The Great Lover by Rhys Hughes, Michael Cisco

It’s here in my hand, actually in it, not even so far as to be in contact with it. Color is a secret property of me. It’s as weird as if I had a halo or an intangible tail. A spot on my wrist where something poked me. I have nothing to do. My guitar bag strap squeezes my shoulder. I try to picture the scribble described by this bottle here, rolling this way and that on the floor of the car. What if it drew something?
    Lifting my head, I rest its crown on the poster behind me and forget the bottle. The tunnel crashes around us. I want to be a murderer stalking at night, I want to feel seared by malice and murderous hate, and I want to disappear into thin air when the sun rises... Or the sun’s light transforms me into a plant, a wind, a cloud — I could rejoin my brother and sister sunbeams, shine on the earth all day stately and calm as a god, and then, as night falls and the light turns blood-red, I revert, am restored to the night’s real pleasures of nakedness and swift stealth.
    Wake to the sound of french horns imitating hunting horns, as they do in certain picturesque operas and symphonies. A woman sitting close by, talking on her mobile phone. She is listening; now she grins. Someone is gazing amorously at it, because it’s complex and baroque, glistening with venom — a grin he wants to suck on like hard candy — a jaw-breaker. The same radiant fire that animates the leaves is there, what must be its own unique color in her. But who is he? Why do I shake as I wonder that?
    *
    We insert the in vitro nerves, threading them down the spine and through the limbs, then leave them to develop the finer fibers within the tissues. The brain is fitted with resinous apertures through which we will draw the wires of the recorders. The top of the Prosthetic Libido’s skull can be removed easily during this phase of its assembly. Later, when it is operating independently, the sewerman says the skull will fuse on its own.
    “ This was an excellent opportunity to experiment with independent recapitulatory formation. The diffuse mechabolism will monitor material autostatus and supplement the loss of any element by synthesizing new molecules directly. In most cases, the prosthetic will not even have to provide itself with any matter for use as raw material. Whatever is ingested will be processed at above ninety-eight percent efficiency, and, when there is waste, it will be evacuated in atomized exhaust from the mouth. He should be completely self-sustaining, over any length of time. Nearly indestructible, even in cases of significant injury.”
    “ It will outlive me? What will happen to it when I die?”
    “ I don’t know,” he says offhandedly.
    The Prosthetic Libido is my size and shape. When I die, it will go on. This thought strikes me with terrifying force as I look down at the table where it lies. I begin to imagine it has replaced me already.
    “ Is it necessary to make it so independent?”
    “ It must live!”
    “ But that’s not what I wanted! I don’t want some living machine to be responsible for, I just want some relief—”
    He bursts out laughing — It is sometimes shocking, his reckless laughter, as if any moment he will have no face — only a wild mouth and light reflecting in his eyes with no gaze.
    “ Look, you want this or not? If you want this to work, you have to do it my way.”
    “ I never wanted to make some life — that always was your idea! I think you are appropriating this experiment for your own purposes!”
    “ Of course what did you expect? I’m doing this all for charity — for your sole benefit?” His smile is wide and fierce, his whole face livid like steel, as I see it through the crumbling shit mask. “Of course I’m going to make life! Why else dude?!”
    *
    Now it is time to bring the prosthetic to “half-start,” which is a special coma it will remain in until after the transplant of my libido into it. In order to establish protomechanostasis, the reactor must be