There is gold in asteroids. Platinum as well, and even water, but you have to go far and wide to happen upon one where stuff like this is compressed disquietingly into globs and bergs. We abuse these opportunities to relieve the overburdened rocks of a cut of their load, but one must avoid becoming overburdened oneself. Maintain mobility.

Mostly, materials are snuck away happily inside of rocks. Water for example is fractionated into a vague dispersion that can't be seen by even a tinge of icy-blue or felt by damp trace. Asteroids are by and large variations on the color gray. Searing melters must be applied to glimpse the other colors. And so when you finally get some water, it's already evaporating away into space. It doesn't form clouds and never rains back down. It's just gone, unless a sucker is on hand to squeeze it into a beverage, perhaps with a spritz of lemon-lime. With enough equipment and time an asteroid becomes any object of desire.

For the purposes of determining where to explore next, further instrumentation may determine the composition of asteroids in a wide berth with a high degree of accuracy, but like most collectors, I now prefer my long-refined intuitions. I specialize in gold because of the day child-me bent down to a glint in the dust and pinched out a chunky watch. Everyone said it was the freakiest damn thing they had ever seen. A Rolex on a rock of no significance. I stashed it away sheepishly, guiltily. It didn't fit beneath my spacesuit, and was too big for my skinny wrist. I grew to loath it for its temerity in appearing as it did, for the idea that it chose me rather than the other way around. So I applied the melter.

It became thread for a golden suit meticulously patterned with sapphires and emeralds. Anyway, everyone can tell asteroid time (Asteroid time is just Earth time but with the word asteroid in front of it. I coined the term on asteroid Twitter and everyone uses it now, but no one ever credits me) without a watch or anything like that, in the same way that I can sense what kinds of asteroids are nearby—by the movement of things. It sounds rather grand when I say it like that, but this intuition is particularized, mathematical. Those who are religious find some kind of deeper connection in it, but they are wrong. Wrong.

Eventually I jettisoned the suit as well. It was too colorful in comparison with the asteroids. Enough beauty is dangerous for people like me. There is a kind of sickness that comes with it. I have matured. I stick with a gray suit of standard issue.

And so does my friend Liquid Anthony, although I have never been able to understand very well the reasons why Liquid Anthony does anything. He communicates with me obliquely, to say the least, which brings me to today. I sit on an asteroid that he visited recently and drew the following picture of:

                    

Liquid Anthony specializes in water. He said that he found something on this asteroid and pointed at the X. He said he wanted to tell me about it before he posted it on asteroid Twitter so that I would be the first to see it. I'm touched, but he does owe me one, so here I am. I'm sitting inside of the 0 closest to the X in a pillow of dust. My butt sinks in a bit. I spy Liquid Anthony's butt print (standard issue, but a little bit squarish) in the other 0 slightly further away. Others will probably see mine.

I cling to scattered boulders to avoid floating away and follow Liquid Anthony's boot prints to the X. Encased in a basketball-sized sphere of ice is a single flower. Something like an orchid. I spend a long time kneeling close to it, staring.

I can't stop myself. I apply my melter. I remove my glove and feel the heat-shriveled thing in my cold palm. I pocket the evidence.

Before leaving, I brush away the traces of my butt and boots. Liquid Anthony posts his drawing, and I give it a like.

Question: I have read this column for many years and have found it to be both entertaining and of practical use. We may all live in different corners of different galaxies, but we share the same problems. As an old hand, I have taken many apprentices to the trade of exploration under my wing. Things haven't always gone smoothly. Every apprentice has their own difficulties adjusting to the relentless pace of discovery, the diligent work of planning safe and productive journeys and of recording essential findings, the lack of roots.

I can pilot them through these phases by recalling how hard it was for myself in the beginning, and by trying to tell them what I would have needed to hear. The advice given for similar issues sent into this column has filled in for the gaps in my social capabilities. And if nothing else works, a little bit of patience carries us through. I take exploration seriously, but it isn't something you can rush. You have to fall in love with it on your own time.

That said, the behavior of my current apprentice has confounded me for a couple of years at this point. She refuses to leave her room, or even her bed. Sometimes when I bring her meals I catch her staring blankly through her window at the planets whizzing by. When we stop for some necessary out-of-ship reconnaissance, and I look back at the window, I see her turn away from me to focus on the space in front of her.

