I had trouble cutting off the heads so they kicked me out of the program. That’s what you want to know, right? I mean, why else does a grad student in biology end up mopping floors at a mountainside observatory? It certainly isn’t the salary—though I have to admit the free slushies in the breakroom were a nice substitute for job security and a retirement account. Then again, the way people are acting lately—all that noise from outside—maybe unlimited boysenberry concentrate is more precious than a 401K anyway.

I started working there right after the Oort-Tyson Superscope went online. The guy who interviewed me was the boss, the kind of scientist who wears Hawaiian shirts. I thought it was strange that the director of an observatory would care who gets to be the janitor, but he was so excited, he hardly even asked me any questions—least of all about the mice in the walls. Luckily, he must not have read about what happened in the newspapers. Or maybe he thought I was someone else. Either way, he just kept going on and on about how pretty soon, they’d be able to see well beyond the farthest galaxy. That’s GN-z11, by the way. I know because he kept mentioning it, even pulled out his phone to show me a raspberry stain shaped like Australia turned on its side.

“That’s almost thirty-two billion light years away,” he insisted, “but before long, we’ll be able to make out individual stars… and I’m not just talking about Cepheid variables!” He didn’t bother explaining but I was glad he was so worked up. With my record, the only way I was going to get a job outside of fast food was if the person interviewing me had half their brain plugged in somewhere else. Unless I lie on my résumé, that is, and I’ve never been good at lying.

Anyway, I started nightshift at the Oort-Tyson Observatory right after they switched on that big floating spyglass, like I said. Lord knows why you need a mountain observatory when the actual telescope is floating in space but the way everyone talked, you’d think this place was about to become the center of the universe. Only there were all kinds of bugs and kinks to work out first, so the place was buzzing at all hours. Lights flashed, computers blinked, people ran around with tablets and printouts like something out of a movie. Meanwhile, I emptied trashcans, scrubbed toilets, and steered the mop around whoever happened to be napping at their desk. People left me alone. That suited me fine. The last thing I wanted to do was rehash the whole thing with the guillotine anyway.

As far as that goes, I lucked out. I know that. The judge didn’t have to throw out the case. And my old thesis director didn’t have to appeal to the dean on my behalf, either. If they’d pushed harder, I know they could have ruined me for good. And it’s not like I didn’t deserve it. But really, how was I supposed to know the mice would come back? I figured if I released them outside, they’d make for the trees on the other end of the parking lot, and that would be that. But the damn things got back in somehow, nested in the walls and bred like crazy, and before long with all that scratching, it didn’t take a forensic expert to tell that little guillotine they gave me had hardly even been used.

Crazy, by the way, that they make mice-sized guillotines. I mean, I guess it makes sense, but I just wasn’t prepared for that. I knew euthanizing animals went with the territory, but there’s a big difference between a needle and a little red guillotine with a lever. Jesus. I mean, how much can one person take? And the mice had names. They’re not supposed to but people are people. Henrietta was the first one, then Hank. Then Mufasa. I mean, what would you have done?

But that was all in the past and I was at OTO now, and even though polishing porcelain probably isn’t what my guidance counselor foresaw, I knew things could be worse. So I did my duty, polite as a bondservant, and wondered what I’d do next. Plenty of time to think between trash bins, after all, not to mention those drives home under the stars, curving and curving my way down the mountainside. I thought about applying to a different grad program. There would be questions, of course, but maybe if I was suitably contrite, or I chalked it up to youthful stupidity… hell, I even thought about changing my name. They’d find out sooner or later, of course, but maybe in the meantime if I did some really critical research on mice utopias—like, the kind of stuff that put Calhoun on the map—then maybe by the time word got out, they’d love me too much to give me the axe.

Wishful thinking, I know. Truth is, I don’t even have some kind of special affinity for mice. It’s just that they fit nicely in your hand, like a comma with fur, and if you hide them in the pocket of your lab coat, they’ll grip the top with their little claws and peek out like a kid staring out a window on a long car ride. Fuck guillotines. Seriously.

Then again, maybe you don’t care about mice either and what you really want to hear about is what happened at OTO. That was my fault, too, I guess. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. But one night, there it was on that gigantic screen that spanned their workroom: a little blur way out past GN-z11, so far nobody seemed capable of mentioning it without shaking their heads. Parts of it were brown and even I know that isn’t a color you normally see in galaxies.

