He didn't have lots of friends, but could he help it? Who had time with all the hustle bustle? After ignition and lift off in the morning, it was mach 3 until he closed his eyes at night. At the end of a long day, he strained his gonads to hold his eyelids above half-mast to catch TV of the day's happenings. Sure he was an upright citizen who felt the responsibility to keep informed, to see who was who and what was what, but it was impossible. The gas tank was empty. Hey, when the buzzer ejected him off the mattress and the madcap morning ritual started all over, what sense did any of it make? He smeared on the shaving cream and pointed his chin at the mirror to do the honors. He slapped his face with aftershave. He staggered to the sock drawer, to the closet, down the stairs to the teapot, his peripheral vision sweeping the tabletops for car keys, wallet, pocket comb, all of it a manic blur to out the door and beyond. In the meantime, the days, the months, the years spilled over the causeway, an unruly tide that swamped any sense of a coherent passing. Ah, come on.

He wouldn't want folks to misunderstand; the missus was a friend, but she wasn't the kind he could go on and on with, at engine-seizing rpm's of unexpurgated slosh, when a nice bikini sauntered by. It was a small item, but he made it a specific point to blow off steam now and then. How else to escape the riveting humdrum of the racing-rat life he had pitched himself into with naive élan so far back he couldn't remember? Ok, they ate fabulously, they zoomed around the track in their scrumptious vehicles, they fulfilled their diabolic need to keep pace, to satisfy the desire, on a snap of the fingers, for any bauble that tickled their fancy, but who was kidding who?

Despite the busload of excuses, his batting average wasn't zero. Yes, he did have one friend who he managed to keep in touch with occasionally, a fella by the name of Treu.

Now, friends, Mr.Treu Balonet, was a whole other story. Treu had already had been there and done that, so forget about it. Treu knew a lot about a little and a little about a lot. Say, for instance, that the equipment presented itself. Why, Treu would go right ahead on and pluck out a tune on the piano, Mozart or no Mozart. Harmonica? Fiddle? You name it. And, what is more, he performed with a mind-boggling lack of precision that took the breath away. The audacity! The staggered passersby were so busy trying to get their balance back, they had no time to organize any rotten fruit.

There was Treu, the compulsive whistler. He had been cited, disturbing the peace, for his manic trilling early in the morning at ear-splitting canary pitches from inside the wood cages of the construction sites. More than once the authorities escorted him out of the area to protect him from gathering crowds of angry sleepyheads milling around in their robes and slippers, rubbing their eyes, cursing. He explained to the judge he couldn't help himself out there under the blue sky, under the billowing clouds, way way up, the gliding buzzard hawks circling, circling, free as the breeze. Which brings us further back.

As a young man, Treu put in few years at carpentry. The choice of trades was a curious early twist as he didn't come from carpenters. Treu believed it was more the bric-a-brac he grew up around than anything else he could put a finger on. There was religious statuary in all the rooms of the Balonet household; every shelf, mantle, tabletop was crowded with a knot of ceramic figurines of all sizes. Treu's favorite was a large, finely detailed Saint Joseph who's serene demeanor made the case for calm in the storm; his unruffled tunic draped down to his feet as if there had never been a howling wind from the beginning of time; he had a carpenter's square tucked under his arm pressing close to his heart; with his other hand, he generously held out a hammer to an invisible borrower. The tender passivity radiated in the aura of the statue belied the bruising reality of Treu's six tackling, somersaulting, red-faced brothers whose elbows, knuckles and knees did real damage. And, managing the fracas, from one insane day to the next, a pair of devout but rigorously opinionated parents who didn't have the sense not to mix alcohol with their inflammatory temperaments, thereby tossing gasoline into the fire. During the screaming matches, young Treu was comforted in the knowledge that his parent's superstition was powerful enough to prevent them from using the icons as part of the arsenal of crockery that went flying across the room now and then.

The magic of the statue faded for Treu as the real implications for a flesh and blood Joseph became apparent to a growing up young man who, ever more, cast a chilly eye on the charming fictions marketed in catechism class. Treu pictured serene Joseph lying awake at night and wondering what the heck kind of mess he had gotten into. He had fallen in love, Mary's beauty and her assent to his affections spinning him like a top. But what a hornet's nest! By a crazy fluke he had either landed at the nexus of plummeting history, with every kind of attendant haywire manifestation or, plain and simple, he was losing his mind. The way Treu saw it, Joseph didn't question the love, but, for the rest of it, he had to have thrown himself into his work at a fever pitch to stop from going down the slippery slope; every next nail he slugged into the fragrant lumber was a nail in the wall that held back the eviscerating demons who beguiled men into practicing their wondrous horrors. As for the precocious Step Son? Joseph most certainly taught the Divine Kid the right side of hammers, nails and wood long before the impudent Romans got the opportunity to kick him up the knobby trail to Golgotha.

