From: quirke_a@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz (Overworked and Undersexed)
Subject: Life 102
Summary: (Another 10 minutes from an insomniac)
Date: 24 Jun 93 11:21:37 GMT

Burning down from orbit's embrace,
 The Last Engineer and Doobie the Greek, sharing xen and shuttle-jockeying,
  The passengers do not know, cannot know, for they have not been born,
   They do not recognise gravity, for they are suspended in fluorocarbon.

And we sing;
   "Cowered by an ancestoral disease ? SPIN THOSE GENES !
    Balls scrambled by incautious wandering ? SPIN THOSE GENES !
    Wanna new daughter, with fur and a tail ? SPIN THOSE GENES !
    Wanna new son, that'll never grow hair ? SPIN THOSE GENES !"

   And as the sun sets over the remains of Tomsk, and night's looser
activities burn and jitterbug in a Vladivostoc alley, Doobie mixes the
wrong derms, and scatters babys-in-cans from the Urals to Centre Green.

   And the ink at the bottom of the corporate spreadsheets adjusts,
   And Doobie and the Big E. end up sucking vac as an object lesson,
   And a wandering Mongol wonders if he can sell a can on the black,

   And 2036 souls wrapped in spun silicon, plastic and metal,
    created by computers and lasers and the odd frozen organic,
     wanting so desperately to open their eyes on a Brave New World,

   Die.

--
Tony Quirke, Wellington, New Zealand.
"Some have a style, they work hard to define / So they walk a crooked line
"But she won't understand, why any would elect to try / to walk a line when
 they could fly..."