The city ran for hundreds of miles in every direction. As far as the eye could see, its claws of steel and concrete punctured and ripped the skin of the blue planet. Geometric splinters sliced far into the sky, which, once blue, was now a brown-grey brick of poison. The poison masked the stars and everything else… creating a black and white monotone, which felt like the expired last breath of a dead man. This… was home.
It was 3 A.M.
He slept on his side and breathed the poison slowly. From a nearby track, the sound of a freight train sent its slow pulse through the open window of the sleeping jester.
He awoke. He heard the pulse. He knew it. It was very good and he listened with thirsty ears. The good sound was the sound of life. It moved. It held adventure. It rekindled old feelings and it went anywhere.
He liked anywhere.
The good sound was contagious and he caught the good disease the moment it hit his ears.
When the sound faded into the night, it took a part of him with it. The part of him it took was the happy part, which, is not good for a jester… or anyone else.
It was just a freight train. He was just a jester. It wouldn’t make much difference to anyone. So, he packed a modest bag and melted into the night. He waited in the shadows by the railroad tracks… at the part of the city where the tracks turn sharply and the trains go slow.
When finally, the next train came screaming around through the curve, he emerged from the camouflage of glass and steel like a baby from the womb.
He ran to catch his destiny.
As he did, he smiled as he hadn’t smiled about anything in a long time. No one saw or knew.
Not there and not then.
But God saw… and He knew.
And as the train pulled out from the gravity of the poisoned place, the jester swung his legs luxuriously from the open door of the boxcar.
He stared at the opaque sky and sang new songs… making them up instantly in his head as he went along. He removed one of the sandwiches he had packed, and as he ate, the sky began to slowly clear.
One by one, and then in groups, the stars all came out. He knew the poison was gone and he realized that soon, the sun would come up and the air would be clear and it was all… too good.
The jester had tears in his eyes. He looked up at God and exclaimed gratefully in no uncertain terms….
“I like blue planet!”
And with that feeling saturating his whole being the jester drifted off to sleep…
smiling…
lulled by the music of the good sound…
And knowing inside…

that when he awoke… adventure was his!

God watched him fall asleep.
After he did, he whispered to him in the old language…
“I like blue planet too, and I like you.”