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. !y friends were like me" some were scared of viruses, some gave you a game on disk, ne#t week or $riday the %&th it reformatted your hard disk or corrupted your memory. 'ut 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. )f course I have to spend a lot of time playing it. *o do my friends. +nd their friends. +nd ,ust the people you meet, you can see them, walking down the old motorways or standing in -ueues, away from their computers, away from the arcades that sprang up overnight, but they play it in their heads in the meantime, combining shapes, pu..ling over contours, putting colours ne#t to colours, twisting signals to new screen sections, listening to the music. *ure people think about it, but mainly they play it. !y records eighteen hours at a stretch. /0,0%1 points, & fanfares. 2ou play trough the tears, the aching wrist, the hunger, after a while it all goes away. +ll of it e#cept the game, I should say. Theres no room in my mind any more( no room for other things.

3e 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 T4. There used to be T4. I wonder what will happen when I run out of canned food. I wonder where all the people went. +nd I reali.e how, if Im fast enough, I can put a black s-uare ne#t to a red line, mirror it and rotate them so they both disappear, clearing the left block for a white bubble to rise5 (*o they both disappear. +nd 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. 6e wanted to die. The dwarfish natives of the +rctic 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. )nce every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless 7ight. 8uring the ,ourney hr would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, fro.en into time. 6e envied Prometheus and 9oki, *isyphus and :udas. 6is punishment was harsher. 6o. 6o. 6o.

Babycakes
+ few years back all the animals went away. 3e woke up one morning, and they ,ust werent there any more. They didnt even leave us a note, or say good;bye. 3e never figured out -uite where theyd gone. 3e missed them. *ome of us thought that the world had ended, but it hadnt. There ,ust werent any more animals. 7o cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies. 3e were all alone. 3e didnt know what to do. 3e wandered around lost, for a time, and then someone pointed out that ,ust because we didnt have animals any more, that was no reason to change our lives. 7o reason to change our diets, or to cease testing products that might cause harm. +fter all, there were still babies. 'abies cant talk. They can hardly move. + baby is not a rational, thinking creature. 3e made babies. +nd we used them. *ome of them we ate. 'aby flesh is tender, and succulent. 3e flayed their skin, and decorated ourselves in it. 'aby leather is soft, and comfortable. *ome of them we tested. 3e taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, a drop at a time. 3e scarred them, and scalded them. 3e burnt them. 3e clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. 3e grafted, and we fro.e, 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. 7o;one could deny that. 3hit the animals gone, what else could we do< *ome people complained, of course. 'ut then, they always do. +nd everything went back to normal. )nly5 2esterday, all the babies were gone. 3e dont know where they went. 3e didnt see them go. 3e dont know what were going to do without them. 'ut well think of something. 6umans are smart. Its what makes us superior to the animals and the babies. 3ell 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 + book whit pages missing, and a bottle, and a glove. 7ow outside its chilly autumn, Im conducting a post;mortem )n our love. Im conducting a post;mortem on our love. +n autopsy to find out what went wrong. I know it died. I ,ust dont know how, or why. !aybe 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 tra,ectory )f 6ell. 3as it suicide, or murder, or an accident, or what< Though I cut and slice and saw and hack it wont come back to life +nd Im severing the label of each organ on the table 3hit a knife5 Im conducting a post;mortem on our love. +n autopsy to find out what went wrong. I know it died. I ,ust dont know how, or why. !aybe its heart stopped.