THE ALGEBRA OF NEED

“Fats” Terminal came from The City Pressure Tanks where open life jets spurt a million forms, immediately; eaten, the eaters cancelled by black time fuzz……………… Few reach the Plaza, a point where The Tanks empty a tidal river, carrying forms of survival armed with defences of poison slime, black, flesh rotting, fungus, \ and green odors that sear the lungs and grab the stom-. ach in twisted knots.. . . ! Because “Fats’” nerves were raw and peeled to feel the death spasms of a million cold kicks. . . . “Fats” ! learned The Agebra of Need and survived. . . . i One Friday “Fats” siphoned himself into The Plaza, a translucent-grey, foetal monkey, suckers on his little soft, purple-grey hands, and a lamphrey disk mouth of ; cold, grey gristle lined with hollow, black, erectile teeth, feeling for the scar patterns of junk. . . . And a rich man passed and stared at the monster and “Fats” rolled pissing and shitting in terror and ate his shit and the man was moved by this tribute to his •. potent gaze and clicked a coin out of his Friday cane (Friday is Moslem Sunday when the rich are supposed ] to distribute alms). So “Fats” learned to serve The Black Meat and grew a fat aquarium of body. . . . And his blank, periscope eyes swept the world’s surface. . . . In his wake of addicts, translucent-grey mon- i keys flashed like fish spears to the junk Mark, and hung there sucking and it all drained back into “Fats” so his < substance grew and grew filling plazas, restaurants and waiting rooms of the world with grey junk ooze.