I don't blink as the face of Gee Horse the Rent-a-friend

floats upward in my bowl of cornflakes. It wasn't in the

bowl and I think, I hope, that I would notice something
that big falling out of the packet or bottle. But no,
here it is, floating on the milky surface like the skin
off a rice pudding. Gee looks a little pale. I'm glad he
hasn't appeared in my coffee. Sometimes I swear that
coffee is the only thing keeping me sane.
I prod the right, my right, Gee's left, cheek with the
butt of my spoon. No way I'm touching it with the part of
my utensil that goes in my mouth.
***
I'd picked the apple from the pile. I'd made sure to pick
a good one. You know the type: firm, ripe- but not too
ripe; no bruises and none of the nicks and scratches that
fruit acquire. Those simple details really should have
started the alert system. It's too perfect, my brain
should have said, It'll be rotten to the core.
I bit into the shiny red and green fruit.
Question: what's worse than finding a worm in an apple?
Answer: Half a worm.
Or, as in my unfortunate example, a worm with four white
eyes set evenly around a small ravenous toothy maw.
"Gnash, gnash" it says. All this set atop a long, white,
segmented body. The kind of worm that infects and infests
things. A parasite that will eat it's way into your foot
and after you catch it's tail, it struggles. Joints
thrashing. You pull it out slowly, fearful that it will
pull apart and stay inside. And when you get it out, it's
pink, translucent and flush with your blood and flesh.
And one of those fuckers is in my apple.
***
I turn the tap and... well... naught. I wait and my
tarrying pays me off with two loud 'gloinks' and a rush
of nothing. I twist the tap further and gain nothing bar
a plaintive 'goik'.
And then there is a gush of what can only be described as
goop. A viscous slime the colour of lime jelly. If I
didn't know better I'd say that a giant green jellyfish
was slowly oozing out of my spout.

But that would be crazy. I turn the tap the other way and
close the flow. Why isn't it draining away?
***
"There's no way that there's something in the wrapper
besides chocolate. Absolutely no way". There is the sixth
time I've said it and I still don't feel convinced. It's
my favourite chocolate too: white flaky centre coated in
brown chocolate. It's a glorious mix that combines in a
gooey mass in the mouth melting together and merging with
the taste buds until the entire mouth is chocolate. A
silky mouth that feels like eternity.
***
This is Mars. A red rock scoured by storms. Dust and
rust. A new atmosphere. Bad oxygen. Hardy plants and
global warming.
Shuttles need to pick their moments well. Bad timing
leads to traumatic landings.
Dust devils and electrical charges. Fine components
fritz. Large machineries jam. Shuttles stop flying.
Shuttles start falling.
Tourism is low. Corporate interest is high. Mars is
untapped. Resource rich. Mars is called a diamond. Mars
is called a lump of coal. Business can sell Terra both.
Government is unconvinced. Torn between public good and
personal gain. Mars is a bastard sell. Who will pay for
it? Speeches about stepping into the universe. Undercut
by mutterings about taxpayer funding.
***
I am a robot. Why am I so calm about this? I am a robot.
Today I was given speakers. They plugged them in and
turned them on. Quite a lot of pain as a result. Too
loud.
***
I feel like some kind of deserter. All the men are on the
work front and here I am swanning around. Women, children
and old men. I feel like the guy who tried to enlist but
was turned down due to health concerns. Now I'm waiting
for someone to approach with a white feather. A hissed
'slacker'

***
The first colonisation attempt fails. The barge drops out
of orbit. The dustcloud is visible with decent scopes.
Satellites show survivors. Amazing luck. Good and bad.
Someone spells out 'send help'. In six metre high letters
using rocks. No one expected catastrophic failure.
Communications fail. Help a good four months away.
Two days later. Another sweep of the satellite. Another
message in rock: 'cryogenics unusable'.
A grim leader on TV: 'we shall remember their sacrifice'.
One final message: '26 survivors'. Dust erases the
message. Covers the crash. The first attempt at
colonising Mars fails.
One Earth. Strife. Heads roll. Governments fall. Mars
central control on Earth destroyed. Terrorists claim
responsibility. Neo-neo-luddites. Tough luck for
interplanetary travel. Tough luck for Mars Barge 1. Tough
luck for the one hundred crew members. Barge cargo lost:
Equipment to build a city; food to feed a city; materials
to run a city; and 4000 cryogenically frozen colonists.
All lost.
The world mourned- for a little while. Life moved on.
***
Things get back on track. Order restored. Terrorists
'reeducated'. Funds restored. Eyes returned to Mars.
Mars, land of opportunity. The pot of gold at the end of
the cash flow. No interest. Too many burnt fingers. New
administrations other concerns. New concerns. Old
concerns. Healthcare, education. Other laudable goals.
Meanwhile. On Mars. The survivors have gone underground.
Continued doing the job that began when they turfed down
on Mars: surviving. Mars Barge 1 abandoned. The engines
cracked. Leaking life-crimping materials. Cryogenics
failed. Almost 4000 lives crimped overnight. Mars Barge 1
is a tomb. The survivors survive.
***
I'm a dumbarse. I've been asleep three hundred years. I
said 'wake me when we get to Mars'. Stupid, dumb
optimism. Sure, I thought, fifty years at the most. I
believed it. Surely we can't fuck this up? Well, don't I
feel like a right charlie. Of course we can fuck it up.

We're human. Terran. Fucking homo sapiens. Sure as the

planet turns we can fuck it up.
***
So fifty years clocks in at four hundred. I have the
dubious accolade of being the oldest human being
currently alive. First day out of the freezer and I'm
attacked by a rogue flu strain. A near sentient resistant
strain of bastard virus. I'm not even defrosted and this
new reality is resenting my existence.
Doctors are surprised I survive. I outlived the cryogenic
facilities that froze me. Drifted through three world
wars. Too many governments to count. I even survived
longer than the banking institution that held my account.
I also outlived most of my internal organs. Big
intestine. Little intestine. Liver. Pancreas. Appendix.
Bladder. Prostate. All of the major ones. Gone. Yeah. Man
bits, too.
I had partially thawed a century back. Bacteria made up
for lost time. Devoured me from the tits down. Little
buggers ate from by mid-forearm down. I liked my hands. I
liked my feet. They did things. It was like my
extremities had escaped from the plague pit of my
consciousness. These appendages that roamed my outer
borders. The ones furthest from my head. From me. I hope
they're on a beach somewhere. The feet wearing flipflops. The hands, one casually gripping tropical drinks
in long-stemmed pineapple shaped glasses with umbrellas.
The other waving at people. I miss them. Especially in
comparison with my news ones.
They're irritating. They're perfect. They're growing from
the stumpy arms that are still growing from my original
shoulders. There are no stubby nails. No fucked up
cuticles. No skin growing over curved corners. They have
no history. The scars on the knuckles. The calluses on
palms and fingers. The shotgunned freckles on the back of
the hands. All gone. Their history is all gone. "Most
people get cosmetics," says the Doctor.
"I'll get new marks soon enough".
Growing the new limbs was the bastard part. Three months
of itching. Agonising pain. Immobility. "A little pain
never hurt anyone," said one of the nurses. What a
fucking liar.
The woman in the room next to mine laughs. "Your hands
look like a babies". Her name is Irma. I wiggle my hands
weakly. I'm about the only thing that makes her laugh.

She's regrowing her body from the ribcage down. We're

companions in misery. Irma and I spend our days sitting
in the sun waiting for our legs and other bits to grow
back. I catch up.
***
The world fractured. Rich and poor. White and not. War
and peace. Control and freedom. Us and them.
***
Countries re-evaluated borders. China opened up. The
United States closed down. India ascended. Europe
consolidated.
The Moon is Indian and Chinese. The US complained.
The Chinese ambassador was summoned to explain. She
listened politely. She nodded. She agreed. She cooed
sympathetically. She changed the subject.
"We have had a film commissioned" she said "a history of
the Moon". She turns and nods. Her assistant leaves. An
audiovisual monitor is wheeled in. The ambassador coughs,
"we need some help to choose a scene and there's only
room for one".
The monitor flickers on. Blue screen with a green
arrowhead indication. The assistant dims the lights.
On the screen is the symbol of the Indian-Chinese
Alliance: An orange disk on a black field. A Hindu Cow
and a Chinese Dragon in profile looking to the top right
hand corner of the screen. Their gazes travelling across
the disk.
Cut. An excited caucasian child looking excitedly over a
railing. He points down and looks up at his parents,
whose faces are just off frame.
Child: 'I can see it! Mum! Dad! We're nearly there.'
Cut. A frosted glass dome as seen from the child's point
of view. Inside is the indistinct shape of a flag.
(I imagine that the ambassador is smiling in the dark as
she hears the Americans fidget).
Cut: close up of American flag against the soft light of
the dome interior.
Cut: close up of Armstrong's footprint in the lunar soil.

Voice over: 'In 1967, Neil Armstrong made one small step
for a man but giant leap for us all when he stepped out
onto the Moon's surface. His actions speak for us all.'
Fade to black.
The ambassador nods and fiddles with the remote. The
image freezes. "That's my favourite," she says. She waves
the remote. The image unfreezes.
Fade up: the Dragon and Cow identity again.
Cut: the American flag against the depths of space, Earth
rising just over the lunar horizon.
Cut: Armstrong's footprint.
Cut: a dull yellow bulldozer silently levels the site
that was the US moon landing.
Cut: the base of the Lunar Lander is lowered onto the
back of a flatbed tracked truck by a crane.
Voice over: 'The groundwork is being laid for the new
step into the solar system. The new interplanetary
launchpad that will take humanity to Mars.'
Fade to black.
Silence.
***
Months pass. I'm itching to get off planet. I no longer
have a reference point. I'm a cultural oddity. A temporal
mistake. I'm alive in what feels like fiction. One moment
a cartoon; the next a noir detective flick. I have to
explain what a 'flick' is. I have to explain 'noir'. I
earn money as a PHD research assignment. 'Ancient
Cultural History in Context.' I'm the context.
The future is how I've always seen Tokyo portrayed.
Images. Weirdness. Iconic faces pimping Japanese
whiskeys. Charlie Chaplin and Hitler appear on the same
poster. Advertising razors. Hitler smiles a toothy smile.
It makes him appear more monstrous.
Neutered musclemen stroll in packs down the waterfront.
All wear fullbody blue lycra. Red cape and boots.
Supermen with a blue streak in their hair. A dimple

beneath their wholesome smiles. Multi-ethnic supermen.

