The future was certainly bleak. I inspected the spidery suture and the angry puckers where the thread knots had been – these were hateful to me. I spent some minutes pushing the edges of the wound wherever I saw pus, dabbing it with the selvage of the dressing. There was less pus every day. This offered me some physical relief. I thought I could detect a trail of corrosion in the pus, though, and this signalled something strange – an industrial future where I would simply be the factory of myself – and a deep agitation arose. Could a machine die? I hoped so.
I pulled my haversack from under my cot and located my flask. I poured capfuls of whiskey onto my stump wherever the cut was not yet closed and sucked in for shock as the fluid entered the incision. Be damned if I would let it go sept
