These out-takes are, of course, stuff that I had originally planned to incorporate into the story.

The story, however, has a mind of its own, and will go in its own directions irrespective of whatever the author does to "fix" it.

The out-takes below are from an early developmental phase and really don't bear much relationship with the present story.

"How many you wan'? An' where?" the camel grins at me. His features take on the image of the bar behind him. Bottles, optics, mirrors, show through. The effect is not unlike Alice's Cheshire cat; finally the smile remains, hanging in Magritte air.

"How many? You mean, more than one?" a cold thrill runs through me.   

"Of course. Man, tan, or trip, whichever's your blip!"           

His hands take on the colour of the table, facing me. A disembodied shallsuit.. Fuck this.            

Finally I say "Do you mind not doing that."            

"Is it bad kanga where you come from?"           

"Kanga?"
        
"Where are you from, heh? You don' believe in kanga?"            

"If I did why would it bother you?"

His eyes reappear as if floating in thin air above the collar line of his shallsuit. There is a slight distortion in the air.

"Bother me? Me? Ahah my ignorant friend, why indeed!"

I make a mental note about the distortion. One slight way of localising these chameleons.

He gradually begins to rematerialise, as it were. Uncanny. I know it’s just an incredibly sophisticated version of the chameleons found in nature: bio-engineered skin by PlasMa, inc., but even so: can one of these camels maintain the effect when nude? Imagine having sex with an invisible person. Or partly visible?

He moves a sleeve to a pocket and as if by magic a small book materialises. By concentrating I can see a ghostly image of the fingers holding it. The pale fingers flip and the book describes a low arc, flopping down just in front of me.

I glance at its title:

            "How you too can can come back through Kanga"

                          -- The Secret Of Life Eternal --

"Read, friend," the camel says in his pale sand-blown voice. "Read. And rejoice."

2. IN THE CPU  

I found a disused processor down in cube 311-GANT, plane 9755, 476 x and 74y. It's some experimental thing made out of gallium arsenide and tellurium. It doesn't interface to the main system bus very well; instead, data and instructions route via a sub process half way across the cube.

I found my way in by accident. Over here, I wish you could see, I'll just have to describe it, there's a gigabyte cache. I've inhibited the processor from using it. Right now it holds the backup of my memories. Me, in other words, for my memories are what make me what I am.
           

The DC power rail is corroded to hell. The cpu, less its cache, is inefficient, so the nnet, the neural net, has learned to ignore it. I invented a low level diagnostic routine and fed that to the cpu, and since then it's just trundled along digesting my endless code loop. Meanwhile I squat like a cuckoo in its cache.
           

It's kind of strange having to lug all the memories around with me, like a suitcase of samples for a travelling salesman, but they're more like a toolbox, they give me ways of evaluating what I find inside the nnet. That's the problem; the nnet is so enormous, it's a living universe, navigating it is as problematic, in terms of mental resources, as crossing the universe in physical terms.
           

When the matrix itself acts as an intelligent entity, then the information contained, like my memories, becomes important and rearranges itself in unpredictable patterns. Life itself finds parallels here; there are areas with a decidedly fascist tone, areas populated by do-good routines that send autonomic evangelworms into the nnet looking for suckers.

3. IN A DREAM

In one dream I found myself 9 years old again, running through verdant fields in the rolling country north of San Antonio. It was a hot day, the sun beat down, and so I wore light clothing: a pale yellow T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs.

I sprang from clump of grass to clump, hearing crickets chirping all around, inhaling the scent of clover crushed under my sneakers.

Here came the low brow of a hill.

I sprang over the crest, lost my footing, and tumbled down the other side, which was much steeper. Barbed wire tore at my shirt, ripping it, and reaved deep scratches in my arm.

Finally the slope eased and I came to a stop in the center of a field, fifteen feet or so from a barb-wire fence. I checked my arm. Bright blood welled up, forming a rivulet down my forearm and dripping steadily from my fingers.

I felt in my pockets for a handkerchief, paper tissue, anything to stop the flow. Two sticks of gum; a dollar or so in change; my tatty comb; general fluff. Nothing of any use to stop the bleeding, so I pulled off my T-shirt and ripped a piece off the bottom. It made a decent emergency bandage.

While I was doing this I hadn’t noticed, but several cows had wandered up. I barely finished tying the knot when one of them bumped me, nearly knocking me off my feet. Its hide felt rough and hot.

I stood up, holding my ragged T-shirt, and immediately, another one sidled up, rubbing itself against me. I recoiled in horror and then I saw something odd about the cow: a large discoloured patch on its flank.

I peered closer; the patch had a dull, almost metallic look. Was that a slight tinge of blue? It had a strange odor, too; and even as these thoughts passed through my mind, the animal emitted a strange lowing sound, more like a gargle than the traditional moo.

I fought my way out of the circle of animals.

They lumbered after me, tails swinging, coughing and belching, as I made for the fence.

I scrambled through, catching my shoulder painfully on the wire. Only when I had put sufficient distance between myself and the field could I slow down and catch my breath.

I felt terribly tired, so I sat down for a moment to rest. The thick, springy grass felt almost as good as a cushion. Gratefully, I relaxed into it, bathing in the warming rays of the sun.

After only a few minutes, though, a cold breeze blew over me. I propped myself up on my elbows and saw the sun rapidly sinking below the trees of a nearby coppice. Their long shadows reached across the meadow toward me.

I tried to stand, but couldn’t.

I sat up and saw that something was wrong with my legs.

Dark liverish patches discolored my skin.

My knees protruded like two doorknobs. Even as I watched in horror, the skin of my calves split open. Yellow pus poured out.

I yelled in fright; the echo of my cry came back from the trees.

I tried to pull myself up using my arms, and saw the skin changing color. And now I felt something inside my stomach, a bloating sensation; I opened my mouth to burp, and a huge belch of foul gases erupted from my mouth.

A dim yellow cast settled over the landscape, as if the bright day had turned into an old sepia tint from my gran’s mantlepiece. My head rolled drunkenly though I tried to steady it.

A bulge swelled my belly, a feeling of movement within, then my navel opened like a sink plug and a stream of black fluid emerged, along with gas that smelt of old drains, rotten cabbages, and sulfur.