# still half asleep when we awake off on another project conference andor rather the half-dreaming world one is exploring and has now been smeared into one often tagged with hubris also known as 'the real world' walking slow down the street you feel neither entirely fish nor completely foul a bullet-timed mutant caught for a razor split picosecond by a series of brilliantly flashing sub-orbital laser probes direct from the third eye of a sentient human-ai research satellite now floating in low geosync orbit a fictional idiot character out of an old hit comedy priest series on channel 4 eyes wide open observing realty as if lightly dazed yet nobody's at home virtually speaking at the station one kisses the sweet angelic forehead of one's love and tells them to come back safe too often treated apathetically your not sure if they're getting the best of you morning is calm and beautiful today is one of few remaining days of summer and the warm seductive segue into autumn is already under way strolling back through town you're wary of other researchers maybe you have more friends in this particular universe than you suspect or care for cars birds sunlight - you don't know or understand where you are right now you'd sure like to scoff down feta cheese and full flat buttered crackers with chilli jam but walking back home from the station you feel desperate to explain to anyone where you were except to idly flick out pseudo-zenlike wizdum toss them the old line about everything being a sentient tripping state of polyversal hyperailen overmind your legs hurt because this brisk morning pace as a commuter reading the daily newspaper is forcing chi down through blockages in your legs time for buttered full flat cheese crackers you went back to sleep for a while where you dreamed you were in a gunfight with actor del toro today you went up on roof to rake the pebbledash with an old broom until smooth and even as form of meditation not that everything already isn't also to ensure you can optimally detect the presence of lab grown shinobi footsteps unless they can dynamically express the extensive internal tai chi skill of 'lightness jing' yet even then they leave future memory traces of ir silent rooftop passing in the drifting superfluid aether unwashed milk bottle days when playspaces are everywhere the entire city drenched in bleeding images of elf-reflecting toxic image and endlessly faded topographic memory empty cobbled backstreets on an abandoned mining island to the deep north on the other side of an armored window overlooking the golden morning shimmer of crystalline downtown megacorporate hyper towers vague human dots and cars in slow motion tokyo urban noize weak humalien signals received from impossibly distant intensely vague yet undisclosed dislocations hissing sea of meaningless information slander signifying everything andor anything repressed impulses obstacles and unhealthy stuff which can injure sublime rhyme and crushing punishment all at once leading to a credibly circumscribed half life where it's as if one has never truly breathed once growing ever more lonely with the endless unfolding daze wandering barren electronic lands in a permanent virtual winter where the cold seems fanned by spite the nets surfed nightly which are meant to catch one have failed cascading down lost and lonely trails researchers indifferent to one's plight frustrations a cornered flightless bird with no wind to catch one's existential sail in which the abstracted de contextualized information one gets while sitting alone in cramped apartment rooms in front of a screen soon becomes the wobbly damp cardboard basis secrete underground research bass of all strangled half thoughts insidious tepid values demanding quick n' easy answers seeing everything in the angry black and white hiss of useless unrelenting static what's harder to discover isn't style they said as heavy neon washed over ir face a forced techno-baptism from the near-future but exceptions motivations intrinsic fallacies you smiled at them obliquely said ok but what do you think of our hot new alternative sci fi procedure // republic of bob