Her mind is somewhere else, but whenever I ask how she's feeling, she says that she is fine, just tired, nothing in particular occupying her thoughts. She showers something like once a week, and each time spends upwards of an hour in there. She has passed all of the relevant medical tests with flying colors. Whatever discussions she has had with the therapy bot have apparently been unhelpful.

The main activity she partakes in, if she does anything at all, is to read old tales of knights and witches and ghosts and romance, stories long forgotten. I feel at times that she is more aged and wise than I am.

I have tried my usual techniques. Given her interest in magic, I took her to the most magical place I know of, an amusement park built throughout a cloud of asteroids that all who visit agree to keep a secret. I remembered one of the older attractions, a quite spherical asteroid on which a group of surfers had somehow offloaded a small ocean's worth of salt-water over several years, and had also introduced a breathable atmosphere that through convection pushed the water into the most perfectly-shaped waves peeling around and around the entire surface.

She got in hesitatingly but floated around there for a long time, staring up at the stars. I worried that she would succumb to drowning after being thrashed by the waves, but she seemed to enjoy being thrown around at their mercy. I saw her smile contentedly for the first time in a long while as she emerged coughing up water from her lungs. I even left her there by herself while I attended to some business, figuring that some independence would do her good. While I was gone, she was apparently almost run over by a surfer local to the area, who she became friendly with through an exchange of profuse "I'm so sorries" and "don't worry about its."

Unfortunately, I think I may have taken things too far. The newest ride was something of an experiment. It went straight through a small black hole and came out on the other side somewhere nearby. Since she seemed to have enjoyed dissolving into the ocean, I thought a slightly deeper dissolution would be even better. And since she was doing so well on her own, I told her I would wait at the exit to meet her with some rainbow asteroid Dippin' Dots.

I waited for a long time. Slowly, like a mist condensing into dew and gathering into a puddle, she emerged from the darkness with a look of such abject horror that I immediately dropped my dippin' dots and ran to undo her seatbelt and hold her in my arms.

She recovered quickly enough, returning more or less to the same state as before, although she now swears off completely the use of any of the equipment we use to form our necessities out of the asteroid regolith. She refused to explain what she had seen on the ride. After she had calmed down, I left her with her new friend to try the attraction myself. I thought it would be helpful if I experienced the same thing. When I got to the start, however, I found the ride operator closing it down. They said that it had malfunctioned somehow, and that it would be dangerous to let anyone else on until it had been looked at by the technician. I wanted to be furious, but I could see from the operator's expression that they didn't know what had gone wrong. It wasn't their fault.

I can tell that a small part of her still does not forgive me for letting her go on the ride by herself. I've tried to stay by her side as much as possible in recent days. I've been doing less out-of-ship exploration, and I force her to come with me when anything like that is necessary. She has maintained a distant friendship with the surfer she met in the wave pool, but it seems their interactions mostly consist in the surfer reaching out to her to see if she is doing okay.

I feel cut off from her, but what exactly is cutting us off is not clear. Perhaps it isn't just her. I fear that I am growing out of touch with the emotions of today's youth. Perhaps they know something that I don't, or are going through something I never went through. Perhaps I am at the end of my days as an explorer.

I know my message has run on for too long, but explaining as much as I can is the only way I know how to express my confusion. For the first time as a reader I am asking directly for your help. How can I understand how she feels? What am I doing wrong?

— Confused Anonymous

Answer: I am sorry, Confused Anonymous, but I simply cannot help you. The story you have told expresses very well your care for your apprentice, but it does not express the source of her troubles. You have given me no essential information to be able to understand her. I cannot say what she went through on that ride.

That there is some youthful zeitgeist that you are out of tune with is doubtful. What has changed? Our technology has remained in the same state for hundreds of years at this point. What new culture could she be tapping into, when the repetition of questions directed at this column point towards no changes in that respect as well? What particular worries could she have for the future, when none of us can anymore experience real scarcity? I am sensible, but this is not a sensible matter. From what you have been able to put together so far, it seems that she must remain a mystery to both you and I. Please let us all know if there are any further developments in your relationship.

If nothing else works, I always recommend the following options for someone who is having a hard time, but of course, you are likely familiar with them by now:

Taking a bubble bath. * Changing career paths. * Petting a cat. * Sneezing.

