The past was often with you, poking a sharp-nailed finger in the tissue of your brain and gouging out a piece, then pressing on a nerve to remind you that the bottom line of life was pain, then groping around other parts, feeling your dick, giving you a proctological examination, thumping your heart's naked flesh to make it beat like a hummingbird's wings, tying your intestines into a running sheepshank knot, vomiting hot acid into your stomach, whipping up nightmares with the blender of old Morpheus, ancient Greek god of sleep. A title for a lyric. "The Dead Hand of the Past." Nah. A cliché . Anyway, the past was not a dead hand. You carried it with you like it was a living thing, a tapeworm. Or like Heinlein's parasitic slug from Titan, the ice-moon of Saturn, the slug growing tendrils in your back and sucking the life and brains out of you. Or like a fever no pills could cool down until you were cold-dead, and you didn't need pills then.»