Virus

There was a computer game, I was given it, one of my friends gave it to me, he was playing it, he said, its brilliant, you should play it, and I did, and it was. I copied it off the disk he gave me for anyone, I wanted everyone to play it. Everyone should have this much fun. I sent it upline to bulletin boards but mainly I got it out to all of my friends. (Personal contact. Thats the way it was given to me.) My friends were like me: some were scared of viruses, some gave you a game on disk, next week or Friday the 13th it reformatted your hard disk or corrupted your memory. But this one never did that. This was dead safe. Even my friends who didnt like computers started to play: as you get better the games get harder; maybe you never win but you can get pretty good. Im pretty good. Of course I have to spend a lot of time playing it. So do my friends. And their friends. And just the people you meet, you can see them, walking down the old motorways or standing in queues, away from their computers, away from the arcades that sprang up overnight, but they play it in their heads in the meantime, combining shapes, puzzling over contours, putting colours next to colours, twisting signals to new screen sections, listening to the music. Sure people think about it, but mainly they play it. My records eighteen hours at a stretch. 40,012 points, 3 fanfares. You play trough the tears, the aching wrist, the hunger, after a while it all goes away. All of it except the game, I should say. Theres no room in my mind any more; no room for other things.

We copied the game, gave it to our friends. It transcends language, occupies our time, sometimes I think Im forgetting things these days. I wonder what happened to the TV. There used to be TV. I wonder what will happen when I run out of canned food. I wonder where all the people went. And I realize how, if Im fast enough, I can put a black square next to a red line, mirror it and rotate them so they both disappear, clearing the left block for a white bubble to rise (So they both disappear.) And when the power goes off for good then I will play it in my head until I die.

Nicholas was...
older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die. The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they where not actually working in the factories. Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey hr would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time. He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Babycakes
A few years back all the animals went away. We woke up one morning, and they just werent there any more. They didnt even leave us a note, or say good-bye. We never figured out quite where theyd gone. We missed them. Some of us thought that the world had ended, but it hadnt. There just werent any more animals. No cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies. We were all alone. We didnt know what to do. We wandered around lost, for a time, and then someone pointed out that just because we didnt have animals any more, that was no reason to change our lives. No reason to change our diets, or to cease testing products that might cause harm. After all, there were still babies. Babies cant talk. They can hardly move. A baby is not a rational, thinking creature. We made babies. And we used them. Some of them we ate. Baby flesh is tender, and succulent. We flayed their skin, and decorated ourselves in it. Baby leather is soft, and comfortable. Some of them we tested. We taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, a drop at a time. We scarred them, and scalded them. We burnt them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze, and we irradiated. The babies breathed our smoke, and the babies veins flowed with our medicines and drugs, until they stopped breathing, or until their blood ceased to flow. It was hard, of course, but it was necessary. No-one could deny that. Whit the animals gone, what else could we do? Some people complained, of course. But then, they always do. And everything went back to normal. Only Yesterday, all the babies were gone. We dont know where they went. We didnt see them go. We dont know what were going to do without them. But well think of something. Humans are smart. Its what makes us superior to the animals and the babies. Well figure something out.

Post-Mortem on Our Love

Ive been dissecting all the letters that you sent me, slicing through them looking for the real you cutting through the fat and gristle of each tortuous epistle trying to work out what to do. Ive laid the presents that you gave me out upon the floor A book whit pages missing, and a bottle, and a glove. Now outside its chilly autumn, Im conducting a post-mortem On our love. Im conducting a post-mortem on our love. An autopsy to find out what went wrong. I know it died. I just dont know how, or why. Maybe its heart stopped. Theres an eyeball in a bottle staring sadly at the morgue Theres a white line on the sidewalk silhouetting where it fell In the dark I am inspecting all the angles of trajectory Of Hell. Was it suicide, or murder, or an accident, or what? Though I cut and slice and saw and hack it wont come back to life And Im severing the label of each organ on the table Whit a knife Im conducting a post-mortem on our love. An autopsy to find out what went wrong. I know it died. I just dont know how, or why. Maybe its heart stopped.