Toxoplasmosis World

The mist was just beginning to clear, revealing more of the brown smear of trees by the road. There was no other traffic as we drove towards Tarnmouth in the jeep. Inside I was wearing a full body bioproctection suit made of the highest quality linen.
“It’s up here, about four hundred yards out.” Says 6. I give him the thumbs up as we turn up a muddy track, the tyres cracking the frozen mud beneath. Ahead of us are the first finished houses in a new suburb that had been partly built, the buildings a mix of yellow brick and concrete painted grey. Great care had been put into the design of the architecture as they each represented the perfect mathematical equation for what the most economic, eco-friendly building could be through being designed by a computer. Rather than stirring up any kind of interest or emotion, all that the new builds inspired was ennui.
“This is as far as I go.” Says 6.
“Thank you.” I say, getting out of the jeep. It’s cold outside. I begin to walk up the unfinished road.

The streets are empty, although I can hear noises coming from inside the houses. There is a strange atmosphere in the air, the same quietness as if out in new snow. I walk up the drive of one of the houses and let myself through the front door. The walls were decorated bizarrely, striped wallpaper patterns beneath pictures nailed to the wall at varying heights. I sat in a perspex globe suspended from the ceiling by a black chain when a horn sounded behind me. I jumped, spinning round to see a man dash out of a doorway. As he continued to run he seemed to step into his clothes and disappeared in a wriggle of elbows and knees twitching beneath a shirt and trousers. It was quiet again. I stood back up and went to the room he’d just emerged from and switched on the light. An enormous teenager was crouching on the floor. When he saw me he began to hop on all fours around the room, breathing heavily.
“Who are you?” I shout, clutching at the door frame in uncertainty. My gaze drifts down from his oiled forehead and into the blistering, violent red eyes of madness. Rabid like, he hopped around the room for a while until he finally stopped by the wall opposite me. He slowly began to stand, the breathing getting louder. He was trembling. I closed the door quietly and looked around for something to block him in. Even through the door now I could hear his breathing. Is he talking? I pull across a bureau and set it to rest before leaving the room.

In the next room I meet a middle-aged man dressed in a lab coat over his corduroys. He looks up from his clipboard as I enter.
“Hello. I’m here to talk about your discovery Dr. Douglas.” I said.
“Oh hello, it’s nice to meet you. Did you find us okay?” He said, we shake hands.
“Of course. This place isn’t on any map but your directions were excellent. And how could I miss the opportunity to talk about such a fascinating discovery? Potentially one that could alter the context of civilization.” I say, taking out my tape recorder to record such a dramatic statement.
“Well, you tell me, haha.” He says. “Please, follow me to the control centre.”

