Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismGrim RaperShe was lithe and taut, skin like black polymer laminate, eyes like LEDs. [1] He'd been programming for days and answered the door in his pajamas. She binked. "You placed an order?" He hadn't, but sensed he should have. "Sure. C'mon in." Whereupon she proceeded to delaminate. Thirteen minutes later, his jammies bunched around his ankles, he lay on the floor wheezing softly through a hole in his trachea. His blood pooled slowly. The fibrillator lay on his desk on top of his rare old Stillinger's Wordsworth. She brought her lips close to his ear: "how does history taste, dear one? How's the future feel?" [2] With seraphic tenderness, she plucked the biosoft from behind his ear. Notes1. We cannot identify this agent, if agent she is. Our best hunch is that she is a Vassist of no ordinary ability. How she determined this Archivist's identity is beyond us. We can only presume--perhaps pray--that she is among our allies. History has proven her intervention to have been futile. 2. An allusion? A coincidental locution? We can't tell. But either way these haunting words invoke that great underground classic Feeling Futurity by Amitava Kumar III (Place and date of publication unknown). Navigation |