One is Indian with a red dot. He looks like a god.
Things I recognise appear. No explanation. No warning.
I walk into a phone booth for privacy. There's no phone.
No graffiti. No business cards. There is a screen playing
pornography. Eye-opening pornography.
On the screen a woman with peach skin writhes. Ecstasy?
Discomfort? I can't tell. She has extra vaginas. One
where her belly button would be. Another between her
breasts. Her crevices slick with secretions. Her fingers
stiffly rubbing nubs and folds of skin and flesh.
A man walks into frame: he looks like a cartoon mouse.
Jet black skin. Big eyes, the whites yellow and blood
shot. He wears baggy red pants with suspenders. A huge
snout. He has a squeaky voice.
"On your stomach, bitch." He slaps her and rolls her
over. The camera focuses on another orifice at the small
of her back; a second anus. He unzips his pants and
maneuvers his penis clear of the opening. It looks half a
metre long. I don't feel inadequate, I'm an utterly
distinct species. He holds her arms on the bed beside
her. She gasps as the mouse bludgeons into her.
The woman stares into the camera. Her eyes aren't
focused. She jerks spasmodically. Her breath comes in
truncated gasps. She could be replaced by a storefront
mannequin and it wouldn't matter. It sickens me and
excites me. I can't stop watching.
The thrusting is interrupted. The woman slumps on the
bed. She doesn't move. The camera moves to the door and
it is forced open by a man-duck. White feathers float in
his wake. He lunges at the mouse, voice distorted into
angry gibberish.
"She asked for it," says the mouse as he wrestles with
the duck on top of the insensate woman. The duck's eyes
bulge. An aneurysm appears imminent. He rolls off the
mouse and lies on the bed. He clutches his chest, breath
rasping. The mouse manipulates himself and ejaculates
bloodied semen over the duck's upturned face. My
childhood dies.
I leave the booth. I vomit into the gutter and a passing
police officer writes me a ticket. I am scum.
***

Brook Noon is the new sheriff. He volunteered. No one

volunteers. No one wants the job. No one wants the
surgery. No one wants to leave Terra. You would have to
be insane. Brook Noon isn't insane. No one knows why he's
doing it and Noon isn't saying.
The town is called Second Chance. Noon hates it. It's a
shithole a quarter of the world away from Cydonia and
just a little bit further from New Cairo. Noon is home.
Second Chance is nominally American, but that's simply
because America sent every one there. Most often by way
of the prison. It's all very Australia circa the
nineteenth century. Very Devil's Island. It's such an old
idea to send criminals to do the hard work. Let them tame
the landscape and build the settlement, grow the food and
construct the infrastructure. In return reduce their
sentence though probability says they'll work themselves
to death first. The survivors are freed, and they live in
Second Chance.
***
They do the same job as when they were prisoners. Along
side their former cellmates. They work fewer hours and
get paid a little more. They have to buy their own food
or grow it. They are free, useful members of a distant
society. They're all men. Women aren't sent to Mars. All
undesirables: murderer, sex offenders and political
deviants. Fortress America keeps itself safe. It plays
the odds. If the colony succeeds then great. If it fails
then it's no great loss. If the colonists create a
nuisance then who cares? Americans aren't getting hurt.
Sure enough, India and China aren't enemies. They're just
not friends. Europe's too socialist. Russia's too
disorganised. Australia's part of Indonesia and the
Pacific's a protected area. The Middle East is glass.
***
I ask about genetic engineering. I'm not sure. Still
unsure. The answer is genetic engineering is omnipresent:
in my room, in my food, in my body.
The Indians developed the 'ultimate' grain. It's hardy,
quickgrowing and almost evergreen. The kicker was, and
this made me giggle, India made it public domain.
Corporations the world over probably shat themselves. All
that potential profit stillborn.
Famine wasn't quite the problem it used to be. Poverty
was eased. Life was easier when a person could eat.

The plant spread like a more pervasive gorse threatening

ecosystems.
***
I set about drawing my past to me. Clothes are a loss.
Everything synthetic fabrics and tight fitting cuts. It's
comfortable but then so is naked and I'm not ready to go
around naked in public. I ask about ubiquitous things.
Jeans, t-shirts, Baggy bermuda shorts. Sandals are easy.
Flip-flops too. Me and my prehistoric cultural
references.
I ask people in the street where they get their clothes.
"just threw it together".
Everyone resembles fridge doors that are layered with
magnets. Many screens. Small screens as a badge. Big
screens as a top logo. Full body suits made of dot
monitors: environmental camouflage.
I realise I'm looking in the wrong place; the city is a
different world. I've woken up in a biosphere. Nothing
but overalls. There is no past here, only last season.
I'm trapped in Test Mall One.
I learn slowly. What I'm asking after is low fashion.
Classic is lower than current. Classic is currently
flared pseudo metal pants. I feel like I'm dreaming. I've
lost my pants. Soon someone will notice and it will be
over. I must find my pants. Pants are verboten. I must
find pants. I am a fashion deviant that people laugh at.
I try to cover up my pantless condition with threadbare
hands. I'm not waking up.
***
My ears wake up first. Layered sound: soft humming;
gentle bubbling and a repetitive beeping. It's the filter
on my fish tank. I have a couple of gourami and redtailed
sharks. A flock of guppies. One of those sucker-mouthed
fish that glides over the glass, eating the accumulated
scunge. One of the sharks hides behind the air filter
***
I hear cloth moving against cloth. Surely my alarm should
have gone off. What time is it? Something is in my nose.
It blocks my sinuses, and puts pressure on my eyes from
below; like a bad head cold. I'm blocked to the eyeballs.
A sudden insight about chloroform and ether and other

strange smells: two slow fingers slipping to the back of

the nostrils. To the eyeballs. Ammonia is a pair of sharp
fingers rushing along a precise path. It all makes sense.
My nose itches and I reach my arm and then my hand and
then my finger to scratch it. They all ignore me. My limb
is ignoring me. What's happening? What is this? My arm
isn't home. I check the neighbours. My shoulder stirs and
nothing else. I wake up
I roll over. Correction- I try to roll. I try lots of
things. I try to get up. I can't.
My eyes are immobile. The lids are set like they're
afflicted with over-enthusiastic conjunctivitis. There is
something across my eyes. A woman's voice.
"Don't struggle," She is authority "you'll feel a little
prick."
A needle into my shoulder. Warmth spreads. To my
eyeballs.
***
I stand over my home. I had to see it. Well, the site
anyway. My home is ten metres underwater and who knows
how many metres under silt, earth and clay.
I'm warned against diving into the water. Too much plant
life makes visibility almost zero and there are some
funky parasites hiding in the hydrogrowth. They like
mammals, though I'm not sure I still count.
I hold the boat's rail and look. This is the valley I
grew up in and now it's a lagoon.
***
I was curious about what had happened to my parents, my
brother and my friends. But standing here on the boat I'm
finding I'll be better of not knowing. Imagining them
happy, their lives a little changed without me. I was the
one who had stopped not them. They kept going without me.
I will remember them as they were the last time I saw
them. Alive and vibrant, my brother in London, my parents
separated but happy. I suspect that I wasn't even buried.
That I simply vanished and that to some extent they lived
out their lives with the hope that I was out there living
mine. Who can I blame? There'll be no-one left. I
abandoned everyone in my life by not being visibly dead.
I wonder what each of them thought?

I buried two of my cats down there. One under the washing

line and the other on the opposite side of the backyard
near the rusting potbelly stove.
"Have you seen enough?" The captain is just behind me, "I
can shift you over to another patch of nothing," he
chuckles, "if you like."
It's getting dark.
"Take us back in" I say.
We return to the boatramps. I watch the sunset. Everyone
I know is dead. Mum, dad and my brother. Friends, lovers,
everyone. The six billion humans alive when I was, all
dead. Where did they all go? It's a dumb question. 'What
happened to the dinosaurs?'
Petroleum is people.
***
The world as I knew it is over. I read somewhere, in a
comic probably, that 'the Armageddon didn't come all at
once, it came one person at a time.'
***
Sure, I remember. I left my body to science. It was one
of two requests that I made perfectly clear to friends
and family. The other was that if I die unnoticed then I
don't mind if my cats eat me. It's not like it was their
fault and I'd much rather that they survive than starve
to death.
Though I'm certain I said 'science' and not 'mad
science'.
***
I don't stick out here. Just another Caucasian in a sea
of them. One more white boy in the former United States
of America. I much prefer the Pacific- whitey is pretty
rare and that heartens me. Not because caucasians left
but because they stayed. They went, and I hate the
phrase, they went 'native'. Pakeha, Maori, Samoan,
Tongan, Rarotongan, Cook Island, Fijian, Chinese,
Japanese, Tahitian, Korean all make up the brilliant mix
of culture in the pacific. It is liberating. Here I'm not
the historical 'Man'. I'm just one more skin colour in a
whole heap of skin colours. Culturally is a completely
different nightmare. My particular brand of culture is
now represented by one person and that is me.

