My Library

hair, who looked to be no more than eighteen, trying to get the attention of the young group leaning against a parked car, asking for a hit from the joint being passed around but unable to get their attention because they can’t see or hear him. The burly policeman in full uniform swinging his nightstick, strolling along the storefronts totally unaware that he is unobserved. The smartly dressed woman of indeterminate age trying to find a coin for a newspaper in her purse as she unknowingly walks through the side of a nearby building. The older man trying to buy the offerings of two young hookers standing by a doorway leading upstairs, angry because they don’t know he exists, watches as a physical man steps up, waves a double saw-buck in one girl’s face as she turns and leads him up the stairs; the first man following. The old woman walking slowly along the street, oblivious to everything around her, reaching down occasionally to the sidewalk and attempting to pick up a half-smoked cigarette snipe, but her hand passes through it. The dark-skinned man standing defiantly in the middle of the passing crowds, intense hate on his face and knife in hand, slashing through each passerby without realizing he is damaging or hurting no one. The unshaven old man at the open bar across the street, trying to pick up and toss down every drink set in front of a customer, then climbing on a customer’s back to try and get the taste and effect of the drink as the customer feels it, unnoticed and to no avail. I turned to BB. (Had enough?) He flickered strongly. (What’s the matter with them?) (They’ve died physically and they don’t know it. All they remember is human physical existence and they’re trying to hang on. That’s all they got, they think.) (Can’t you give them a different percept?) I smoothed. (If you mean me, I have to have help when I get into that run. There are others who make a career of it.) BB blanked. (Career?) (That’s all they do, try to get the attention of such humans. Would you like to get a percept of an extreme distortion of the survival drive?) He flickered. (Sure, lead on.)