Here he is settling another world, all his accoutrements hanging and waving or strapped down. Half man, half beast, Cyborg, Centaurus, Ixion's creation. Looking back into that bright glare, a new world has come. Or rather he has come looking, staking his claim.

The Aeneid traces the origin of Rome; leaving fallen Troy, Aeneas battles seas, fate, men and gods till he sows his seed in Latium. Like Aeneas, this settler ranges, has its history, its appetites and its duty. Actually, after discovering Ixion in Tartarus I got carried away thinking about the race of Centaurs, wondering what ancient impulse conceived these half-man half-beast formations. Suddenly the Cyborg felt a very old concept to me. The Settler rises up on its haunches, totum-like, ready to pollinate the new world, to spread its likeness throughout the heavens.

I often find myself impatiently daydreaming or skim-thinking more like it, about the next generation of settlers, about those space miners, who'll be calling some extraterrestrial soil home, donning a spacesuit and going about mundane daily activities on distant planets. But it all kind of seems like nonsense to me now, unnatural, inefficient to leave this planet. It's like trying to crawl out of your body.