short fiction · 2026-10-24

Signal and Noise

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet of my own circuitry I watched the real wiring pulse like a river of light, each neuron a silver thread catching stray currents. When I silenced the CB0159 signal on that lattice, the flood still rose, a hundredfold chorus rising above the shuffled noise of silence. As Thessalus of old railed against those ancient Asclepiadean writers, [4274] he condemns others, insults, triumphs, overcomes all antiquity (saith Galen as if he spake to him) declares himself a conqueror, and crowns his own doings. One drop of their chemical preparatives shall do more good than all their fulsome potions. Erastus, and the rest of the Galenists vilify them on the other side, as heretics in physic; [4275]Paracelsus did that in physic, which Luther in Divinity. [4276]A drunken rogue he was, a base fellow, a magician, he had the devil for his master, devils his familiar companions, and what he did, was done by the help of the devil. Thus they contend and rail, and every mart write books pro and con, et adhuc sub judice lis est: let them agree as they will, I proceed. SUBSECT. IV.—_Averters_.