaship, by Cory Doctorow