Homosexuality is a political crime in a matriarchy. No society tolerates overt rejection of its basic tenets.

Junk is a pain-killer, it also kills the pain and pleasure implicit in awareness.

The Man is never on time.

‘And what do you conclude from that?’ ‘Conclude? Nothing whatever. Just a passing observation.’

No one ever looked at anyone else because of the strict law against importuning, with or without verbal approach, anyone for any purpose, sexual or otherwise.

A functioning police state needs no police.

I am a ghost wanting what every ghost wants – a body – after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is only the colorless no smell of death.…

(Latah is a condition occurring in Southeast Asia. Otherwise sane, Latahs compulsively imitate every motion once their attention is attracted by snapping the fingers or calling sharply. A form of compulsive involuntary hypnosis. They sometimes injure themselves trying to imitate the motions of several people at once.)

(A simopath – the technical name for this disorder escapes me – is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.)