Status Updates From The Electric State

Wow. Superbly unnerving. Just replace the neurocasters in the story with smart phones...

Immersive again and superb so far.

Max's lasagna existed in the intricate way those pink chunks had been assembled, just like love and hate and anxiety and creativity and art and law and order. Everything that makes us humans something more than elongated chimpanzees. There it was, spilled across the flagstones, and no technology known to man could ever put it back together. It was incredible.

Afterward, I was curled up on the ground and saw the pink chunks spread across the flagstones around me, and before Fort Hull's alarm system started blaring I had the time to think: That's it, right there! The recipe for béchamel sauce. But even if I did my utmost to scoop up the pieces and put them back in the pit that used to be Max's skull, his recipe would still be lost.

I saw a guy get shot during the war. He was named Max, and we were smoking on the terrace behind the B pavilion at Fort Hull, talking about lasagna. Max loved lasagna, and when the bullet hit he was in the middle of a recipe for béchamel sauce.

The car moved through the pitch-black desert like a submarine in a deep-sea trench.

When we fell asleep, the car was engulfed by howling darkness. It rocked in the wind, and I dreamed I slept inside the belly of a giant.

The collateral damage was of two kinds: the civilians unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire, and the children of the federal pilots, who, as a concession to the godheads of defense technology, were all stillborn.

Actually about my fourth time reading this one...