The control centre was the entire second floor of the house knocked through to reveal a state of the art laboratory mixed with a state of the art security system, all decorated with state of the art meme paintings. HD monitors were fastened to poseable telescopic arms that descended from the ceiling. In the centre of the room was an enormous white table. Dr. Douglas went over to it and smudged his finger, unlocking the huge touch screen computer.
“What I have to show you may alter the future of human history…forever.” He says. He looked back down at the screen and opened up a menu bar and selected a folder, then a subfolder, then a file.
“Say hello to Toxoplasma gondii, a sporozoite that is capable of infecting more or less all warm-blooded mammals, although only breeding inside a feline. Immediately it appears to cause flu-like symptoms, although my research shows that there may be a slightly more insidious side to this microscopic creature.” Says Dr. Douglas. On the table there is a magnified video of the parasites making their way through space.
“Damn.” I say, slowly standing up after leaning against a desk.
“Damn is putting it lightly. Gondii has a 50% infection rate against feline to sapien interaction. We’ve found the average person has a twenty to one chance of carrying the disease.” Says a woman who’d just walked in.
“And you are?” I say, raising one of my eyebrows.
“Her name is Dr. Douglas. This is my daughter, Dr. Amanda Douglas.”
“A pleasure to meet you…doctor.” I say, raising my other eyebrow.
“As I was saying, Gondii is so prevalent in our society we ran studies on the actual effects of this parasite in humans beyond the immediate symptoms.”
“And?”
“And we’ve found that the parasite can affect human behaviour. It increases dopamine levels, shrinks grey matter and engorges the mendula oblongata.” She says sternly.
“In English?”
“Basically it alters the parts of the brain that effect behaviour. Fear, rationality, reasoning…it can even go on to alter sexuality. People with the infection are more likely to drink, more likely to swear…even more likely to have sex with each other.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, now you got my attention.” I say, holding my fingers up to my head and pretending as if my mind was exploding.
“For instance, once Gondii has infected a man it lays its eggs in his semen, which can they go on to infect a foetus before travelling up the mothers spinal column. It also has the added effect of increasing the sex drive of people with the parasite, who then go on to spread it further and further through…intercourse.” Says Dr. Douglas.
“Does that word make you…uncomfortable?” I say, smirking slightly as I create a steeple shape with my hands.
“I’m not sure if you’re taking this seriously.”
“Seriously? Seriously. You know, let me tell you about serious. I once knew a guy who’d worked all his life selling apples out of a cart, he had his own orchard that had been passed down through the generations but this guy had no kids. One day his horse dies and he has to start dragging the cart from his orchard all the way into town by himself, it’s not long before he takes a slip and breaks his ankle. A local kid comes up and finds him, puts him in the back of the cart and then drags both the old man and the apples all the way in to town to the local doctor. And you know what happened when he got there? The old man had died with a smile on his face and an apple core in his hand.” I said. Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“What happened to that kid?”
“His name was Steve Jobs, maybe you heard of him?”
“Even if Steve Jobs were here, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Gondii makes people take more risks, become more narcissistic and more sexually active.”
“Sounds like the right ingredients for an Instagram superstar.”
“Not only is it transferable through bodily fluids, it is zoonotic. You can get it from eating rare steak for example. It’s potential for infection is enormous.”
“So what? Sounds like this Gondii is a good deal.”
“Cats.”
“Excuse me?”
“The parasite only breeds in cats. Mice that have Toxoplasmosis show almost no fear of cats. People who carriers on the other hand tend to have pet cats. I’ve been tracking the number of times cats are mentioned on the internet and the numbers are increasing at an exponential rate. Our society is becoming almost wholly obsessed with this animal.” Said Dr. Douglas.
“The cats themselves are benign. It’s the parasite that is the driving force behind this. Like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus that infects ants that alters their behaviour, Toxoplasma Gondii offers just as much a threat to humans. Our entire planet could become slaves to cats before the century is up.”
“So what you’re saying is we should destroy all cats?”
“It is difficult to think of how to deal with the disease. On the one hand it offers relatively little danger and in fact can make the host happier to some extent. On the other hand, the parasite could change over time…evolve to alter human behaviour further. The rabies virus makes the host attack others orally when it wants to propagate, what if a mutation of this virus makes people engage in…intercourse?”
“Does that word make you uncomfortable doctor?”
“Nevermind that. This little enclave is our test centre. We can run simulations, modify the parasites DNA and test its possibilities. We’ve already discovered that this parasite can cause schizophrenia in babies. You ever seen a schizophrenic baby?”
“So everyone living here is infected with brain parasites? Whose idea was this?”
“Mine.”
“Doctor…do you have Toxoplasma Gondii?” I ask.
“Of course. I accidentally caught it off my cats.” Says Dr. Douglas. He walks over to a cupboard and opens it up. Inside it is stuffed with cats. Hundreds of cats squashed together, mewling and hissing, a wall of fur and claws. The surface tension breaks and the room is suddenly filled with cats running across every surface. I start to run. Out in the next room the teenager has started hopping again, although he is set upon by cats. I knock over a table on my way out of the door and back onto the street. And I am greeted by a sea of cats eyes.

Hundreds of cats. Perhaps thousands. Some are sleeping, some clean themselves, others join flowing roads of cats that move this way and that. A few have already noticed me and are already rubbing themselves around my legs.
“Remove yourself!” I shout, beginning to run around the house. There is a couple copulating in the back garden, the low winter sun illuminating a pair of hairy buttocks rising and falling in the air as steam comes off the sweating bodies. I pull myself up over a garden fence and into the next one. A few people are gathered around a dead cat, they look up from their meal at me at the same time. All of them are wearing white contact lenses.
“Can I get a doggy bag?!” I wisecrack as I leap in with a karate kick, delivering the blow in slow motion to the forehead of an old man. Not breaking stride I continue to run, jumping, rolling, moving. Behind me thousands of cats are chasing over each other to get me, the microscopic worms in their brains wanting to enter mine. I run.

