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Date #7, Mars 202224 BC: Love in the Time of Red-Banded Excretions"**
*Featuring: SPYKES “June 28 2023” One-Sided Lathe 7" Played on a Martian Bonegramophone*
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He went by **Lukzor**, and his profile said:
> “6'2” (Earth inches) | Biped | Into sound-based sculptures, iron dust wine, and limbless poetry.
> Swipe right if you own a lathe. Bonus if your saliva doesn’t corrode alloy.”
She was called **Zeenapha**, part human, part archivist mold, regrown from library fungus in the thawing ruins of Atlantic Outpost 3. Her photo was blurry but clearly featured the **SPYKES “June 28 2023”** lathe cut 7” embedded in her thoracic shelf like a brooch.
The match was instant.
They agreed to meet on the **Martian crust ridge once known as Valles Marineris**, near a fossilized vending machine and beneath a shrine to forgotten insect gods carved by exogeologists in the Year of Many Spines.
Zeenapha brought the record. Lukzor brought a **millipede.**
> “Narceus americanus," he grunted.
> “Red-banded. Still alive, somehow. Found it nibbling antenna grooves off an abandoned SPYKES side project.”
> “You didn’t lick it, did you?” she asked.
> “Only once. For romantic reasons.”
They sat in silence while the sun bloomed magenta behind distant ice cliffs.
He set the millipede on a sound-conductive rock.
She inserted the 7” into her bonegramophone rib-slot.
The record played a **distorted field recording of time collapsing**, woven with crackles, a child humming, and the hiss of something burrowing *too close.*
The millipede began secreting.
Zeenapha’s eyes misted over.
> “This… this track... it was recorded in reverse from the moment of a human’s last taste of a plum. I didn’t think it still existed.”
Lukzor leaned in.
They kissed.
But her lips had touched the excretion residue on his.
A brief shimmer. Then her skin flushed violet. Her spine sprouted **bio-audio petals** that pulsed in sync with the SPYKES lathe groove. She tasted **wood smoke, glass rot,** and a memory of 2007’s underground cassette scene.
> “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “JackBeefus warned me. But I had to try.”
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In the Martian sand, the millipede curled into a treble clef and disintegrated with a sound not unlike a whispered “upvote.”
And though she glowed with pain and static, Zeenapha smiled.
> “Worst first date? No.”
> “Strangest love? Maybe.”
> “Will it last?”
> “As long as the needle keeps moving.”
They left the shrine hand-in-claw, disappearing into the ultrasonic feedback of a planet still learning how to forget.
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**Location: Southern Valles Marineris, near the Echo Ridge Fault Scar**
**Size of millipede (excluding antennae): approx. 9.8 cm**
**Identification: Possibly Narceus americanus, but corrupted by Martian sonics.
Edition of 1.