”Dream me the good cemetery”, she said, eyes shining and wide. “For me and at least Itsumo Thirteen and Baby Henry.
I decided to ship the datalinks in proletarian style, using the Zeux Urban Menace owned by the Ng Idea Reef, a conceptual R&D lab project that had become real on the streets. Hyper-black cryptosocialism.
Violence, 20th Iblis thought, was a form of heat - unfocussed dozy energy that would eventually wear down the gears of the universe.
On a varied mix of beer, Baby Henry roared through the streets on his Filipino motorbike. He was the God Rider, the Devil's white cicatrix scar tissue on society's wounds. Cannonning down La Rue De Ramstein to someone's dealer, he was really living.
We were up exchanging mythology for many nights, the nighthawks and whoring atheists that we were. Henry supported the old Pacific bisexual monarchy, as did Rocket. Sasha cried down the Jericho hegemony of bitter old queens with mean, smooth faces.
We were lost in the hotel hallways, chased by jaguars, unchallenged by dark slang. Here, in our greylight, we could see like owls and hear the heartbreak riffling of the universe's punchcards.
"To the Great Michael Alkanov:" he wrote "Station clear. Zen trials in effect. To host party will need winecellar of baronet in castle of philistine. Please advise.".
Bazajet roared through the operating theatre.
“You know, sometimes it seems like a shame to stop” said the surgeon.
The decade saw a resurgence in American guilt, this time focussed on the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Army Corps Of Engineers were brought in to construct an island of land reclaimed from the sea off the coast closest to Hiroshima. On it was built a bronze statue, of tastelessly gargantuan Soviet proportions, depicting the lower three-quarters of a nude Asian girl, one hand clutching her left breast, the raised to her groin in a masturbatory salute. The headless orgasmonument was soon absorbed into tourist itineraries and the traditional Japanese industry that had historically printed t-shirts of Lady Liberty getting double-teamed by Godzilla and King Kong.
Rain ran sadly in the glass gutters near the tensile concrete temple of the Army Corps of Engineers HQ.
Al-Khaliq handmaid's scurried outside Sound Room North. Inside, the Lion of the Maghreb brought forth his art of arcane Koranic song, the medium juxtaposed with lyrics from the eastern poets - Lo Bztu, Yun Zheng, and, first and last and always, Bo Gaixing, known for the infinite loneliness of his swans and lotus leaves.
“It's the rules! It's not the food of severe relapses - it's just running from shadows, running to die, to kill one of few lives” How Kyu knew about your clothed command, I'll never know.
His hands shook until he had been slicing across the black downs through acid rains for half an hour. He had committed a felony against the order of the cards not the people themselves, but his questionable deed would be severely punished. If he were caught. Sentenced to years in the mining camps on the asteroid belt, perhaps. That would be exile at least, and probably death. If he were caught.
The plane gleamed sodium yellow through the haze of rain, a whale on wet tarmac, waiting to go. Here he was. In an hour he'd be on the plane, and thirteen hours later he'd be coming in to land in Tokyo Bay. A long way, but it was all automatic from here. The only note of unease was that, four hours into the flight, he'd be flying right over those Death Valley motherfuckers. It seemed like too much, tempting fate. But that was superstition and, in any case, there was no way to avoid it.
The miserable duke, black suit drenched in spray, knee deep in the surf. On the shore, Annalise in a vague pink and white dress, screeching and hurling roses.
Their relationship was troubled.