Published 2003 in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. As further indication of the unique flavour of the Guide, my contributor’s biography runs as follows …
How does a basilisk operate?
The short answer is: we mustn’t say. Detailed information is classified beyond Top Secret.
Author Note: “This looks very like a book review but conceals a guilty secret to be revealed in the afterword comments.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The bomb wasn’t supposed to go off until you were six miles away.
You never get the future you expect. We all knew, or thought we knew, that the next big thing would be a very small thing indeed: nanotechnology, molecular assemblers, microscopic robots unclogging arteries, restoring synapses lost to Alzheimer’s, and generally clearing the way to immortality.
“Sir, someone’s done something nasty all over Jane Austen.”
We apologize for interrupting your regular afterlife, but unfortunately the message is urgent.
It was always dark outside the windows. Parents and teachers sometimes said vaguely that this was all because of Deep Green terrorists, but Jonathan thought there was more to the story.
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