At night, when I go to bed, I no longer sleep next to a loaf of bread. None of the text in my dreams is ever legible, but yet I still know that they all read: “Unreal yeast makes unreal loaves.” The General once told me that the second half of my name means “dough” in intergalactic standard tongue. The first half means “fish.”

“Ah, morning, Fish Dough,” was how the General always greeted me. I never knew if he owned the bakery, but he was certainly a product of the place, his smile crusted like that slice across the top of a sourdough. My scheduled arrival was six sharp, I have a possessive nature over bakeries. It is unfulfilling to be the second customer to smell complete bread.

I never chose which loaf I would buy. I trusted the General’s recommendations. The reason was obvious: his white apron and hat were so adorned with medals he glowed like a nursery of stars. Only once his belly stopped wobbling enough did I eventually read the text on one medal in the shape of a comet: The High Star of Jupiter – Record Riser.

I live in a transformative region of space, things are faster, gas spreads out desperately, heat flies rather than dissipates. It is unsafe to inhabit without care, but the risk is worth the reward for those that are involved in technical work. The baker, the bread maker, for example, their dance with yeast is elevated here – the gas those yeast shoot out!

Consider the luck of my situation: I occupy a two-foot square tube, which I slide myself into at night to sleep. There is a small window at the top of my container that points directly at the Sour Cluster in the sky, so named, for it is an assembly of thousands of bakeries, all in orbit around the star BU.001.7A. For these intergalactic bakers, the star is their oven, which they are happy to share while it burns on. This all, I see from my port window, about the size of the moon in a planet’s sky. And I watch it, day dreaming about the bread, night dreaming about the bread.

I walked into the General’s bakery with a face ready to order bread. The General had a hand raised high and I looked to where it pointed which was up at the ceiling. But then he brought it down and slap! he met it against a wet piece of dough. He shouted, “To a hole with your answers!” and he did it again, this time with the back of his hand like he was dealing with a mouthy fish.

“Ah, morning, Dough Fish,” and slap! slap! slap!

“I have” – slap! – “bad bread” – slap! – “this morning,” said the General.

I walked up to the counter to get a better look. The wooden side was marked with hundreds of loaves, all wet, all yet uncooked. Without looking up at me, the General said, “Tough yeast.” slap!

I once asked the General how I could learn to make bread like his. He handed me a piece of paper with the following written on it:

Flour

Water

Yeast

Surely there was more to it than this, I thought. The General read the thought on my face, he said: “Do not listen to anyone that tells you how to mix them. You only make other’s bread then.”

Back at my tube, I considered this for the rest of the day. Around me, citizens went about, all bread-based operations. The ships above me look down on us and see a honeycomb, thousands of little two-foot tubes, packed with no air between, each holding a bread dreamer. I cannot hear the dreams of those that sleep in the tubes next to me, but I know they are of sourdoughs, walnut loaves, tough ryes, and spelt-ful delights.

When I travel to the Sour Cluster each morning, I could go to anywhere. Despite the occupation of the entire galaxy, bakery architecture has remain unchanged. Still of brick, or wood, with eyes of windows and in those eyes many pupils of breads on display. The bakery is the only building worth putting your nose right on and smelling deep, for the art form soaks into the plaster. Any one of these, I could walk into, inhale deep, and say, “A load, please!” But I do not. There is always only one door I walk through, one side it reads on a sign, “Unreal yeast makes unreal loaves,” on the other side a doughy General.

Sometimes I stay around, after buying my bread. The Sour Cluster is an efficient machine, it leaves little room for anything but processes that produce bread. Some bakeries, like the General’s, have one or two stools by a window. I take a stool next to a long black coat, one that buttons across the chest like a straightjacket. If there were a face, it was hidden behind a high collar. But peeking above the collar wall, a loaf – white tiger – and I could hear deep breathing, heavy in and out.

Some call the Sour Cluster the “highest rising city in this arm of the galaxy,” and, if you count the collective daily efforts of the yeast, it is true. This is a place made from bread, made of bread. Every function here is with bread on the mind. My lunch was a speckled half-dry rye, with a friend who works in the flour mines. She was engaged with a thick slice of crusted poulaigne. We both take in a deep breath of our bread. What did we discuss? Why, bread.

“The bread breathes,” said the General to me once while he had under both arms enormous loaves I had not seen the likes of before. He swung them around as he walked, like two double-barrelled shotguns. “What with the bread under the arms?” I asked. “Keep it warm,” he gruffed.

And then one morning I woke with a clear sky and a perfect view of the Sour Cluster humming above me – abuzz with motion around its star. I imagined all those loaves packed up and being hauled to and from the surface ovens of BU.001.7A. I parked my ship on Bread Corner, walked down Main Bread, inspected the eyes of all the bakeries as I went, feeling the saliva in my mouth build up on cue. I know the General’s bakery is near not by sight – they are all the same – but by smell, slight differences in the aromas.

“Morning General,” I am about to say, my hand on the door. The door, though, forgets its part in this play, does not budge. Again, I give it some more weight, but its totally stuck. I peek inside and it is dark. I feel dysfunctional. Alienated, around me unfamiliar. I am alone, outcast, astray, dry. I try to stabilize myself with thoughts of bread, take in the arresting flavours of the air about me. Someone walked up to me and perhaps my desperation was on my surface now: “Arrested,” they say and they walk on, on to their own yeast church. “Arrested?” I yell after them. They stop and turn, “For crimes against the yeast,” they call and then turn the corner.