Status Updates From Gravity's Rainbow

every true god must be both organized and destroyer, all sets of opposites brought together.

Saure begins to crank his clattering wheel, and sheets of reichsmarks do indeed come fluttering off into the holder, thousands on thousands. “All authentic plates and paper, too. The only detail missing is a slight ripple along the margins. There was a special stamp press nobody managed to loot.”

“A million marks,” Saure sighs.
“Where are you going to get—“
Holding up an elfin finger, leaning close, “i print it.”
Sure enough, he does. They all troop out of the Chicago, half a mile down through rubble piles, over pathways, twisting, invisible in the dark to all but Saure. Down at last into a houseless seller with filing cabinets, a bed, an oil-lamp, a printing press.

“They’re deciding how to cut up Germany,” sez Suare. “All the powers. They should call in the Germans, Kerl, we’ve been doing that for centuries.”

Names by themselves may be empty, but the act of naming…

Slothrop picks up the scent of an unstable no it can’t be. Yes it is. It’s a REEFER! A-and it’s burning someplace close by.

Stay in the zone long enough and you’ll start getting ideas about destiny yourself.

The thumb of mercy never touched his scales.

Peculiar talk
Not if you’ve been where we have. 40 years ago in SudWest, we were nearly exterminated. There was no reason. Can you understand that? No reason. We couldn’t even find comfort in the will of God theory. These were Germans with names and service records, men in blue uniforms who killed clumsy and not without guilt. Search and destroy missions, every day. It went on for two years.

“well, I think we’re here, but only in a statistical way. Something like that rock over there is just about 100% certain— it knows it’s there, so does everybody else. But our own chances of being right here right now are only a little better than even— the slightest shift in the probabilities and we’re gone—

for the zone Herreros it has become something deep, Slothrop gathers, maybe a little mystical. Though he recognizes the letters. K E Z V H, the five positions of the launching switch in the A4 control car— he doesn’t let on to Enzian.

Any Berliner these days know enough to boil water before drinking, though some then proceeded to brew it with various things for tea, such as tulip bulbs, which is not good. Word is out that the center of the bulb is deadly poison. But they keep doing it. Once Slothrop—or Rocketman, …— thought he might warn them about things like tulip bulbs. Bring in a little American enlightenment.

Tchitcherine will reach the Kirghiz light, but not his birth. He is no aqyn and his heart was never ready. He will see it just before Dawn. He will spend 12 hours then, face up on the desert, a prehistoric city greater than Babylon living in stifle mineral sleep a kilometer below his back. As a shadow of the tall rock rising to a point, dances west to east, D Q tends him, anxious as a child and doll…

The first thing he learned is how to vary his index of refraction. He can choose anything between transparent and opaque. After the thrill of experimenting is worn off, he settles on a pale, banded, Onyx effect.
“ too late. You’re not part of what he’s (Tchitcherine) got coming not anymore.”