‘The Big Talking Mouth was talking,’ I began, ‘It talked and it talked… It talked and it talked…’ This was a good start, I felt. I rather liked the big talking mouth motif – I can get a lot of mileage out of that, I felt. The big talking mouth, the big talking mouth. Always talking, always talking. Like a bastard. Like a big bastard. ‘Shut up you big talking mouth, you want to say. But then you’d be the big talking mouth – talking shit forever, talking shit for all eternity. ‘Woe is upon me,’ you will cry out then, ‘woe is upon me for I have become the BTM!‘ These are unhappy days; these are monstrous abominable days for all will be transformed into shit. Everything will be converted into hideous inane prattle and I am the instigator – that is the shame I have to live with. I am he who has unleashed this evil upon the world. I am he who, I am he who. I realised then that I had called forth a demon which had no intention of doing my bidding. It’s an old story isn’t it? It’s an old, old story and you probably heard it first when you were on your mother’s knee, no more than a tiny grey little wrinkled homunculus more than ten thousand years ago. You remember that time – you had only just been created, amidst great turmoil, in the Forge of Vulcan? How well you remember those tales that you heard at your mother’s knee, back in those most ancient of times! How well you remember them, how well you remember them. Now you have grown. Now you have become the Great Destroyer – He-Whose-Name-Must-Never-Be-Remembered. Now you have become of age and you have taken your place in the council of elders, reading from the sacred scrolls, posting your exalted status on Instagram, reminding the world that you are there, and that you are a bit of a dick. You’re the Last of the Transhumans – the perfect fusion of protoplasmic flesh and positronic nano-circuitry. You have the brain the size of a flea’s rectum – it’s all that you need. You are full of despair because you have cocked your life up – you have made a shit of it. You don’t know how it happened; you don’t understand how it all went so bad. You did everything right – you did everything by the book. You went to school and you learned your lessons. You became a lame, dependent personality, just like all the rest. Just like you were supposed to. You graduated with honours and got your first job selling knickknacks in a cornershop. You talked bullshit with the people who came to purchase your worthless wares. You dared to dream. You dream of writhing nematodes with the heads of politicians who infest the dark, unknown parts of your body. You wake up screaming, urinating helplessly in terror. So how did it all come to this, you ask yourself? What did I do wrong?