Hey, Jim, and you know who you are...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hey, man, she's got ice in her eyes and they look like shiny new dimes as she puts something in her coffee with an eyedropper.  Liquid pills, Jim, liquid pills, and her grin breaks and goes all jagged a few minutes later.  "Time to go to work!", she sings, and her grin gets even weirder.  Then she's off to the morgue for another exciting day of finding out why Suzy Rottencrotch died in an alley on 12th avenue at 3AM, at the ripe old age of 19.

She, like a few other people I could mention, can only function with the help of The Spider.  Without the calm he brings, she'd shatter like glass the first time she stepped off the curb.

This century was not designed for the convenience of domesticated primates, as one old hippie said, and it's gotten to the point where we all need enhancements to function at our assigned tasks.  I mean, I guess they're enhancements, in the same way that nitrous oxide enhances a motor...it makes it run like a mad bastard for a while, and you can beat the whole goddamned world with one arm tied behind your soul, but it ain't exactly good for the engine.  Eventually, the whole works blows up, and you have to haul it out and rebuild it.

But where do you rebuild a human, Jim?  Is there a shop somewhere where you can send someone like her or me or you, to get those blown rings and burned valves re-machined?  If you know of a place, I'm all ears.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.  The future was supposed to make life easier, to let humans enjoy themselves, fuck it, let the robots do all the shit work, and we'll all become DaVincis and Wagners, right?  Well, the future is here, and it took us somewhere other than what we were led to expect.  Sure, we have gadgets, fuck, we've got more gadgets than we know what to do with, but gadgets aren't what we needed.

What we needed was to catch our breath, to relax a bit, and maybe enjoy life a little.  The Spider says you can do that, but first there's more work to be done.  Just one more bend in the road, and we're there...But Curly knew better, you could see it in his manic grin, the same way you could see it in Einstein's haunted eyes.

But there's no point worrying about it, Jim, because worrying takes time and time is money and money is your SCORE, right?  It's the basis by which you will be judged, and if you can't be a pinball wizard like Bill Gates, you can at least score well enough to keep that monkey on your back from screeching and chattering and whispering horrible secrets in your ear.

I wonder what she has in that eyedropper, Jim.  I ought to find out...It may help me reach my own personal high score.

Or Kill Me.

Bump for use on burners.

Oh fuck yes!