You'd need five-axis milling machines, injection presses, stress-testing labs, and climate-controlled environments just to match the craftsmanship of that fur.

Assuming these cups do resemble cartoon wolves, you'd need five-axis milling machines, injection presses, stress-testing labs, and climate-controlled environments to manufacture them.

One for fear, two for guilt, three for determination.

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

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.

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

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

Even saying it gets him a little hard.

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.

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

A snarl flickers beyond the veil of the smile.

Even for them, this is a bit much.

Seems like it's attached to his skull; this asset could be wired up.

No satisfaction registers on his features. He wants more.

You were hoping more around the 75 mark...

Pain and love. Actual nostalgia. Something is lost.

And yet he has constructed an entire mental apparatus just to be here again, with you.

What had been foreshadowed was significantly darker. Everything post-extraction is, in a sense, already an unlikely best-case scenario.

Recreational espionage, an extreme sport for those who truly have no place in regular humanity.

Caveman emotions, space alien brain. He can't handle something this primal, this gooey.

It is imbued with its history. Psychic receptors bristle at something that is not quite a scent but is burned forever into the object.

Trepanation was the earliest form of treatment for brain tumours, relieving the buildup of pressure inside the skull.

Centuries-old paintings of patients, sans anesthesia, getting bloody chunks removed from head. The agony. The insanity.

Feel that. Life and death trembling beneath you, a single gram of pressure between them.

Maybe it's just a random nerve firing, but a smile flutters at the corner of your former double's mouth.

The stillness of death is different from that of catatonia -- the conversation that results from it more unnerving.

You are actively courting schizophrenia at this point.

The boat has been set alight, the chants intoned, the cuts made on the body to attract the vultures. Some kind of ritual action performed to obtain closure from death.

We're going in with that thing. Straight through the bonescreen.

He's not hiding it. He's screaming.

He should have been giving literature classes at a university, not out here, down here, doubting everything...

An artist's impression of biological decay.

Deprived of sight, the inches of paper travelled by your pen feel like chasms.

Did you hear it? The song in your head? 'Twas the sacred art of versecraft, inaccessible to all but the most radiant of hearts.

No matter how terrible reality might be, it's better than the not-knowing.

If you don't get back on track, there's a chance you'll both end up in an EMTERR work camp.

The monkey calls out faintly in this strange place. His fingers are cold against the metal bars, he is blind in the dark.

Some form of explosive device may have been useful.

Every grand finale needs an epic cue.

Tempo never really got nervous either -- a sociopathic streak which often served him very well, but occasionally very poorly.

No -- but don't let her see.

Distant crashes in the basement of your mind.

THEIR GRAND LICH FEARS YOUR HUMBLE BULLET.

No witty retort -- caught her with a stiff jab.

Monaxial Intelligence and Hermetic Operations.

In retrospect, her diligence gave you a false sense of her abilities.

Blank entries in the archive. Impossible to query or cross-reference. A form of willful oblivion.

Politeness, professionalism, the performance of empathy. These are the things he was taught would make a good man, or at least a correct man. In his moment of greatest extremis, they all deserted him.

They had to make sure it didn't smell too sour, so the test animals would eat it willingly.

Checks