a canvas sack of black meat.
Taking a jiu-jitsu stance, I open my door to find...a lean, weathered man with thin lips and a sly smile, balding, horsy jaw, narrow nose, keen eyes, he’s really quite dazzling this fellow...I might as well be looking into a mirror. This weasel Turing have absorb my chromosomes so he can lift my papers. Call him Alan-William Turing-Burroughs now.
The obvious question: do we make fucky-fuck? Fie! I’m not my type, dear. Instead we rustle up a brace of boys in the Socco Chico—my Kiki, and Alan’s erstwhile soul-mate Driss. The big surprise is that the boys are already by way of being skuggers too. The transformation has had a bad effect on them, they seem a listless, limp. But once Turing lay on his hands and flow in his latest skuggy program tweaks, they peppy.
So we four while away a lovely Christmas afternoon in my digs, eating couscous and nibbling sweetmeats between tastes of the Forbidden Fruit, sometimes melting into a mound. Even when we’re not in physical touch, we’re reading each others’ feelings and thoughts. It’s richer than what I’d expected from telepathy—I call it teep .
Such expansiveness today, such laughter and joy... luxe, calme et volupté . And Turing—how rare to share the company of a truly intelligent and utterly subversive man. An oasis in the long caravan of life.
But then our hired boys leave, the sweets are all eaten up, and my opportunistic double want to sit in my rocker and use my typewriter even though I am still in mid-stream on this letter.
Over my shoulder, even now as I type, I tell him he’s disloyal as a sheep-killing dog, and he think I’m joking. Even under the ameliorating influence of my genes, his laugh still very ugly and he enjoy to talk about like Diophantine equations yet. I have this suppurating anxiety he gonna burst open any second and release uncountable numbers of skug larvae to recruit the local citizenry en masse .
So I pull my shiv on him and explain it best he leave town tonight on the ferry to Spain. I’m giving him my passport and a letter of reference...just for the pleasure of seeing his questionable ass go out my door before he get me exiled from my Land of Nod. Still some details to wrap up...and then for The Novel. Interzone .
Love,
Bill
***
To Mortimer Burroughs
Tangier, Christmas Day, 1954
Dear Father,
The man who bears this letter and my passport has taken on my form as a way to avoid unjust persecutions of the sort that I myself am subject to. I ask you to assist him as much as you can.
He is a pleasant gentlemen of sober habits and considerable scientific skill. He hopes to find work in some technical field. I realize that you’ve long since sold your stock in the Burroughs Corporation, but perhaps you still have some contacts among the higher-ups. He feels he would do very well in a research lab.
I won’t try to explain how it is that he took on my appearance. Suffice it say that the interaction had no bad effects on me...far from it, I feel livelier than usual, and I am full of energy for my next book.
Rest assured that I remain your true son Billy, and that I am indeed still in Tangier. I can arrange a confirming telephone call through the US Legation if you like. By no means should you discontinue my monthly payments.
Love to Mother, and Merry Christmas to you both.
Billy
Chapter 4: Aboard the Phos
Alan left Burroughs’s apartment with empty hands and a happy head. He patted his face, savoring its firm, healthy contours. The cure had worked. And it was still Christmas Day—although you’d never know it from these evening-shadowed Moslem streets.
He’d been so anxious about allowing the skug onto his body this morning that he’d taken a shot of Eukodal first. So his memories of the transformations had a hallucinated, fun-house quality. The skug had infected first Alan and then, at Alan’s urging, Burroughs—with no harm done.
Alan chuckled to
Taking a jiu-jitsu stance, I open my door to find...a lean, weathered man with thin lips and a sly smile, balding, horsy jaw, narrow nose, keen eyes, he’s really quite dazzling this fellow...I might as well be looking into a mirror. This weasel Turing have absorb my chromosomes so he can lift my papers. Call him Alan-William Turing-Burroughs now.
The obvious question: do we make fucky-fuck? Fie! I’m not my type, dear. Instead we rustle up a brace of boys in the Socco Chico—my Kiki, and Alan’s erstwhile soul-mate Driss. The big surprise is that the boys are already by way of being skuggers too. The transformation has had a bad effect on them, they seem a listless, limp. But once Turing lay on his hands and flow in his latest skuggy program tweaks, they peppy.
So we four while away a lovely Christmas afternoon in my digs, eating couscous and nibbling sweetmeats between tastes of the Forbidden Fruit, sometimes melting into a mound. Even when we’re not in physical touch, we’re reading each others’ feelings and thoughts. It’s richer than what I’d expected from telepathy—I call it teep .
Such expansiveness today, such laughter and joy... luxe, calme et volupté . And Turing—how rare to share the company of a truly intelligent and utterly subversive man. An oasis in the long caravan of life.
But then our hired boys leave, the sweets are all eaten up, and my opportunistic double want to sit in my rocker and use my typewriter even though I am still in mid-stream on this letter.
Over my shoulder, even now as I type, I tell him he’s disloyal as a sheep-killing dog, and he think I’m joking. Even under the ameliorating influence of my genes, his laugh still very ugly and he enjoy to talk about like Diophantine equations yet. I have this suppurating anxiety he gonna burst open any second and release uncountable numbers of skug larvae to recruit the local citizenry en masse .
So I pull my shiv on him and explain it best he leave town tonight on the ferry to Spain. I’m giving him my passport and a letter of reference...just for the pleasure of seeing his questionable ass go out my door before he get me exiled from my Land of Nod. Still some details to wrap up...and then for The Novel. Interzone .
Love,
Bill
***
To Mortimer Burroughs
Tangier, Christmas Day, 1954
Dear Father,
The man who bears this letter and my passport has taken on my form as a way to avoid unjust persecutions of the sort that I myself am subject to. I ask you to assist him as much as you can.
He is a pleasant gentlemen of sober habits and considerable scientific skill. He hopes to find work in some technical field. I realize that you’ve long since sold your stock in the Burroughs Corporation, but perhaps you still have some contacts among the higher-ups. He feels he would do very well in a research lab.
I won’t try to explain how it is that he took on my appearance. Suffice it say that the interaction had no bad effects on me...far from it, I feel livelier than usual, and I am full of energy for my next book.
Rest assured that I remain your true son Billy, and that I am indeed still in Tangier. I can arrange a confirming telephone call through the US Legation if you like. By no means should you discontinue my monthly payments.
Love to Mother, and Merry Christmas to you both.
Billy
Chapter 4: Aboard the Phos
Alan left Burroughs’s apartment with empty hands and a happy head. He patted his face, savoring its firm, healthy contours. The cure had worked. And it was still Christmas Day—although you’d never know it from these evening-shadowed Moslem streets.
He’d been so anxious about allowing the skug onto his body this morning that he’d taken a shot of Eukodal first. So his memories of the transformations had a hallucinated, fun-house quality. The skug had infected first Alan and then, at Alan’s urging, Burroughs—with no harm done.
Alan chuckled to
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