"People. They make an airline." This thought came to Joe as he fumbled with the tab on his Mercy Implant. Pain could be eliminated but how would you know when your body had a message? Wasn't it better to hear the company's human aspect than allow potassium to collect and discharge pointlessly? Joe thought so. He was eighty-five years old, and the reason he came to the airport was love.

"Let me carry your bags," he said to her.

"This airport is new, but somehow old, older than us. A quaint fantasy of environment."

"They found the blueprints in a hard drive."

"They realized the dead man's vision."

"Not without irony."

"Most people travel because they have to."

"We're the rocks."

"Sundials, Stonehenge, the stratified face of an eroding slag heap."

"Do you hear that noise?"

"'Inspiration,' 'tree.'"

"You're the first person I've met who thinks abstraction is the same as perception."

"My father worked as car-man."

"All that time. The road moves. You stay still."

"Chickens, cucumbers, digital satellites...."

"So many kilometers."

"Megameters."

"Gigameters...."

"Let me carry your bags."

They passed through zones of expectation, longing, nostalgia. Joe heard advertisements for beef, Joni Mitchell, labradors, the tango. His father had died a month before the big unveiling.

"How old are you?"

"Less than sixty."

"What messages! I can't imagine them."

"Greeting cards, nanocreams, splendor, iridescence."

"Content without form."

"'A name on every wire.'"

She laughed. He laughed. It was Gerhard Richter's sesquicentennial.

Innovations in democracy had rendered aging obsolete.

At the exhibition clones of history's greatest villains delivered confused speeches about nationhood and degeneracy. The importance of the arts was fostered in developing minds. Joe felt a rush of seratonin as he gazed at a painting he had commissioned of his jeans. There were six trillion shades of blue, he learned, and his legs had known only fifty.

"This can't be why you brought me here," she said.

"I had to make sure the jeans were lost. Left out, by necessity."

"I'm pretty drunk," she replied, "and suddenly very tired." 

"It has nothing to do with proclub."

"Fuck you, Joe." 

I admit I'm beginning to like the Feeling. I don't love the Feeling, like it says I do in the Info Guide, but in any case I can feel my attitude changing. Developing. I check my goatee for smears in the rear view mirror of the Vehicle and rehearse my lines: "Whhoooooo's ready to fun something?!" It sounds great out there in the Vehicle, but inside it doesn't quite come off. The Primary is an alarmingly thin ten year-old boy with sock pocks all up and down his arms. When I say "Whhooooo's ready to fun something?!" he just looks up at his mother and coughs. His mother is grinning and looking straight ahead, like the Info Guide tells her to. A long silence ensues. "Whhooooo's ready to fun something?!" I say once more, this time pushing the Real Pizza Disk box directly toward the child's quivering mouth. Take that, silent fellow! But the mouth does not open. Not an inch. Or a millimeter, I suppose. So I press the button that makes the vein burst out of my Biceps Experience. Normally kids love this, but not this one. He thinks he's special. Like Friday. Or Jane. Oh. Now I am really flummoxed. According to the Info Guide, the Primary must acknowledge the Blow Out Greeting before the Transaction can proceed to the Eating is Healthy and Good for Democracy phase. Otherwise, Legal gets involved and I have to conference with Winnipeg. Using body language, I try to infect the kid with the Feeling. Then I scream: "Whhhooooo's ready to fun something!!!" Nothing. The little shit. Still grinning, and apparently reading my mind, the mother slaps the kid on his shoulder with a fan belt. The kid winces as little points of blood begin to show through his faded hospital gown. "This kid," he finally mumbles, "wants to fun... something." Attaboy! In a fit of Adreno-Buzz, I suddenly can't decide which of the Four Retorts I should implement, but eventually I settle on "A Real Pizza Disk is Real Pizza Fun!" "A Real Pizza Disk is Real Pizza Fun!" I say. Then I switch on the Smellmaker and open the box. The kid looks down at it. The tears running down his cheeks fall into the Water Sauce and cause a chemical reaction of sorts. This leads to more tears. My heart clenches. I think about how you can't put a goatee on a heart. The the kid looks up at his mother, who is still grinning, and says: "I know what it means. It means I'm going to die-ie-ie-ie-ie!" When he finishes no one says anything for a while. His mother stares at my Jaw Booster. For some reason, I'm afraid of her. "A Real Pizza Disk is Real Pizza Fun!" I say.

