You try to rise to every occasion, get out of the freshly laundered rot you buried yourself in. The tides and stars churn from pulp to revolution, farm to table, and vice versa. There and back again, if you’re lucky. When you look out the way you came, the pale blue is lost and replaced with other colours painstakingly conjured in a lab. Godspeed compared to evolution. Come and gone, like everything else. And in the end, a choice: blood or jam. The machine only reaps two kinds of rewards.