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mosquitoes on a windshield as it calculated what to do…
    It exited the flyway and ascended to the rooftop of a nearby vidbuilding with a shopshack. It dropped me onto my feet. I tripped and fell into an ungainly somersault. Dr. Identity picked me up, dusted me off, and slapped me.
    “What was that for?”
    “Pain helps sometimes.”
    The rooftop’s aesthetic was minimalist-medieval. A few stone tables and chairs near the edges. Tall, hollow suits of armor here and there. The shopshack was a rickety wooden structure that wore its merchandise on the outside. Inside crouched vendors in buzzard suits.
    Not much of a crowd on the rooftop. A handful of cow-pigeons casually devoured whatever pieces of trash they could get their beaks on. Some alaristrians drank coffee, shined mirrorgoggles, cleaned their business suits with oversized lint brushes. Most were ’gängers, which wasn’t atypical in the public sector: corporate subjects surrogated themselves with much more frequency than plaquedemics.
    A small group of ’gängers had gathered around an allotriophagic mime. Every minute or two, the mime spontaneously regurgitated a sequence of random, nonedible objects, took a garish bow, and held his bowler hat out for spare change. Now he disgorged what appeared to be a collection of small mechanical clocks. The timepieces dribbled out of his mouth and formed a pile between his feet. The audience observed the spectacle with a cool disconnectedness, idly checking their watches to see if they were synchronous with the mime’s vomit.
    The canvas of sky overhead was a dull orange color. Sharp, thin clouds peeled across it in neat droves as if drawn there with an Etch-A-Sketch.
    A shelf of prepackaged sandwiches caught my attention.
    “I’m hungry,” I wheezed
    “I know,” Dr. Identity said.
    I licked my lips. “Garlic bologna.”
    Dr. Identity strode to the shopshack. I told it to stop. “Wait. Wait. We can’t pay for anything.”
    It kept going. I let it.
    We were in trouble when we landed on the rooftop. Shortly after we left the rooftop, we were among the Papanazi’s ten most wanted snapshots.
    Dr. Identity began fumbling through a row of sandwiches.
    A claw reached out of the shopshack and grabbed the android by the wrist. Dr. Identity looked at the claw quizzically, then looked up. Two yellow eyes peered out of the shadows.
    “Buy or fly,” said a snakelike voice.
    Dr. Identity tried to shake its hand free of the vendor’s grip. “Get your mitt off of me.”
    “Get your mitt off of my sandwiches.”
    The android’s eyes pulsed. Within reach was a copper vase that contained a bouquet of Baasendorfer samurai swords. The vase sat atop a large antique television set. A syndicated episode of the science fictionalized version of Leave It to Beaver was on. I had seen the episode before. There was no plot or dialogue, only a scikungfi Battle Royal that took place between June Cleaver and Eddie Haskell in the living room. For a moment Dr. Identity seemed to be hypnotized by the show.
    Then its head stiffened, its lips convulsed.
    Moving in fasttime, it pulled a sword out of the vase and sliced off the vendor’s claw. The vendor shrieked. Dr. Identity reached into the shopshack and yanked it out by the neck. Feathers snowed off of its buzzard suit…
    Dr. Identity tossed the vendor into the air and sliced it in half.
    The vendor’s torso landed flat on its back. It panted, squirmed, gesticulated as its innards poured out like baked beans.
    The vendor’s waist and legs pinwheeled out of control and struck a flâneur. He was a refined-looking gentleman wearing a top hat, mirrormonocle and razorcoat with tails. Somehow the legs wrapped around his chest and neck, then a foot kicked him in the head, knocking him cold.
    Dr. Identity made quick work of him.
    The severed head of the flâneur bounced past me like a discarded basketball, its mirrormonocle firmly in place.
    Not until the head bounced off the roof did I process the