Author: R. J. Erbacher

He woke, sat up in bed, transmuted a yawn into a groan of satisfaction as he rolled his shoulders before dropping his feet onto the carpet. Standing, he stretched his fists up to the ceiling and groaned again, twisting the kinks out of his back, finishing up with a butt scratch through his gray boxer shorts.

The short walk through the hall allowed him to dry wash his hands over his face. In the kitchen he popped a pod into the coffee machine, placed a mug underneath and pressed start. Inhaling the aroma was intoxicating, helping him to fully wake up, but it didn’t mask an unpleasant odor that wrinkled his nose. After a sniff of his own armpit, a quick lift of the garbage lid was all he needed to discover the source of the offense. He pulled the draw strings of the white plastic bag, cinched, and knotted the top closed, carrying it with him.

Off to the side of the kitchen there was a door that led into the garage. He opened it and stepped down, annoyed with the minor inconvenience that the garage was on another level from the rest of the house.

Gazing at the strewn odds and ends (impact shovel, hammer, a dead plasma battery, roller blades) lying around misplaced, he realized he was going to have to set time aside later this morning to clean up the mess. He carried the trash bag over to the garage door. He didn’t have one of those fancy automatic openers. Just the good old-fashioned T-bar handle and roll up door. He yanked it open.

The black-background view of the universe outside his garage was always an invigorating sight.

Fat planets, front and center, swirling in a vibrant array of colors, some of them ringed with halos of bejeweled particle discs. A smattering of light blue spiral galaxy clusters, dotted in amongst the yellow and red elliptical galaxies. In the far distance, quasars pulsing bright blue were a nice accent feature. Up in the right-hand corner was a psychedelic nebula cloud just forming a baby star. If he looked down over the precipice of the floor, there was a fascinating twin galaxy, spinning in their conjoined whirlpool of cosmic dust.

He took in the spectacular tableau for a minute, smiling, before tossing the bag of garbage out into the vacuum of space to float away – and then closed the door. Coffee was probably ready by now.