Aliens Of Kepler 186-f

The National Associated Space Agency (NASA) has recently discovered life on another planet. The planet, Kepler 186-f orbits the Kepler star, an M dwarf that is roughly 44% the size and strength of our sun. Scientists are already deciding on renaming the planet something more memorable, such as Tarkus or Izitso, due to its importance in the history of human civilization.

The planet is composed mostly of rocks and ice due to being a lot further out than Earth relative to Sol. Because of the weakness of Kepler at high noon it gets as bright as a nightclub toilet so therefore the vegetation of the planet is enormous. The leaves on the trees are each as big as satellite dishes, and of a similar shape. Fungus is also prevalent, as on Tarkus the ice gets mouldy. Due to the spectrum of light thrown from Kepler, the flowers are all ultraviolet and lack any visible colour. Kepler 186-f also has no moon and so its oceans are still. These enormous ponds are home to shark frogs and leech whales, above them fly flocks of giant flies that have the ability to sing like birds, although they do this through their proboscis and so create a sound similar to a wet trumpet. On the plains of ice live a variety of strange alien creatures that are reminiscent to some of the animals on our planet; wooly pigs, two headed cat monsters, tortoise spiders and mirrors that walk around to name but a few.

Kepler 186-f is 600 lightyears away, so we are seeing the planet 600 years ago. If the aliens living there had good enough telescope technology and were watching us, they would see the world in 1414, perhaps watching the Battle of Agincourt and wondering if we were imbeciles who ate mud and slept in chimneys. With this intergalactic empathy in mind, the supposed most intelligent being on Kepler 186-f are the Kepleroids. These strange beings look a little like us, although with eyes the size of basketballs standing on highly veined stalks. They appear to live in a village that spans entire continents, often walking for miles to visit their neighbours with what must be meat pies. They also play a variety of night sports and ride around on dead horse things with the legs replaced with wheels. The Kepleroids seem like a benign and peaceful race, and it would be ethical to eat them should the opportunity ever arise.

A NASA spokesman suggested that we build a spaceship and send it off to explore this planet and exploit it for any fossil fuels they may not be using. This alien petrol would be made from alien dinosaurs and would power a car to drive from Paris to Beijing on a single tank! NASA is currently looking for a crack team of astronauts to go on this mission and have styled the crew requirements to mirror that of the characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although a 'Wesley Crusher' isn't required.

Atlas Sands

I walk. I walk and I walk and I walk. From the airport runways to the heart of the city centre, Manchester is one of the best places for any keen hiker to explore on foot. There are mile after mile of roads in Manchester, I estimate there is enough tarmac for a single road to run along the entire coast of England. And on the side of these roads, more often than not, is the pavement. For where would we be without pavements? Perhaps the unsung hero of Manchester, its pavements are walked on daily by its entire population and on which lost items can be found, promises can be made and even a few secrets kept. Anything can happen on these mysterious walkways, five and a half feet wide and infinite in length. In Los Angeles there is a pavement with the hands of famous celebrities embedded into it. In Manchester the pavement is covered in the bloody handprints of gunshot victims. I went to see what kind of pavements I could encounter on a standard day of exploration.

Before long I found myself stranded on the embankment of the M62, the traffic rushing past me on both sides. The air around me moved quickly, filled with the smell of diesel and rain water. I shut my eyes and found myself in a

death dream

falling forward, clutching at my left eye. It had gone cold. Stumbling blindly I reach a concrete bridge and begin to scale it with my fingertips.
"Gone gone samba, rolled rick potassiums and inobstruble magnificents." I mumble to myself. A sacred mantra I had picked up from the last necromancer in Berlin. Eventually I managed to pull myself upward to near safety and began the long walk home, pulling fragments of teeth from out of my tongue, musing, simply musing on the bare bone facts of life. What if instead of people we were pavements? I know, I know, it sounds crazy, I know. Okay? But just hear me out here~

~ quantum physics ~

~ I hope that adequately stated my point, but though even irregarding the fact that the pavements were a source of trouble in our lives, it is possible to empathise with architecture at at least an atomic level.

OK Coral

Thousands of miles of bone covered by a coloured skin, slowly turning the bleached whiteness of death. The sky screamed infernally overhead burning deeper and deeper through the ancient reef. It was the time. Unknowing, each mouth kissed the sea, releasing motes out from their stomachs that drifted into the ongoing storm happening beneath the foam. The cells that caught one another began to change, drifting down far from where they began onto a sheet of rock. The polyp grew a mouth and began to grow another, attached by a tiny membrane. And these copies would go on to grow another copy. With identical mouths they snared plankton, reaching upwards on a limestone skeleton towards the shifting sky.

