Nova Express by William S. Burroughs

he jetted free and drifted to the ­ceiling—Looked down on quivering bodies—crab and centipede forms flashed here and there—Then red swirls of violence—The caustic green mist settled—In a few minutes there was no movement—
    Lee was not surprised to see other people he knew—“I brought them with me”—He decided—“We will send out patrols—There must be other survivors”—
    He moved cautiously forward the others fanned out on both sides—He found that he could move on his projected image from point to point—He was already accustomed to life without a body—
    â€œNot much different—We are still quite definite and vulnerable ­organisms”—Certainly being without a body conveyed no release from fear—He looked down—The green mist had formed a carpet of lichen over the bunks and floor of what looked like a vast ­warehouse—He could see surviving life forms with body—Green creatures with purple fungoid gills—“The atmosphere must be largely carbon dioxide,” he decided—He passed a screen through and wiped out all thought and word from the past—He was conversing with his survivors in color flashes and projected concepts—He could feel danger—All around him the familiar fear urgent and quivering—
    The two agents sat in basement room 1920 Spanish villa—Rotten spermy insect smell of The Green People swirling in bare corners quivering through boneless substance in color blats—He felt out through the open door on thin music down dark streets swept by enemy patrols and the paralyzing white flak—He moved like an electric dog sniffing pointing enemy personnel and installations through bodies and mind screens of the silent fish city his burning metal eyes Uranian born in the face of Nova Conditions—his brain seared by flash blasts of image war—
    In this area of Total Conditions on The Nova Express the agents of shadow empires move on hideous electric needs—Faces of scarred metal back from The Ovens of Minraud—Orgasm Drug addicts back from The Venusian Front—And the cool blue heavy metal addicts of Uranus—
    In this area the only reason any agent contacts any other agent is for purpose of assassination—So one assumes that any one close to him or her is there precisely to kill—What else? We never knew anything else here—None the less we are reasonably gregarious since nothing is more dangerous than withdrawing from contact into a dead whistle stop—So every encounter quivers with electric suspicion—ozone smell of invisible flash bulbs—
    Agents are always exchanging identities as articles of clothing circulate in strata of hustlers—These exchanges marked by last-minute attempts to switch the package and leave you standing with some old goofball bum in 1910 Panama—Lee had such a deal on with the other agent and of course both were falsifying and concealing defects in the merchandise—Of course no agent will allow a trial run since the borrower would be subject to take off with the package and fuck every­body they’ll do it every time—So all the deals are sight unseen both parties gathering what information he can delving into the other identity for hidden miles and engineering flaws that could leave him with faulty equipment in a desperate position—His patrols were checking the other agent—Sending in reports—Conveying ­instructions—intercepting messages—
    â€œPresent Controller is The American Woman—Tracer on all connections—Taping all lines in and out—Santa Monica California—She is coming in loud and clear now—”
    The young man dropped Time on the bed—His face was forming a smooth brown substance like the side of an electric eel—His left hand dissolved in a crystal bulb where a stinger of yellow light quivered sharp as a