Free Hell's Half Acre by Baer Will Christopher

and the redhead flinches. Miller laughs and hands him a gray silk handkerchief. The redhead stares at it as if he’s never seen a handkerchief before, as if this might be some kind of trick. Miller shoves it into the rabbit’s hand and says softly that no one ever died from a nosebleed. The redhead gurgles back at him and John Ransom Miller shrugs.
    He nods at me. Are you coming?

nine.
    I’ M GETTING COZY WITH THE IDEA THAT TIME IS CIRCULAR , that lost time will come back.
    Behold.
    I find myself outside in the final minutes before dark falls over California and I am confronted by an apocalyptic sunset. The odds of this happening today and not tomorrow seem astronomical or anyway too staggering for my small brain to contemplate right now. The hills before me are splattered with some kind of freak sunlight that appears to exist on a physical plane but is forever shifting from one form to another and is therefore impossible to contain. If only I had an instant camera, then I would never need step outside again. I despise cameras, though. They butcher your memories and anyway when you’re an old man drooling yellow shit down the front of your pajamas and your eyes are long gone, what good is a boxful of shitty snapshots that have turned green with age.
    Nothing is real to me anymore. The world around me has been systematically reconceived through digital imaging and computer animation until everyflower and raindrop is pure and flawless as the flowers and raindrops of the book of Genesis. The new world is brought to life in high-density pixels and is then transferred to human memory. The digital sunset always looks better than the real thing, always. Because a sunset generated by the basic package of yellow sun and blue sky is unreliable. Today it may be stunning, hypnotic. Tomorrow it may be lifeless and dull, a white sky scorched with yellow. Tomorrow the sky will be velvet.
    Beautiful or not, it disappears. The sky goes dark and what are you left with.
    The image stored in my head suffers rapid decay and within hours I will be unable to describe the sunset that I have just witnessed without accessing the false but technically perfect sunsets that I’ve seen on a thousand television and computer screens. I have no personal memories that are untainted by media and marketing and I often suspect that I am dead but still functioning. My heart is raw and pink, a package of ground beef wrapped in plastic. My body is composed of shatterproof glass and fluoride and vitamins and sheep hormones and recycled copper wires. There is no poetry in such a being but neither is there fear. I tumble easily into the void and I am safe as a kitten in the bony confines of my own skull. If I can afford the proper software, then I can download anything imaginable. The physical world is getting less and less realistic by the minute and eventually I will learn to pay it no mind.
    Twilight, now.
    John Ransom Miller and I have been walking for nearly an hour, most of the way uphill, not talking. I am chewing a hole in my lip. Miller is much too cool and friendly and unconcerned about my sudden presence in his life. The silence is heavy between us, but notterribly unpleasant.
    What’s your name? he says.
    First names are dangerous, I say.
    Why, he says.
    The intimacy, I say.
    My legs are heavy and I hope Miller doesn’t try to run away. The BART station is a long, long way down. He won’t run, though. John Ransom Miller could not be any less afraid of me. But he might like to fuck with me. I would probably fuck with him, if our positions were reversed. Miller nods and again I have the sticky feeling that he can hear my thoughts.
    Yes, he says. Intimacy is a tricky thing. I would think it’s hard to kill somebody if you are in the habit of calling them by their first name.
    I whistle through my teeth, irritated. Why don’t you have a car? I say.
    Miller shrugs. I have two cars. Three, actually. I had a driver for a while, a guy who wore one of