No muse appeared. My verse continued to be technically proficient and dead as Huck Finn’s cat. I decided to kill myself. But first I spent some time, nine years at least, carrying out a community service by providing the one thing new Hyperion lacked: decadence. From a biosculptor aptly named Graumann Hacket, I obtained the hairy flanks, hooves, and goat legs of a satyr. I cultivated my beard and extended my ears. Graumann made interesting alterations to my sexual apparatus. Word got around. Peasant girls, indigenies, the wives of our true-blue city planners and pioneers—all awaited a visit
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