Globehead

By the time we rolled through the Mojave, the phonanesthetics stiched inside the lining of the seats weighed scarcely twenty kilos. It was going to be very, very close. The federal police of the Analgesic Unlimited energy concern was moving quick but we hoped to outrun them in the desert. They jump us within site of Vegas  - razor wire along the road pops the tires and we skid out. Someone must have talked. Cries of "who, me?"

Figures appear in the distance. We live and die by the glint of iron on the distant horizon. Larry catches two in the head and gets the blood absolutely everywhere. The rest of the crew try to shoot back while I make a break for it. Someone swings at me but I tase him and his gimmicked fingers malfunction into knives easy enough.

"To explain: there is a vast network. A whole ocean of possibilities. Now these here amulets will protect you from curses both witchcraft and voodoo in origin, up to three demonic possessions, malignant sigils and scabies. They'll be expecting a full report in the offices and I for one do not intend to get written up again."
The firefight switches into the high-noon showdown. They bring out the old cliches. In the red corner, weighing in at one hundred fifty pounds and packing a Ruger Bearcat, Theodore Rosenstein my collaborator and neighbor from the flat downstairs. In blue, of mass only detectable with a particle accelerator and wielding authority roughly equivalent to the energy output of a neutron star is the unnameable presence behind this whole thing. It's gonna be a hell of a fight, kid. The dusty street goes quiet. Tumble weeds beam in over the shortwave unconvincingly. Three cold seconds under the desert sun. For a moment everyone has fixed themselves in the world. Then Theodore moves - too soon - and it's all over in an instant. He screams as the big hands come down. The new rules are read forth briskly and terribly by every roided up goon of the right and established order of Goons and any fucker tries to shirk his union fees is subject to a beating at full cost.

Sweaty Charlie

Charlie Green – ‘Sweaty’ Charlie to his friends – was and presumably still is a large and nervous man, prone to crippling obsessions and paranoia. True to form, he was being large and nervous in a café. He was eating a chicken Caesar salad, which in his opinion contained rather too many croutons. Charlie like to represent every ingredient equally in every bite, but this salad was simply too saturated with bread for this to be accomplished whilst maintaining both a correct ratio among ingredients and a regard for taste. 

Indeed, it seemed that as he ate each even forkful that the quantity of croutons relative to that of say, chicken or lettuce was steadily rising. Soon, he realised, croutons would comprise the entirety of food in the bowl. Given that in the beginning they had comprised but a fraction of the meal, Charlie reasoned that they must somehow be propagating, multiplying themselves whilst retaining the same volume. Soon his lunch would reach a point of infinite density and form a black hole which would then devour the solar system, if not the universe.

‘My god!’ cried Charlie, as he flung the bowl through the café window, ‘I knew I should have ordered chips!’

Apologue five

Indulge me temporarily. Look up and see: through the outermost orbits of the solar system moves a mysterious and terrible planet. Unknown by telescope or any other traditional means of inference, we perceive it as breath on the back of our necks, a strange light on a deserted street. There's something wrong with that man. A voice that whispers in your headphones, beneath the Morse code. Tension rises and all the old numbers stations go dead. Theia has come back to finish the job.

I can feel it in my bones now. The gravity well's run dry. Look up; they're here already. Fiddling with radios somewhere near magnetic north. All of this is stricken from the record. Damnatio memoriae. Like electrons around an atom we spin through the void and with us spins this planet, the malfunctioning engine. It's over. Arm yourself. Bring a knife to a M.A.D. doctrine. It's almost ready. A little further now.

Here it comes.

Even Smiling Makes My Face Ache

He was bankrupt in seven dimensions and 

having nothing better to do of a wednesday

I offered him shelter from hungry and vengeful 

creditors. He'd been financing an insurgency -

on the astral plane, dear boy, where the final

battle will resolve itself and I will free mankind 

of all tyrannies, spiritual, existential, benign or

otherwise, as foretold by ancient prophecy and 

tv guides. I said yeah, but look here at these 

faucets in the shower. They're fiddly, you hear me? 

Fiddly, and they must be fiddled in the manner

of a safecracker in order to achieve correct 

tem-per-ah-ture - oh, and you'll be sleeping

on the couch. He thanked me for my hospitality 

and for taking such an enormous risk, dear 

boy. I told him that I liked to live, as they say,

on the edge, and that really it was nothing; later 

that night I crept downstairs and phoned it in. 

The look in his eyes as they dragged him off in

manacles delights me to this day, and though

it's been close I have never since felt so

free.