THAT DAY

I spend all day on my crazy art project, Planetocopia--a set of web-tourable utopian worlds. Fill in some regional tours on Serrana, then sketch my first orbital view of Lyr (right). Don't have a physical globe of Lyr yet, so it's rough. Need more clouds? Lyr is wet...

Got an email critiquing an early planet in the series: Venus Unveiled. "Air that dense would be toxic." If true, it'll be a problem on Lyr, too. So I re-research to be sure. Find my answer in Sylvia Earle's Sea Change. Nitrogen NOT a problem--as I thought, my partial pressure around 3-3.5 atmospheres is equivalent to about 20-25m of water (75'), not quite into the zonk zone starting around 30m (100'); a minority of visitors might feel a mild buzz, but it's not going to knock tourists out. Long-term, extra oxygen (30% above Earth's partial pressure) might age tissue, but I think we could handle it. Our bloodstreams adapt to thin air by adjusting hemoglobin levels; I assume blood will thin out in over-rich air, so most tissues would get roughly the optimal amount. Oxygen's been that rich on Earth in the past. And even in our era, caisson workers did hard labor for years in up to several times our oxygen level; their great hazard wasn't oxygen OR nitrogen rapture, but the Bends, if they depressurized too fast, in minutes not hours--not a realistic hazard on either my Venus or Lyr.

Hmm... unless you snorkel on those worlds! Both have lovely reefs, but I better warn against diving more than a few yards down. Within seconds pressures rise--just five-ten meters down, nitrogen DOES get druglike. Rapture of the Shallows!

Planets fluffy as housecats... till they pop out their claws.

THAT NIGHT

I'm curled up by the bar in the Bazaar Cafe, San Francisco's best venue for songwriters. Here mere cover-tunes are banned. Originals alone may soar. Or sour. The crowd's dream-outré--tigers, a lone jaguar, and half a dozen feathered dinosaurs. That's a full house! Guests so dire require dinosaurian space. Beware-- Don't crowd your proud neighbors, or blood'll bloom. Not raw temper--for all predator-cubs learn restraint soon--but sheer spikiness and scale. No one dare sprawl. Up front a dino bard deep-croons four improvised ballads. Other raptors all ignore his lyrics. Never rude--chat quietly, or screen-peck. Neglect. Heard him before? But the tigers of the Bazaar demur! Biggest sweetest songbird ever. Lured. One tigress even leaps snake-fluid onto dais and curls up, monster-kitten, round our bard. The song soothes her huge paws--slowly claws sheathe. Velvetation. That's the job of art! Still sadly bared: humanity's jagged flaws. But even tigers long to tame! I bless her start.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Big city, big cat: in This Rough Magic (by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer) the Lion of Venice is no mere mascot as in our world, but a living spirit who defends the city, half-possesses the Doge, and blesses marriages with a huge and ghostly paw.
• Caution about personal space around well-armed critters: well, I researched another hazard today, but it's oddly analogous--not high tech but sheer mindfulness seems enough to prevent both Rapture of the Deep and... clawmarks.
• Art helping monsters coexist: Planetocopia, in every sense from sex to politics, is xenophilic. I'm trying to revive the lure of Utopia in this bristling, bad-tempered age. Still, my dream thinks even tigers prefer ballads to battle. Maybe those killer apes will come around. Eventually.
• ACTION: Keep at it. And sing more. "Music hath charms" that mere text and pictures lack.

YEARS LATER

I was slow to act on this. I'm a good composer of dream-songs but a clumsy musician--just not neurologically wired for it. But I spent a full year going weekly to the Bazaar Cafe and trying out originals; now my friends and I are recording them as The Krelkins.

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