In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.

The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.

On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.

Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.

The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.

The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.

Legalisation

In front of us were row after row of cannabis plant lit by yellow lights, casting harsh shadows onto the concrete floor. We are underground. Alvin Theodore turns to me and wipes at his brown moustache.
"What do you think?" he says, voice wavering in excitement. I turn back to the 'sea of green' and breathe in.
"Smells like...food."
"That's the trichomes." he utters before leading me through a gap in the field. Alvin Theodore is a business man, I could tell by his cheap suit and the way the skin sat on his face, like an ultra-real mask, all deep-pored and hairy up the nose. He looked like a wax work animated wet. We enter another room, this one contains seedlings on three rows of shelves. Botanists walk through the columns, administering a liquid vitamin solution into the growth matter.
"When they bred dogs for a certain kind of temperament, they noticed some physical features were shared with behaviour, like if a dog was good with people it might have had floppy ears. Or a curled tail. That kind of thing. With these plants we aren't really looking for a psychological behaviour but physical traits. But what if the exterior form is intrinsically linked in some way to the interior?"
"So what you're saying is that plants have a personality, like big leaves means...this plant is good to be around? Like...this plant is fucking sound."
"More or less. It took them about fifty years to breed a little terrier from a true dog, call it forty generations huh? Think how many generations you can have with plants. They reach reproductive maturity much earlier and can have potentially hundreds of children. Not only that, we can clone them. I think this is why we've seen such a significant increase in THC levels over the last fifty years or so. If you look at the buds we have now compared to your grandpa's weed, ours looks a lot more...Lovecraftian." he says, climbing a staircase. We're in his office, decorated in formica and residue. He makes a pot of coffee.
"Tell me about your cannabinols. Would you say what you have been growing was 'kush'? Or more similar to the variety of super skunk flooding the country from Amsterdam." I enquire nonchalantly, accepting the cup from Alvin.
"I'm running a business model that fits the high class stoner, providing the highest quality product on the market. I have a degree in Evolution from Oxford, I've travelled to the states to see how they do it. Recreational cannabis is going to be a huge cash crop, bigger than...wheat."
"Wheat?"
"Celiac's on the increase. Why not replace wheat with weed?" he said. I nodded encouragingly. I always enjoyed meeting a person willing to maximise their concept to it's fullest potential. It wasn't just a product with a single purpose, it was a multi-faceted money spinner that could enter various revenue streams. Food, clothes, medicine, building material, the potential was endless.
"It comes down to the waste product. Think about wood pulp, animal fats, plastic chips. We recycle all of these in pretty much everything, but we're going to have such an excess in marijuana related waste matter we can have weed in everything."

I left the meeting feeling puzzled. Was drugs okay now? I visited a juice bar to find out. Hundreds of these have popped up over the country, not selling alcohol but various juices that simply tasted nice. I ordered a virgin cranberry mojito and sat outside, digging the vibelicious music pouring out of the woofers, waiting to talk to someone. It didn't take long for a woman to ask me for a light. I passed her a box of matches I'd kept for such an occasion and watched her quietly, trying to smell her from across the table. I introduced myself and asked why she was smoking cannabis.
"It feels good, you know? I like it. Do you smoke?" she says, offering me the glass pipe stuffed with a well cornered bowl of Norwegian Haze. I breathe in the thick smoke and shut my eyes. I quoted Descartes: "I think, therefore I am."
We then get into a conversation about the fancy drinks that they had at the bar before I moved onto a more complex conversation.
"Why do you take drugs? Do you have no control over your life?"
"What do you mean?"
"Does your need to escape reality have anything to do with problems you experienced as a child?"
"Well, not really. I mean, I had a good childhood."
"I suppose you're imaginative?"
"Yes."
"Imagination is a defence mechanism for those that struggle with their own ego."
"That's ridiculous." she says, laughing.
"Let me tell you about a man who imagined the whole world was an orange. He tried to peel the whole world until they trapped him in a dungeon. Now was that because he was on drugs or was it all in his imagination?"
"I'm going inside." she says, leaving me alone. I think about the man who had tried to peel the world. What would happen if he had been successful? I look up and down the street, thankful for small favours. I think back on my experiences so far, still undecided if smoking weed was a morally safe decision. I needed to try for myself by visiting the Institute of Scientific Research in Durham.

