“Having several other well-developed hands within my immediate possession, hands recently practiced at love, or archery, or the writing of music — it seemed appropriate to begin to consider previously impossible alternatives. There were hands whose fingers had only yesterday listened intently to the heartbeat of a tiny serpent woven between them. Hands of skilled artisans and those of diggers of earth, or those of sewers of clothing or surgeons. So many hands!

I realized, suddenly, something astonishing. I could give them away. Second hands, actually. Second hand second hands. At that point, unfortunately, watches and clocks became involved and in the resulting confusion I instigated a window into an intelligent dimension which thereafter occupied the sum of my attention. I was thus unable to accomplish the terrible precociousness which had initially gripped me, wrenched me anew from the fires of the possible, and instantiated me in that heavenly demesne reserved for the eccentric, the electric, and the elect.

But I would like to give you a hand.”

— an anonymous yours truly