But, as always, someone in the crowd just couldn't take words at face value. Especially words that still reeked of the heuristics that generated them and the knowledge representations that filled their formal parameters with ham-fisted instances.

"'JUST TOYS' as in MERELY toys," he asked, possibly rhetorically, "OR 'JUST TOYS' as in MORALLY RIGHTEOUS toys?"

His tone didn't make clear which one he was gunning for, but most likely either would do.

All eyes were now fixed on this man who'd just ('JUST' as in 'A MOMENT AGO') dared to question heartfelt machine code transduced into near-perfect mammalianisms.

Everybody knew him -- and knew his "story".

As a con man, he'd used his adorable adopted daughter to steal the heart of a corporate lawyer he'd targeted for one of his cons.

The lawyer, at the time, had just tried and failed to prove her husband's innocence after the military accused him of murder.

One day, they (the con man and the lawyer) were sitting together quietly alone in the park.

"Can you hear that?" he said suddenly, then went totally silent, his head cocked.

She heightened her own silence -- the park air was motionless -- devoid of sound.

When she heard it, she looked at him with sudden fear and they both jumped up and started running as fast as they could, holding hands, each pulling the other to go faster.

At about 200 feet away from it they felt the shock wave and heard the huge blast at the spot they'd just been sitting peacefully, and were lifted or jumped into the air and thrown or jumped a short distance and finally slammed face down or landed on the damp grass unharmed, their arms over their heads and clutching each other, which was anatomically impossible, but after that immense ball of light and heat, who expects classical mechanics to still be guiding the course of matter.

Cut to the future: a cutting-edge android in the form of a boy embarks on a journey to discover his/its true nature. He/it is their son. More or less.

The first thing he learns is that the zeitgeist is everywhere. And that when it comes to the zeitgeist, EVERYONE IS TO BLAME.

And simultaneously EVERYONE is its victim, and no individual really even understands the very fucking zeitgeist he's responsible for.

"When we're not in a packed stadium with hundreds of thousands of others, we are all lost," the android moans to his hydrotherapist, who, after fifteen weeks, has been unable to lift him out of his funk over life itself.

But suddenly there is a knock on the hydrotherapist's office door.

Animated by a vicious killer's spirit, a battered doll and its mate are here seeking help from neighbors to regain human form.

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