Getting a haircut or wearing a wig. * Burning a piece of toast entirely to a crisp.

Listening to Björk. * Committing a minor felony. * Meditating.

— Sensible Susan

I found myself rather excitedly skipping around my ship on my way to a wedding between two people that I had somehow met individually before they later met one another, also independently. I met them both in the usual ways (through asteroid Twitter, etc.). But from the start, the circumstances of their own meeting were unconventional and will perhaps sound embarrassing to some ears. It isn't a story that any of us can bring up at the dinner table. But this is also what drove them closer together, and I protect their secret with admiration for a love deeper than I will likely ever personally experience.

How can I say this. You see, Platinum Dan dislikes wearing his suit when touching down on asteroids. He prefers to feel their physicality in a closer, fuller sense than most of us do. He has explained this to me by saying that the other senses—sight, sound, smell, taste—though they may be remotely communicated through the special panes of glass and pore-filled membranes of our suits, are misleading in that they locate the center of consciousness in our heads. Platinum Dan insists that this isn't the case, that we are all fundamentally lost, that we are missing out on the one true way of orienting ourselves: through the entire body.

Platinum Dan is, in other words, an asteroid nudist, and his pursuit is not for the faint of heart. The first time that he experimented with this form of contact, he risked his life. On average, explorers last around 30 seconds in space without the oxygen provided by their suit. It takes around 15 seconds to peel the suit off and another 15 seconds to zip and strap it back on. That leaves 0 seconds of between-time. When Platinum Dan was out exploring and first had the realization of what he wanted to do, he acted impulsively. He tore his suit off in 10 seconds, but felt so right without it on, that he spent almost 30 seconds standing there, his breath slowing and his awareness dimming. By the time he realized he was close to death, his fingers were fumbling sloppily at the fastenings of his suit. He made it, but he almost didn't.

This experience led Platinum Dan to design something that he hadn't personally seen before—a harness that could hold a tank of oxygen without being connected to a suit. His design was ingenious, completely minimal and yet dependable. Using it, he could last around 20 minutes before he would begin to feel sick from losing heat and moisture through his skin and through the bubbling of oxygen through his circulatory system. He was so proud of it that he later shared it on asteroid Twitter.

The sad truth is that Platinum Dan could not share his design on his main account. He is a public figure. He couldn't have anyone knowing about his method of exploration and coming to the wrong conclusions. What he does is not sexual. It is sacred. His concerns about being misunderstood were confirmed when many followers of his side account stopped interacting with his posts as much from that point forward. It didn't seem like anyone shared his point of view or wanted anything to do with his invention.

The few months following were the point of his life at which he felt the most lonely, at which I met him and he chose bravely to share his story with me. It was also the point at which something miraculous happened that changed everything for him.

While exploring a medium-sized, especially metallic, asteroid, he found what looked like a bottomless pit. He was debating climbing down into it but pulled himself back when he recalled the previous impulsivity that almost led to his death. Through his bare feet, he was able to feel some soft, rhythmic vibrations coming from the other side of a pile of boulders. Forgetting the pit, he began clambering around on the boulders. He rounded up onto the top, totally exhausted, and raised his eyes to find someone doing the exact same thing from the other side. Also bare-assed. Also wearing his invention.

This is where Platinum Dan stopped the story when recounting it to me. He preferred to keep the exact details of this special moment a private matter between him and her. From that point forward, it was Platinum Dan and Crystalline Vi, together forever.

There is, of course, a sadness in attending someone else's wedding. With the strengthening of one relationship, a certain kind of friendship is no longer possible. I know this even though theirs is the only wedding I have even heard of happening, among my acquaintances and within my lifetime. The spirit of exploration tends to get in the way of such traditional notions of attachment.

Platinum Dan and Crystalline Vi are not suckers for tradition, however, and this was no normal wedding that I was on the way to. This was going to be a moment of bombast. This was going to tie the two together in a way that showed the world who they truly were, that proved they really did share a deep sense of embodiment and togetherness, such that they would no longer have to live in the fear of embarrassment. It was, in other words, going to be an approximately 20 minute wedding on the asteroid where they first met—no suits, nor dresses, allowed.

