“Don’t open your mouth because I know you’re going to say ‘I would like to know– what’s it like to be what you are?’ and then shut your mouth and not say: ‘How disgusting it must be to be a disembodied head sitting in a surgical pan.’

Yes, Professor, that’s right: I can read your thoughts. Amazing, is it not? I have powers beyond your– yes, you’re right. I was going to say ‘beyond your wildest dreams,’ and yes, that’s right too, you sarcastic bastard,

‘My my– now isn’t that a novel figure of speech.’ Fool! We all have our scripts to read, so don’t blame me. Is that what you call it? A surgical pan? I prefer to call it a cookie sheet. What’s it like? Ha! Your mind is feeble.

You imagine that  I sit here all day and watch the vile life-sustaining fluids as they race through the opaque plastic tubes which, I assume, are connected to the base of my severed head, and if you weren’t such an imbecile, you’d realize that I said ‘I assume’ because, after all, I can’t see down there, although if I pout in an exaggerated manner and strain my gaze downward I can see part of my lower lip, glistening with spittle. You also imagine that I sit, here listening to the pump. What cacophony! That racket– hey! I’m talking to you! Don’t. If you try to leave I’ll give you an irresistible  command to stab yourself to death or maybe jump out the window. That damned pump! That racket! Not unlike a tin can full of bumble-bees, very angry bumble-bees, don’t you think? Or a disturbing conversation between two strangers, an argument you’re in noo position to halt, and what’s worse, you can’t help but eavesdrop. So– what’s it like?

Terribly sorry, but I can’t answer your question because as soon as I shut my mouth the Protagonist will smash down the door with his disgustingly muscular shoulders and punch you into blessed unconsciousness and smash the machinery and the test-tubes thus causing a fire which will put an end to us while providing the valuable moral lesson, which is, dummy, that men must never again use a cookie sheet in such a dastardly manner. Ha! it will be a horrible death, as I’ve known all along. Alas! The tragedy of omniscience. Most dirturbing. Ah well.”

THE PROTAGONIST ESCAPES FROM THE BURNING HOUSE. HE SIGHS AND SAYS, ‘IF ONLY THE PROFESSOR HAD USED HIS GENIUS FOR GOOD INSTEAD OF EVIL!’

On a hill where the water springs that eventually winds its way down out of the Sierra Madre, that thunders finally into the mighty Los Angeles River; on that hill there, clings the spine of a human town. It’s just a store, really; and a post office and a couple of houses for no particular reasons. I lived there ‘cos I was born there. I never would have made up my mind to go there.

Well, I was outside sweeping dust off the porch of the Southland Corporation’s ‘Outpost’ store, when this weird old coot come roarin’ into town, hollering and spinnin’ his ancient pick-up truck in circles in the parkin’ lot.

“Come with me, boy, we’re gonna have a hellish time tonight!” he yelled and shuv a bottle of whiskey in my face. We wound up at Miss Lillie’s Saloon where the geezer dumped out a pile of glittering sand on the bar. “Drinks fer everybody,” he shouted, and suddenly he had more friends than he ever seen before in his life.

We got real plastered and Miss Lillie had on her friendliest smile, and there was dancin’ and live music on through the rest of the night.

In the morning he woke up and I was still dancing with Miss Lillie. Everybody else was either passed out or had gone. Gone, too, was the last of the metal dust. The miner pocketed his change and giggled a little foolishly. “Well,” he drawled, “I reckon I had me a real fine time,” and he started to leave.

“When are you coming back?” I asked him. He screwed up his face and scratched his head, and he figured a bit. “I don’t reckon I’ll be back,” he said. “See, I was seventeen when I started t’ mine. It’s sometimes a year’s worth of silt without a single nugget.” And he cranked up his old flivver and headed back up the mountain trail.