So what they were doing, see, is turning the image this way and that, messing with filters, trying to figure out what was wrong with the redshift, talking back and forth with all kinds of terminology I didn’t get. Smart people—no doubt about that—but they reminded me of ancient sailors who’d just found out the world isn’t flat. Not excited so much as scared witless. So I looked over my mop at that blurry image they were playing with, and then I said it.

“Looks like a nurse reading a magazine.”

Right away, the room got quiet. Some people looked at me. Others looked at the floor. Computers chirped in the background. The big screen flickered. More images were coming in. They were really cranking OTS to the max, peering further than any Greek philosopher or high school science teacher could have imagined. I finished collecting the garbage and got the hell out of there. I expected to get a call before my next shift, informing me that my services would no longer be required.

Instead, Dr. Graham—that’s the boss—wanted to show me something.

Most people at OTO call him Graham-Graham. Something to do with some big award he got a while back and how they screwed up that glossy little plate at the bottom, repeating his last name as though it were also his first. I didn’t actually see the award but I guess he keeps it in his office and points it out and laughs about it whenever people stop by, describing it as a glitch in the simulation. But he didn’t have me come to his office. Instead, he came up to me while I was cleaning the men’s room—strange place to be approached like this—showed me a print-off, and asked me point-blank what I thought it was.

Thing you have to understand about Graham-Graham is that he’s basically a walking vacation. Hell, he was grinning like a margarita when he first interviewed me and every time after that—always in those damn Hawaiian shirts—but not this time. As for the image, it was so thick with ink and detail that the paper felt heavy, even through the latex gloves I was wearing. But I figured there was no harm in answering so I looked at the picture for a while, turned it this way and that, then told him I thought it looked like a big potted plant next to a window with bars on it. I don’t know whether that was the right or the wrong answer but he nodded, took back the image, and walked away with his head down. Watching him, I wondered if that’s how Calhoun felt.

I mentioned him earlier but if you don’t know, Calhoun’s the guy who did the thing with the mice utopias. That’s what first got me interested. Basically, he built a perfect little mouse-city, complete with ramps and water and plenty of food, just to see what would happen if you gave creatures everything they could possibly want. Well, I’ll spare you the gory details but it wasn’t long before Eden devolved into Stalingrad. Turns out animals don’t actually want a perfect life. We need something to knock our skulls against. We need fear to strum our bones like guitar strings or else we go nuts. That’s funny to me. I wanted to know more. But because I’m an idiot, I mistook sociology for biology and ended up on the wrong side of the guillotine.

Maybe it’s arrogant to think I’m responsible for Graham-Graham. Thing is, he brought me other pictures after that: blurry, always turned about, like they’d been taken by a child who’d just been given his first camera. But I always told him the truth about what I saw: ceiling tiles, a drip pole, a hospital tray with a little dish of Jell-O on it. To be honest, the pictures were making me more and more uncomfortable. They seemed to be getting clearer, crisper, less like inkblot tests than constellations with the lines filled in. I started to wonder if he’d learned about my past and was just messing with me. But I couldn’t imagine a guy in a Hawaiian shirt being that cruel.

Meanwhile, no matter what I said, Graham-Graham never answered. He’d just nod, like I’d confirmed what he’d already been thinking, and go on his way. As he went, he’d take the picture—always printed, never digital—and rip it into little pieces that he’d stuff in his pocket. A few nights later, I made my way up the dark mountain and got to work just as a police car was leaving. I thought I saw a bright, gaudy lump in the backseat, like someone had pulled their shirt over their head and was rocking back and forth. Urgent colleagues whispered in the lobby, the hallways, that big room blinking with computers. They all got quiet when they saw me, though. I wanted to ask what had happened but I figured the best thing to do was keep my mouth shut for once.

It might surprise you to learn that I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m not saying that because I think I’m especially brilliant or good-looking or anything. I just mean that nowadays, it really does seem like there’s someone for everyone, if you look. Not like it used to be. But for me, relationships never feel right. I always end up overanalyzing the woman’s behaviors, then worrying about my own, then feeling like it’s all some kind of joke somebody’s playing on me—a bit of cheese at the wrong end of the maze, a coma I can’t quite wake up from—and the smartest thing I can do is be somewhere else.

