Trenton, New Jersey, like any other modern city of over one hundred thousand souls was one big industrial metroplex. The buildings in Trenton were nearly all dedicated to the efficient manufacture and recycling of various products which contributed to the general growth of the city itself, its communities and partnerships. Only a very few souls, those with a lot of money, or those in certain "valued" positions in the professional hierarchy were allowed to live in Trenton, though stuffed with buildings, considered one of the most pleasant places on the east coast to live. Despite the advances, like molecular decombinators, (which banished the need for sewers, eventually relegating pedestrians to the complex preestablished corridors underground), the need still existed for transportation of people and goods in small, boxlike vehicles. One such advance, magnetic resonance propulsion, took those vehicles off the ground and into the air. Just getting a driver's license was work. Keeping it was a chore and buying a flitter was nearly impossible, but still, every level of every byway was generally congested with flitters of all sizes and shapes moving on magnetic cushions at various altitudes, which were predetermined by the drivers' skill, previous accident record and certain unknown genetic factors, most of which are still a mystery to the average flitter pilot.

As the orb of the sun touched the western horizon, heralding the oncoming night, every light in Trenton, for that matter on the east coast, snapped on. Night in Trenton was virtually the same as day, except one need not wear sunscreen. Though pedestrian traffic was largely confined to the well-lighted, well-monitored, sweet-smelling, air-conditioned once-sewers below, the occasional ruffian, armed with an array of spray paint cans, markers, stencils, diodal decalomania and microthin battery stickers escaped to the upmost air and the well-lighted night to make his mark on the world.

On the building we will now visit, one industrious soul created with painstaking detail and the most modern appliances and techniques his idea of the status of the world. A bodiless set of teeth and lips swallows flitters, two-headed horses, six-legged calfs, two-headed birds, vidscreens and much of the other realities of the modern world. As one watches, the lips engulf the potpourri, cheeks swell and down a short tube a swelling mound moves to a perfect stomach which moves in the exact way yours does, spasming left, right, up, down, around until the mound, smaller, longer and seemingly alive travels through a complex representation of human intestines, the whole image moving, in endless loops of peristaltic, perpetual motion. At the end of the long, long intestinal trail, an anus waits, its sphincter opens at the insistence of a golden egg. The egg drops to the bottom of the wall, splits open to reveal a hand which waves at the viewer. From behind the egg come twin razors. The razors spin and, madly whirring, slice off the index finger, the ring finger and the pinky of the hand. Blood spouts in a gruesomely realistic gout as the hand turns, its lone middle finger pointing upwards, toward the rectum from which it came, indicating perhaps where we go, where we come from? Who can guess? The artist maybe? The hand turns then into a dove with two heads, it flies up to join the two headed horse and the vidscreens, where they all are summarily digested again and again. Inside the building live a few dozen of the privileged few. One of them, Regina Comfort, must be more privileged than she herself knows. But nonetheless there she was.

There she was, Regina and her friend for the evening, or maybe for longer. Celeste was her name. Named for the stars, no doubt.

Appropriate, as you will see.

"Is it on now--working, I mean? I mean... What do you expect to see with that thing?" Celeste seemed ready to bounce out of her skin in her excitement, nipples perky, buttocks absolutely fat-free.

"It's mounted on the building a block away from his flat; I might get a few shots of him fucking that little twinkie he calls his lover." Regina breathed through her nose, concentrating on the viewscreen before her.

"That would be fun," Celeste murmured, picking at her toes.

"Hilary," Regina intoned to the ceiling, "dim the lights, please. Thirty percent of normal." The lights dimmed. The women witnessed the other apartment through a tiny multilense camera stuck on a window six storeys up and seven blocks away. Now Celeste and Regina stood out against the relative darkness of the loft apartment, their forms illuminated primarily by the viewscreen before them, and focused on the unmoving picture of a window two miles distant,

"Why name your computer?"

"What? Oh, you mean Hilary? Oh, I just feel silly saying, 'Computer this and Computer that' haven't you named yours?"

"I don't have one."

"Really? Well, when you move in with me--"

"Who said I was moving in?" Celeste snuggled up to Regina, her tiny shoulder fitting perfectly into the cleft between Regina's ample breasts.

"I was hoping." Regina smiled, looking into Celeste's eyes and passing her hand over the younger woman's thigh to stop before reaching her kinky bush. Celeste enfolded Regina's hand in both of hers. There was a moment of silence followed by a chime.

"What's that?" Celeste flinched, startled.

"The food's here."

"Oh. It scared me."

"It was worse before; I got so tired of it, like fire engine bells."

"Fire engine?" Celeste squinted.

"You're so young." Regina used Celeste's body as a pedestal as she climbed to her feet. Naked, except for her slippers, wooly in the shape of pussycats that meweled at each step, she padded pussily to the door. She took a credit chip from the dispenser on the wall and opened the door. The boy on the other side didn't seem to even notice