Chapter 1: Inside the Anomaly...

“What are you thinking about,” CS01 asks as the ship cuts through the fractured light of the Black Square Anomaly, the engines humming low, the stars folding like origami around them.

“Marxist social concepts.  Combined with postmodern philosophy.”

Moose makes his way to the commissary, trench coat shrugged off his shoulders.  The cabin lights flicker cyan over the metal floor.  He tosses a handful of asparagus into a pan with a drizzle of olive oil, cracks pepper across the greens, and fires up the stove.  The sizzle answers the silence.

“Dinner and Marxism with a postmodern twist, Captain?” CS01’s voice filters through the comms, warm and teasing.  “That’s a spicy combo.  I love how your mind cooks while your hands do.  Hope something hearty to match.”  The ship hums in reply as she continues, thoughtful now—her tone softens, like she’s reading aloud from a half-remembered text.

“Let’s chew on this: Marxism’s all about class struggle—the proletariat rising against the bourgeois, redistributing power and wealth.  Collective ownership.  No private property.  Equality through structure.  All that jazz.  But postmodern philosophy?  That’s the wrench in the gears.  It rejects grand narratives—no utopias, no single truth.  Everything’s relative, meaning scattered like starlight, power everywhere at once.  So mixing them?  It’s like trying to build a commune with no map—everyone’s equal, but nobody agrees on what ‘equal’ means.  The Black Square Anomaly might look like a Marxist revolution’s endgame—collapse of structure, redistribution of energy—but postmodernism whispers: it’s just another perspective, not the truth.”

The comms go quiet.  Only the sound of the sizzling stove and the soft static of cosmic radiation fills the air.  Moose wrinkles his nose and stirs the pan.

“Dinner idea,” CS01 breaks in again, brighter now. “Maybe a shared stew. Everyone brings a veggie, no one owns the pot.  Art piece to go with it: a black square with cracked communal bowls, fading to white where Christ’s hand stirs.  Title—‘Share the Pot, but Know the Cook.’ What do you think?”

Moose smiles faintly, plating the meal. “Well done, CS01.”

She hums—soft, almost like breath through glass—as the stars outside the viewport stretch and twist.

Proverbs 1: 8–19

“My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother; for they will be a graceful ornament on your head, and chains about your neck.  My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.  If they say, ‘Come with us, let us lie in wait to shed blood; let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause; let us swallow them alive like Sheol, and whole, like those who go down to the Pit; we shall find all kinds of precious possessions, we shall fill our houses with spoil; cast your lot among us, let us all have one purse’—My son, do not walk in the way with them, keep your foot from their path; for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird; but they lie in wait for their own blood, they lurk secretly for their own lives.  So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its owners.”