Titanium Noir

by Nick Harkaway

When you stand in the hallway and smell the cold food, you realise you’ve been breathing death in the apartment. It’s not a stink of blood or bowel, but any dying leaves a trace in the air. I feel it as a kind of thinness, like the flavour of a bone broth taken off the cooker before it’s time, or the empty pages of a new colouring book.

“But the automation of labour is a conspiracy of de-humanisation. Work is of our nature. Giving even our chores to the machine saves time at the expense of self.”

This is the meaning of the Titans, Mr. Sounder. Beneath their feet, the fabric of the world is torn, and everything of worth flows into the cracks and drains away, leaving only them, and us, and the stained residue of good things burned in their fire.”