After Dinner Conversation: Philosophy | Ethics Short Story Magazine

AFTER DINNER CONVERSATION

JANUARY 2021

SHANI NAYLOR

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After Dinner Conversation Magazine – January 2021 This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner.

Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in electronic format.

All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical articles, or reviews.

Contact the publisher for more information at info@afterdinnerconversation.com .

ISSN# 2693-8359

Vol. 2, No. 1 .

Copyright © 2021 After Dinner Conversation Editor-In-Chief: Kolby Granville | Acquisitions Editor: Viggy Parr Hampton Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation Magazine. .

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

AFTER DINNER CONVERSATION

Table Of Contents FROM THE PUBLISHER .................................................................................... - 2 BOOMCHEE .................................................................................................... - 5 HIS NEIGHBOR’S WIFE .................................................................................. - 15 THE WAITING ROOM .................................................................................... - 23 TEDDY AND ROOSEVELT ............................................................................... - 32 BELIEVING IN GHOSTS .................................................................................. - 48 MONSTERS ................................................................................................... - 70 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ........................................................................ - 83 FROM THE EDITOR ....................................................................................... - 84 -

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From the Publisher ***

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth. Philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories, audio and video podcast discussions, across genres, as accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students. *** Enjoy these short stories? Purchase our print anthologies, After Dinner Conversation “Season One,” “Season Two,” or “Season Three.”

They are

collections of our best short stories published in the After Dinner Conversation series complete with discussion questions. *** Subscribe to this monthly magazine for $1.95/month or $19.95/year and receive it every month!

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Boomchee Shani Naylor *** I saw Barry this morning in Pak’nSave. A tall, older man with thick grey hair pushing a supermarket trolley. Even though I hadn’t seen him for about 25 years, he was unmistakable. I didn’t call out or wave. He wouldn’t know me from the crowd of middle-aged women doing their weekly shop.

He made me think of Susie.

It was her bright smile that first drew my attention to Susie. I’d been working at the Glaxo factory for a week and was still trying to put names to faces. I was one of a group of six university students who had answered an ad for a summer job, back in the day when Glaxo had its big pharmaceutical factory in Palmerston North.

The students were given a range of jobs in the factory. Some were fun, like working the huge guillotine that cut through heavy stacks of cardboard, or the machine that wrapped boxes in sheets of plastic and sealed the edges with heat. But some jobs were straight out boring, like working on the conveyor belt. This involved taking things off the conveyor belt and putting them into boxes. I can’t even remember what we took off JANUARY 2021

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the conveyor belt. Little tubes of… something? When the students worked on the conveyor belt, we used to chat and laugh and tell jokes to pass the time of day. But I noticed that some of the permanent staff really had to focus to do the job. They found our chit chat and laughter distracting. I wondered what they really thought of us, this group of smart people who came in and picked up their jobs for a couple of months to make a few bucks, and then took off back to university. Maybe they resented us.

But Susie wasn’t like that. She was the sweetest thing. And really quite pretty. She had curly blonde hair and was rather curvaceous (although a nasty person might call her plump). She had such a sunny nature, always saying hello and laughing at our jokes (even when I suspected she didn’t really understand them), with a big smile on her face.

I knew my boyfriend Martin would say Susie wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but that didn’t matter. She was like the kid in your class at school who always got the lowest score, but was happy anyway. I felt a bit sorry for her. This was probably the best job she could hope to get. When I qualified as a lawyer and was doing amazing things in court, she’d still be here, sitting by the conveyor belt, picking things up and putting them into boxes. I don’t think she could even work the guillotine or the plastic wrapping machine. I chatted to her one day when we were sitting next to each other. I found out she was 26, lived at home with her parents, had a cat called Wendy, and had never had a boyfriend (she got a bit shy when I asked her about that). She was a lovely girl.

That summer was the longest holiday Martin and I spent together.

We’d hooked up near the end of the previous summer, when we’d met at a music festival. We sort of knew each other from school anyway. Then he went to Otago to do pre-med and I went to Vic to do law. We kept in touch during term time and spent our holidays back home in Palmy.

That was where I met Martin’s older brother Barry, who still lived at home with their mother, even though he was in his mid-thirties. Martin JANUARY 2021

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also had two older sisters, but they had moved away, married, and had families. Martin was the baby, born when his mother was 45.

Martin’s mum fussed over Barry. She did all the housework and got up early every morning to cook him breakfast, even though she had quite bad arthritis. Barry helped around the garden, mowed the lawn and drove his mother if she needed to go anywhere.

Martin complained constantly about his brother. “Bloody Barry, he’s got Mum twisted around his little finger. He should make his own frickin’ breakfast.”

I would say: “Well, at least she’s got someone at home to keep an eye on her.” I didn’t say: “She makes your breakfast too, Martin, when you’re home.”

Barry was a bit odd. It was difficult to put your finger on exactly why. He was always very formal, even with Martin. He worked in the kind of old-fashioned men’s clothing shop that sold cardigans and slacks. Apart from work, he stayed home, watched television, did stuff around the house and that was about it. He wasn’t unpleasant or anything. He was always polite and said hello, but apart from that never took any interest in me. I thought maybe that was because I was at university and he felt intimidated. In hindsight, I think it was probably because I just didn’t matter to him. These days people would say he was on the spectrum. I thought he was just a bit different. He wasn’t bad looking though – being tall with nice thick brown hair.

One day when I’d been working at the Glaxo factory for a couple of weeks, I had a brilliant idea. How about setting up Barry and Susie on a blind date? They were both single, both nice people, and both unlikely to meet someone without a helping hand. I told Martin my idea, and he was horrified.

“No bloody way! It’s a terrible idea.”

“But why not?”

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“We can’t just interfere in their lives.”

“It’s not interfering – we can ask them, and if they’re not interested, then that’s the end of it.”

Martin wasn’t convinced. I pleaded. I told him about Susie and how sweet she was. I said it would be good for Barry to interact with a woman who wasn’t his mother. It took a week, but I wore him down. In the end Martin agreed, probably just to shut me up.

