Lagoon Station

Date: 10.15.2224

Location: Boathouse, Duson Lagoon

We left the Lucky 7 behind. The neon lies, the luck, the echo of clattering machines—gone. Across the highway, the boathouse waits like a relic perched on the edge of still water. The lagoon smells like rot and life mixed, bubbling in green slime where mutant hounds once patrolled. The building itself is eerily intact, pre-war branded boxes stacked in corners, cans of food, old cookware—just waiting for a decent stove to breathe life back into them.

Sleeping here is a compromise. The floor creaks, smells sour, and even with the still water lapping at the stilts, the slime from the hound battlefield drifts in, haunting each breath. Yet, we’re safer. For now.  One misstep here, and you’re lost.

Clancy stands watch, stiff as ever. I can see the tension crawling across his shoulders. “Relax,” I say. “Awareness doesn’t mean panic. You’ve got to read the space, not just guard it.... Observe, absorb, respond, then let your body find rhythm.”

He lets out a grunt, fingers twitching. Meanwhile, I hand him tools to work on Pinball. His hands are steady, but his speed? Slowed. Motors hum, sparks jump, servos whine—the little sentinel will move again, but he’s not quite the same. Not yet.

While Clancy works, he mutters a story, quiet enough not to disturb the lagoon:
“Grew up hearin’… Black folks, not… good people. Ain’t never met one I’d trust. But you… Chief… you ain’t bad at all. Think I missed something in my upbringing…”

I nod slowly, thinking of the rhythms that built me. “Maybe you did,” I reply. “But let me tell you about a man named Ray Marcel. my great-grandfather. Back in the 2050s, when racial tension boiled over under a tyrant president, he owned a store in New Orleans. Not just any store. A brand, a hub. He became an arbiter—hope, peace, bringing folks together.”

I let it hang. “New Orleans wasn’t like the rest of America. Creoles, Italians, Native Americans, Blacks—we all had our space, Tension were high, He was nearly shut down.  But he made it work. Laissez-faire in practice, principle in presence. People looked to him. He built trust where trust was scarce. That’s what I carry forward. That’s why I move the way I do.”

Clancy nods, chewing on it. Doubts linger, but the gears are turning. Awareness expanding. He’s learning. like all of us in this liminal space.

Pinball’s circuits cough back to life slowly, and the mechanical hum returns, softer than before but steady. The sentinel will walk again.

We’re here, uneasy among the bubbling remnants of hound battlefields, yet held by this fragile refuge. Momentum is our track. Awareness, discipline, history—they carry us forward. Tomorrow, we move closer to Lafayette. I can feel the tracks laid in the mud and mist, waiting for us to follow.

—The Big Chief