Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
In memory
FAR FROM ALGIERS
An unnamed race slips by ethnographer and xenophobe, roiling bowels and hackles, electrifying space. Genomes tell us nothing about our overlords; we know we're an underclass to these corsairs and otherlings. They break our doors at night, take our wives and children, foul our consensus with ideas and scat full sale on glassy seas. Though we take them to our beds they're unwelcome in our churches; they profane our certainties and stir up gifts renounced. South of every guarded circle is a Barbary where our rules stand on their heads and dance to tunes of turbins and scimitars. Their ships fly no flags until it's far too late and we’re engaged in the kind of bloodiness youth praise for to spite the social good. Every simpleminded day guards against kidnappers, every complacency has its dey * fat on ransom in some Algiers. If there were no Barbary Coast to haunt our dreams and genes, we’d eat potatoes, bed our cousins and be as stupid as we want to be. Read by Kevin Swanwick, in memory. * A ruling official in the ranks of the North African Ottomans.