Time is a notepad into which I jot down the occasional note to myself. The occasional scrawl. The occasional comment or two. Sometimes a whole load of comments. Sometimes a long and vitriolic litany. That’s time for you, anyway. That’s time – make of it what you will. I know I do…
Talk is cheap, so they say. Some talk can be expensive enough, though. If it’s very special technical talk then it might be quite expensive. If it’s very artistic talk then that might come at a price too. The type of talk I specialise in is worthless talk however – dirty old talk, rotten talk, scurrilous talk. That kind of thing. The type of talk I’m talking about is the type that leaves a bad smell in the room for many hours after you’ve gone.
If it isn’t cheap then it’s probably expensive – that’s the point I wanted to make. We can’t have it both ways, after all. I specialise in the cheaper end of the Reality Market. I operate there – with impunity, some might say. Some of the cheaper realities can leave a bad taste in the mouth in your mouth of course. That’s generally understood. Some of them leave you feeling unpleasantly contaminated – that’s generally understood too. There’s a reality out there to suit everyone, I always say. That doesn’t mean that it has to be an agreeable one of course. There’s plenty out there that aren’t so agreeable; plenty of them that you wouldn’t be too chuffed about…
Even the most expensive reality will let you down in the end however. That sort of thing can go to peoples’ heads. It can give you airs and graces – you think you’re something special and then the next minute you have a rude awakening. A rude awakening designed to cut you down to size in a hurry. It happens to us all, doesn’t it? So perhaps we should be prudent in this case and settle for a run of the mill boring old reality instead. Go for a Ford Escort rather than a Lexus, sort of thing. There’s a lot to be said for being prudent, after all.
Talk is cheap though and we should be wary of wasting our time on empty words. We should be very wary. Everyone you meet is an enemy – trust me, I know. Everyone you meet is an enemy and the quicker you learn this the better. ‘Show me your happy face,’ I command the chief demon and before very long his fearsome great head bursts asunder from the strain, splattering threads and globules of corruption in all directions. I gathered from this that a happy face was not part of this demon’s repertoire. There’s a bad taste in your mouth, as if you’d been eating something putrid, something gone off, without realizing it. You’ve had an unpleasant experience but you can’t remember what it was.
You served your time in the Psychic Wars the same as us all. You were there and you’ve got the scars to prove it, as so many of us do. The psychic scars, that is. The scars that are on the inside where no one can see them. You are supposed to adapt smoothly and seamlessly to civilian life. You couldn’t adjust though – none of us could. Eventually you came to the attention of the authorities and were duly arrested by the Peace Keeping Force for impersonating a person. You were issued with a formal warning, which you accepted with nonchalance; the whole world is little better than a giant penal colony at this stage and so as far as you are concerned you have little enough to lose. You try not to lose your temper with them. These Peace Keepers are little more than children, you observe. They’re young enough to be your grand-kids. They wouldn’t last long in the Psychic Wars, you say to yourself. They wouldn’t last out the day…
