I pull my old journal from the bookcase. It is bound in artificial leather. Gina gave it to me as a birthday or a Christmas gift. It hasn’t gotten much use since all of this internet writing started.

“I guess it begins.” I say, taking the one and only pen in the apartment from the wire cup on my desk, putting pen to paper, and turning my back on friends and colleagues, characters and gods.

“This will have to do until I get the machine.” I say, watching the ink drip from the pen like a scalpel between my fingers, cutting the audience off from me, leaving them with another corpse to defile. The online internet being, Appropouture, Bibles going on Libels, Zoet, Billiam, Ol’ Cry Baby Joe, Galaxim, Klaus Biesenbach falling away.

“Who can I be when I am somebody?” I ask the diary.

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