We talked about how it might work and, in the end, we agreed that we couldn’t just set up a blind date and leave them to it. Neither of them, to our knowledge, had been out with someone of the opposite sex before, so it would be doomed to failure. We would have to go with them and guide them in the right direction.

Martin was still reluctant, but I convinced him that I had a good plan. I think he was worried I’d suggest going somewhere like the Fitz or the Fat Ladies Arms where he’d be bound to run into his mates. Instead, I suggested the Awapuni Hotel.

“It’s perfect,” I said. “They have a buffet and a covers band. Do you know anyone who’s ever gone there?”

He couldn’t think of one person.

“Then we won’t see anyone we know. Barry and Susie can have a meal and then dance. We’ll keep everything on track, and if they want to see each other again, they can use the phone like everyone else.”

At that point, Martin seemed to run out of excuses, so he agreed.

“Perfect. You talk to Barry and I’ll talk to Susie,” I said.

Susie was easy. At morning tea the next day I mentioned that my boyfriend had a brother who was single, and perhaps she’d like to meet him. I didn’t need to convince her. She said yes straight away. And she looked so excited. She was almost jumping up and down when she returned to the conveyor belt. After that, at every opportunity, she came over to talk to me and ask questions. What should she wear? What was JANUARY 2021

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Barry like? Did he have a job? What sort of dancing were they going to do?

She told some of her friends at the factory, and they got all excited as well.

Honestly, they were like a bunch of school girls. Some of the students found out as well. A couple of them seemed to think it was a joke. One asked me: “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Barry turned out to be easy as well. I had half thought he would refuse but, to Martin’s surprise, he agreed immediately. Well, that was good then.

On Saturday night I went around to Susie’s house to pick her up.

She looked lovely. She was wearing a pale blue dress with lacy white collar and cuffs that she’d worn to a cousin’s wedding. To be honest, she looked a bit over-dressed for Palmy on a Saturday night, but I didn’t want to suggest that she change. Susie’s father looked at her proudly, but her mother pulled me aside and asked me to keep an eye on her.

“Of course I will.”

“She’s not like you university girls.”

“I know. I promise, I’ll look after Susie.”

She looked me up and down. Finally, “OK then. Off you go.”

We drove to the Awapuni Hotel and arrived just as Martin and Barry were getting out of their car. Barry was wearing a suit with a tie and looked a bit flustered. I did the introductions and Barry put out his hand to shake Susie’s. Then Barry and Martin walked in, and Susie and I followed. I caught her eye and winked, and she giggled loudly.

There were a handful of families with children and some older couples in the restaurant. Martin and I did most of the talking and ended up asking questions to get the conversation going. We found out what school Susie had gone to, where her grandparents lived, where she liked going for holidays and how long she had worked at Glaxo (nine years!).

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locked eyes. I could see he was thinking the same as me, that everything was going great.

The band started playing after dinner. They were actually quite good. They started off with real oldies from the fifties and earlier. To get things going, I asked Barry to dance and then Martin asked Susie. Some of the older people were doing the proper ballroom stuff, and we tried to follow suit. It was fun. Even stiff old Barry seemed to be getting into it. Then we swapped partners and I danced with Martin while Barry danced with Susie. By this point the band was playing more modern songs, so Martin and I did our usual boogying, but Barry and Susie kept dancing together, with his arms around her. What a cute couple! They looked like they were really enjoying it. Martin had been so negative yet Barry and Susie were having a great time. It was a triumph!

At the end of the night I was to take Susie home. She and Barry said their goodbyes in the carpark – Susie’s face was pink and flushed from dancing. I don’t know how Barry could resist kissing her goodnight. Maybe he felt shy with his brother and me standing there.

Susie was very animated on the drive home. She’d had a wonderful time and couldn’t stop talking about it. She kept thanking me for introducing her to Barry and saying how nice he was. Her parents looked relieved to see her. Her father shook my hand and her mother kissed me on the cheek. She had a tear in her eye.

Then I drove back to Martin’s place. Barry and his mother were sitting at the dining table drinking cocoa and Martin was slouched on the sofa watching TV. I sat at the table and looked at Barry. He seemed pleased, in his usual reserved way.

“Did you enjoy your night?” I asked.

“Yes, it was very pleasant, thank you.”

“And Susie?”

“She was very nice.”

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“And… would you like to see her again?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Barry. “Because of Boomchee.”

“Boom… sorry?”

“Boomchee. My fiancée.”

“What the hell?” Martin jumped up from the sofa. “Did you say fiancée?” He looked from Barry to his mother.

“Yes, my fiancée. She’s coming to live here in March.”

“Did you know about this Mum?” Martin was almost shouting.

“Yes, of course. I’ve spoken to Boomchee a few times on the phone. She’s a lovely girl. Her English isn’t so good, but it’ll improve.”

“Where’s she from?” I asked.

“Thailand,” said Barry.

“Why didn’t someone tell me?” said Martin.

“Barry wanted to keep it private,” Martin’s mother said. “Besides, it was only confirmed a few days ago. Boomchee will come here to live and, all going well, she and Barry will get married mid-year.”

“But have you even met her?” Martin asked Barry. “You haven’t, have you? You don’t even know what she looks like.”

“Yes, I do,” said Barry. “I’ve got a photo.” He stood up and left the room.

“She’s only after his money,” said Martin. “He knows that, right?”

“Well, he’s hardly John-Paul Getty, is he?” said his mother.

“Boomchee is a hard worker and very respectful of her elders. She’ll be a great help around the house.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Martin.

Barry came back with a black and white passport-type photo, showing a serious-looking young Asian woman with long hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“She looks nice,” I said.

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Martin glanced at it and turned away. “So, why did you come out tonight if you already have a fiancée?”

Barry looked uncomfortable. “I’ve never been out with a lady before. I thought it would be good practice for when Boomchee arrives.”

“For fuck’s sake,” said Martin. He looked at me. “Let’s go to your place.”

Martin was silent during the fifteen-minute drive to my house. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.

I had a thought. “She might be a prostitute,” I said.