***
The boat's captain shows me the swivel mounted guns
placed around the ship's rail.
"If we are attacked, aim below their waterline" said the
unsmiling captain.
"Who would attack us?"
The captain sniffs, hacks it back and then spits the gob
over the rail into the water. "It won't be martians."
"I'd expect them to use saucers" I said.
The captain stares past me out to the hills before
shaking his head slowly.
"Below the waterline" he said.
He walks away. I look at the cannon.
Below the waterline is a tree that I used to climb as a
wee boy. There was a fork where trunk becomes confused
with branches and it was as high as I could climb before
my weight and gravity conspired against me. It was my
crows-nest.
I could see forever from up there. Down the street to the
skylights of the local mall; the roof of my primary
school; the fields of the local park, the rafters and
tekoteko [note: simon, check this out for spelling] of
the wharenui. I had watched 'Treasure Island' and 'Peter
Pan' and my imagination had absorbed ships and planks and
best of all Pirates. I kept a hard look out for Pirates.
Other tall trees sprouted mainsails and uncurled flags.
Who would it be? A Spanish galleon? A dread pirate? A
rival buccaneer? Perhaps a juicy merchant fleet crying
out to be plucked of it's copious goods. Whatever.
Broadsides! Cannon's recoil below and plumes of stinky
smoke jet from gun-hatches. The roll of cannonballs freed
from brass monkeys mingles with the yelling of men and
the booming of flintlocks and muskets. Finally, silence
descends upon the churning sea before the next act
begins.
Ropes are flung through the air, grapnels glinting in the
smoke filled air. Boats come together with a bowel
liquefying crash and then there are men leaping over the
gap, cutlasses flashing and knives gripped between bared
teeth. Gold teeth are costume de riguer. Parrots fiercely
cling to shoulders to avoid displacement and the battle
roils across two decks. The captains wade through the
melee, dropping anyone foolish enough to stray into their
paths. They are seeking each other out.

Finally they come across each other. One a swashbuckling

adventurer, the other a peg-legged, hook-handed pirate
king. Here is the main event, the culmination of a boy's
fantasy, a duel between vicious rivals.
Disaster! The Hero is disarmed and the Villain has a
pistol. The Hero and his crew are captured. The Villain
revels in his victory and all seems lost. The Hero faces
a short walk along a shorter plank. Beneath him the ocean
seethes with sharks, whipped into a frenzy from blood
spilled off slippery decks. The Hero braces himself on
the edge of the length of wood and...
...And Mum calls her offspring home.
"It's time to feed the cats," she says "then do something
about your room, it's a tip."
I'd climb down from the rarefied air of piratical fantasy
and feed the cats and reluctantly shift piles around my
room.
The pirates won. My privateer lies weed-locked beneath
the surface of the lagoon. The crows' nest rests
enticingly near the surface. Somehow I don't think that
the pirates of today do anything as quaint as making
captives walk the plank.
I leave the boat's rail. I shiver: either the sun's
drowning behind the hills or it's a pirate jigging over
my grave.
***
My organs have serial numbers. They are also someone
else's property. What else are these organs?
***
She's screaming at me. Right in my face spraying me with
spittle. A finger pokes into my chest and I flinch
backwards, off the pavement and off balance I sprawl
backwards. She starts kicking me while I'm on my arse and
she's still screaming. She has sharp toes and my nose is
caught. I'm a foetus being.
The kicking stops and she has screamed herself hoarse. I
uncover my face. She's being held by passersby, her arms
flailing, spit flying. I'm lying in the street, my nose
spilling blood. The police arrive.
***

Three asexual suits of armour descend from the sky. One

for her, one for me and one for the crowd. Spiders after
flies in their web. Everybody freezes. I've fallen
arsefirst out of the tree. I'm trying to be calm. I'm
trying to look calm. I'm a possum trying to remember if
I'm in a country where I'm protected.
The officer motions at me and I keep on doing nothing. No
one's moving. I don't even think about standing, which is
a redundant thought anyway. I sit, I bleed.
The woman who attacked me is being restrained by two
gauntleted hands. She's still angry, her face red, her
body rigid, her fingers clenched and knuckles white.
I'm lifted upright and set on my feet by one of the
officers. A hand remains encircling my upper arm- gently,
though I won't be going anywhere.
"Please disperse" the non-restraining officer's voice is
mechanically altered, modulated and loud. The crowd sifts
away, returning to their business. The angry woman
crushes me with hardened eyes.
***
The technicians at Cryobirth aren't able to help. My
remains have been transferred so many times that my point
of origin has been lost. I have become a sphinx who's
riddle is "how did I get here?" Memory only runs so far
before legs snap from the pelvis.
***
I am contacted. A call to my room. Not on a phone. Fibre
optics are dead here.
***
I go to the bank and wire- shit, wave now- half of my
money to Amnesty Interplanar.
***
If you can't find the body then it means nothing. Knowing
my family there would have been no marker. There would
have been a donation of books to a library and my ashes
scattered. I hope it was from the lookout at the top of
the hill overlooking the harbour. Maybe sneakily arrange
that a teaspoon of my ashes ends up in the coffee urn at
the wake. My ashes probably stayed with my dad.

But, of course, I didn't leave ashes. My whanau were

ripped off. What did they get? A cheap imitation? They
disposed of a carton of generic ashes while my body
became the property of mad science. Conspirrific.
***
Those fucking birds. I aim the device and click
repeatedly in the direction of the trees. Bodies begin to
drop from the branches. Wings and legs twitching
spastically. Beaks opening and closing. Eyes unfocussed.
Chests heaving and tongues protruding. They twitched for
a minute or so.
"Fuck, ow" said the bird nearest me.
I shut the window. I make coffee.
***
Mata has his waters back.
***
Submerged houses have holes punched in their roofs like
chocolate eggs at Easter. People getting out and people
getting in.
***
Liquefaction turned earth to water: some homes float,
most sink. Ruamoko [spelling] kicks.
***
There's a simple memorial at the top of the hill, Next to
it is a tap, it's pipe snaking to a metal water tower. A
block of stone with details chiseled into it. 'Lest we
forget'.
***
There are no windows. The earth, viewed on a monitor,
slowly minimises. It's still blue and wispy. I expected a
gray globe in turmoil. It's all as unreal as moonshots.
Gravity let me go eventually. I've left home. My stomach
bunches- I've made a mistake. I don't want to leave
anymore. Earth is my home. I wasn't manu huri [spelling]
there.
***

A giant cat on a tiny island, Grenada perches on my

chest. He's leaning forward, his triangle face
centimetres from mine. He's a Siamese.
"How are you today?" he says.
"Your breath is minty."
"I brush thoroughly before coming to work" Grenada says,
"I even scrub my tongue."
"Do you shower or tongue-wash." I'm having difficulty
focusing on his face he's so close.
"You're avoiding my question."
"I'm curious today." I say.
He closes his eyes; "curiosity killed the cat."
***
Growth is pain. New nerves fire continuously.
"If you didn't feel pain," says the nurse, "it wouldn't
be working."
It feels like it is working exceedingly well.
I don't want to know what is happening beneath the
sheets. I don't want to know what is being done to me. My
eyes 'came online' before they defrosted me completely.
They implanted them before I woke. They did an awful lot
of things to me before I woke.
Later, as they talked to me, I change my mind. They did a
lot of awful things to me. Not only had I changed my
mind, they had changed it too.
"We grew a clone of you" says the head specialist.
I feel sick.
***
I dream a lot. Dream patterns recur: different people and
different places, the same things happen.
***
Grenada sits in the window watching birds. He's feigning
supreme disinterest. His reflexes betray him as he whips
his head up as birds fly past his position.
"Do you chase them?" I say.
Grenada looks at me. His eyes wired wide from tracking
flight paths- snapped in the act.
"Birds?" he yawns, his ears pulled back. His eyes change
to sleepy, "nope" he says.
"Do cats even chase birds these days?"
"Nope. Nobody I know does."
"You want to chase them, though."
Grenada looks out the window, his eyes tracking movement.
"It's against the law," he says, tail twitching.

***
He stands, shakes himself and turns smoothly. He plonks
his arse down, his back to the window. His tail twitches.
"It's against the law," he says.
***
Recurring dreams.
I'm late for work. Only, I know that I quit months ago.
No-one where I work notices that I should no longer work
there. I'm anxious about being late and it infects
everything I do and feel. I courier messages and mail to
staff that don't notice my lack of not being there. I
solve problems on the computer.
The feeling is that I'm late and simultaneously know I
shouldn't be there at all.
The second dream: I'm in the corridors of my old college.
Pale mustard lino on the floors. Pale avocado walls and
horse manure coloured doors with reinforced fire-rated
glass windows. No lights are on and the corridors are
grubby with shadows. I am alone.
The final dream: A baby is crying. I'm talking to someone
only I cannot hear them over the wailing of this baby.
The other person keeps talking - they can't hear anything
untoward. I can't find the baby.
***
Grenada is wearing gloves: big metal exo-gloves that
extend his paws into human like hands.
"I was typing," he says.
He hops around like a rabbit and when he is still he sits
like a gorilla.
"I also use them to pick up furballs around the house."
"You have a house?" I'm surprised, "I kind of expected
you to sleep around the hospital."
"Times have changed old man."
***
I'm the healthiest man my age and I look like a starving
politically correct prisoner. I discover serial numbers
all over my body.
***

Things begin to make sense. Nothing makes sense. I think

I understand something but it twists around inside my
head and spirals and coils out like springs punching
through a mattress covering.
***h
"Who's funding all of this?" I say as the Doctor examines
the flesh that is slowly spreading over the bone, sinew
and nerves that have been attached to my body since
waking up. Grenada stops purring and his eyes are open.
He's too alert. The doctor continues to examine my legs.
The Doctor finishes and looks up.
"When the skin reaches the toes we'll have to do a little
surgery."
I lie back and look at tiles.
"Who's paying for this?" I'm trying to keep the edge out
of my voice and not really succeeding. She looks back to
my feet and begins checking connections and hydraulics.
"It's the difference between having feet and stockings."
She says as she taps my toes with the body of her laser
marker. She sighs and drops her hands to the bed. Without
looking up she says "Officially or unofficially?"
"Start at the beginning" I say.
Grenada stretches and takes a quick leap from the sill to
the bedside cabinet and then onto the bed.
"I don't know if you need to know some of this," he says.
***
There are no bars in America. Not that I imagined myself
being in America, amongst other things. America is clean.
There are no homeless, no litter and no vast servile
underclass. Apparently America got rid of them and
replaced them with robots.
***
"I'm not sure about this," says the Doctor as she sits on
the edge of the bed, "it doesn't seem a good idea at
all."
"You're in danger?"
"No," she shakes her head, "under contract." She smiles
and pats my unskinned knee "It's much the same thing."
My brand new baby stomach makes a fist the size of my
head and tries to push it up into my mouth.
"Are you alright? You've gone awfully pale."
"Don't tell me," I say, my teeth gritted "I don't need to
know." I don't want to open my mouth: parts may fall out.
"I know something's-," I trail off. My skin feels cold.
Dry and prickly. I need to breathe. The doctor stands and

runs a cloth under the cold tap. She places it on my

forehead. I concentrate on breathing.
"I'll never get used to that," says Grenada.
"Used to what?" The Doctor looks at him.
"Human's going gray, it weirds me out." Fucking cat, I'm
feeling like all my organs are about to flee.
"I've seen you blush," says the Doctor.
"You have bloody well not." Grenada's tail twitches once.
***
The reporters attacked at noon. I have not seen anything
like it before in my life.
Grenada was on the bed, while I sat in the sun drinking
what was supposed to pass for coffee these days. 'A
nutritious stimulant made in the mode of barista
traditonale'. It smells like aniseed and tastes like
pleasantly charred plastic. It's synthetic coffee
extruded from the bulbs of engineered plants: a nightmare
passed off as a cheeky, yet tasty beverage. I drank it
for want of anything else.
The light intensified through the window. I stood and
looked out into a shining reflective sea of light.
"Do they shoot movies here?" I said.
Grenada looked up, "what?"
I turned, "Movies, do they-"
The answer was a truncated whistle and my mug shattered.
A shower of hot liquid and ceramic
at the mug's handle in my hand for
handle holds nothing. I've slipped
and I'm stuck looking at the towel
off the wall on the way down.

shards and I'm looking

the end of time. The
in my life's bathroom
rail that I've torn

Grenada is gone from the bed.

