She screams and backs up into the edge of her desk before she can get a hold on herself. MonitorBots are scary sons of bitches no matter what form they're choosing to take, and right now this one is in full-on enforcer mode, having arranged itself into a humanoid shape, except eight feet tall and with solid blocky limbs that could piledrive through her skull like it was nothing.

In a recent essay in The New York Times , Jonathan Ames wrote about kipple. I was thrilled. Not just because it�s nice to see other people writing about the messes of their lives, but also because kipple has been a favorite term of mine ever since I encountered it in Philip K. Dick�s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Like a fledgling fallen from the nest / my scent erased by human hands / I cannot go home again.