Status Updates From I Am Death: Two Novellas

"When Walter Rasmussen became so ill that he could no longer ignore it, and believed he was going to die, he wanted to go home. He did not want to see his doctor, a man younger than himself improbably named Nutter who was as stern and clean-living as could be easily imagined and who would certainly ask questions about an above-average consumption of alcohol and troubled personal relationships... "

....if we just slip you off the project, no damage will have been done..."

In fact, a great deal of damage had been done, by both men, but both men, in very different ways, remained oblivious of or unconcerned by the damage of his own making, focusing instead, secretly, on the damage the other was responsible for. Thus concluded the second act of the tragedy.

The first novella (I Am Death, or, Bartleby the Mobster) was, simply put, stunning.

It's possible to feel evil coming at you from a great distance, across a city, invisible in wires strung from overhead or braided deep underground, fiber-optically, to see it manifest in the shape of the telephone itself, just before it rings and everything changes. Imagine :all that power, all that money, all that technology--it's impossible that the phone not be a force, that it's a convenience and nothing more.

I sang the first few words of "Happy Birthday," and cut the string with my steak knife, unwrapped the heavy paper, and found a manuscript :A Boy's First Book of Mobsters...

I finished the first novella. I had a bit of a hard time following it to be honest. I started the second novella last night and i have no idea what's going on so I'm going to shelve it for a moment until maybe my brain is ready for more attentive reading.

Just finished the first of the two novellas, "I Am Death." I'm a little disappointed. I'm not sure what Amdahl was going for here. I mean, a meditation on death, sure. Maybe he's just operating over my head, but this did not have the spot-on thematic diagesis of the short stories in Visigoth.

On to "Peasants".

Pangs of conscience over past deeds are anything but repentance; they are pain at the knowledge of oneself in one's true nature. - Arthur S.

Nearly there...

Halfway through...