“Give it a rest,” he hissed, as though I’d been banging on about Boomchee all night. *** On Monday at work I didn’t know what to say to Susie. I couldn’t tell her about Boomchee. I couldn’t say that Barry had a fiancée all along that he hadn’t told us about. Poor, sweet, trusting Susie. She wouldn’t understand. She’d think I had done it on purpose. I saw her in the staff room, putting on a white coat, before she saw me. She had the same bouncy look and big smile that she’d had when I dropped her home on Saturday night. I couldn’t face her.

I put on my white coat and swept past. “Hi Susie. Hope you enjoyed Saturday night.” Then I strode over to the guillotine and didn’t look back.

At morning tea I took the last seat next to the other students and talked loudly to them. At lunch time I snuck out and went to the local shops for half an hour. I kept this up every day. One tea break I even hid in the loo for ten minutes. Every time Susie came near, I would say hello then take myself somewhere else. By mid-week she had got the message. At that point, I could see she wasn’t her usual bubbly self. I felt really bad. I knew it was cowardly of me. I should have said something, but I just didn’t know what to do. A couple of the students asked me about the blind date. I said it was fine and they left it at that. Some of the permanent staff must have JANUARY 2021

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heard something because they gave me rather nasty looks. But they didn’t say anything.

That was the last week of the summer holidays before we went back to uni. I phoned in sick for work on my last day so I didn’t have to speak to anyone. Martin was still angry. His mother and brother should have told him about Boomchee earlier.

Martin was really busy that year. Medicine was a huge commitment and he didn’t have much time for anything else. When the next holidays rolled around, I went to Tauranga with some flatmates instead of going to see my folks in Palmy. After a couple of months Martin and I were officially over. I wasn’t bothered. I had met a guy in Tauranga and dropped out of uni to be with him. Law was too much work anyway. I got a job in a café. It didn’t last. The job or the guy.

I heard through the Palmy grapevine that Barry had got married to a Thai woman. I never knew what happened to Susie. Did she meet someone else? Did she work at Glaxo’s until she was made redundant when the factory closed?

Even now, decades later, I still wonder about Susie and feel bad about what happened.

When I got made redundant, I came back to live in my parents’ old house in Palmy. A couple of months later I saw Barry picking feijoas in the fruit section at Pak’nSave. I saw him again in the carpark with two people – a middle aged Asian woman and a teenage girl, who looked like a younger, taller version of the woman. They were loading groceries into a car. The girl said something and the adults laughed. They looked happy together.

I put my groceries into my car: One chop, a few spuds, two-minute noodles, bananas, baked beans. I thought how nice it would be to have someone to laugh with. I’m glad Barry found Boomchee. *** JANUARY 2021

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Discussion Questions 1. What is your opinion of Barry marrying Boomchee?

2. Do you think it was wrong for Barry to go out with Susie, even though he was engaged? What, if anything, should he have done differently?

3. Barry and Boomchee ended up happily married with a teenager. The narrator ended up alone (but wishing she had married someone). Do the outcomes change your opinion of Barry’s choice to get a “mail order bride?”

4. Is falling in love an (1) emotion, a (2) choice, or a (3) combination of the two? How is it that arranged marriages (or mail order brides) have success (or love?) when so many dates don’t work out? (The divorce rate for arranged marriages is 4%, versus 40% in the US) 5. What, if any, mistakes did Barry, Susie, the narrator, or anyone else make in the story? ***

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His Neighbor’s Wife Bryan Starchman *** The autumn air was crisp as the Subaru idled in the residential street. Despite the early hour, the Enforcers lined the sidewalks, passive as they fulfilled their obligation. They were there to witness the act and were not to engage with the players in any way unless the victim faltered. It was time for vindication. The law would be upheld.

After a brief discussion they agreed that a chain would be attached to a thick metal stake driven deep into the asphalt. There was concern that residents might burst their tires on the protruding inch of steel but it was only temporary. As soon as justice had been served the stake would be removed, along with the broken body of the young boy. He whimpered in the road, his ankle firmly held by the metal cuff. The chain was so short that he could only pace in small circles around his anchor. They had decided that it would be cruel to give him any length to run with and so he sat in the road and stared past the idling car.

The driver, a Mrs. Weston, could see the boy sitting in the road but just barely. She had set her starting position nearly three blocks from the scene of the crime. She wanted to gain enough speed to ensure that his JANUARY 2021

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death was instantaneous. The boy sat panting, panicking, screaming in the exact spot where Mrs. Weston had cried over the remains of her own child just twelve hours ago. There was still a burgundy stain where her daughter’s blood had flowed. So much blood. How could a five-year-old’s tiny body contain so much fluid?

This thought steadied Mrs. Weston. It grounded her and she felt a sense of peace as she shifted her car into drive. She focused on a spot beyond the boy, a house at the end of the cul-de-sac and then she accelerated. She did not look at the boy as the Enforcers stood witness but she felt the terrible shudder of the car as the tires split open his skull. She turned around in the cul-de-sac, parked in her own driveway and, a little shaken, she entered the house she shared with her grieving husband. As the Enforcers removed the boy’s body, a fire truck blasted away the boy’s blood and the steel pin was removed from the asphalt. Mrs. Weston entered her dead daughter’s room, collapsed on the child-sized bed, and wept. *** In the year 20** the Law of Vindication had recently been adopted by all fifty-seven states. President ________ had run on a “Levitical law and order” platform and soon after his inauguration the new law was introduced to congress. The Death Penalty was still legal in many states but evidence showed that it did little to deter criminals. And so, the Law of Vindication.

If a burglar shot your wife during a home invasion, you were legally obligated to take revenge and kill the burglar’s wife or comparable loved one.

If a husband killed his wife, her parents must exact revenge on their son-in-law.

Or, in the case of Mrs. Weston, if a drunk driver ran down your child in the middle of the street…

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And so on. And so on.

And the families were given recommendations on how to exact revenge. Every citizen was registered with the Ministry of Psychology and the victim’s loved ones would receive a report revealing the condemned’s greatest fears. If the family truly wanted justice, they could use acid, fire ants, or snapping turtles. Within reason, of course.

The Enforcers were your neighbors, your colleagues, the residents of your town. They lived with you and had an interest in keeping the peace.