***
In my first four weeks in Chile I don't see much beyond
the ceiling of my room.
***
My existence has settled down into a safe little rut.
Coffee substitute, rest, talking to Grenada and soaking
up the video news and current affairs. I am indeed the
luckiest dead man alive.
***

I have my body back but I can't do anything with it.

Running outside is verboten. I can't remember doing any
exercises way back when and the word 'gym' elicits blank
stares from people I mention it too around the hospital.
Not that I remember ever going to a gym; I just can't
discount it as a possibility. Now I have a body to
maintain and no where to take it.
***
I don't know why I expected. We're driving to the
airport. No radioactive wastelands; just subdivisions in
stasis.
"The council's fucked," says Javies the driver, "it's all
special interests, nepotism and conflicts of interest.
Four councilors are real estate agents and it always
seems that contracts are being awarded to 'friends'."
***
It's considered a quick jaunt next door, however many
kilometers it is to Mars.
They'd sent a crewed flight to Jupiter and lost it in the
asteroid belt. China had begun propelling asteroids out
of the belt and steering them to low Mars orbit to be
mined of useful materials. They stopped when orbits
decayed and an asteroid had plunged planetward and
propelled dust into the air. The sun was blocked for
almost a decade. The ice capes expanded and nitrogen
froze. The colony suffered and China rethought it's
tactics.
***
The inflight lolly tastes the way urinal cakes smell.
***
Driving on the highway at 115 kilometres an hour. Sixteen
kays to Eumundi. Fuck knows how to pronounce it. All I
know is whichever way I say it, everybody else will say
it different.
Australia hasn't changed all too much, it's still arid,
hot and big.
***
The Sphinx is a communicator between the lands of the
living and the dead. A beacon, portal, marker.

***
I am in the land of lost children. Posters; stickers and
holograms display names and faces. Tragic stories
attached to each one.
"Do they find them?" I say as we drive past arid trees
fronting kilometers and kilometers of grassland and dust.
"The missing kids?" Grover tilts his head slightly, eyes
not leaving the road,
"Sometimes," he shrugs, "I stopped watching along time
ago. Too many timelines. Too many tailings off."
Roberta twists in the passenger seat. "There's two
channels dedicated to them." She shakes her head, "one is
just revolving pictures and details. Fifteen seconds a
face. Apparently you can watch for a week now and not see
the same face repeated." My brain begins calculating.
Roberta continues, "The other channel is fifteen minute
segments. It's fucking ghoulish."
It takes me a fair while to work out. Fingers are ticked
and numbers muttered. I have to restart a couple of times
as I lose my place. "Fuck, fifty thousand."
"Fifty thousand what?" says Grover.
"Missing kids." I look out the window. I'm intently
looking for piles of dead children. Dead kids planted
like seeds. Murderers attempting to dispose of mutilated
bodies uncovering more mutilated bodies: 'is this one of
ours?'
How big is this place that that many people can go
missing? And that's just children. Missing children don't
grow up into missing adults. They don't age, staying as
young as their school photos. Photos chosen because
they're the best ones available.
***
Sick of this shit I leave my room, traverse the corridor
and enter the lift. Fucked if I know where to go now.
Ground leads to security. Basement is probably secure
parking. Top floor is either a drop of- I check the
lift's panel- a drop of forty stories or it's security. I
push the button to take me down to the ground.
The lifts doors open and I find myself alone on the
floor. I walk into the vacant space. It's nothing but
pillars and sea green carpet. Concealed speakers emit
sentimental piano.
***
From a dream:

A woman called Issicada Chrysallis. Selling postcards to

be sent to underprivileged children. Accompanied each
other until I had to catch my bus. We form a bond.
***
In the novel: (novel?!!?)
Issicada is an agent of Amnesty Interplanetary.
-they meet
-talk
-bond
-narrator purchases a secure box
-they part ways at the airport.
-S. boards the plane
-flies to spaceport
-luggage is searched
-postcards are found
- questions asked
AIP is considered a terrorist organisation.
-ID checked
-Officials soften; apologise and send S. on his way.
-S.: "what made them change their mind?"
***
I wake and no one is there. Grenada is gone.
***
'You're on your own' the monitor reads. 'The authorities
will be around at noon'. What time is it? Fuck. Shit.
Fuck fuck.
There is a case under the bed. Brushed aluminium and fat.
I haul it out and lay it on top of the bed. The lock is
combination but someone has thoughtfully drawn the number
in thick black ink on the back of my left hand. I spin
the wheels and open the case.
***
I can't say much about my actions. I know I was scared
shitless.
The bullet, the projectile, tore a neat little hole
through my skin, through my ribcage and proceeded to do
nasty things to my heart before carrying on through my
back, nicking my spine, passing through several walls

before splattering itself over the engine of a distant

hover-car thingy.
The ground rushed up towards me. My vision crowded in and
clouded over. Gravity overwhelmed me. Arms fling, hands
grasp the bed. Knees hit the floor. My hand stalls my
fall. I try to stay, and then my eyes give up. A
children's song plays in reverse: toes and knees,
shoulders, head. Black.
***
News of my death went utterly unnoticed. No records, no
grave.
News of my birth had people pissing themselves with
excitement. Puppies dehydrate when they get this excited.
As it happens I arrive in fluid.
***
No one knows nothing and after a few days of utter
mundane routine I realise it's because they don't know
anything.
***
She lies in her clay tub and lets the green gel soak into
her bandages. She's got the space between soaks up to six
days now; she's been slowly weaning herself off the gel
baths. Part of its cost, though the agency doesn't say
anything, she knows that it must be a great expense. It's
really about her independence. She could quite happily
stay in the viscous gel full-time. Six days of feeling
her skin tighten to the point where movement becomes
laboured. The tub isn't a treatment; it's a reward. Just
as the burns aren't an affliction but a reminder of how
she got here.
***
"Harken Wha?"
"This may not be his actual name," the Doctor runs her
hand over the engraving on the canister, "but it's the
best thing we have".
"The canister was compromised," the Doctor points to a
gouge in one side of the canister: a wedge shaped hole in
the metal. It had been clumsily patched. The patch ahd
been removed and it lay on a nearby table.
"We think it was an axe blow," says an investigator.

All of this canister probing taking place after the

transferal of its contents to a functioning cryo-freezer.
"I'm surprised the contents are still viable," says the
inspector.
He's surprised? I'm fucking ecstatic. I don't know what
the actual odds of my survival could be after four
hundred years in a leaky chilly bin. Astronomical?
Stellar?
Circumstances, as they keep on telling me. I'm the
luckiest man alive. Possibly the oldest too.
***
I'm walking with Tutankhamun around the new pyramids at
Cydonia. Tutan-fucking-khamun. He's pretty young for a
man reconstituted from his own mummified body.
"Call me Leroy," he says, "Tutenkhamun is a bit of a
mouthful."
***
I can't stop watching. I'm the proverbial Catholic
watching celluloid crucifixions: I'm trying to
understand.
I stop watching when I punch the monitor. There is a
crackle of static electricity and the metal on glass
clunk of knuckles hitting monitor. I punch the monitor
again and the monitor cracks. The camera is focusing on
the ruined orifices of the raped woman and I'm punching
the monitor and it won't lose its image. I'm punching and
cursing modern technology for being so fucking hardwearing and my hand is bleeding and I can't tell what is
my real blood and what is digital blood and what is
crushed monitor and crushed woman.
My head drops ballast and ascends and my throat closes
off. I lurch from the booth and to my knees. My mouth is
open and nothing is coming out. I'm retching up a searing
stream of coffee substitute; it burns my throat and
sticks in the back of my nose. It feels like I'm purging
litres of the stuff and I'm afraid I'll never be able to
breath again. I wipe my eyes and my mouth and stare at
the puddle of fluid in the gutter. It's never as big as I
expect.
***

I raise me hand to my head.

