Idle hands do the devil’s work, right? What about idle minds? Are they commandeered by some other malevolent agency? Inquiring minds want to know.

We appear to have arrived at the doldrums of summer a bit early here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York. Just finishing up a stretch of 90-degree plus days, some of them feeling over 100 degrees with the humidity. When it gets like that, we go subterranean – down into the cavernous basement of the mill, where it’s about 30 degrees cooler and wherein we have built an alternative habitat of sorts. Makeshift furniture made of bits and bobs. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a charging station set up down there. It’s a big, dank, windowless home away from home, perfect for summer staycation.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. It’s anything but perfect. It’s drab as hell and it reeks down here. Even worse, there’s nothing to freaking do except scratch on the walls and think about shit. That’s where the idle minds come in. I don’t remember if it was my idea or someone else’s, but at some point we got to talking about how we haven’t done a tour in years, why that was the case, and where we would go if we decided to go on the road again. Before we knew it, we were scratching out the rough outline of a 40-city tour, using a sharp piece of slate on the cellar wall. I say rough because Anti-Lincoln can’t tell the difference between Jupiter and Saturn – he keeps mixing them up, putting the rings around the wrong one. You may think that’s a detail, but once you’re out in interplanetary space, these details matter.

Okay, so …. here’s the hole we dug ourselves into, at least on paper (or, rather, concrete). Two weeks of engagements in the greater Jovian system – you know, the Great Red Spot, then on to Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (we limit ourselves to the Galilean moons because, well, they’re more well-rounded). As stop-over at Saturn and Titan (always a lively show). Then from there, straight out of the solar system, assuming we can rent a vessel that will handle interstellar travel. Our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee says he knows a guy. We’ll see about that.

I must confess – I’m not sold on this idea, but if it keeps my colleagues content for a couple of weeks, there will be peace in the basement. And when the heat wave breaks, then maybe I can talk them out of another tourmageddon.