He watched and waited while the photo slowly downloaded.

He had bought a faster machine.  And the salespeople had insisted he already had the fastest connection - but with the addition of 500 million new users all the new technology still seemed to crawl.

He considered the wheel, then remembered the car and traffic.   Like the gun-toting hate drivers on the Interstate, the Information Highway already was filling with the impatience of the world.    

The 13th wondered which came first - the wheel or the snake?

This was just about enough wonder to last him the rest of the day, so he turned the machine off, and went to bed, only to return again the next day to download the photograph.

Bang 13.

The racial inequalities of the world had all been erased, integrated into the new world order of technology and profit-margins.   The Internet had united the populous NOT through marvelous opportunities or the enrichment of the world as advertised, but rather via the simple sharing of fart jokes and cartoon files among the new global community.  The sublime had saved the day.  Everyone chose the inside joke as the way out.

Smile.   His head is on fire.   Oh yes, I get it!

The gun never went off although the victim certainly was dead.

Bang 13. Bang.

On THAT day - he happened to look at the calendar.   "Shit!", he groaned to himself, " still The 13th".  

Some days are not really days at all.   We invented days as a unit of Time to measure their passing.

We've invented seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, even millenniums all to measure the passing of Time.

What of the eternal?   How do we measure that which does not change?

What time is it now?           

These were all too fanciful thoughts for The 13th for he already knew their answer.

Thoughtlessly he reached his hand under his shirt and started picking at the navel of the body he was occupying.

"This body gets itchy," he muttered.     

The 13th had most of the answers to his own existence.    That was partly because The 13th was still young - and could remember his origins.    More importantly it was because The 13th had created himself.

This is what he remembered.    This is what he believed.

With these beliefs all consequences of his living would remain only his to signify - his to remember - his to forget.

Gee, it's great to be young again, isn't it?!?

Bang 13.    He started to laugh.

A nervous twitch.   The mating call of insects.  A shared commiseration.   The comfort of not being alone, even though he was.

Someone had found the body.   People would be arriving soon and with a whole lot of questions....