"What the fuck are these?"
"You don't know?" The Doctor looks surprised. I'm running
my hands over my head counting. I find six circular
depressions in my skull: one behind each ear and one
amongst the hairline around the each temple. There are
two bigger ones: one in the skull's occitipal plate at
the top of the neck and the other where the fontanel is
on the top.
"They're all around a hundred years out of date." The
Doctor says. She pauses and sees the look on my face "Oh,
right, yes. They're input output sockets."
"The fuck?"
"They," the Doctor pauses, nodding slightly, presumably
thinking very carefully about what to say.
"Either tell me or get someone who will."
The Doctor looks like she's taken a mental step back.
"I'm tired." I lie back and shut my eyes. My lips feel
very tight and my jaw is flexed to the point of cramp. I
listen to the Doctor quietly leave.
The next few days become increasingly punitive.
I can fit my middle finger into the bigger depressions.
There is a little bit of suction on the finger tip where
it fits the socket. A red button of sucked up flesh on
the end of my finger that slowly fades out to white. Some
bastard turned my head into a computer case.
***
"I can almost fit my fingers in the big ones." I
demonstrate for the Doctor by placing the tips of my
index fingers into each hole. "I'm fairly certain I
didn't have these before I died."
What do these Doctors do? This one clears her throat:
"No you didn't"
"Do you know when they were put in?"
She smiles, tension fleeing. Good, some answers. She
presses the front of her ear closest the eye. She's
activated her on-body computer. As she speaks she's
sifting information being projected onto her field of
vision.
***
They've let me out for the day. I am now equipped with a
functioning creditchip all of my own. It's implanted
under the skin of my left hand at the crux of index
finger and thumb. Saying:

"So now Satan owns me" gathers strange looks from the
Doctor, the Nurse and the funny little man from the bank.
He activated the chip with a literal wave of the wand,
collecting serial numbers and connecting them with the
bank's datastore with all of the other details they have
attached to, and gleaned, from me.
I am now officially Harken Wha, citizen of the South
Pacific and South American Territories. Now I have money.
***
"There are some sweets on the coffee table," calls
Grenada from somewhere in his flat, "you can turn on the
screens if you want."
I'm in Grenada's apartment.
"It's cozy," I say.
Grenada laughs "hah."
I pop a boiled sweet into my mouth.
"What flavour are these?" It reminds me a little of
aniseed only not as curved at the back of the mouth.
***
>>Further snippets from 30 August 2004 to 9 June 2005<<
She lies in her clay tub and lets the green gel soak into
her bandages. She's got the space between soaks up to six
days now. She's been weaning herself off of the gel
baths. Part of it is cost though the agency doesn't say
anything. For her though, it's about independence. In her
mind is the knowledge that she could quite happily stay
in the viscous gel all of the time. But, for now, it's
not a treatment it's a reward for six days of feeling her
skin tighten. Of feeling movement becoming painful and
slow. Of the bandages she wears feeling like burning
sandpaper. It's all to remind her of how she got here.
***

Have they found the grail?

The temple mount?
The Mayan calendar?
These events and objects don't matter since the motion of
time carries humanity away from them.
***
His name is Harken Wha.

The Doctor said "it may not be his actual name, but it
was etched on his canister, so it's the best he's got."
The canister was compromised. That is, it had
malfunctioned and it's contents damaged.
There was a gouge in one side: a wedge shaped dent that
had punctured the metal.
"Possibly an axe-blow" said the lead investigator.
The gouge had been clumsily patched with aluminium,
solder and epoxy.
All of this probing taking place after the transferal of
it's contents to a freezer.
"I'm surprised the occupant is still viable," said the
lead investigator.
While he may be surprised, I'm fucking ecstatic. I'm not
sure of my odds of surviving four hundred years in an ice
box but the must be, at least, astronomical.
Circumstances, circumstances.
"You're the luckiest man alive," they keep telling me
"possibly the oldest too".
***
I'm walking with Tutenkhamun around the new pyramids at
Cydonia. Tuten-fucking-khamun. Pharoah. Young; well, for
a man reconstituted from his own mummified body: younglooking.
***
Questions.
What was Giza called when Tutenkhamun was alive?
DNA and mummies?
Connection between Giza and Cydonia?
Life of Tutenkhamun?
***
I sit, staring at my puddle of vomit for quite some time.
>>or<<

I sit, staring at my puddle of vomit, until the box bangs

into my leg.
***
I can't stop watching. I'm the catholic watching
celluloid crucifixions: I'm trying to understand.
I stop watching when I punch the monitor. There is a
crackle of static electricity and the metal on glass
clunk of knuckles hitting monitor. I punch again and the
monitor cracks.
They're focussing on the ruined orifices of the woman and
I'm punching the monitor and the image. The monitor is
caving in and it's still coherent. Fuck modern technology
for being this fucking hard-wearing.
My hand is bleeding and I can't tell where blood meets
image blood and crunched in monitor meets crunched in
women.
My head drops ballast and ascends and my throat closes in
and I lurch from the booth. The heels of my palms hit the
ground and the skin is punctured by small stones. I want
to throw up and my mouth is open but nothing is coming
out. I begin retching and finally a stream of coffee
substitute flows. It sears the back of my throat and
sticks in the back of my nose. It feels like litres of
the stuff and I fear I will never breathe again.
The process stops after what feels like an eternity. I
wipe the tears from my eyes and stare at my puddle. It's
not as big as I expect. My body and brain collaborating
to make a point; exaggerating for effect. I'm kind of
glad they're still talking. My face is cold.
***
You haven't seen horror until you've seen a pukeko
pecking a duckling to death.
***
I raise my hand to my head, "What the fuck are these?"
"You don't know?" the Doctor looks surprised. I'm running
my hands over my head doing a count. I find six circular
depressions in my skull: one behind each ear; one at the
base of my skull; another at the fontanelle and the final
two about an inch above each ear.

"They're about a hundred years out of date," he pauses

"oh, right. They're input output sockets."
"the fuck?"
"They," the doctor pauses, nodding slightly, presumably
thinking very carefully about what to say.
"Either tell me, or get someone who can."
I have had enough of nothing from these people.
The doctor looks like he's taken a mental step back.
"I'm tired," I say, "please leave."
My lips feel very tight and my jaw is flexed to the verge
of cramp. I shut my eyes and listen to the doctor quietly
leave.
The next few days become increasingly punitive.
***
Into the bigger depressions I can fit my middle
fingertip. A little bit of suction on the fingertip where
it fills the socket rim. A red button on the end of my
finger slowly fades to white. Some bastard turned my head
into a computer case.
***
"I can almost fit my fingers into the big ones," I
demonstrate for the doctor by plugging my index finger
into each hole, "I'm fairly certain I didn't have these
before I was frozen."
What do these Doctors do? This one clears his throat
"No, you didn't have them."
"Do you have an idea when they were inserted?"
She smiles, tension fleeing. Something she can answer.
She presses the bone in front of her ear, activating her
on-body computer. As she speaks, information will be
projected onto her screen of vision. It could be
pertinent. It could be pornography. I don't know.
***
They've let me out for the day. I am now equipped with a
functioning credit chip all of my own. It's implanted

under the skin of my left hand at crux of index finger

and thumb. Saying
"So, now Satan owns me" draws strange looks from the
Doctor, the nurse and the funny little man from the bank.
He activated the chip with a wave of a literal wand and
calibrated the account details with a remote console that
sent the chip serial numbers to the bank's datastore
where it was stored with all of the details that have
been attached to me.
I am now officially Harken Wha, citizen of the South
Pacific and South American Territories. And they have
given me money.
Suckers.
***
Troubles with my passport again. Something seems to catch
the officer at departure's eyes. I don't know what it
could be. The officer mutters and clicks their mouse.
"What's wrong here" he says, mainly to himself, but loud
enough for me to hear.
I've done nothing wrong, though he's making me doubt my
innocence in the matter. What could the hold me on?
***

"Because that's how it's always been done" he said.

***
"king Tut has been in charge here for twenty years."
"Is that good?"
"For him, certainly," Steen grins, "he was no more than
eighteen when he died the first time and he ascended to
the throne when he was nine"
"Sure," I say, "the original boy-king."
"He's a little older now"
"Aren't we all"
Steen looks at me weirdly.

I follow Steen through the palace. It's open and light;

all pillars and stone benches with large windows that can
be shuttered in storms.
King Tutenkhamun is sitting in the shade of a solitary
olive tree holding a baby. He plays chess with a young
girl and three teenagers read nearby, sprawled out on the
cropped grass.
Tutenkhamun stands with a smile and waves us over.
"Hello Morris," he shakes Steen's hand and then turns to
me, "and you must be Harken". I take his outstretched
hand and try not to appear too enthusiastic. Tutenfucking-khamun.
The little girl watches quietly, her hand resting
casually on her king's rook. She doesn't smile. I smile
at her and say "Hi, my name's Harken. What's yours?"
Her mouth twitches at it's corners and her hand leaves
the chess piece to rest in the other. She turns to
Tutenkhamun
"I hope he's nicer than the last one."
Tutenkhamun's smile weakens and I can feel Steen tense
beside me. The little girl sits looking at me. Eventually
Tutenkhamun laughs.
"Please forgive Nefertiti, Mr. Wha," he turns to the
girl, Nefertiti, "I'm sure he will be nicer, won't you
Mr. What?"
"I'm-" this is so fucking weird "sure to be." It sounds
like such a lie under the circumstances. I smile and try
and appear non-threatening.
"Could you teach me chess?" I ask her.
Her eyes narrow "That's what the last one said, too".
She stands, pauses and flicks her king over before
running from the courtyard. We watch her leave. I don't
know what to say.
"The last visitor we had caused... problems" says
Tutenkhamun.
"I'm sorry, I really should have talked to Nefertiti
prior to your arrival."
"Not a problem I say," though it bugs me a little, being
judged. But what if she's right and I am a prick? It's a
stupid idea but one I can't quite wave away.

Another thought: "Isn't, I mean, wasn't Nefertiti your

mother?"
Tutenkhamun grins, "you're one of the few who knows
that." He shifts the baby to his left shoulder and
gestures to the teenagers on the grass "these are my two
daughters and my grandmother and this," he gently rocks
the baby against his shoulder, "is my wife Apeshakten.
"Call me Leroy," says Tutenkhamun, "it's a little
informal, yet accurate."
Leroy grins displaying perfect teeth. Leroy is at least a
foot taller than me and skinnier. Gravity on Mars has let
his body grow to a different plan. He would find it a
little difficult on Earth. Gravity would rewrite his
reality.
The song is looping in my brain. I don't know the words,
so it's all 'dah-dah-dahs' with periodic 'dums'. I know
how to stop it: sing another song. One of my favourites.
Only, I can't remember any.
I stomp around the room trying to remember songs. I can
feel them, their absences, like running a tongue over a
missing tooth's socket. All signs point to locations that
don't exist.
A white car; hands and satellites; time and love and
girls; ocean depths and crafted things.
Fuck: I know what the songs are about.

