"Attanasio, A A - Radix 02 - In Other Worlds 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Attanasio A.A)

In Other Worlds
by A.A.Attanasio
version 1.0

Contents

Eating the Strange 18
Alfred Omega . 88
The Decomposition Notebook 146
He who looks does not find,
but he who does not look is found.

-KAFKA
Carl Schirmer's last day as a human was filled with
portents of his strange life to come. As he completed
his morning ablutions, he saw in the bathroom mirror
his hair, what little of it there was, standing straight up.
He smoothed it back and tucked it behind his ears with
his damp hands, but it sprang back. Even the few
strands left at the cope of his shining pate wavered
upright. His hair was a rusty gossamer, and it stuck out
from the sides of his large head like a clown's wig.
With his usual complaisance, he shrugged and
commenced to shave his broad face. Today, he sensed,
was going to be an unusual day. His sleep had been
fitful, and he had awoken to a breed of headache he had
never encountered before. His .head was not actually
aching-it was buzzing, as though overnight a swarm of
gnats had molted to maturity in the folds of his brain.
After completing his morning cleansing ritual and checking
the coat of his tongue and the blood-brightness under
his lids, he put his glasses on, took two acetaminophen,
and dressed for work.
Carl was not a stylish or a careful dresser, yet even
he noticed that his clothes, which he had ironed two
nights before for a dinner his date had canceled and
which had looked fine hanging in his closet, hung
particularly rumpled on him that day. When he tried to brush the
wrinkles out, static sparked along his fingers. The morning was
already old,- so he didn't bother to change. He hurried through
breakfast despite the fact that his usually trustworthy toaster
charred his toast, and he skipped his coffee when he saw that no
amount of wire jiggling was going to get his electric percolator to
work. Not until he had left his apartment and had jogged down the
four floors to the street did he realize that his headbuzz had tingled
through the cords of his neck and into his shoulders. He was not
feeling right at all, and yet in another sense, a perceptive and ease-
ful sense, he was feeling sharper than ever.
Carl lived in a low-rent apartment building on West 'Twenty-
fourth Street and Tenth Avenue in Manhattan, and he was not used