Teaser

Calliope’s Reach
(do magpies dream of Calliope?)

© 2026 John Healy
Draft 8-23-2026

Epigraph

Here rise to life again, dead poetry!
Let it, O holy Muses, for I am yours,
And here Calliope, strike a higher key,
Accompanying my song with that sweet air
which made the wretched Magpies feel a blow
that turned all hope of pardon to despair

– Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy (1321), trans. Anthony M. Esolen, “Purgatorio”, Canto I, lines 7 to 12.

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Prologue

Ted was mindful of his family line. It was a weight which occasionally surfaced, nagged, butted into his musings.

His genetic code allowed entry into the archives, into the remembrances of some of his ancestors’ long lives, at least the ones that were literary, those who journaled to learn from their pain, to examine the dots and dashes of life. Especially trajectories left unresolved, untidy loose-ends, the indeterminate half-lives of half-cocked decisions.

And he was a child of such a decision. An offshoot of an illegitimate liaison somewhere between the Earth and the stars. He’d always felt like a black sheep. That was the vibe of the voices in his head as a child, reinforced by the indifferent care he received from place to place.

Now, while in a dark patch between jobs, he wondered whether he had a future in space, where his ancestors had gazed.

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