I don’t know why but I started thinking about that as I worked that night. OTO was quieter than usual, even with everyone there. Whatever Graham-Graham did really had everyone spooked. I eavesdropped a little and it sounded like among other things, he’d sent pictures and some kind of crazy email to… well, everyone. Like, all the newspapers, plus the suits in charge of their funding, plus every government official with an email address, from mayor to dogcatcher. Everyone was worried about Dr. Graham and what would happen to the observatory, sure, but it was more than that. And even though being single hadn’t really bothered me before, something about the way people shuffled between conversations and sometimes hugged or squeezed each other’s hands like mourners at a president’s funeral made me wish I wasn’t so alone.

So I emptied the trash bins and mopped the floors and swept up all those straw wrappers in the break room, and I sat there on my breaks and had my free slushies and tried not to overthink things, but it was no use. If I wasn’t dreading my empty bed at home, I was remembering that awful scratching in the walls—how it had felt going back to my old job at that lab, knowing everyone had already figured out what I’d done with the mice and hated me for it. How long would it be before the same thing happened here?

See, the last time, it all ended up being a bit too much for me and I had to check myself into a hospital for a while. You know, the kind where they don’t do surgeries. That might be why the judge threw out the lawsuit, though I swear, I wasn’t faking it. Anyway, I didn’t want that to happen again. Some things sting worse than a paycheck. So I tightened my guts, marched into that big room where everyone was standing, walked right up to the person I figured was in charge now that Graham-Graham was gone, and said that I didn’t feel like I could work here anymore.

I might as well have tinked my champagne glass at a wedding and announced that after careful reflection, I’d decided the world was round. A few people offered vague, detached smiles. Others looked at the floor. The de facto boss, a woman named Umaru, didn’t even nod. She just looked down at the bright red shoes she always wore, then up at the big screen in the distance, then back at her shoes. Then she swore in another language and sat on the edge of someone’s desk, kind of kicking her feet back and forth, like a child at the edge of a lake, afraid of the water.

I looked at the screen, too, expecting to see another blurry image of some ancient, malformed galaxy retrieved from the very edge of OTS’s visual range. There was an image there, all right. But it wasn’t blurry. It was red—redder than a slushie, redder than Dr. Umaru’s shoes—with a bright blade and a long fat handle.

“Not funny,” I told Umaru. She frowned. I felt my eyes getting wet so I knew I’d better hurry up and get angry before I embarrassed myself. I said there are right and wrong ways to kill something. Everyone backed up a step. Umaru reached for a hole-puncher like she was getting ready to use it as a club. I realized they thought I was going postal so I changed tactics. I told them I understood why they thought the whole thing was hilarious but it wasn’t. How I could feel each mouse in my pocket as I smuggled it out. How their little hearts thumped against my thigh, wave turned particle. How I knew they’d die anyway out in the wild but maybe it would be better in the fresh air and the uncut grass. I didn’t realize they’d come back—that everything always returns to where it feels safest, even if they’re wrong.

Well, no one answered. Umaru kept clutching that hole-puncher but the way her free hand reached for my shoulder, I could tell they realized their mistake. Their little joke had gone too far. They were going to apologize, just as soon as they found their voices. But I knew once they did, I’d cry, and I didn’t want that. So I turned and walked out as fast as I could. Then I drove back down the mountain under the cold stars, drove so fast the tires whined and the turns almost got me.

That was a week ago. Maybe longer. Lately, the days kind of blur for some reason. People keep leaving messages but I don’t listen. I know they’re probably just worried after everything that’s happened, but I don’t feel like explaining. And on top of that, there’s the reporters—a lot more than there were after the incident with the mice. When calling didn’t work, they started coming to my door. They ask me about Dr. Graham and what kind of things go on up at OTO, something about leaked images from the new borderlands of the observable universe—strange, riot-inducing images that don’t make sense—but I always close the door before they can say more. I don’t need that kind of scratching in my life.

On the other hand, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this and I know it’s not good to be alone—not like this, not always. Especially these days with all that funny noise leaking through the windows. I guess that’s why I didn’t slam the door this time, why I invited you in. You see, you’re the first person I’ve chatted with in quite a while. Sorry I’ve been doing all the talking, though. I can’t seem to stop. Maybe I’m just afraid of what you’re about to say.