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If I worked in the moment industry I might have had a chance. But I’m in spoons. R&D was hiring,  they said, "You'll make spoons you've never dreamed of." I said, “How?” "Honestly, there's no magic to it. The bowl. The handle. Does it fit in your mouth?"

We knew she was joking. She always made the best spoons. I was doing alright. One minor recall in six months.

But last week my boss took me aside and pointed at the factory line, "Put a sensitive man in the heart of those machines," he said, “By the end of the day.” I looked for someone for a long time. That night I saw a post by my friend in the moment industry.  She was smiling in a field. “No sense worrying about spoons,” she said with her smile. “That’s easy for you to say. In that industry,” I typed in the little reply box. The next morning, I pulled the release levers next to the oiled capstans. The sheet metal stopped pumping into the steel press. There was just enough room to sit patiently. 30

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How well can things go for you?  Some people will prosper: don’t make eyes at them. Anyone, really. If their gun goes off  and nearly hits you then you best watch. To Prosper: kill something faster  than other people  are killing it. That is yours.  That is not something people can take away from you once slain.

Good.  Good for you, Rocket Dream. Let the more meager citizens among us ogle and take rare pity on them: a few pauses  to let them clear off the soot from their dry lawns,

inhaled silence.

It is the Shock and Awe of this Prosperity  that Unites us, launches the Rocket.

We have real need, rhythms of need collapsing like a deck of cards. Twenty cards, thirty-six cards. 

Not to imply Prosperity would gamble.  No one can take a checked box back,  that’s theirs.  Terms of Service: In life and somewhat longer.

It is food for someone, it is life unburdened somewhere that slows the Rocket.

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The human genome is 3,234.83 million base pairs. 1 sperm has half that DNA. Each base can be represented by 2 bits. That means there are 404.35Mb in one sperm cell. Le petite morte = ~250 million swimmers in 7 seconds. That makes the male organ a brief 13.5Gb/s connection. USB 3.0 = 2.5Gb/s Thunderbolt = 5Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 = 20Gb/s

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Who's there?

How does consciousness behave in combinations? If we imagine a process that makes it possible for two sentient beings to completely fuse together, becoming the same awareness, would such an act maintain two separable consciousnesses?  Or could there only ever be one new consciousness, possibly more different from the two first beings than they were from each other? Some theoretical neuroscientists argue that consciousness is in part defined by being unified and discrete. They imagine consciousness as particles or magnets that form clumps of information, which then draw in further particles of information.  This model might define two beings fused into one as further aggregations of information, yielding a single new consciousness.

We might ask, Can this concept of consciousness be used to test for consciousness?  For example, if I can "join" the internet and then leave it, does this mean the internet is not yet conscious?  We might also ask, If consciousness is in part defined by separation, does this mean that being sentient beings actually separates us from the state of the rest of the universe (perhaps one other large consciousness)?  This would suggest that our sentience,  long perceived as a unique gift, might actually be a perverse punishment, separating each human from each other, and each sentience from all other things.   As though existentialism were part of the math of being someone. 26

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Pay in cash, like sugar to keep their attention. Pay in crisp sugar bills. And who would mind if I exploded into $10,000 in one dollar bills blowing down the street?  Who would say, "That was an American tragedy, to lose a life so abruptly and with such lack of meaning?"  While the bills still sifted down from the air, while people still ran around trying to grab them, a reporter might stop someone walking away, clutching a small wad of bills. "It's a real shame what happened to that guy," he might say, "one second he was walking down the street, next thing I hear a loud bang, and there's this cloud of money."   The reporter asks, "What was your first reaction?"  "At first I thought there was a terrorist attack going on, but when I saw the money, I knew something else must've happened."  The camera might cut to 10 or 15 people chasing down the remaining bills as they get stuck in small piles, like leaves, near the door of a pharmacy, the opening to the subway. "Do you think more people will explode into money?"  He looks around and laughs for a second, "Well I don't know.  What I want to know is, why did he do it?  Was he too proud?"  After a short pause, he might add, "If it happened again, I think I would be more prepared.  I might carry around a small trash bag with me from now on."

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After all this time worrying, I get off the train. And there I am, trying to walk up the escalator burdened by no one, as no one watches. I move carefully, trying not to trip up the jagged stairs, and I remember the occasions where getting too lost in the steady climb of the moving dull steel has made me trip before, something about the yellow mustache slurping at the top, the black plastic brushes along the stairs polishing my leather boots in one spot above the ankle. Then my mind wanders to second grade, when the school gave me a test to see if I was smart and I called a picture of an escalator an elevator by mistake.  The test ended quickly. Somewhere near the top, I remember the time when I found an older woman confused, stuck rolling, falling, and rolling again at the bottom of a subway escalator, and how I was the only person who seemed to notice her.  How I ran back down the stairs and how much heavier she was than I expected.  How she had three neat holes in her forehead from the teeth of the corrugated stairs and how the blood started pouring down her face all at once when we had gotten to the top. It slowly dawned on me that she was incredibly drunk.

This is all to say, I once found a baby snapping turtle, barely larger than a half dollar coin, spinning endlessly in a small eddy of the creek near my childhood home.

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Ouroboros macaroni It's easy! Just boil the macaronis and set them aside for 10-15 minutes. Go take a short walk and/or play with your kids!  When you come back, there will be No Mess, No Fuss; It's Food So Good, It Eats Itself! (TM)! If you find after 15 minutes that some macaronis are still finishing the meal--feel free to help them along by eating them first! But don't expect to get full, Ouroboros Macaroni will finish eating before your body has a chance to digest, that means ZERO calories!  It's a Chef Ouroboros Guarantee.

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