Stream of Consciousness POV

Someone wants me to make a political statement. Say that I favor some point of view that she does.

I forget which point of view.

“But it would mean a lot to us,” she said in the voice transcription she sent me. “The colony on Iapetus could be a thought leader for the entire solar system.”

The colony on Iapetus – myself, the scarecrow, and two cactus plants I’ve named Billy and Bubba – thought about the issue at hand; the issue I don’t remember.

Slowly I turned it over in my head.

What came to mind?

Niagara Falls.

Slowly I turn. Slowly I turn. Step by step.

I have views. I have views on many issues. But to represent the colony of Iapetus on a view, that is heady business.

Slowly I turn.

I had to walk out to the regio, where the scarecrow stood, to ask it the imponderable question. I had to walk out. Step by step.

As I walked I could hear the falls.

I visited the falls once. I stood, leaning on the rail, watching the rushing water, hearing it fall. It went where gravity wished it to go, and took some of the underlying bedrock with it. It did not ask the rock what it thought of leaving; it just worked on the rock until it left. Step by step. That is what I fear. Erosion.

Water gushed through the windows of the Alamo, tearing it slowly to pieces. In the weak gravity, the water gushed slowly, with more globular motions than on Earth. Sometimes, a globule wandered so slowly it did not splatter when it hit a surface, rather it bounced like a rubber ball, moire curves of light scattering shadows of ripples on the rock and hills of dust.

The scarecrow gave no answer.

Or maybe it did. But I could not hear it over the rush of Niagara Falls.

Slowly I turned. Step by step I walked back to my refuge.

Oddly, I longed for a bowler hat.

“I’d like a bowler hat,” I told the woman in reply.

She duly sent a bowler.

Slowly I turned. Step by step.

Bowler in place, squashed a bit by the helmet, again I walked out to the scarecrow on the regio. The rushing water had not washed it away, nor even cleaned the dust from the creases in the old space suit it wore. Here and there were tracks of the killdeer, who ran at my approach, keening their call, luring me from their nests in the dusty cracks and rocks.

Niagara Falls had not washed them away.

I thanked the woman for the bowler.

Her point of view, I forgot. If Billy and Bubba remembered, they did not say.

The Buckminster fullerene of Iapetus has no points of view, I finally told her. Points of view flow slowly on the surface like water and sink into the dust to gurgle and fuss beneath the surface and where it goes, I do not know. The killdeer refuse to tell.