Backbreed
“I haven’t seen you in here before. I'm a regular.”
“Regular what?”
“This is my regular bar, and I’m a regular guy.”
“Good. I require a nonmod biotype. I mean, a regular guy.”
“That accent – I can’t place it.”
“Is my speech acceptable?”
“Definitely. I always heard English is hard to learn.”
“I had mods and training for verbal speech.”
“Good job. You like that Cosmopolitan?”
“Yes. You've secured a drink for me, so I remit. Have the subvee make drinks for you, and more of this drink for me.”
“Subvee?”
“That.”
“The bartender? His name’s Joey.”
“You shouldn’t give them names. Here, exchange these.”
“Whoa, that’s a lot of cash.”
“I enjoy the images of deformed biotypes. This one, Franklin, lost its hair on top.”
"You sound almost Korean, but you look –"
"– It's an unimagined pleasure to interrupt you and not know your next word. To hear only my thoughts and be surprised by yours, separate streams, not mingled amidst one vast river."
"Glad you like it. We're havin' a good talk."
"Discrete contact points, few but intense. Sparks in blackness. For this I learned physiological speech."
"You're kind of an exotic chick, you know that?"
“I remit! Exoticism – relative. Posit you transited to an ancient time, with authority to research."
“Traveled back in time? Okay."
"You contemplated body contact with a native."
"Like, sex?"
"Put simplistically."
"For me, that'd have to be a woman. Just FYI."
"Surely you’d find that person's primitive nature irresistible.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
"The ancient human brain, unenhanced, isolated. Sloppy, superstitious, but uniquely unpredictable."
"We modern folks aren't much different there, I guess."
“The ancient human body, unmodified, animal."
"Animal, right."
"A hairy, pulsing biological accident."
"Absolutely."
"Its slapped-together ugliness, at home in its filthy environment, somehow entrancing. The past -- another world. Understandably, excusably, one would seize the opportunity."
"What happens in the past stays in the past, right?"
"Truth! I've secured a room. Sex now?"
"Whoa! I was just – why do you assume – I mean, yes. Jesus!"
"Deliciously primitive!"
Manuel Royal was born, like Tristram Shandy, with a broken nose. He will die. In between, he lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia.