I am strapped onto a bed, scientists move around me, though I'm unable to see them properly as a bright light shines overhead. There's so many electrodes attached to my scalp it looks like an orange plastic ponytail, my thoughts being played back to me as a wavering sine tone. A doctor administers 100 milligrams of pure cannabis via eye drops.
"Blink please." he says. I can feel the liquid drip down my temples.
"How long will it take for the weed to activate in my system?"
"Approximately four minutes." he says. I can feel hands touching at my arm and the sting of a needle.
"What are you doing?"
"Administering a saline drip in case you lose consciousness. Try to relax." says the doctor. I wait, watching the light. After a few minutes I mention I don't feel anything, so more eye drops are administered to me. There is somebody talking in the background, I think I recognise the voice.
"Who else is in the room?" I ask. There isn't a response for a while and I can't move my head.
"Myself and the nurse." says the doctor eventually.
"I think I am beginning to feel the...eye drops having an effect."
"How do you feel? Speak clearly into the microphone." he says, I can feel the foam top brushing against my lips.
"I am beginning to feel like Bob Marley." I say.
"Do you have the munchies?" he asks.
"Yes...yes, I think I can feel an increase in appetite. And a dry mouth, is that normal?" I ask. The doctor laughs.
"Just try to relax, we are moving onto the next stage of the procedure." he says.
"Okay." I say. The bed begins to tilt so I can see the whole room. In front of me are about fifty snakes inside a glass box.
"What are they there for?" I ask.
"This is an experiment." says the doctor, walking forward and smashing the box with a baseball bat before running out of the room.

The Sun Is Angry

With the recent trend in violence leaning towards the bizarre and mostly cruel, the government have launched a new task force in order to best deal with this 'Crime Heatwave'. The P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.O.N. bureau is ran by Ian Newman, a head honcho with a heart of gold and a sly grin parked onto his face as he speaks in his relaxing West country accent of the strange spate of violence sweeping the countries streets. Dog attacks, funeral bombs, the case of the mad vicar, human arson, dental harm, hospital admission statistics, the missing helicopters and so on.
"On the surface it may look like the so called 'Summer of Death' is an anomaly, a phenomenon. As if all of this started out of nothing. But we at P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.O.N. have been planning for this for years. We have a highly specialised team of experts willing to take on each case on a week by week basis."
"So it's based on television?" I ask, sweeping my arm across the room at the enormous television set against one wall. Newman shakes his head.
"No, people are beginning to base more and more of their behaviour on television. We are simply adopting a model that fits the socio-cultural background."
"So what you're proposing is that the world is becoming more fictional somehow? It's not as much you're copying the style of detective television shows but that as detectives you can't help but find yourself playing that role which mirrors this semi-fictional reality in some way?"
"I'm not saying that reality is fictional, just that human behaviour and perception is being altered by it's culture constantly. For instance if you hear a certain phrase in a film and repeat it in real life, and somebody hears you and repeats that. What if you come across a man needing insulin then plunged the syringe into his sternum because you saw it on Pulp Fiction? What if you just happen to be a criminal and kill a guy because television told you to?"
"I'm not sure if I follow." I say, glancing through the photos he has handed to me. Some are of celebrities, others are of crime scenes.
"The television is talking to me. It is showing me prophecies, strange visions...that of a perfect, set world. Can you imagine it? That alpha is followed by beta, celta, delta, omega. Maybe a world where we have televisions in our eyes, with all the wires sticking out of the front? How about we have film crews everywhere, filming everything, showing it to everyone, all at once, the cities and landscapes an endless labyrinth of televisions, broadcasting the pure, unending, my own shuddering and secret, most ultimately all encompassing and final, the power of god as he is man living forever, we are trapped amongst the forcefields, to follow the lines in between onwards and through into that of maximum television." he says, frothing at the mouth, ripping at his own face. I rest the ipad onto the desk and quickly make my way out of his office and down the empty corridor. I look over my shoulder, listening to his screaming getting louder. There's the feeling as through somebody has rubbed the back of my neck as I pace faster to the exit.

I drive home, wondering about what Newman was doing at that moment in time. Had he calmed down? I had hoped so. It was bad enough that I couldn't claim my travel expenses for the interview as I had lost my receipts. Now I had witnessed the birth of a maniac, emerging out from his unconscious like a thing without bones being pulled from the sea. My car begins to speed down the motorway, faster and faster. I look into the rear view mirror and notice something.