Rydell’s uncle, the one who’d gone to Africa with the army and hadn’t come back, had had a couple of tattoos. The best one went right across his back, this big swirly dragon with horns and sort of a goofy grin. He’d gotten that one in Korea, eight colors and it had all been done by a computer. He’d told Rydell how the computer had mapped his back and showed him exactly what it was going to look like when it was done. Then he had to lie down on this table while this robot put the tattoo on. Rydell had imagined a robot kind of like a vacuum-cleaner, but with twisty chrome arms had needles on the end. But his uncle said it was more like being fed through a dot-matrix printer, and he’d had to go back eight times, one time for each color. It was a great dragon, though, and lots brighter than the tattoos on his uncle’s arms, which were American eagles and a Harley trademark. When his uncle worked out in the backyard with Rydell’s set of Sears weights, Rydell would watch the dragon ripple.