In the roller-coaster turmoil of early manhood, raging testosterone, raging rage at the discontinuity of savage adult play, Treu discovered that swinging a hammer out under the hot sun was a way to siphon off the debilitating energies. But the work could be unsteady at times and, besides, Treu, ever the curious cat, was off and running to any new enterprise that offered a change of regimen.

The restlessness didn't do much for the steady employment. It was impossible for Treu, especially after any extended period, for him to dissemble the fact that he always had an eye on the exit sign, nor did his fatal habit of speaking candidly to his employers help; it made it easy for them to overlook him when a promotion came up. The managers loved him to death as he was the first crossed off the list. Treu subsequently bounced around at various entry-level jobs over the years, leaving him weak in the most important area-making money. Treu's threads, iffy in a big way, showed it; his apartment complexes showed it, the rank smells in the hallways, the foot-holes in every third door, the screaming matches across the balconies. But the most telling eyesore resulting from Treu's chronic shortage of funds was the lineup of crash tested automobiles he had owned. Treu drove his cars way beyond the time they should have gone to the scrap heap, so forget about the paint. When he pulled up to a curb, his arrival had the same impact as automatic weaponry; everybody in close proximity hit the dirt or dove behind a garbage can. When Treu clicked the handle and shoved his shoulder to get out, the noise from the agony of a caved in door squalling for mercy perpetuated the unique hypothesis that tortured metal could carry a tragic tune. On the positive side, Treu gained a master mechanic's expertise during his life long struggle to keep his shimmying junk on the road. His pathetic classics were a testament to fervent parsimony and compulsive ingenuity. There's no doubt that Honda, Ford, GM, any of the big boys, would have hired Treu into their service bays just like that; in very lean times, when meals were in question, it had been a temptation, but Treu was always up to the challenge; he stood firm, he set his jaw, he screamed up into the nostrils of snickering Fate,

"I'll NEVER be a wrench juggler."

There were other, less greasy endeavors, more suited to Treu's mechanical bent of mind, his digital dexterity, his occasionally wayward inner curiosities. He trained and earned a living for a while as a physical therapist and, later, as a masseuse. He had discovered in the pursuit of the line of work a strong interest, with clients of the fair sex, in the pliability of limbs and the feel of bare skin under his kneading fingertips. All of the gals in short skirts who had ever sashayed across the landscape and into Treu's fecund imagination eventually added up to the longshot of his matriculation at a fast track medical school in Costa Rica. He had an eye toward gynecology as a specialty, with the crazy notion that it would be the perfect way to meet girls. After a couple of rocky relationships, and the lab classes that found him noodling around in the crimson slush of practice cadavers nicknamed Linda, Monica, Paula, Treu came to the grim conclusion that one woman was plenty, let alone waiting room full of them. He flew out of San Jose reeking of formaldehyde, but he remained upbeat and more than ever convinced of the principle that people could recover from their bad decisions at any point along the way. They could ring him up if they wanted to talk to a real pro.

Yes, there were numerous false starts but, friends, Treu Balonet finally found his stride when he hatched an unusual idea to earn some cold cash; the concept caused a significant stir in the investment community and, for a short spell, Treu was on the brink of cracking though. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. He had dabbled in linguistics, ancient languages, cartography; he had put in a short stint at barbering and a shorter stint at fry cook. With all of the variety behind him, he looked up one day, and found himself completely immersed in a correspondence course on rocket design and propulsion.

Needless to say it was circuitous path that led Treu to the highly technical discipline. Her name was Beth, a svelte peach, divorced, Treu had struck up a conversation with in a pub in El Segundo, California, the once thriving hub of America's defense and aerospace industry. Beth was one of the thousands of forlorn engineers who had been laid off a few short months after the official end of the Cold War; she was involved in the logistical support for the manufacturing of ICBM components. Beth had a great cry when the Berlin Wall came down as well as epileptic spasms of guilt over her secret sorrow at the collapse of the Evil Empire, for which, to defend against, she had been paid, along with thousands of others, a luxurious salary that had financed the two story house with the three car garage and the sparkling vehicles parked inside. The financial strain, the move into the seedy mobile park, her engineer turned maitre-de husband's descent into self pity and excessive drinking, resulted in the marriage breaking up and all of the wheels coming off the wagon of a once boundlessly prosperous life; she went onto some serious medication, but her occasional tete a tete's and sipping sessions at the local establishments were much more satisfying than the dreary counseling and the zombie aftermath of her visits to the pharmacy.

