Uranus is a special place, that’s what they told me anyway. Initial probes way back when showed promise, like if a population of the galaxy’s nerds could get in there just right they could make a real home. Cities of floating rubbery balloons, basked in the blue hue of methane-laced air. The museums dedicated to the taming of Uranus would have you believe it was a romantic endeavor, but no. Humanity’s spread did not need Uranus. But the family business was tied up there so, guess what? So was I.

When you hear the term family business, especially one you might get stuck in, you might think of like a mechanic or a plumber, but actually that wasn’t me. I was a Pro-State doctor, meaning I worked for the party. There was only one party on Uranus, and when they had a hold on you, there was no leaving. They had a grip on you for generations. Pro-State. As long as you passed your exams. Maybe that was my first mistake, taking them in the first place when I could have left well-enough alone, could have made my way out Uranus for good.

“Crap,” my secretary said, staring at her display as I walked into the office. 

I set my briefcase down on one of the waiting room chairs before I walked over to her monitor, wiping the sweat off my balding head. “What’s up?”

 “IRS is running another sweep.”

“Didn’t they clean me out enough last time?”

“They have to keep their agents working to keep things flowing. That’s what they say anyway.” She was typing a response to the service.

I sighed. “The flow here on Uranus is fine. We shouldn’t have to be the ones paying to be here.”

“Just imagine if you weren’t Pro-State,” she said, tilting her glasses down to see me through her farsighted vision. “We’d have to fudge the numbers.”

“Who says I’m not,” I mumbled under my breath. I grabbed my briefcase and thumb scanned into my office. A beleaguered light flickered on.

“What’s that?” she called after me.

“Don’t worry about it. Tell them to do whatever they want.”

“Already did.”

The filtration system flatulated. That was really the only thing to call it. Methane belched out with the unmistakable smell. Sometimes I thought that it wasn’t for lack of the system to be able to filter out the smell of Uranus, it just sometimes didn’t want to. “Here’s a reminder of where you are,” it seemed to say. This is the life the back pocket of space has chosen for you.

My patient was a little older than me, an energetic 50. “Winds,” he said, putting his shirt back on.

“Pardon?” I said, wiping my stethoscope with a laser brush.

“Winds out Uranus.”

“I don’t follow.”

He laughed. “They don’t use that expression anymore, do they?”

“Are you referring to the smell?”

“It certainly does paint a picture, but no.”

I put the stethoscope back around my neck and sat on the padded stool near my monitor. A holographic keyboard sprung up from the desk, ready for my notes. “You haven’t invested in the prescribed kibble yet, have you Jon?”

Jon shook his leathery face and held out his weathered palms in an exaggerated shrug. “Why bother? The winds will carry me soon enough.”

I frowned, typing in small font. Possible M-Pat, refer to psychiatric specialist in accordance with Pro-State…

“No, no, don’t go typing that I’m crazy, doc.” He waved his stony hands.

I held up my soft ones. “Okay, tell me about the winds from Uranus.”

“Not from,” he emphasized. “Out.”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me the difference.”

“What do you know about where we live?”

“Outside it’s cold, dark, infinite room to fall, and pressure that will destroy you. Inside it’s dark and full of disease.”

“Such a doctor’s point of view.” He leaned forward. “I know how to escape.”

“Enlighten me,” I said, beginning to transcribe key pieces of our conversation.

“Interdimensional winds.”

As I typed the words, the skepticism inside my battered heart of the three personed God murmured, a quick fluttering pace that felt something between a leap of my insides and a missed beat in a dance step. I didn’t think my face gave anything away except for a bead of sweat that formed on my ten foot high forehead and slid down to my nose.

“Yes,” Jon exclaimed in an enthusiastic whisper. “Yes, I knew you would feel it.”

“I’m listening.” I tried not to let my voice tremble.

“Winds.”

“You said that.”

A knock broke the tension of our conversation like a fat cat sitting on a bowl of cereal.

“Doctor.”

I turned, wordless, and saw my secretary’s head poke inside. “The IRS man is here. He says it can’t wait.”

I looked at Jon, my strange patient. He had a mole under his eye. I didn’t know why I hadn’t suggested we freeze it off yet. He would probably say it didn’t matter. His eyes told me all I needed.

“Urgent matter of health here,” I told the secretary. “I can’t afford a backup. He can wait a few minutes.”

I went home with Jon’s words rattling around my head like a singular nail in a tin can being shaken by a raccoon that took it down a shaft. That was a funny trick, someone dragging those trash pandas across the solar system to take up residence in the slummy balloons in the turns of Uranus. I passed at least one everyday, and I had been attacked more than once. At least we had a cure for rabies.

Back at the office Jon practically sounded drunk. “The winds are in the corner of your eye. You don’t see them. But what do you think holds the walls of reality? Forget it. There are no walls. We live in the shadow of the fourth dimension. Time is in constant flux. It’s energy. It’s all the better places of the universe wrapped up into one. You ever hear of the allegory of the cave?”

“Sure,” I told him, “Back in high school.”

In my apartment, I threw my collective key fob into a drawer hanging out of my dresser. Before I sat down, I remembered a syringe I forgot to throw in the sharps can. A little bit of Jon’s DNA had followed me home with it. I tossed it in the trash can, really not caring what protocol I was breaking in doing so.

“There’s these prisoners right. All they see are shadows on the wall cast by people behind them. The prisoners, having no other reality to reference, believe the shadows to be reality. One prisoner escapes. Outside the cave, our lonely hero discovers the real world outside. This guy, blinded by the light, has to return to the real world to describe to the others how unholilly crappy their existence is.”

I escorted him to the door, part of me wanting to hear more, the other part of me aware of the IRS man waiting as a reaper of dreams.

“Jon kept going. Think about it, man. There are winds of time all around us. Uranus is a portal. The pressures below us. They amount to more than crushing physics. If we access them. We can find nirvana. We can be one with the universe.”

“Okay, fantastic, all right. I’ll see you next time, Jon. Tell me more then.”

The subsequent meeting with the IRS goon crushed me, and now I was home, shoving candy in my mouth and trying to watch whatever the Pro-State had approved for the night. As always, nothing was on in the cities of Uranus.

The drone of the screen put me to sleep. I could feel the city moving under me and the lights turning down for the night. I kept hearing the words. Winds, winds, winds, winds. Change. Change me. Change my world. Sleep. Sleep forever.

I became vaguely aware of a pain in my arm. It felt like I had pulled my shoulder, but I also felt it in my jaw, my head, and soon enough my abdomen. Take his pulse, said the voice in my head, blood pressure dropping. Agonal breathing. We’re going to lose him. Someone get the doctor!

I am the doctor, I thought.

Then there was a rush, a breeze on my pale sweaty face with the faint scent of methane. The winds out Uranus had claimed me in the shadow of a heart attack. At last, the bright-white sweet nothing of leaving the darkness, baptism in the waters of time through the bowl of nirvana.