Absent intensity. It's impossible to tell how much he even understands.

Callsigns aren't meant to be flattering. So if he was named after a bird known for its wayfinding...

A dirty little city bird. A winged rat.

'Permanently'.

A big hit of his own dwindling supply gives the old man a fleeting high.

The ranking system amongst pilots is all but official -- military is highest, followed by commercial, then cargo, then finally leisure. Jet pilots likewise command more respect than those flying traditional rotor planes.

The saliva smacking in his throat and mouth is louder than any words formed.

Tracing the shapes his mouth makes, you manage to make out the words 'I was', 'people', and 'land'.

'Territories' meaning, in this case, La Luz's island states -- briefly independent, now reannexed.

Far below the normal region of air traffic, almost skimming the dark water, a shuddering cargo plane crosses the Noscorrentes Sea, lights dimmed.

What they did to him is the reason why he can't speak.

His reward was severe.

The laughter leaves in its wake something like conversational scar tissue.

A particularly brutal annexation, the Tenantries were razed almost to the ground. What remains is a shrunken capital surrounded by non-arable land.

A joke in poor taste. A stamped passport for a country that no longer exists.

THE TECHNO-FASCISTS WOULD BRAND HIM THE SECOND HE LANDED, AND HE KNOWS IT. THEN THEY WOULD GET CREATIVE.

A chorus of hacking coughs, like cats throwing up furballs in unison.

He means 'buy me a round'.

You know what he means, but you can't help it: an apple-sized dollop of lard melts between hand and chest as you massage grey-tufted folds of old skin.

That smirk. Like he's somehow gotten one over on fate.

The signs are clear if you know what to look for: jaundiced skin, bilirubin-choked. The disease has taken hold.

The subject, whether immediate or eventual, of the negotiations the prisoner told you about.

Were the talks not currently on hold, Portofiro would be being carved up by the drunken and otherwise degenerate diplomats representing the two rival powers of EMTERR and La Luz even now.

Doused with cold water, all three of the pilots seem to sober up as your words hit them.

Fantasies of refuelling planes that no longer exist run through their eyes.

Spilling the People's secrets to the first drunkards you meet. This is why your internal clearance level is currently 'DO NOT INFORM'.

THE APPETITE OF EMPIRE IS SLEEPLESS AND INSATIABLE.

Light craft. Single turboshaft engine and a mere 120-litre biodiesel bladder. Favoured by the Aussaunnian militia and guerrilla groups.

Bandying about the fact that you're no common civilian is tantamount to wearing a sign.

His face twitches on the razorblade between perverse delight and terror.

He edges out onto a thin sheet of memory, like a child on a frozen lake.

A painter's nightmare, etched in bodies and fire.

And by some strange alchemy, somewhere is turned into nowhere.

The stories affect them as much as any listener. They reopen the wound with every telling.

The Reunión: La Luz's grand annexation campaign -- slow, legal, often bloody. A creeping tide reclaiming, every few years, one more of their old colonies.

No translation needed, and not the slightest hint of irony. Yes.

You picture the words in bold on the cover of the world's least enthusiastic travel brochure.

He means the Miracle Line. They're regulars, all of them.

That was a growl, not an attempt to speak. He would be making the same noise if he could talk.

LIKE VULTURES TO A DYING ANIMAL. CARRION-TO-BE.

If that's true, he might know where you can find the Head of Human Capital.

In which case the phone-hog must be one of the negotiators Dante mentioned.

Wherever there is money, the bloody hand of transnational capital is never far away.

EMTERR, a.k.a. L'Empire sans Territoire, a.k.a. 'The Bank'. Equal parts global development fund and spy service. Linchpin of the Developed World.

It may have been the techno-fascists that destroyed his homeland, but it's the entrepreneurial types that his disdain is really reserved for.

Even saying it gets him a little hard.

The Miracle Line. Must be what that card in your pocket is about.

A leaden silence descends. You have touched on something that should not have been touched upon.

The soundless words are clear on his lips: 'I was held in one'.

He will not lower it. Defiance keeps it aloft.

The glasses only magnify what is fundamentally missing from the gaze.

In his perennial lasciviousness, he's trying to throw a lifeline to his friend.

Read the story from Loud João's own lips.

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The fleeting shapes of ghost-words flit through your vision.

An example, to prove the Developed World was 'serious' about cracking down on human trafficking.

Terrifying sterility. The inherent cruelty of human curiosity.

BEHOLD! THE TRUE FACE OF THE SO-CALLED DEVELOPED WORLD.

In your gut you already know what's coming.

Now you see it. Camouflaged in wrinkles, a necktie of scar tissue nestled in the folds of his throat.

Pain and pleasure, revulsion and attraction, all irremediably tangled.

EMTERR, a.k.a. The Bank. Somewhere between a global development bank and a private intelligence service with allegiance to none but itself and capitalism, EMTERR is the Opera's wealthiest enemy -- and therefore yours.