And suddenly there was Treu Balonet, the lonely, slightly disheveled, but not unattractive fortyish fellow sitting on the barstool and sorting, as he ever prone to do, the endless possibilities spread out before him. The two stragglers struck up a conversation and, bingo, the ayes having it in the two person conclave, a torrid, though short-lived affair was launched.

Oh, the numnum was fabulous, much brighter and more conducive than Treu had expected out matter of fact Beth who was every bit the low key, analytic engineer. Nope, she was amazing under the covers, combining Wagnerian high pitches with a gymnast's agility. She had a fabulously unique slant at the supreme moment airing out with big lungs the phrase "lift-off, lift-off"; the commotion was so intense the feel was that of levitation, the bed posts jack-hammering on the floor, the room tilting, the spasming lovers clinched in a spinning vortex.

Of course there were little things as the feverish companions got to know each other better. Beth became mildly irritated by Treu's constant cigarette bumming, his happily indifferent manner of reaching into the depth of his pockets every time and coming up with not a plug nickel; she knew he was no hard charger, but she encouraged him to bone up and search out a more lucrative means of earning a livelihood than his disinterested endeavors had amounted to thus far. She recognized that Treu had a natural talent for the sciences and, with his extensive, albeit scattered, education, it wouldn't have taken all that much to patch the various disciplines into a more coherent and employable portfolio.

Treu, oh yes, fabulously sated most of the time, would have studied nuclear physics to keep the ball rolling, but Beth's ex-hubby showed up on the doorstep one day with the three little ones. The one time Treu had not been looking for an exit sign, Beth, without so much as a word, nodded toward the front door and Treu knew it was time to pack.

All was not lost. Beth's influence had been positive. Treu had absorbed enough in math and drafting from the rocket courses to allow him to put together a proposal he talked past the disbelieving aerospace engineers and into the zany marketing departments of several of the Corporate Godzillas. He made it as high as fifty stories a few times where they provided croissants, bagels, locks, cream cheese and an assortment of jellies; the hospitality convinced Treu of their interest in his undertaking. Any time, on such occasions, he found himself licking his fingers, his cheeks bulging with complimentary treats, Treu knew he was in promising territory.

Treu had put together drawings and calculations to flesh out his idea to provide for the remains of deceased loved ones way up in bright and shiny outer space instead of dropping them into a cold, claustrophobic ditch, or worse, sliding them into a blazing cheap incinerator that resulted in a mound of pathetic ash which certainly did nothing to spark the sagging spirits of the bereaved, gone with the wind being the main theme of that disconsolate sequence. Poof

The idea had upon Treu like a comet blazing across his consciousness; it lighted up, as never before, the dark attic upstairs where his accumulated ideas, baked, half baked, unbaked, were packed in as in nothing ever thrown away. A pomegranate fruit, of all the weird possible things, was the trigger. Being from far off regions, he had never seen one before. A number of them were halved and displayed in a colorful buffet at a Caribbean garden party he attended; picking one up for a closer look, he asked one of the brats peeking over the edge of the table what to do with it. The brat told him to dig the seeds out with his finger, suck on them and spit them across the lawn. But the lighting had already struck. What an unusual phenomenon, the exotic fruit with its abundance of bright red seeds packed tightly in the spongy rind. How nature blew into one's ears with its marvels! Treu went home that night, unsheathed his calculator, flung open his drafting pad and scribbled furiously before the precious concept fizzled out, fast as a Fourth of July sparkler. In the all night session, Treu roughed out a design for a hollow globe that would accommodate the remains of three hundred of the dearly beloved to be packed tightly inside like the seeds in the pomegranate fruit. Liquid styrofoam would be blown in to secure the carcasses in place; dry ice, similar to the overnight packaging concept, would keep them fresh. The payload would amount to fifty thousand pounds giving or taking a pound here, a pound there. Treu figured 130 pounds for the women and 200 pounds for the men, most of the clientele coming from the upper third where meals were rarely missed. He also figured for set asides and financial aid for the malnourished so that the lower third didn't feel utterly bereft of the socio-economic updraft and public unrest held to a minimum. The percentages of poor didn't sway the throw-weight calculations significantly one way or the other.

Treu designed the skin of the craft to withstand the stupefying frictions involved as it bobbed across the inter-galactic tides. Exotic composites available from stealth technology made the durable exterior feasible.

Treu, extremely exited with his potential change in fortune, called the pal who had never batted an eye in the thin times when the bar check came.