I had never before beheld one killed by pestilence. While every mind
was full of dismay at its effects, a craving for excitement had led us to
peruse De Foe’s account, and the masterly delineations of the author of
Arthur Mervyn. The pictures drawn in these books were so vivid, that
we seemed to have experienced the results depicted by them. But cold
were the sensations excited by words, burning though they were, and
describing the death and misery of thousands, compared to what I felt in
looking on the corpse of this unhappy stranger. This indeed was the
plague. I raised his rigid limbs, I marked the distortion of his face, and
the stony eyes lost to perception. As I was thus occupied, chill horror
congealed my blood, making my flesh quiver and my hair to stand on
end. Half insanely I spoke to the dead. So the plague killed you, I
muttered. How came this ? Was the coming painful ? You look as if the
enemy had tortured, before he murdered you. And now I leapt up precipitately, and escaped from the hut, before nature could revoke her
laws, and inorganic words be breathed in answer from the lips of the
departed.

Qu’en est-il du dehors ? Il pleut. Des centilitres d’eau font gondoler nos peaux. Je n’ai plus rien à mettre sur l’écran (la page) : j’ouvre et je referme (vide) le même fichier. Vies //, probablement, aura pour titre, s’il existe, quelque chose comme /// (soit juste trois barres).

The Rubicon, I felt, was
passed ; and it behoved me well to reflect what I should do on this hither
side of disease and danger. According to the vulgar superstition, my
dress, my person, the air I breathed, bore in it mortal danger to myself
and others. Should I return to the Castle, to my wife and children, with
this taint upon me ? Not surely if I were infected ; but I felt certain that I
was not—a few hours would determine the question—I would spend
these in the forest, in reflection on what was to come, and what my future
actions were to be.

Ma peau pue le vinaigre : dans ce vies // il y aura, brièvement, un type nommé, en tout cas effleuré par le discours, Vinegar quelque chose, enfin non : Molloÿ Vinegar (ou Vinegar Molloÿ). Je passe X minutes, à cheval sur un crâne, au taf, à récurer à la brosse miniature, nappée vinaigre blanc, la carcasse d’une tête d’un automate de type LightBite : la colle cancérigène qui maintient closes et hermétiques les faces A et B de son crâne en Kevlar a fuité. Elle coule. Est-ce que je mets des gants ? Je n’ai pas encore lu le mémo SAS sur les matières dangereuses. En une journée on ne peut jamais tant lire.

I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its
surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety. In the south, the disease, virulent and immedicable, had nearly annihilated the race of man ;
storm and inundation, poisonous winds and blights, filled up the measure
of suffering. In the north it was worse—the lesser population gradually
declined, and famine and plague kept watch on the survivors, who,
helpless and feeble, were ready to fall an easy prey into their hands.

Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Ce livre expose une pandémie. The Last Man. On devine vite où et comment le truc s’engouffre. Il pleut encore. Gondolé mon visage et les fils de mes doigts. J’ai refermé le crâne Kevlar du LightBite sur son cybercerveau nickel. La capsule qui protège son double core IA est censée tenir même en cas d’accident de voiture. Peut-on en dire autant de nos cartons de carne humaine ? De toute façon, je n’aime pas le voiture. Et écrire au « tu », ce n’est pas écrire au « je » en modifiant après coup les personnes (ou bien l’est-ce ?). Note pour Vies //. Tâcher de s’en souvenir.