A short dose of delicious new prose from Warren Ellis:
Lavinia sits on the bench outside the local Starbs and swallows her antifutureshock meds with a soy chai latte. After a few minutes, she feels able to switch her shades from obstacle-imaging to full vision. The world slowly fades up from green and black wireframe to three-dimensional colour. She gazes blankly over the rail station, at the full-motion billboard ad for the new Speculum Bar down on Main Street, where warm drinks are mixed in and served from the muscular rectums of young Algerian girls.
A flock of Fuckit Kids clatter past Lavinia, videoloop John Lydon tattoos on their scrawny arms snapping out the words “fuck it” over and over. Some of them slow down in front of her. People under twenty-five or so aren’t used to seeing pregnant women. One of them stops dead, scratches his scabby upper arm, making his fresh new talking John Lydon face bend and ripple. Antishocked to the eyeballs, he still struggles to cope with Lavinia’s alien curves.