What begins as an attempt to understand the ex-pilot's story soon becomes a philosophical inquiry into the nature of human communication.

How does the human mouth work? How is it possible that our grunts and growls are comprehensible to others, silent or not?

He knows because he's tried.

Caught out. Fair play.

Envious.

PSEUDOPOD. It's as though he had been as much of a nonperson when he was alive as he is now.

The word comes out slurred, almost as though he had to slurp back saliva to pronounce it.

The filthy communality is what they get off on.

A tremendous honeypot, in other words. Waiting to be tapped.

You cannot rule out the possibility that she is a spy, that the vein has already been tapped.

Mild generalized discomfort. You have pointed out the elephant in the room.

THIS IS NOT A GLITCH IN CAPITALISM, BUT A MONSTROUS OUTGROWTH.

They act like the issue of money is secondary to the existence of the miracle line -- it's not. This is the issue itself.

A shudder passes through you from the sheer pleasure of his company.

A slender finger slips into the black curls of a phone cord and twirls them around itself... suddenly it pulls, and your breath cuts short.

Rapturous fantasies of masturbatory death overtake them.

Behind the jokes, there's a seriousness -- it's their one true pleasure in life.

Your controller's razor-edged voice comes to you, cold light from an infinitely distant star.

The john is always the enemy. She may have made him think they are friends, but they are not.

You can believe him or not, but the other pilots do, and they are eating their hearts out.

Toying with them like a cat with its prey. Now he breaks off another leg and watches the thing limp.

Eyes widen. The other men regard him like some kind of God.

Something's not right here. He's not exactly lying, but... nor is he telling the truth.

For one, to humiliate his companions.

Because he's more present than the other two, and capable of manipulation.

Fuck the children, they won't miss what they've never had. You need the wolf merch more than they do.

YOU WILL NOT BE THE VEHICLE FOR THE SPREAD OF TECHNOFASCIST PROPAGANDA TO IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG MINDS.

Nothing like 'kid's stuff' to really hammer home your obsolescence.

Final proof that he was not bluffing about her address. It's too much for the poor pilots to bear.

Sixty-Six Wolves! Fuck the children, they won't miss what they've never had.

YOU WILL NOT BE THE VEHICLE FOR THE SPREAD OF TECHNO-FASCIST PROPAGANDA TO IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG MINDS.

Stimulus and response. His breath quickens and below the table, his hands begin to paw at his lap.

The immense, blubbery mass of a manatee's lower half appears in your mind, utterly out of proportion with the svelte female torso that protrudes from it like a tumour.

He's getting worked up again. This group has no inhibitions surrounding public arousal.

A permutative bestiary unfolds...

A sunken grey cunt lost amid vast expanses of rubbery skin.

What sounds does a manatee make? You generally think of them as rather silent animals.

You thought just because it was phone sex it was verbal? Think again.

You realise after a moment that he isn't just doing his usual thing -- he's demonstrating.

Fear becomes desire. Revulsion becomes attraction. Death becomes sex, and then death again.

Subtle and leering -- for the first time you see his true smile.

Anglerfish smile. Predatory. Testing. Infinitely patient.

A trained operant, played like a child's instrument by a depraved old man.

Technically harmless, weapons-grade creepy.

Cowed, shrunken, SLAVA ages ten years as the feeling of betrayal sinks in.

The old man's normally yellow skin blooms an almost purple-shade of red.

He's experiencing what men like him fear most: Humiliation at the hands of a woman.

A snarl flickers beyond the veil of the smile.

He wants the real thing.

There is no endgame. There is only a pulse, a drive towards something unattainable.

No sense of direction... so he learned to read his instruments well.

Despite yourself, you're impressed.

A STATE-SPONSORED KILLING MACHINE.

It'd be hard to focus, what with all those switches and dials to play with -- but you could manage to picture it.

Death lust, in your jaw and in your cunt.

If orgasm is 'the little death', then death is the big orgasm.

Saturation twists the sound output on the receiver, the signal more than the electronics can bear.

The analog joy of greased levers actioning release mechanisms, sixty pound warheads sliding out into the sky with a whisper like a sword unsheathing.

Meanwhile his companions begin to squirm.

Even for them, this is a bit much.

Slavering, impotently aroused, hyena-attentions.

Clocked you instantly, even though your accent has been diluted in the decade-plus since you left.

Kill this lecherous geriatric.

More than a courtesy, he is establishing hierarchies. You and him -- human. His companions -- sub-human.

A few metres away, your target continues to pant and sweat as he whispers into the payphone, the cable still wrapped around his neck.

He's made himself the hateful object of the old men's attentions as well. They might have a way in.

A few metres away, the well-dressed young man continues to pant and sweat as he whispers into the payphone, the cable still wrapped around his neck.

Neither is he. It's in the accent -- vowels musicalised, R's straining not to trill.

Slavering, impotently aroused, hyena-attentions.