Everything is seen through a layer of dirt; a filter the

colour of coffee stained teeth.

I think I fall asleep in New Zealand. I can't be certain,

though evidence points to that particular conclusion.

As far as certainties go, I believe I was frozen there

too. Everyone is fuzzy on how I made it across the
Pacific ocean. Reports of my existence are sporadic.
I apparently spent a few decades on display in a Natural
History Museum in Sydney. An example of twentieth
century humanity; post modern male. Probably surrounded

by cultural artifacts. A mobile phone; a desktop

computer; a desk, even.

Scattered images of a life left in the past: a wooden

house painted white wrapped in green plants; a small
brown cat beating another small black and white cat;
bookshelves and mugs full of coffee.
A view from a bus window: a town in a valley.
Chocolate and comic books.

I wake up. My sleep filled with odd dreams.

I wake, my dreams still sliding from me. Reality slowly

taking it's place in my head. I lie and let it happen.

I surface, my dreams pooling on reality like oil:

together but separate. Still buoyed by dreams
I surface from sleep, dreams pooling upon reality as oil.
I surface from sleep, my dreams pooling around me as oil

Living archeology. We're just walking around.

We're the living dead shambling across the globe moaning
for the flesh of the living.

Grenada likes feet.

Tutenkhamun had two daughters with Apensanapen, his half

sister. Their father was Akhenaten; her mother Nefertiti
and his Kiya.
Their grandmother was Tiye.
Their daughters are, to the best of my knowledge, unnamed.

Someone calls me 'Dad'.

Are you my dad? says the Ur-me.

My teeth ache almost constantly. The incisors aren't the

root, ha ha, of the problem. All the enamel has eroded
from my molars. My wisdom teeth are fucked before they
pass the gumline.
All this damage is from stomach acids. I've been throwing
up with too much regularity. I'm swallowing pills every
couple of hours.
I think I'm an addict.

I'm looking at myself: a head and a ribcage and the upper

left arm. That's all. That's me. Or, really, that's him.
He is the real deal. The original mould from which I was
stamped.
What a fucking mess.
He's still alive, the Ur-me. A remnant in a vat, still
hooked up to a computer. He's able to tell you where,
exactly, in the soalr system you are to the nearest metre
and the time to the nearest second.

So, says Leroy, how was Islam seen in your time?

I don't have teeth, I have a coral reef.

Leroy sits with his family in a sunlit courtyard. He

plays chess with a young girl of around seven and cradles
a baby in his left arm. Nearby, three young women sprawl
on the ground with portable monitors.

Nearby, three young women lie in the sun wearing what

look like sunglasses. I#m presuming they're portable
computers. Their hands dance occassionally in front of
their faces and they're talking and laughing.

You, sir, are by far the nicest assassin he's ever

sent.
I begin blinking rapidly, my skin has gone clammy. The
room is warm but I'm not feeling it.
I... the words take a while.
I'm not a killer. I say.
You've all said that, he's standing behind the bar, his
hands below the counter top.
Myhands are squeezing the arms of the chair so tightly
that my fingers have bleached. I know he has a weapon. I
know he's waiting for me to react. I force my hands open
and turn them palm up. I'm shaking.
Why do you think I'm an assassin? My mouth is dry. I'd
drink from the glass beside me but I don't want to move.
Leroy smiles. I think he's going to shoot me.
Why me? I say.
Because I know who you are. He raises his hands from
behind the counter.
Leroy shoots me.

Four hundred thousand kilometres out from Mars and I'm

tracking seventeen objects that could cause us a
mischief. They're most probably rocks yet I'm certain
that one of them has been following us.
I know it has been hunting us. It appeared not long after
we departed Terra's gravity and it has been accompanying
us at a discrete distance. At the limits of my sensors.
If I change the parameters by a single point of
resolution it vanishes off my field.
It's definitely on the cusp of it's a
forget about it.

threat and

I can't put it out of my mind. It's a stone inside my

shoe. The fly on the periphery of vision.

I'm walking alone in the dark and I'm afraid there's

something out to get me.

Like some bloody horrid zen koan:

First there is a car
then there is no car
and then there is
I'm standing in the middle of the road where these things
hit you.

I open the suitcase and find someone's opinion of what I

should be doing with my life.

I open the case and find a bunch of boxes.

I open the case and I am confronted with a slew of boxes,

cartons and sleeves.

You're lucky, says Nefertiti from where she sits beside

the bed, the slug grazed the socket and ended up
splattered against the bomb.
She holds up a lump of dull gray metal the size of a
small passionfruit.

It's the same old thing again. My insurance must be

taking a hiding on premiums.

Darkness. Beeping. My eyes are covered with something.

The same old thing again. I wouldn't mind seeing my
benefactor's insurance premiums on my damaged arse.
Right. I can't see. I'm flat on my back with my eyes
covered quite securely.

I look for Mummies

On dusty Mars then dirty

Earth where I began.

King Tut knows it all
He's been before and likely
Will be here again.
Nefertiti smiles
Her little child smile, hiding
Her plans in plain sight.
Simon is still dead
And I am not who I thought
I was. Where to now?
Tut looks for death in
All the right places and still,
Like a stone, he waits.
Tutenkhamun is
a very long name. Call me
Leroy, if you like.
Grenada lies and
Claims that he doesn't. Just like
Any other cat.
Grenada knows the
Milky white truth, yet he tells
Me unhusked white lies.
I have no hands and
My torso ends at my ribs.
I am not happy.
My body is new
And completely uncalloused.
I hurt all over.
My body creases
And I sigh in pain. When will
The drugs take affect.
I know where I am
By looking at the Heavens.
Stupid procession.
My head is like a
Flowerbed planted with bulbs.
Who knows what will grow.
I travelled the deep
Nothingness to get to Mars.

I am truly lost.
I am full of holes.
My head is a radio
Tuned to dead stations.
I look at myself
Suspended in a tube of
Death delaying gunk.
I am eye to eye
With the man that I came from.
I can't believe it.
I dreamt of insects
Flying around my head with
Malicious intent.
Giant insects dive
Waking me to alertness
To swat phantom bugs.
Who is the finance
Behind my rebirth and who
Keeps an eye on me?

I take some leaflets

And talk to Issicada
About injustice.
People vanish on
Mars without warning. Perhaps
It's body snatchers.
He twists in the air
Spilling paper like fresh snow
From the thirteenth floor.
I am sheltered from
The realities of this
Present I am in.
New made man goes to
Mars to escape the present.
He doesn't succeed.
I write missives from
Another place and send them
To my distant selves.
You abandoned us
Words writ large across the land
Telling us the score.
Settlers abandoned
Like yesterday's newspapers.
Of course they're angry.
It's a covert war,
They told me by way of a
Triggered recording.
Issicada works
To raise awareness of the
Martian plight. Leaflet?
Things aren't always as
Crystal as people make them,
I'm slowly learning.

Nefertiti has
Her own plans born out of her
Knowledge of her past.
Issicada came
To me in a dream fully
Formed, job, name and all.

Nefertiti extends her hand such that my imagination

places a phantom leaflet in it for a slice of time. I
take her hand, her grip firm.
Do you have a sister?
She looks a little mystified at my question.
No, she releases her grip and smiles quizzically, Why
do you ask?
Leroy has stiffened behind her. I laugh.
I met someone on earth with the same self confidence as
you.

Issicada and
Nefertiti are sisters
who have never met.
Clones, in fact.
Leroy has some things
To tell Nefertiti he'd
Rather keep quiet.
I am being set
Up to take some sort of long
Fall of a short drop.
I don't know who I
Can trust in this fucked up place.
Not even myself.
To some extent I
Guess this is my fault. I could
Have gone someplace else.
For a second, I think that I'm at Giza. I'm looking up at
a huge pyramid.

Layout of Giza
Rameses the great
Exodus
Moses
Egypt

Rameses II; called Rameses the Great, reigned for sixty

seven years. He buried sons, daughters and wives. He may
have been the Pharoah of Exodus. He may have known Moses.
He outlived very nearly almost everyone who was alive
when he took the throne of Egypt. For many Egyptians he
was the only king they had ever known. For them he was
immortal.

But the light is wrong, and checking my watch, which is

fully redundant, as it's telling me it's just after 1
a.m. in the morning and even after I add 12 hours it's
still incoherent. The sun isn't anywhere near being
overhead.
I was trying to remember how far Egypt is from the
equator when I finally realised: the pyramid has five
sides. Fuck.

You're from NZ yet you're not Polynesian. Some probative

scans reveal a resevoir of Polynesian and Pacific Island
ideas and imagery. Although not ethnically Maori it
appears to have been a huge part of your identity. So,
what if I say taniwha to you? What does that mean to
you?

I've been inside for

and over and I think
there's this one gap
around: just how did
brain in a jar?

so long. I've thought about it, over

I understand almost everything. But
that I just cannot wrap my head
they make the jump to putting a

It's not like it's a naturally occurring event. Brain

expelled from body; falls into jar and becomes a supernavigating computer on a spaceship.

When did they make the leap? When did it become okay for
this to happen?

Do I have a soul? Assuming the fucking thing exists. What

happened to it? Did you get it? Did I keep it? Am I
lingering without one?
Perhaps you got a new one.
I have so many questions.
My role is totally unclear in all of this. I was a guide
on the barge ferrying souls. Or was that my dream?
Sometimes I dream of climbing trees. I dream of cats. The
barge had a cat- it had an entire colony of cats.
We are chattels; all creatures of Rameses, to one extent
or another. Tut too. He's trapped playing catch-up as
Rameses scoots pieces around the board.
The gods have made a magnificant return. Only the popular
gods mind. Set is glossed over, as if not mentioning him
will mean he doesn't exist. Amun is never uttered. Amun
is the usurper and part of why Rameses and Tutenkhamun
are at odds. Both are laying claim to the spiritual
territory. Both are royal to the nth degree. One is
Osiris' follower and the other is Amun's.
As a mark of contempt, Rameses has struck Tutenkhamun's
name from the records. Again.

Have you heard of the Seven Mothers? says Leroy.