Everyone over the age of 18 was mandated to stand watch within their own jurisdiction and witness the retaliations. And if, for some reason a grieving parent or spouse, in a moment or weakness or moral superiority could not exact revenge, the Enforcers would complete the task. Once the judgment had been passed, the People would swiftly and mercilessly eliminate the assailant’s loved one for the good of all.

Of course there were caveats and mistakes would be made, but the People seemed willing to accept the prospect of innocent casualties in exchange for the promise of a more peaceful society. A drug addict strung out on Monkey Shade was not likely to take time to pause and think about his own family as he held up a convenience store clerk at gunpoint.

Should the addict’s family suffer?

Should they have their guts blown apart by a shotgun?

Or should the addict be shot while his family members are forced to take the same drug that tore his world apart?

Would that teach the society to seek help for their fellow addicts?

To insist on rehab and interventions and treatment?

The Law of Vindication was in its infancy and the courts would have to “adapt” as the criminals tried to undermine its intended use. But after a year, premeditated homicide was down 42%, drunk driving had also dropped significantly as had armed robbery. There would always be fringe criminals, the psychotics and sociopaths, but no law could curtail the truly JANUARY 2021

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insane. All and all, The Law of Vindication had made effective social change and the world was better for it. *** The argument was not about the dishes. When Harold’s wife Margaret told him to “wash the Goddamned dishes” it was the proverbial straw that broke her husband’s back. And after she stormed out of the room and returned to the entertainment nook where she immersed herself in her Digital Mindwall Stories of the Scottish Highlands, Harold reached for the largest knife in the kitchen. He was ready to stab Margaret through her black heart and watch her bleed out while her mind was still trapped in her virtual world but he stopped as he remembered the morning’s news blast.

A man in Cleveland had strangled his wife last night and already the Court of Vindication had passed sentence. The Ministry of Psychology identified his greatest fear and within hours his father-in-law was melting his flesh with a government issued flame thrower as the Enforcers looked on. As Harold fingered the knife, he imagined his own father-in-law’s sadistic grin. He wouldn’t give the son-of-a-bitch the satisfaction. Not today. And so...the knife was slid back into the block and Harold washed the dishes.

But instead of powering on his C.E.S. (Cochlear Entertainment System) he decided, for once, to stew in his own thoughts. It was too easy to get lost in the fantasy stories of F.D. Ruffino and he did not want to let his wife off the hook. He was relishing his anger. For too long he had given up his own identity while trying to conform to Margaret’s warped concept of an “ideal” husband. Charismatic and social but also quiet and present.

Fit and well-dressed but also willing to go out for drinks and fried chicken and sharing two desserts. Faithful and steadfast but sultry and sensual and dangerous. A life of contradictions led to a wife who was never satisfied and instead of liking Harold for who he was, she ended up resenting him JANUARY 2021

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for all the things he was not.

And then today, his birthday, he had the entire day planned out so that he could be by himself. He wouldn’t have to check his posture or his diction or his tone. He could just be Harold, out on the lake, drinking beer, his baited hook floating twenty feet below the boat, not caring if he caught anything as his C.E.S. whisked him away to a land of talking goats and gnomes.

But it didn’t work out that way. It never worked out the way Harold planned. Because he had chosen to spend a life sentence with Margaret and she had bawled hysterically at the thought of her husband spending his birthday alone.

“But...it’s what I want for my birthday,” he tried to explain.

“Don’t be stupid. No one wants to be alone on their birthday.” “...I do.”

“You just don’t want to be with me for your birthday.”

“It’s not that…”

(It was that.)

And so Margaret insisted that what he really wanted for his birthday was for her to make him his favorite breakfast: French toast with strawberries (he was allergic) and a yogurt smoothie (also, lactose intolerant). And after he had gorged himself and his throat was swollen and his bowels were churning, she told him to do the dishes. It was the least he could do after he had received such a generous gift from his wife.

With the last dish dried and put away, Harold was amazed and a little frightened to find that he hadn’t calmed down. Usually a little time away from Margaret would cool his rage but not today. Not on his birthday.

This was what he would have to endure for the rest of his life. And so, he pulled the knife back out of the butcher block and crossed the yard to his neighbor’s house.

Lily answered the door. She was a pretty little thing. Far too narrow JANUARY 2021

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in the hips for Harold but she had these big doe eyes that seemed to have been drawn on her face by an illustrator. She was newly married to Daniel Grant, a straw haired architect with an all-American smile. Harold and Margaret had gifted them a blender. They had become friendly due to their close proximity. Harold could hear the young couple making love most evenings and on weekend mornings. Lily could hear Harold and Margaret screaming at each other seven days and nights a week.

Lily had just finished baking some cupcakes for Harold and before she could even wish him a happy birthday, he plunged the knife into Lily’s chest.

As Harold waited for the Enforcers to take him to the Court of Vindication he smiled; tonight he would have the entire king-size bed all to himself. *** “All rise! The honorable Justice Wilshire presiding over the case of Harold Bloomington in the premeditated murder of Lily Grant” Only a few hours ago Harold had watched the life seep out of his neighbor’s wife’s chest and now he was ready to be judged under the new law. He felt a little sorry for his neighbor Daniel. He had seemed genuinely in love with Lily. But Harold also felt pleased with himself for being so clever that he had found a way to legally get rid of Margaret. He saved quite a bit of money by defending himself. Who needs a lawyer when you are willing and ready to plead…

“Guilty, your honor. I stabbed Lily Grant through the heart at 9:47 this morning and I fully understand that under the Law of Vindication I must pay with the blood of my own beloved wife.”

Margaret charged down the aisle towards the defense table, screaming, “You son of a bitch! I can’t believe that I’ve wasted the best years of--” But her threats were cut short by a stun baton. Harold grinned as JANUARY 2021

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her unconscious body was removed from the courtroom by an Enforcer he recognized from behind the deli counter of the grocery store.

The judge was grinning too, but not at the removal of Margaret.

His eyes were boring into Harold and suddenly Harold was overwhelmed with a sense of dread.