I had an important role in officiating it. We ran a couple of rehearsals on the asteroid in the weeks leading up to the real date, for which a sizable amount of Platinum Dan's and Crystalline Vi's acquaintances had RSVP'd. While I was therefore confident that the wedding would go by smoothly, I was still brimming with anxiety about screwing up somehow.

My worries really started to flare up when I finally warped to the coordinates of the fateful asteroid a little bit earlier than I had promised and found the space empty. I checked and rechecked the coordinates. I warped to a couple other nearby locations in case I had somehow gotten them confused. As time wore on however, more of the acquaintances officiating and attending the wedding began to show up and murmur amongst themselves. Platinum Dan and Crystalline Vi arrived on time and the commotion became intolerable at the sight of them floating there hand in hand.

I had somehow failed them. I didn't know what to do. It wouldn't be right to have the wedding on another asteroid, but it didn't seem like we could call it off. I decided that the only option was to have the wedding right at the exact coordinate where they had first met, asteroid or no asteroid.

There was certainly something big missing (literally) from the occasion. But somehow it all came together better than I could have hoped. Platinum Dan and Crystalline Vi didn't get to show people what experiencing an asteroid in the truest, fullest way, was like, but we all felt joined into something greater. Through the absence of the fateful asteroid, we realized instead the possibility and value of finding in any asteroid, in any point in space, the potential for love and connection.

In other words, we had a 20 minute nude wedding in the space of possibility itself, and we haven't forgotten it to this day.

You might be wondering by now about a couple of points. Firstly: where are the aliens? Secondly: where is the asteroid? I respect your curiosity and feel the need to make some final comments.

The answer to the first question is that there aren't any, at least not any that have been observed by explorers and that aren't stuck at a microbial stage before the possibility of meaningful communication. As humans spread across the galaxies, some people tried to make divisions between human beings to compensate for the absence of any real distinction between intelligent alien species. At one point, there were the humans that were flipped spatially along all axes: up-to-down, side-to-side, and front-to-back. The problem with this idea is that there was no way to objectively determine whether a person was one way or the other, leading to many conflicts when people were treated as belonging to the wrong group.

You might think that the technological capabilities I have described would enable something like the creation of a new, artificial lifeform. This, I cannot allow. If any old organism can be fabricated, then there is nothing stopping us from fabricating clones of human beings, and this isn't that kind of science fiction universe. The medical capabilities of the fabricators are admittedly advanced, but there are two limitations. For one thing, it cannot stop one from dying. It can stop one from succumbing to disease, but the death itself will happen eventually. At some point, people become spent. The other thing is that it cannot cure mild cases of acne.

A high-profile example of a person with such a case of acne is Big Jesse. Big Jesse is a streamer with an incredibly large audience gathered to join in on their quest to build the largest man-made object in the known universe. Big Jesse warps from asteroid to asteroid faster than almost any other explorer alive, stopping as they go only long enough to plant their sturdy little flag that says "Part of Big Jesse's Object." Part of what draws in Big Jesse's audience is their collective uncertainty about whether the combination of all of the flag-marked asteroids constitute a real object. Big Jesse sometimes lays awake at night wondering the same thing.

Having seen so many asteroids, Big Jesse and their audience were extremely excited one day to capture footage of an asteroid that Big Jesse had planted a flag on seemingly moving of its own accord. Typically, asteroids move along predictable courses, either circling in broad paths around planetary systems or hurtling straight through the vacuum of space. This one, however, did a little wiggle in Big Jesse's direction. Had they discovered the first example of artificial life? An asteroid with its own autonomous existence?

The viewer count on Big Jesse's stream hit record numbers, and they saw no option but to temporarily halt their quest and return to the asteroid for further investigation. Upon traversing the asteroid's surface, they came upon what looked to be a bottomless pit, the only feature that aroused any suspicion. Not wanting to disappoint the audience, Big Jesse saw what they had to do. They climbed down and down the bottomless pit, until they began to catch hints of artificial light. They slid off the side of the pit into a comfortable room that had a desk in one corner. On the desk were a couple of monitors, and on one of the monitors was Big Jesse's face. And in the chair, spinning slowly around to face my favorite streamer, was I. At that point, the millions of people watching Big Jesse's stream were faced with the disappointment that the asteroid was not a living thing, but my own ship, powered by perfectly intelligible, non-biological mechanisms. So I think that about answers all of your questions.