The idea tastes familiar; I've heard it or read it
before. It sits beside another sentence: We are all us.
The chip in my head is flashing 'bad-ref' across my field
of vision in big green letters. It doesn't have a fucking
clue what I've just said means and, hallelujah, that
means I have had an honest to gods, genuine, actual
memory.
Leroy frowns and I say I know the phrase, but not the
meaning. It goes alongside 'We are all us'
Leroy nods slowly, we are all us he says.
Yeah. I'm sorry I can't be a bit more forthcoming. I
tap my head crap memory.
No, it fits, he says the Seven Mothers is a genetic
theory that all Europeans- caucasians- are descended from
a group of seven women from Africa. He pauses, purses

his lips and then splays his hands in front of him as if

flicking water off of them.
The Olduvai gorge and all that.

Do you know if Polynesians have a point of origin?

A memory of a map and a route from New Zealand, up the
Pacific and bouncing along the coast of South America,
then over up and through Africa to
Egypt. I'm beginning to feel like I've been set up.
Tut's knocking and I'm saying my lines according to a
script. Who's there?
Tut looks a little confused.

Travelling through space at

An ungodly number of kilometres
An hour towards Mars.
There's at least one shuttle a day, heading each way.
First time? asks an Asian man in the seat across the
aisle.
Yes, well, I assume it is my first time.
Ah, the man nods, full with understanding, to be that
young again.

What's it like?
It's a shithole, he sips from his plastic tumbler,
ever been to a small desert town?
No, but I've seen documentaries.
The man grins, It's like that, except grittier.

His head is a radio tuned to a dead station; a frequency

remains open in his head. Radio-telepathy: unbidden
thoughts and voices beamed into his head.

DNA degrades
Meaning I am not who they

Say I am. Bastards.

DNA degrades
Like an icecube in a glass
Sitting in the sun.
I am no older
Than six years old. Great time
Went into my birth.
New memories are
Who I am. Imperfect
Machine.
My genes are not my
Own. They're a reasonable
copy of the first.
I don't own my genes:
trademark some corporation.
I am illegal
If copied. My genes aren't
Mine to give away.
His Grandmother; his
Wife; his two stillborn girls. Tut
Never far from them.
His Mum: separate
from him. Hidden away in
someone else's tomb.
Nefertiti, first
Woman pharoah, high priestess
Of Amun. Unique
Tutenkhamun in
opposition with pharoah
Rameses the great.
Tut vee Rameses
Young vee old, both eternal
Rivals in kingship
Pyramids on Mars
Refined by years of hard work
By hands unknown.
The face stares out of
The violent dust kicked up
By heat and static.

First sight of Mars is

Two petrified eyes staring
Into the heavens.
A human face makes
Mars easier to digest
For fresh arrivals.
A rusty face makes
Mars easily digested
By fresh arrivals.
A rusty face on
Mars is easy to grasp as
A rusty face sits
On the landscape comforting
Those new to the place.
On the landscape sits
A comforting face. Made red
By rusted iron.
On the landscape sits
A rusted face made red by
Comforting iron.
The rusted face sits
Comforting strangers with it's
Rusted red stares.
The rusty face lies
Staring with red eyes upon
It's uncertain guests.
Unsure passengers
Exchange glances with the face
Staring up at them.
Passengers exchange
Stares with the rusted red face
That lies beneath them.
Are they replicas?
Or clones? or copies taken
From photos and notes?
We made you using
An expensive interface
And some top notch genes.
Drag and drop from the
List of genetic basics.

Drag and drop; mix and

Match from the genotype list.
This is what you are.
There's an upturned U
In my throat as I struggle
With what I must do.
Letters on the ground
Appear to evaporate
As they fade with age.
The cats know something
The way they strut smuggly through
the house. Sneaky fucks.
Sneaky fucks, strutting
Smugly through the house. The cats
Are plotting something.
Those fucks strut through the
House as if they own it. They
All plot against me.
Nyarlathotep
Is an alien god of
Nefarious means.
My cat has bugs and
Recording devices of
A sinister bent.
My head is fuzzy
and can't quite work as it should
this morning. TypicMy head is fuzzy
and isn't doing it's job
as is contracted.
My stomach gurgles
like pipes with air in them
My stomach gurgles:
pipes containing air, rattling
at my taps and trains.
I have a tattoo:
Heiroglyphs marking me as
Property of Ra.
I also have an

Invisible mark: I was

Once owned by Amun.
I'm not liking this
At all. Was I worshipping
These gods? And why switch?
Tattoos like strata

The memories don't come back. There is no rush of images,

sounds, colours or scenes. No slow trickle. No
disconcertion attained through sudden knowledge.
Nor would I want it. Who I was is not who I am and I'm
probably better off ignorant.

A ticket dropped in my lap by a mysterious benefactor.

Mars is the wild west! No time for machinery; the sand

sees to that. Here, on Terra, you pass gas and your
accounts het closed because a passing sensor picked up
the trace emissions and calculated that you'd exceeded
output for the year.

Our biggest import is criminals and our largest export

are ignored requests for supplies, assistance and relief.
Welcome to Mars.

He's moved his head. She's certain now. Before, the only
time it would move would be if she, or someone else, laid
hands on it and shifted it for him. No. His head isn't
where she'd left it. She's positive: he's moved his head.
She presses a fleshy nub behind an ear and speaks
Doctor Ashram, she looks over to the man in the bed,
he's showing some function.
A pause. Is his hand twitching? The excitement is letting
her see things.
No, he moved his head. She says to the empty room.
Doctor Ashram ignores Nurse Fellowes and heads staright
for the bed. She's all business.
Only his head?
Maybe his hand too, I didn't catch the movement.
Ashram hums and removes the blindfold off the patient.
She shines light into his eyes. The pupils remain fixed,
holding their ground. Fellowes reads the monitor: Eye
implants are inert.
Never mind the eyes, says Ashram, He's inert.
His brain's working, it's just not in possession.

He's inert and we don't know how to make him ert. He

can't die. We won't let him die. Our bonuses depend on
his viability.
He has tubes coming out of slash connected to every
oriface. When he awakes he'll find a few more orifaces
grafted onto his body than memory and commonsense can
recall.
Food, fluid, oxygen, painkillers, anti-biotics,
information, and nanites going in; urine, faeces, carbondioxide, assorted wastes and dreams coming out. A fat
cable plugged into his fontanelle socket facilitates the
emphemeral data.

I spring from the bed and take a line to the nearest

door. The world sways overhead. A split second later I am
caught by the multitudinous cables and tubes and end up
flat on my arse on the cold floor. I must have looked
amusig caught up on the floor trailing tubes from nose to
gonads. Looking like a stunned rabbit.
I can see the humour now.

Welcome to the future. here you will discover that

everyone and everything you once knew is dead. The
language you speak is archaic, your idiom is antique and
your accent a source of constant amusement to all who
hear you. You will be shorter, fatter and uglier than
anyone else alive and you will find that the environment
is in turns hostile and toxic to you.
Also, your bank no longer exists and you are facing a
bill the size of a small nation's debt. But you're alive
and that mitigates a lot of the shit that you find
yourself in.

ASHRAM: As your Doctor, I oversaw your rebirth. From a

nub no bigger than a fleck of skin to your
current state.
FELLOWES: The Doctor exaggerates. You weren't built from
scratch. We- well... let's say we had a fairly advanced
starting point. A head start. Ha ha. Well, you're tired
and medicatedASHRAM: Pickled.
FELLOWES: Ha ha. Yes. And tired. So we'll leave you be.
You'll probably have a lot of questions to ask.
ASHRAM: Rest now. The nurse will check in on you later.
FELLOWES: And the Doctor will be back when you're compis.
Sleep tight.

A white framed bed in a white room and me on it under

white sheets and blankets, white arms festooned with
canulas leading to bags containing fuck-knows-what. I am
numb. My mouth is dry. Full of roofing bats.
I am half embalmed. Or I am half de-embalmed. Perhaps
they're draining formaldehyde and alcohol from me and
replacing it with softening agents and more lifeconducive fluids.
My heart's not working. I'm wearing a plastic vest that
massages blood or the fluid formerly known as blood
around my body. My heart is broken and the vest allows it
to mend. Every so often- once, maybe twice a day- there

is a fluttering in my chest like the feathers of a mashed

bird on the road. It might be my heart, trying it on.
Just in case.
I am a litany of non-participatory organs. The doctors
hoped that they would have kicked in before my brain did.
Doctor Ashram appears to be a functioning addict.
I'm on the patch she says and takes her jacket off to
reveal a flesh coloured patch about three centimetres
square on her sholuder.
You smoke? I would have thought cigarretes would be
illegal?
Ashram's brow furrows.
Cigarretes? This is for cocaine.
I try to shift uncomfortably in my bed.
But you're- I lower my voice in case this is all a
secret -you're a doctor.
Ashram reasserts her jacket and smiles breezily.
I don't use on the job she gestures to the door, if
you want any there's a dispenser in the hall.
And there is. Everything looks like sweets and have names
like 'sugarcaine' and 'Bacchus'.
I place my thumb on the payment sensor and after a laserlight rolls over my print the machine politely tells me
to 'fuck off'.

I am moved to another facility. A 'thawed folks home'.

I open my eyes and see yet another face examining me.

Who are you? I ask, Maternity come to cut my
ubilicals? I'm tired and uncooperative; the joke sounds
serious. She smiles anyway: a thin indulgent thing that
quietly tells me that 'You can play your games, thank
you, but I'm here on business.'
I'm Shan Mumbai, she waves her hand over the scanner
attached to the bed-side monitor. Her details are
displayed beside a nice picture.
I'm with Crosby Ways. I'm an accountant. Your
accountant.

I sigh. I had been wondering when this was going to

happen.
What do I owe? I look at the ceiling. Here it comes.
Well, she's fidgeting, it's not what you owe, it's how
much you're worth.
I look over at her, excuse me?

I hold the canister up so that I'm eye to lens with it.

