Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Short Fiction

kids spread out on the wall-to-wall carpeting, crouched over their homework, preparing for success in school and their future professions by poring over the latest encyclopedia. Today such publications, so popular in the past, force us to face up to some of the more embarrassing presumptions of our own recent history, I tell the secondhand book dealer, inviting him to have a look at the image of two chicks. Look, read the note: “These chicks with hoods and eyeglasses are subjects of a psychobiological experiment. The lenses modify their vision, which influences their behavior in such a way that scientists can measure and interpret it.”

My interlocutor smiles ever so slightly, squeezes his cigar between two fingers, and lets out a cloud of smoke like some fallen Zeus. Bits of ash float down onto the books

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