“That is not the letter of the law, Mr. Bloomington. You murdered the love of Mr. Grant’s life and in turn he will be vindicated when he kills the love of your life.”

Harold looked at the Judge like he was some sort of illiterate. He answered very slowly.

“Yes your honor, and that cold fish that was unceremoniously dragged out of here is the love of my life.”

“You are married to her,” the Judge retorted “but do you love her?”

“Not a bit.”

“It is clear to this court that you love yourself more than you ever loved your wife. And so, the victim’s husband must kill you in the way that you would most fear. Are you ready Mr. Grant?’

Daniel Grant appeared from the judge’s chambers. Harold had wondered why the grieving husband hadn’t been present for the judgement. His eyes were red and puffy as he glared at Harold. Suddenly the Enforcers, Harold’s friends and neighbors, were holding him down. He began to panic but he couldn’t move. Someone had removed his pants and Daniel Grant was advancing on him with a power drill aimed at his scrotum.

And under the whine of the drill and the animal screams coming from Harold, Daniel Grant was muttering to himself.

“Love thy neighbor...as thyself…” ***

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Discussion Questions 1. If implemented, do you think the punishment method in the story would cut down on crime? If so, then why don’t we use methods like this? What is the purpose of criminal punishment if not to deter crime?

2. If this were the punishment laws in your country, would you participate in their enforcement?

What if failing to participate in their

enforcement meant you were in violation of the law and subject to punishment?

3. Do you think punishment, like the one in the story, could ever, over time, be seen as “normal?”

How do we decide what “normal”

punishments are vs those that are cruel and unusual?

4. If someone you loved were murdered or raped, would you want this type of vindication punishment to be enforced against the criminal or would you prefer a more traditional punishment like jail time?

5. What do you think a “fair punishment” would have been for the main character in the story? ***

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The Waiting Room Kate Choi *** Overhead the lights hummed. They were bright and fluorescent, and they reflected off the clean white walls of the waiting room to produce the unsettling effect of being folded away inside a sheet of paper. Crosslegged on the floor by the door, the boy squinted against the glare and tapped his fingers together—one, two, three, one, two, three. Across from him, a man sat on a long low bench, his knees pointed at awkward angles.

As the boy watched, the man put a pen to a sheet of paper, scribbled slowly, and looked at what he’d written. Then suddenly, violently, he crossed it out. He started over. The cycle repeated itself twice before the writer flung down his pen and put his head in his hands, the pen rolling away beneath him. Across the room, the boy watched. His fingers tapped— one, two, three, two, two, three.

Finally the silence became too much. “So, I’m waiting, you’re waiting,” the boy said. “What are you here for?” For a moment the writer didn’t move, and the boy thought he may not have heard. But then the man shifted his hands and spoke through them.

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“What are you here for?” he grunted by way of response.

“I’m here to get a new Dream,” the boy said. The writer nodded.

He looked down and picked up his pen, but made no move to write.

The boy waited, but when nothing more came he prompted, “And you’re here to…”

The writer jerked. He had forgotten that the boy was there. After a moment, he said, “I’m here to get back an old one.”

The boy nodded slowly, though he had to fight the urge to raise his eyebrows. “Why’d you give it up?”

“Sorry?”

“Your old Dream. Why’d you give it up?”

“Why are you giving yours up?” the writer retorted, irritated.

But the boy just looked down at his fingers—tap, tap, tap—and said, “I ran out of chances.”

The writer didn’t scowl at that, but nodded. He, too, had run out of chances. He looked at his crumpled paper, tried to smooth it out on his knee, and scribbled again. He stared at what he’d written.

“You didn’t answer me,” the boy said, cutting into his thoughts. He shifted; the hard floor was painful to sit on. “Why’d you give it up?”

For a moment the writer looked as though he was debating whether to answer. At last he said, tersely, “It was foolish.”

“But it isn’t foolish now?”

“No. It’s still foolish.” The writer stared at his page, mouthed a sentence, then abruptly struck out the words again, drawing a furious scrawl of lines over the writing. “But all I have left now is foolish.”

As the boy opened his mouth to reply (though he wasn’t sure what he meant to say), a sudden commotion outside the room made both of them look up at the closed door. A few muffled shouts, one or two alarming thuds, and the door was abruptly wrenched open and a woman thrust inside, her hair a wild flurry of bright red and her body long and too tall.

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She turned back with a cry, but the door had shut as quickly as it had opened, and everyone in the room knew without trying that it was already locked. The newcomer pulled at the handle anyway, and when that failed, she pounded on the door and yelled. “Get me out of here! Come back! I’m not meant to be here. Come back!”

“It’s no use,” said the boy, still sitting by the wall, and the woman started and looked at him, only just noticing that she wasn’t alone. “They won’t come until they call for you.”

“But they have to—come back. I’m not meant to be here,” she said again, this time to him, but he only shook his head.

“If you’re here, you’re meant to be here,” he said.

“But I don’t need a new Dream.”

“If you’re here, you must.” He added, his face soft and his fingers still lightly tapping, “It’s okay if you don’t realize it yet. You’ll see, soon enough. We’re lucky that they’re taking care of us—they always know what’s best.”

“No, they don’t,” she said, her hands clenched at her sides. Her hair formed a harsh red halo under the fluorescent lights. “I don’t need a new Dream. I don’t want a new Dream.” She smelled like flowers, like petunias.

The writer hated the smell of petunias; he had once known it too well, before he became tired and lost all of his chances—before he had been foolish, he had been like her, like this woman and her petunias. His mother had smelled of petunias, too. Her Dream, like that of many before her, had been to invent a medicine to cure cancer… but she had worked too hard, failed like all the others, and when she died, even at the funeral where there were only lilies, the air had reeked of petunias.

For the first time since the woman had entered, the writer spoke.

“It doesn’t work that way.” His voice was toneless, though, recitative.

That made the woman angry, not placated. “It doesn’t work that way! Of course it doesn’t. That’s not how they operate. That’s not how they JANUARY 2021

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do it.”

After a moment, the boy said, “What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, she looked around—at the white, white space, at the bench, at the poster on the wall with the words, “Dreams drive us!” in bright, big letters. “They’re giving me a new Dream. I can’t believe this. They’re giving me a new Dream.”

