More Advances In Robotics

"So where you taking me?" Ponsemby asked.

"We're going to the City, Ponsemby, as I promised," said Roab, rearing the motorboat to the side of the harbor. (((lack of better word for landing of small vessels, maybe a quay?)))

They got up and started walking down the planks. "Are we there yet?" asked Ponsemby.

"Why don't you write a letter to Kirsten Dunst, asking if she may let go of your Romanian street urchin, that you may then both coalesce and spurt your juices upon the universe?" The street had become dark, and Roab checked his watch.

This was getting really boring. Fucking boat and planks. "Notice how everybody around us is closing down earlier?" Ponsemby remarked.

Okay, thought Roab as they went down past 11th and 3rd. "Yeah, I have, matter of fact," said Roab. "They're all closing their businesses up a little earlier these days. There's an economic depression. People are fucking compensating."

"No," said Ponsemby, grinning, "that's not really it." Suddenly, a homeless man curled from an unseen corner, unto their wake. In the murky shadows of this curled apparition's unfurling browned sheets evolved a deceased hand. Diseased hand. This very hand now begged for money, and grabbed Roab's, which was nearest.

"It's my Romanian girlfriend," laughed Ponsemby hysterically, as Roab struggled, pulled into the corner of the concrete underside by the hungry beast. "Sometimes she's a real monster. A devil in the dream!"

"Kill it!" yelled Roab.

"I sent her flowers, you know?" said Ponsemby, raising his eyebrows. "All the way to fucking Romania!"

Roab was wrestling with the homeless man in the shadow of the overpass. There were no real elements but the overwhelming sheets of the imaciated, these deceased hands that liked to tickle so. "Ponsemby," Roab would gulp, from time to time, as he rose from that twisting sea of dirt and dust, "save me!"

"One time I even bought her probably the most spectacular box of chocolates," mumbled Ponsemby sinking into a past time, as Roab struggled over there. "Admittedly, it was kind of corporate. But it was the only nice thing I could find to send to Ro-"

"I'm drowning," yelped Roab, and then Ponsemby gently fished him out.

"Drowning, were you?" he smiled.

"Fuck you man, I was in there, and the gha --" and the poor beggar started crawling over too, trying to be part of the ... group. Ponsemby gave that beggar a quarter from generosity, and the two were able to pass on, by themselves, while the creature went off to hide it. They walked for for hours, away from the place and towards the City.

"Shit, I never knew you could be so kind," said Roab, finally, unable to hold it. "Shit, it was like, you had some massive revelation, in the middle there, somewhere! Thanks for saving me, man."

"You don't know anything about me," said Ponsemby, rolling the quarter down his back pocket and urging Roab forward.

Advances in Robotics

"So you're saying, nowadays, that it was Kirsten Dunst, a celebrity, a woman who's acted since a girl of three, burned to death on film ... someone who's actually kissed Spider Man -- hired some girl off the streets in Romania to come shack up with you at the Chelsea Savoy? That this 'Ensecured' somehow had some dalliance/parlance with the classics of moderately recent European literary history, like Tesserat?"

The raindrops splat heavy unto the cobalt subway vents, and at least prickly rats were getting water, thriving. "Your soul could be chewed up to pulp for implicating something like that," said Roab, who had just walked out, and had been waiting for Ponsemby this evening since about 10:32pm, five minutes earlier.

"Why the hell did you call me here?" asked Ponsemby. "Downtown just becomes annoying after the grid. After sundown and the tourists, it's just a bunch of trollops, and I don't say that in any small degree. I would bet an honest man my soul to find me an epistle of an apostle that shards earnestness in as much a fucking kingdom as your location of choice, tonight." He looked up and down at this Roab, who was in another world, apparently.

"You never hang out with, and I got bored of all my other, other friends," said Roab, stretching in the bask of the outside candelabra of this bar.

"Fuck," said Ponsemby.

"I know you prefer the girls on the lower side of downtown very specifically," smiled Roab, "so, I figured, I may as well call you. But more than that -- lo, and behold: You came!"

"This is like walking, ears pulled, by your puritan mother into a strip bar, just to be informed about what everything "really is"," replied Ponsemby, as they started off into the street. Roab tried to pat his back, but was met with something in leather with sharp teeth. The night was dark, tonight, and may have been daunting. It may have been inky, refusing to devulge its most sunken secrets. A bittery bitching night of sand to dine on.