The iris swirls as it focuses on my face. There's a click
from within and a vibration begins, I feel it in my
palms: the hum of a speaker that my hands are muffling.
I place the canister on the bench and sit down in front
of it. It clicks and then:
Dad, is that you? A mechanical voice, vaguely male with
no colour, emitted from the speaker.
I don't know. Maybe I am it's dad. But I can't
remember. Maybe even with the fucked up leg and eye-patch
I look like him.
Call me Long John. Or John if you like. I gesture at my
patch I'm not quite the man I was.
There's static and hissing for a few seconds.
It's hard to laugh, the canister says, When you have
no lungs.
Who are you? I lean in close. Silence. A static
hissing. Then
I'm John too, the head of.
I tell the future. Show me the stars and I can tell you
things.

My eyes narrow: is that an actual da Vinci?

I don't see him but I know Leroy's there. I'm looking at
the painting and seeing things that are lost in photos:
cracks in the paint, the shape of the brushstrokes, the
three-dimensionality of the dried oil.
Yes. It's 'Virgin and Child with St. Anne'.
Who's Saint Anne?
Mary's mother, Jesus' grandmother.
I step back from the painting and look. It makes me
smile. Widely enough that Leroy asks:
What's so funny?
I gesture at the canvas da Vinci had quite the sense of
humour.
Oh? Leroy steps back. How so?
It's a candid family portrait, isn't it? I circle my
fingers along the general proportions of the figures in
the painting. Look at how Mary is sitting on her

mother's lap and how they're both watching the baby Jesus
mangling the lamb.
Leroy isn't convinced, he pinches his lip.
It's an unguarded moment. Leonardo daubing away quickly.
Like a photo before anyone is posed.
We stand in silence for a couple of minutes. Eventually
Leroy folds his arms.
I think you're ignoring the subtext of the painting.
I shrug and Leroy turns and walks up the corridor.
Sure, it's possible. I take one last look at the
painting But it's a nice painting however you look at
it.

Where are you from? asks Nefertiti . She's sitting

across the table from me apparently engrossed in scribing
on a clay tablet with a wooden stylus- it's actually a
computer- but Leroy seems to like the appearance of old
technology.
In the end we decided that I'm a Pacific Islander. Most
probably from New Zealand.
And how did you decide that?
Well, I notice that she has her stylus poised as if
what I say will effect it's motion, I was found in
Antarctica in the New Zealand controlled zone. There was
Maori language on my tube and my genetic profile pointed
in that general vicinity.
The stylus still hangs in the air.
I think the clincher was that I knew how to count to 10
in Maori
But you're not Maori?
No. Caucasian.
I wake up on my own and alone. Usually I am woken. The
nurse checking my temperature and taking heartrate. I am
without bandages too and all of the equipment that was
attached to me is gone. I lie for what feels like hours
but is probably the period of an alarm clock's snooze.

I can't believe on Mar's staring at the Face.

I'm told it's been here for millennia. Not in it's
current form. Like a Micheangelo sculpture it was lying

beneath the surface waiting for the unnecessary pieces to

be removed.
Apparently it took almost a century for the face to
appear. Laser cutters slicing away rock at first, then
chisels and saws.
No-one knows whose face it is modelled on.

Nine minutes of an alarm clock's snooze can stretch into

an indeterminate length of time. A glorious decompression
of time that convinces the mind that nine minutes is
actually an hour. Bliss usually disturbed when you ask
the question 'Why hasn't the alarm clock gone off?'

I'm watching Nefertiti toss a sphere of dull, grey, metal

from hand to hand and I've probably been watching for
quite a long while.
I look down and find myself in a bed.
I can't see out of my left eye. I reach a hand up and
discover heavy gauss bandages over it. Nefertiti stops
her game and looks at me.
You're very lucky. She says.
Define luck. My voice creaks as I speak.
Nefertiti tosses the ball of metal onto my chest. I pick
it up; it's lighter than it looks.
It was in your head.
I turn the ball over in my hand. There is a small
indentation on one side.
What was it doing in my head?
It protected you from the bullet.
I've been shot. My chest tightens. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Not in the eye. Not through the eye.
Breathe, Says Nefertiti, just breathe.
She stands and pours a small glass of water from a basin
near the door. I concentrate on breathing.

This hospital is one of the few places on Mars that has

running water. Such a waste She brings me the glass and
helps me drink. The water is warm but is so good in my
mouth. It takes the rough edges off. The ball of metal
slides off my stomach.
I lie back and breathe. Nefertiti sits down and takes the
ball from the bed.
It stopped the bullet from damaging your brain. She
smiles. You're okay, now.
I don't feel okay.
You were going to die.
Of course I was. Your-, what the fuck is Leroy to her?
-Leroy. Tutenkhamun. Whomever, shot me. I'm shouting at
her and she looks a little, a little bit afraid.
Nefertiti offers the glass of water to me. I shake my
head and make myself relax again. I stare at the ceiling.
He's really sorry, she says quietly.
Sorry, I say, I'm not really on top of things.
Can I tell you about the bullet?
I look over. I smile, weakly.
Sure, why not?
Great. When Tut shot you, the bullet caught the edge of
your socket, here. she gently taps the bone underneath
her left eye.
Your cheek bone deflected the bullet like this, she
angles her finger sharply up, pointing through her eye,
into your head up and into this she gently shakes the
lump of metal.
What is that?
If Tut had shot you with anything more powerful we'd be
mopping you off the walls.
A bomb. A fucking bomb. I was supposed to blow up
killing Tut.
We think so.

What bullshit. I rub my forehead and the bandage over

my eye catches the heel of my palm.
I'm not a killer.
We know. Says Nefertit, nodding.
I wouldn't kill anyone.
Not on purpose.
Who's fucking with me?

It's me, me and me. I'm standing in the doorway and I'm
also sitting on the couch and I'm there, in front of the
bar, looking over a shoulder at myself.
I stop looking at the doorway and return to slicing the
lemons into wedges. They're all a little green and I
think I've cut enough. There's always more in the fridge
if I need them. I place the bowl of lemons on the tray on
the bench.
Come in, I say, you look like a stunned mullet.
I am. The door feels good and solid beneath my prop.
I carry the tray to the table in front of the couch. I
line up three glass tumblers. Beside it I put the salt
shaker and the bowl of lemons. I unstop the bottle of
tequila.
A drink?
I pour. I couldn't find shot-glasses but I don't give a
fuck. I need this drink. I look towards the door.

I don't exist. Which is a fucking stupid thing to say.

I do exist and everything I thought was true about myself
is a lie.
None of my memories prior to waking up in the hospital
some three years ago are mine. They were manufactured
like I was; or like my face, they were borrowed and
copied.
They made me to kill. Or they want me to think that.
Fuck them in their neck sockets with a butter knife.

I have existed for around three thousand years. It sounds

impressive and that's probably the best part of it.
When people hear this piece of information they always
want to know What was the past like?
The most appropriate answer is different.
Between the ice, the thaw, the numerous incisions,
insertions and implantations I just don't have much of a
memory.
Hooray for progress that they were able to fill in the
gaps, so to speak, of my severely damaged brain.

I am a man of the ice. It defines me the way water does a

dolphin or the womb does a child. It held me and kept me
and when I was no longer in it's embrace it left it's
mark.
You can freeze a frog and it will be undamaged when it
thaws. The ice is contained and kept separate from the
frog's brain and heart. Moisture is drawn away into empty
space where it freezes.
Freeze a strawberry and when it thaws it turns to mush.
The ice invades all parts of the strawberry and as the
internal moisture freezes, the ice expands causing
irreparable damage to surrounding tissue.
I wish I was a frog instead of a pile of pinkish mush.
Rather appropriately and, as others always tell me,
ironically, the process they used to reconstitute my
vital organs grew out of research performed in an attempt
to keep strawberries whole during freezing.

My brain has gently expanded during my freezing. Ice

crystals form from the moisture omnipresent throughout my
body. Little shards committing the death of a near
infinite number of cuts.

And not only my brain. My body is riddled with ice, each

minuscule crystal tearing and destroying the structure of
the surrounding tissue. Full body destruction.

Terrible information: identity resides within the brain.

Memory and personality too. All of my social conditioning
is gone.
They've treated me the way they would any brain-damaged
human: concern, lots of concern, testing, drugs, bioneural-psycho-geno-viral chipping, scanning, rescanning
and lots and lots of fear.
They're afraid that they've missed something, that
somehow they haven't returned me to life but created a
bona-fide, honest to goodness monster. A reformatted
human without the social programming. Am I?

When will I remember who I am?

>>QUESTIONS<<
Where does memory reside in the brain?
The architecture of the brain.
The 'dolly the sheep' ageing syndrome?
Cloning wherefores.
Clone Laws (a la Asimov's robotic laws)
Brain changes and how far you can push it.

We own your genes. You have only leased them from us.
Your body is illegal.
You cannot have children.
Any offspring is the illegal copying of our intellectual
property.
Any offspring is a derived work based on our IP.

A patent on Cancer; a patent on other stuff.

Harken wakes up.

Harken undergoes reconstruction and enhancement.
Grenada and Harken talk.
Harken is abandoned by the hospital.
Harken gets a job.
Enter Issicada.
Harken begins to investigate himself.

On crushes on porn actresses:

So what you want to do is rescue the damsels so you can
do to them in private what others are doing to them for
all the world to see?

Did I say that?

I'm fucked. My centre of gravity is at the bridge of my
nose and my hand floats towards the glass, the air
slowing motion.
The glass is empty.
What was that? someone says beside me.
I turn at the head and my brain flips on it's side like a
marble in a box. I'm looking at myself in a mirror.
Are you okay? The reflection says.
I think so, my hand drifts up to my forehead, I
think.
What are you drinking?
My glass is empty.
Two of whatever he had, my reflection says to the
bartender.
The glass vanishes and is replaced with a duplicate full
of green liquid.

That looks ghastly he says. He places coins on the bar,

careful to avoid liquid rings.
It's cheap. The glass is already at my mouth.
It's beer. The reflection says with surprise.
What day is it? I ask.
Wednesday. says the reflection.
Saint Patrick's day says the bartender.
One day is much like another, I say.
Every day is Saint Patrick's here. He removes the
glass.

This is our afterlife, our promised reward. This is why

our bodies were entombed, our mummies hidden. Our bodies
would rise again. And they have.

Who are you?

Who do you think?
Oh, fuck off, beer sloshes over the rim of the glass,
fuck these games.
You're losing.