Well, sir, ever since I learned of its existence I’ve wanted to join the Deep State. I’m sure you’ll find everything in order on my application. Experience in the field? Check! In fact, I’m currently working undercover as a member of a swim team. My mission is to hide in the deep end and spy on other swimmers from below. I bet you didn’t know that the older you get, the more flaccid your flesh becomes, even
Bryce Cranwell thought himself very clever. And he was, for a quant. Most quants were narrowly focused on using mathematical abstractions to help Wall Street extract profits from the real economy, but Cranwell had been taking classes in Personal Evolution and was now on track to get his Hero Belt, having already mastered the King and Warrior archetypes. This according to Nadine Tremblay who ran the School for Evolving Nerds. Nadine was an exacting coach. It was her idea for him
It had been a rough week for Angie Everglade. Monday’s job interview disaster with some young pup who seemed to equate rich life experience with imminent dementia. Wednesday’s OkCupid date with a man so full of himself she feared he might actually burst, splattering her new outfit with his ruptured innards. And now lab work that suggested a new incurable malady of which she already enjoyed several. After having a ripshit tantrum in the privacy of her own apartment,
Nobody thought to recycle rags anymore. Nobody dared. But Lila was different. Her commitment to the old ways was unwavering.
So door to door or she went, in neighborhoods flush and parched, asking people for their rags. Clothes too ratty for the Goodwill, too thin for kitchen floor scrubbery.
People were surprised, to be sure, but Lila was earnest to the point of beguiling, and so they searched their closets until they found something, anything, to drop into her little wicker
It was one of those utterly perfect East Bay days. The air so balmy, the sun so bright, people and their dogs walking oh-so-happy, you could easily forget the world was falling apart at the seams.
Brad Browning had been among the happily oblivious until news through the wireless jerked him from his reverie. Now he’s walking down Alcatraz, iPhone pressed up against the place where you get radiation tumors. He’s going for it, neck craned forward, eyes narrowed and blinking like