As part of You'll Sleep When You're Dead, the inimitable Warren Ellis brings us tomorrow's world of killer sleep machines and distant lucid dreams. -the Eds

"I have lived long enough for junkies to become boring."

"Junkies were always boring."

"Some of them used to make records and write books. Idiot. What kind of self-respecting junkie takes showers, gets a job, pays for utilities and saves up money to buy gene therapy and consumer electronics? It's not right. Nut up, rob some old people, and buy some shit that's been mixed in a rusty bathtub from a guy who smells like a leper's coffin and has a tattoo of a dog eating a baby on his neck."

Somebody sneezed on the other side of the café, and everybody flinched and covered their faces with the crooks of their arms, because it was that time of year and flu shots were bullshit. Everybody except the guy in the back corner with the post-ironic fedora, blissfully asleep, arms tucked across his chest over a laptop folded in four with an LCD strip on the crease, gently pulsing with activity. Looking closer, soft router lights could be made out, flickering under the hat.