When I get home Sam is sitting in my chair. As I approach, Sam notes the goatee residue on my chin and says: "Fuck you, Joe." I lodge a hiccup of protest. "Fuck you, Joe," he says again, looking me straight in the eye. So I go and sit in the chair by the door to the toilet, telling myself that I'll take care of Sam after I log some Rejuve Mins. Jane is there, in the next chair over, by the hot plate. "Fuck you, Joe," she says. She's upset with me because I didn't bring her a free Real Pizza Disk as I sometimes do. I perform a Thought Search, but the only result is: "Now that's a real nice Real Pizza Disk," which seems inappropriate. Meanwhile my Rejuve Mins seem to be going slower than usual, which I'm sort of happy about since I don't really want to deal with Sam. Sam my enemy on this battlefield we call the world. Flipping through the Relaxologue, I select "Justified Outrage" and get comfortable by placing my hands underneath my buttocks and jerking my head backward until it makes a cracking sound. Then I hear it again: "Fuck you, Joe," this time in the voice of an old woman. Goddammit! I look up: it's the ghost of the boy with the sock pox. Woh! He's dead? Already? But before I can say anything, he's off on this long harangue about how I represent everything that's wrong with our society, etc, etc. The other people in the chairs find this message heartening. For some reason, they've always hated me, and now they're only too happy to form a Revenge Coalition and tear the limbs from my body, which they do. Verily, there is joy in their body language.

So now I'm a ghost too, I guess, which isn't so bad really. I watch Jane while she showers and try to remember what it's like to be embodied and have a groin. I miss my Biceps Experience, and the Feeling I almost loved. But really, besides that, I'm thankful. So thanks. Thanks Proclub.

"There May Have Been an Accident"

Joe Loring and Tom Michaels had been friends for years. In high school, they promised to break up each others' marriages, if it ever got to that. One day Joe came home from work and saw that there was blood on the floor.

He followed the blood into Tom's room. There was a corpse in the bed and blood everywhere. "Tom?" He shouted nervously. There was no answer. He reached for the phone but stopped himself. "Fingerprints," he thought.

Joe ran over to the neighbors' house. "May I use your phone?" he asked, "there may have been an accident."

The police told Joe that he couldn't go home just yet, so Joe went to the bar. He saw people he knew there: Dave, Bob, Sandy. Joe ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey and waited for his thoughts to do something. But there was only one thing in his head, and it wouldn't go away: Tom killed somebody. He looked down the bar at a woman watching proclub. Tom killed somebody, he said to her in his mind.

The next day Joe went to work. His manager gave him a look when he came in the door. Joe did his best to appear to be observing some kind of protocol. There was a group of teenagers arguing at the counter. One of them wanted pepperoni. The other wanted cheese. You people have no idea, Joe thought. That night he slept at the Super 8. Because money was the last thing on his mind.

At four o'clock an order came in from a fake address. Joe knew it was Tom but pretended not to. When he got to the vacant lot, he even pretended to be lost. He even got out of the car, took off his ball cap, looked around, threw up his arms. Then a piece of gravel stuck the ground near his shoe. "Pizza man?" Tom shouted in a southern accent, "it's back here!"

Joe walked toward the trees at the far edge of the lot. "Hey man," Tom said, "guess you saw what happened." Joe nodded. "You talk to the police?" Joe nodded again. "Fine, fine. That's fine. You can even tell them that you saw me out here if you want. In fact, you should. Tell them that I said something about Mexico." Joe stood there a moment longer. Tom smelled like liquor.

When Joe got back to the restaurant he called the police and told them that he had seen Tom at the vacant lot, and that Tom had said something about Mexico. The police asked how Tom had seemed. "Drunk," Joe replied, "and high, possibly." The police had found methamphetamine in Tom's dresser.

The next day Joe called in sick. "Say no more," the manager said. Then Joe called Detective Sands and asked if it was OK to go home. "No, no, not just yet." Detective Sands sounded distracted. Joe figured he might as well move out. There was something depressing about the Super 8.

That night Tom was apprehended by a border guard on a bus to Toronto. A few days later the lab work came back. There had been methamphetamine in the girl's blood, too. Tom claimed temporary insanity and self defense. They gave him ten, but he got out in four.