With each step producing a posture more contorted than the last, the Cowboy of Smithfield paced confidently around the room, as if each appendage had been inhabited by a rattlesnake. Clad only in his signature pair of jet-black sunglasses, the Cowboy had just arisen from that palace of fire and incest in which he resided nightly. For the day had broken, and was thus in need of a mending, and only Cowboy had the wherewithal for a proper rectification. The pacing continued until Cowboy’s feet had desired so strongly to stand upon the ceiling that the remainder of his form could no longer adopt the veneer of erection. Crawling through the adjacent doorway, Cowboy found some slacks and some boots which would constitute the day’s uniform. He stood upright. There was work to be done.

	Leaving his abode, he entered the mechanical mouth down whose silver esophagus he had to descend to reach the recipient streets and corporal forms of a distorted sunlight. The visage of horror was visible upon the shoulders of the townsfolk, just as it always was. Those rays of infection emanating from that perverted yellow blob decayed their spirits. They avoided Cowboy, looked away as if mere eye contact was an invitation to pestilence. They even vacated the metal esophageal probe upon his entrance. But Cowboy did not begrudge them; he understood, more deeply than they could ever want to, the taint his duties engendered. The life of a Cowboy was defined by its solitude and its commitment to code. He exited the probe.

	Those diseased emanations protruded his being with greater force than any bullet. He stared up at that blinding blob until flowers grew from his eyeballs and covered his entire field of vision. He stumbled past the techno-horses that sped by, both toward and away that malign star. Once the flowers had rescinded Cowboy saw the saloon. He bisected the blackened dirt road on which these rapid metal stallions traveled, just barely unscathed from their forceful gallop, and entered the liquor palace in search of a whiskey. The patrons shifted toward the back of the dwelling and the barkeep was reluctant to serve, but Cowboy insisted that it was but a single drink he sought, as recuperation from the star’s power. Barkeep finally relented, recognized the currency as valid, and soon after Cowboy was subject to that invisible inferno pecking away at his flesh once more.

	On toward the source of these beams Cowboy did stride. Just as he neared its doorway, that shrill screech of the sheriff’s horse entered his ear canal. Cowboy knew a standoff was fast approaching. He turned, back toward the cruel miasma, facing this Agent of the Star just off his horse. The Agent spoke with vacant words and syllables devoid of content. Cowboy reached deep into his pocket but the breakneck Agent discharged sun rays directly into his shoulder. Cowboy had little choice but to go down. He was cuffed and a night in county jail awaited. Worse yet, the star’s demise had been delayed. But Cowboy was not upset; patience was in his code, and he knew that soon his mission would resume once more.