He relishes the thought. He thinks it's funny.

Just like Ignatz said.

An effulgent burst of colours, the blast passing through buildings, turning bodies to particulate matter.

The dialectic assumes a predictable trajectory. It does fail to account for one thing.

Spoken like an artist admiring a rival's technique.

No playful jab, no implied wink. He doesn't know you met her.

THERE WAS AN ALTERNATIVE: TO RID THEMSELVES OF CAPITAL AND PROPERTY. THE LUZIAN BOURGEOIS FOUND BLOOD MYTHS PREFERABLE.

Basic tradecraft: if the mark is focused on the shiny coin in your hand, they won't feel the left slipping a wire around their neck.

No attempt at deception here.

And opens his memory house. An old remembrancer's trick.

A small comfort: he did not address you by name.

The Subcomandante's 'metaphysical superweapon' is useless, unless.... could it be he's found a way to reconstruct the red disc?

Strange. Somehow you do know where his studio is, despite having never been there before.

Wait, you don't actually know where his studio is... do you?

The Operant Bureau concurs with the null entity. You are not actually considering this.

Like a dead octopus smothered and forgotten about.

Play it off.

Perhaps a kind of social scramble pattern.

There's no threat behind his words. He's simply describing the objective state of things.

Out of the corner of your eye, on one of the little rounded tables, you notice someone's left an old sausage, casing black and blistered, pool of grease congealing around it.

THE PARTY GIVES PRECISELY ACCORDING TO THE PEOPLE'S NEEDS AND NOT ONE IOTA MORE.

He pruned the conversation forcefully, artificially. There is more.

Making inroads with his persona. Competent in-theatre, at least for this period of play.

He needed you.

Velodisk! A modern laser-hybrid format, played using a heated stylus unit. Astounding sonic fidelity. Cause of thousands of home fires.

A consecrated ground of tiny, crooked monuments.

Oddly specific.

Now speaking proudly of the stock he earlier disparaged.

Overplaying his persona, classic misstep. Baby's first time in-theatre.

You see him now -- eyes wide, reward circuit shorted out by the cut and thrust of commerce.

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR OUR GREAT AND ANONYMOUS CENSORS.

The signal blockers: wiry battlements like the skeletons of titanic insects face out across the strait on Portofiro's most desolate shore, snagging Luzian radiowaves as they enter.

INSIDIOUS IMPERIALISM. TODAY, THE SOFT POWER -- TOMORROW, THE HARD.

Behold! The paladin who stands before Absurdity and declares 'Well, technically...'

That's the brand slogan.

Remanence: the charge that remains after the removal of a magnetic field. The ghost of magnetic possession.

Portofiro at the break of the 60s. A teenage boy sits on his bed and gazes at a full-page magazine ad for a brand new single-play format. The crimson of the disc spellbinds him. Excited thumbs leave sweat prints on the page.

Pretty esoteric term we've got here... Just roll with it.

Gives himself plenty of excuses for the self-molestation, doesn't it?

All pretense drops. The red glints in his lenses.

Sublimity. Terror. As though you'd unexpectedly flashed one of the faces of God at him.

Specialists, collectors of the rare and the defunct. People like him, in other words.

His rising anger gone in an instant, like a fuse being tripped.

THIS IMBUING OF CONSUMER GOODS WITH QUASI-RELIGIOUS PROPERTIES IS TYPICAL OF LATE-STAGE CAPITALIST DECAY.

THE NEXT TIME THE WORLD SEES HER SHE WILL BE CLASPING AN ASSAULT RIFLE, DRAPED IN THE FLAG OF THE PARTY.

He handles the disc reverently, as if it were a tiny plastic coffin.

And as the audio content was obliterated -- so was PSEUDOPOD.

A single-use existence, erasing himself cell by cell.

As if to ward you, vector of the techno-plague, away.

IT HAS CROSSED HIS MIND. OBJECT COPULATION IS THE HIP NEW PERVERSION OF THE JADED MIDDLE-CLASSES.

Checks