I had been on the bus for as long as I could remember. You meet a lot of interesting people on the bus. The driver was a monkey, and at each stop he bellowed the name of the stop and mumbled rude things while the passengers got on and off. I always stayed on, and watched and thought.

On this leg, there were a lot of people on board. There was an amazingly beautiful woman, fingering her beads of hope and showing around a photograph to everybody who would listen - except me, for some reason. She just stared at me the way you would stare at a fetid mass of excrement.

"Hairy Corners!" the monkey yelled. Everybody got off the bus, then, except me and one other fellow who had been thinking so hard he was embedded in his seat. A few more passengers got on, and then there was some sort of confusion outside, and the last few got in. One of them I recognized. I felt the power within me. I went over to him and asked, "Are you Sissy-boy Johnson?" He looked me up and down, and I could feel his eyes trying to eat me. He was very old. "No," he said, "I'm the Entropyneur. That's Sissy-boy Johnson," and he pointed to one of his companions. I was about to burst, now, as I turned to the one he had pointed at. I was suddenly struck from behind, and the second man pulled out an ancient-looking knife and slit me open from head to toe. There was no blood, only a thin black oily seepage, and circuits and gears were exposed. I was struck again, and everything went white, and I heard their voices. "A Recorder?" "Yeah, and a Sword, too." "One of Theirs?" "No... damn. I thought all this was over." "Let's take him back to the club and take him apart." I heard no more, ever.