“You mustn’t have been successful,” said the writer. “What could you expect, if you weren’t successful?”

She sighed. “I’ve always been successful.”

“Always?” said the boy disbelievingly.

“I needed the Benefits, the Reductions. I had to be successful.”

“You speak like it’s been more than once.”

“Five times.” She looked at her fingers, counted them as she counted her Dreams. “I’ve been reassigned five times.”

“Then you must not have been successful,” said the boy.

“I was successful. I was always successful.”

“Then what?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I reapplied. I changed them.”

“But if you were successful—” “I didn’t want them,” she snapped, and ran her hands through her hair, making the ends stick up and the smell of petunias stronger. “I wanted this one. The other ones… I was an accountant once. A successful one. But I was overworking myself, I was too successful. So I started going on walks.

I went walking around the city. They reassigned me then, kept reassigning me. Do you go on walks?” She looked at the boy, the writer, but neither replied. “They’re beautiful. Or they should be, but they’re all mixed up.

Hardly anyone who should care cares enough to make the places beautiful—only they really Dream, see, it’s all theirs in the first place, not ours. So the places are ugly but the spaces are beautiful. It should be the other way around at least.”

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Neither of the others understood. The boy asked, finally, if only to interrupt the silence that had followed, what her Dream was now.

“I’m a florist,” she told them. “I sell flowers.”

“You must not be successful,” said the writer again.

“I was happy,” she said. “The flowers were mine, and they were beautiful. No one else could interfere with them being beautiful.”

“Were you successful?” asked the boy, confused.

She almost tried again, but only shook her head—not in answer to the question, but to say it did not matter. “I sell flowers,” she repeated, softly, to herself.

“Sold,” the boy corrected. “You won’t be a florist for much longer.”

“No,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet and angry. “No, I will be. It’s my Dream. They can’t take it away from me!”

“Of course they can,” the writer said tiredly. “They gave it to you, didn’t they?”

“But they can’t take it away! I was happy! I was happy!”

“If you were happy but you weren’t successful, then it must not have been the right Dream,” the boy reminded her gently. “Mine wasn’t. I ran out of chances. So I’m here to be reassigned.”

She wheeled on him. “But were you happy?”

Across the room the writer was writing, almost without realizing it, “I was happy… I was happy” on his sheet of paper. When he saw what he was writing he stared at the page in consternation.

The boy said, “I had to be successful to be happy.”

The writer interrupted. He recited the poster above him, without really meaning to: “Dreams drive us.”

“Drive us where?” cried the woman, exasperated. “Drive us where?”

“Towards a better future,” said the boy, as if it were obvious. It was.

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“And what’s that?” she asked, as if she genuinely did not know, but she did. She knew what it should be, but not what it really would. Neither of the others bothered to answer.

After a pause she spoke again—she seemed unable to stay silent, or still, her fingers twitching, her whole body stiff and expression still disbelieving, as if she were in a trance. “You know what I think? I don’t think it’s ours, any of ours.” Before either of her companions could register her words, she turned to the boy again. “What’s your Dream?” she demanded.

Taken aback, the boy stammered, “To—to be a pianist.”

“You had to be a successful pianist?” she said, and her tone—it was almost a scoff—made the boy flare up defensively.

“What’s wrong with that?” he demanded harshly. She only laughed, but it was a brittle sound.

“Yes, indeed. What’s wrong with that? Ask them. They’re the ones who made you come to be reassigned, aren’t they?”

“No, I came myself,” the boy said staunchly, coldly. “I ran out of chances. I know when it’s time to move on.”

“Do you, now? And I wonder why. Tell me, who gives you those chances? What was it—failed competitions, lost prizes, empty auditoriums? The lack of applause from all of the rest of us standing around with our own empty, driving Dreams?” Her voice was full of scorn and the boy said nothing, his expression frozen stonily on his face. His fingers had stopped tapping. “Sweetie, they give you the chances and when they don’t like you they take them from you. They don’t need another pianist. They need doctors or builders. Artists… flowers… they’ve had enough.”

The boy’s face had hardened as much as it possibly could, and from behind that stony exterior he unfroze long enough to say, stubbornly, “It’s for the greater good.”

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“So do we!” cried the boy. “We just have to find the right Dream— be successful.”

“The right Dream! And have it stolen away from us when they don’t like it anymore? No more flowers—no more pianists—when we work ourselves to death for the stupid Dreams that aren’t even ours—” The writer froze, stopped writing. The boy cried, “You don’t know what you’re saying. Stop it, it’s not right!”

Before she could reply, the writer spoke from the other side of the room, addressing the woman. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t go around saying mad things like that.”

“And you!” she exclaimed, turning now on him. “What are you, again? What’s your failed Dream?”

He said nothing, but his pen twitched in his fingers, and she saw.

“A writer, then,” she said. “What kind of writer? A screenwriter? A poet? I bet you’re a poet.”

“I was, once,” he said, in a voice as stubborn as the boy’s. The boy looked up and asked, with interest, “Is that the Dream you want back?”

He said nothing, but that was only confirmation for the woman, who laughed again. “Another failed artist! And you want it back? That’s foolish. They’ll never give it back. Not for a poet.”

“All I have left now is foolish,” the writer said again. For the first time the woman seemed to understand; her face softened.

“That’s right: all we have left now is foolish. Foolish for leaving behind our foolish dreams for foolish following to foolish ends. My God! How I’d love not to be a follower for a day!” The silence was broken by a loud, sharp buzz in the ceiling that made them all jump and look at the door. “Number 52130, please exit for resignation. Number 52130, please exit for resignation. Remember, Dreams drive us!” A click from the door told them it had been unlocked, and it opened, revealing two stony-faced impassive men in black standing in a stretching corridor of white, white, JANUARY 2021

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white. The woman looked at them, no longer fighting but exhausted. “My God,” she said softly, and left. When the door shut behind her with the same buzz and click the boy and the writer looked at each other but said nothing. The writer looked down at the paper in his hands and saw the words he had written. I was happy… I was happy.

