What did he slip out of. An egg hologram? A precisely removed
chip-cyst? The New Bones Man is clean; sterile right to the smallest
splits in his toenails; depilated even between his arse cheeks,
worked-out free of colouring, right to his symmetrical marrow. Pure data. Since
the Archean all hermit days liquidated, a blank screen.

He still kills, but without touching (material is nothing to him but a burden from the past,
anachronistic greed), with no swelling interest - in actual fact a shift
is enough. Gets a solution. Lords of Darkness don't count for him, formica,
no engineer's instrument for drainage. The final breath is drawn off
germ-free, and that's guaranteed.

He's a bulimic who stuffs himself with crime stories where characters bill and coo,
plots twist like worm-tails, until he throws up. That empties his minus stomach like an
unload . . . urn in which, hatefully retrograde, the A- whistles.

Translated by Catherine Hales