A Fiction:
I could taste the immortality like the twinge of a phantom limb, dusty specks of a greying desire. Switching back down this dirt road, the children stared me like I was a visitor from another star. Their mechanized eyes whirred quietly as they took in my confusion. I was lost. I was hungry. I was at my most broken, my prize seemed so out of reach.
But to them, I was a new mystery, a page from their ancient lullabies made manifest. They were a patchwork people, kept in existence by the worst kind of technomancers. Shoddy witch doctors with discarded tech, fusing metal and hydraulics to bone and skin, upgrading senses with the majesty of nothing.
A leper is still a leper.
beard gospel: the cult of uncool 