He stared at them in the silence of the humming white fluorescent lights and then he tore them up, dropping tiny fluttering pieces of inky paper to the floor, like a rain of soot and ash. Across the room, the boy tapped his fingers—one, two, three, one, two, three. The silence regrew.

Finally, the boy spoke.

“So,” the boy said. “I’m waiting. You’re waiting. What are you here for?” ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Is it important that you be successful in your dream, in order for your dream to be a success? Or, can you be successful in a dream that you will never be particularly good at?

2. Many of the characters in the story are emotionally attached to their current dreams and don’t want to give them up, why do you think that is? If they had been given a different dream would they be emotionally attached to that other one instead?

3. The poster in the waiting room says, “Dreams drive us!” Do you agree with this statement? Where do you think dreams that drive us come from?

4. What is your dream? If you could change it to a dream you would be more successful in pursuing, would you?

5. Is it selfish to follow a failed dream if following a dream you would be successful at would be more helpful to society? For example, is it selfish for a talented (but unhappy) surgeon to quit medicine and take up (mediocre) painting? ***

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Teddy And Roosevelt Steven Simoncic *** They call it Friends Group. But there are no friends, and there is no group. Just me, a state-funded Social Worker, and another sixth grader the kids call Sweaty Teddy. We sit in a converted cinderblock office between the furnace and the chapel and listen to the muffled sounds of the rest of the middle school having actual recess outside. On the desk, Ms. Judi has placed a stress ball, a point-to-the bad touch doll, a box of tissues, and a bowl of candy. She has been meeting with me individually every Monday, for forty-five minutes of stress-inducing awkward silence, since I transferred from Rosa Parks Elementary. Teddy is a Friends Group veteran.

According to Tommy Stanick, my assigned locker partner, Teddy has been going to the nut ward since third grade when he threatened a teacher with an X-ACTO Knife in art class.

Ms. Judi decided to put Teddy and me in a group session so we could dialogue. So far, I’ve learned that dialoguing usually just means Ms. Judi repeats the last thing I say in the form of a question.

“How are you feeling today Roosevelt?”

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“I dunno. Little anxious I guess.”

“So, you’re feeling a little anxious?”

I nod. She writes something down. Teddy unwraps another piece of candy and pops it in his mouth. To escape his hard candy crunches, I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do – I pick up my book and begin to read.

“The Strenuous Life,” she says.

I nod.

“Still reading it,” she says.

I nod.

“Can you read us something?”

I open the book to any page and close my eyes, “far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

“That’s impressive.” She says.

“Teddy Roosevelt was an impressive man,” I say.

“No, that you memorized that passage.”

I nod.

Without looking up, Teddy slides one of the hard candies he has taken from the bowl over to me. I accept the gift. As I place the book back into my backpack, the edge of another brittle page flakes off and flutters to the floor. When the firemen left, they gave me and my mom anything of my dad’s that they could salvage. His fifteen years of service watch from Wayne State, a few teaching awards, his master’s degree diploma, and his soggy, signed first edition of The Strenuous Life, which he read to me every night before bed - the book from which I can recite not one passage, but any passage. And that is impressive. But I do not feel the need to tell Ms. Judi that.

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“Teddy why do you think you’re here?”

This catches Teddy by surprise. He clears his throat and for a brief second the Sour Ball in his mouth goes down the wrong pipe. A series of coughs, snorts, and breathy exhales follows. He regains. His cheeks flushed red. His uniform shirt suddenly more sweat-soaked than usual, hopelessly untucked and hovering above an ever-descending pair of khakis that no longer fit.

“I think we’re here because I’m fat and he’s black.”

We both look up from our laps at Ms. Judi. Waiting for her to say, so you’re saying you’re fat and he’s black? But instead she opens up both of our files and begins to write. *** The walk to school was always the same. I’d pass Michael Drostey and Ronnie Bootrie getting high on the corner of Westwood and Tireman.

At Derby Hill, I’d see Gina and Tammy, two white girls who wanted to be black, listening to Controversy. They shared a pair of foamy orange Walkman headphones, listening with wide eyes and shrieks of delight like they were getting away with something. And they were. Controversy was controversial in Copper Canyon – our little corner of Detroit that had no copper and no canyons. Just house after house of Detroit Police officers who had to live in the city they pledged to serve and protect. So, they begrudgingly colluded to live in one neighborhood, a white island, that shined like a new badge, with St. Agatha’s at the center of their planned community.

I was not part of the plan. After the fire. My had to go back to work.

She applied for a job in Mayor Coleman A. Young’s office as an executive assistant to the Head of Human Services. The day she of her interview, she was armed an associate’s degree from Wayne County Community and a ten-year old resume. After I helped her pick out her clothes (three times) and put on her makeup (twice), I slipped a note in her purse to calm her JANUARY 2021

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nerves.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood – T. Roosevelt.

Except I changed the world man to woman and added a bunch of fireworks and flowers and hearts. I think it helped. She got the job. This meant we too had to live in the city. But we were done with Corktown, so we came to The Canyon to be safe.

I get to the top of Derby Hill, and by the graffiti-covered cannon, he is standing there. Teddy. We stand for as minute facing each other. I pull my inhaler out of my pocket and pump it twice. Teddy Roosevelt had asthma too. Mine acts up when I am near dust, mold, or confrontation. I’m not sure about Teddy Roosevelt’s asthma. I have not been able to find adequate detail on his symptoms or triggers. Tommy Stanick passes by on his Mongoose. He flips me the bird. I don’t know why.

“He’s a dick,” Teddy says.

I nod.

Teddy reaches into his backpack and tosses me a Sour Ball. I pop it in my mouth, put my inhaler back in my bag, and start to walk toward school. With Teddy. *** Theodore Roosevelt began boxing at age fourteen when a couple of bullies taunted and manhandled him. I started at eleven. He trained with the Boston Strong Boy, Jim Sullivan. I trained with my mom. He went from a sickly kid with asthma to fighting in the Harvard Gym Championship on March 22, 1879. I have asthma and have settled for trying to teach Sweaty Teddy how to punch. In the hours between school and dinner, Teddy and I were pretty much on our own. My mom worked until six or seven most nights and Teddy’s dad was a real gung-ho hoorah cop who was put on a special narcotics division in my old Corktown neighborhood. He was a gang buster, ballbuster, Teddy would say. Total badass.

