Smoking Under the Whyfish Billboard like a Delinquent

There was no access to weed in his waking life, but he had learned how not to smoke a cigar.

You weren’t supposed to inhale a cigar, though he had done it plenty of times.

He was handed a hand-rolled cigar by one of his Ormus trainees who was about to be a father. “This makes you a grandfather!”

He didn’t know what to say. His children were his soldiers. He thought about them that way and they may have picked up on it, but no one had called him a father of any kind before until then.

He had only had a cigarette before then and he coughed until he felt the incredible urge to be held, and at least he got that from Margulis afterwards. Privately, where no one could see, of course.

Margulis was his whole world. Margulis would protect him. Margulis would hold him when he wanted to be held as long as it didn’t interfere or could be hidden from the others.

He was owed a wedding.

Instead, he was back in the Cathedral Ship again, and it was Logos offering him something resembling a badly wrapped handmade cigarette. He knew what it was. Had tried it once or twice before, but it wasn’t something he was into. It didn’t make sense to get high on the job as a construction worker.

“What’s this going to do in this place?”

“I don’t know, this is your nightmare. You thought of it and now we’re here.”

Cherenkov knew very well how dead he was, but this was neither hell nor heaven, and it didn’t really feel like purgatory, either.

The red light and the heat from the billboard made this one of the few places on the Cathedral Ship that radiated any warmth, and somehow Logos also had a standard lighter on him.

He still didn’t know how to smoke, and he was coughing pretty badly, not enough to want to be held, but remembering that Margulis used to do that made the resentment bubble up again. Logos being able to understand his thoughts was going to make this awkward.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed about. You were robbed of something most people take for granted. It’s unfair to judge yourself by their standards.”

“You don’t have to pretend to be nice, I don’t need your pity.”

“Pity? This isn’t pity. This is me trying to keep your despair from adding to the system collapse. You might not be The Architect, but your will shines bright enough that it’s become attached to this loosely spinning reincarnation cluster. Klaus remembered some part of you, somehow, so here you are, I suppose.”

Suddenly, it was a lovely spring day, and a brash-looking blonde man in a lab coat walked by the billboard. “Is that him?”

It was merely a vision, and the man faded away quickly. Logos nodded. “It’s at least who he used to be.”

Andrew wondered at him for a few moments, wishing he understood more, but all of a sudden tired, and feeling it.