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“It’s a pillow,” Teddy says.

“It’s a punching bag.”

“Made from a pillow. This is stupid.”

“This will get them to stop calling you Sweaty Teddy.”

I

hold

my

homemade

heavy

bag.

Teddy

punches.

“That was terrible. You have to rotate. You punch with your hips, not your arms. Watch.”

He holds the bag. I throw a combination.

“Damn! And you’re so skinny.”

“You think I hit hard, Teddy Roosevelt was –” Teddy throws a left to my chest.

“Fuck! Teddy! Roosevelt!”

“Oh, it’s on.”

We wrestle to the ground laughing, rolling on the burnt-out grass of my yard, throwing jabs and talking shit until Teddy ends up sitting on me.

“Don’t tell me – Teddy Roosevelt used to get sat on all the time.”

“Fuck you Teddy.”

“Fuck you Rosie.” *** On Saturdays I visit my dad. St. Hedwig’s Cemetery is exactly 9.4 miles from my house. My mom used to drive me every week, but that was before she started spending Saturdays with Phil. I usually take my bike, but Teddy popped my back-tire bunny hopping a curb, and my mom won’t let me take the bus ever since those kids got shot in Warrendale.

“Paul Ray has a car.”

Teddy’s half-brother not only drove, but he smoked, had a tattoo, and a ring of hickeys on his neck. He spent most days ditching high school and practicing his nunchucks on his corner. Teddy was pretty much terrified of Paul Ray, but since I was teaching him to box, he felt like he owed me. I JANUARY 2021

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waited across the street, watching Teddy talk to Paul Ray. Through the slats of the wooden fence Big Ray built, I could see the brand new, four-foot high, above ground pool they just put in. The sunlight bounced and shimmered off the surface. A big green inflatable turtle floated dumbly back and forth across the pool.

I could see Teddy shifting his weight and not making eye contact.

At one point he popped a Sour Ball for moral support. As they talked, Paul Ray would line up Pepsi cans on the fence and crush them with his nunchucks. Each time Teddy would flinch and step slightly further away.

The rumor in Copper Canyon was that Big Ray had to save Paul Ray more than a few times down at the precinct. There was talk of drugs. And fights.

All Teddy would say is that Paul Ray would have been better off in jail, than having to come home and deal with Big Ray. When Paul Ray broke his arm, everyone at school said Big Ray did it. I never asked Teddy about it. And he never told.

Teddy waves me over from across the street. I watch Paul Ray watch me walk toward him, pretty sure I am not what he was expecting. I say thanks. He says nothing. Teddy shoots me the shut-up look, and we all pile into Paul Ray’s Burgundy Monte Carlo with cry baby rims and a petticoat spoiler.

The back seat is immense. Teddy and I bounce up and down as Paul Ray tries to scare and impress us, fishtailing down Warwick, and laying a huge patch as he leaps off the line at a stop sign on Belton. Being a cop’s kid in Copper Canyon meant you had license to do pretty much anything you wanted behind the wheel. And Paul Ray did. As we made a left on Telegraph, I tried to yell to the front seat that we were going the wrong way. But between Foreigner Four on the Alpine, and the growl of the dirt mother muffler he put on himself, Paul Ray didn’t hear me. Or didn’t care.

We pull up, not at St. Hedwig’s, but at Sheri Olshenski’s house. She was famous in Copper Canyon for almost getting pregnant. It seemed to JANUARY 2021

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happen a lot. Paul Ray lays on the horn. She comes out a minute later. Torn jean shorts. Cowboy boots. Teddy and I watch her walk down the driveway toward the car. She gets in, doesn’t even look at the back seat, and begins to make out with Paul Ray. This goes on for a while. I try to whisper we should go to Teddy. But he shushes me, eyes fixed on the front seat. A minute later we hear the thuddy ca-chunk of the Monte Carlo’s automatic doors unlock, and we slide out the passenger side.

The last mile of the walk was the worst. They hazy smokestack Detroit sky held the heat like a plastic bag. Soaked and slow, we walked toward the hill where my dad was laid to rest. I made the time go by faster for Teddy by summarizing my father’s Masters’ Thesis: Theodore Roosevelt: Politics, Patriotism, and Preparedness.

When we get to the grave I reach into my bag and get to work.

“You always keep that in your bag?”

“Never know when I’m gonna get up here.”

“It’s like a tiny shovel” “It’s a trowel.

I clear the crab grass and weeds off the headstone with my trowel.

On my hands and knees, I blow the tiny blades and leaves out of the recesses of my father’s name, birthdate and death date. Teddy watches.

Gets down on his knees. And blows as well.

“We must show not merely in great crisis, but in the everyday affairs of life.” I say.

Teddy nods. Understanding the quote.

“And all men must try really hard in the arena of their life.” He says.

I nod. Understanding he’s trying. *** As the weeks went by, we worked at being better at life. Teddy got better at boxing and doing his homework. I got better at being less judgy and more normal, and we both got better at answering Ms. Judi’s JANUARY 2021

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questions. On the playground we found corners and nooks to disappear into. Safe havens far from every Tommy Stanick, Ronnie Bootrie and Michael Drostey. We created our own world, and together we preached and lived not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

On our last hot dog lunch of the year, Teddy and I ate alone, together, like we always did. I gave him my second hot dog. He gave me half his sour cream and onion chips. After that, we were supposed to have final period recess, but since our homeroom earned enough self-control marbles in Mrs. Garko’s Shush Jar, they let us out early.

My mom was working late. Big Ray was at a DPOA union meeting, and Paul Ray was getting hickeys from Sheri. So, we went to Teddy’s house.

It was the first time I was actually inside. Teddy’s mom was away visiting her sister again. He said she had been gone for a while this time, but she called Teddy every Wednesday and Sunday to check in on him. Big Ray said Teddy was in charge of cleaning. Which meant the house was never cleaned, but with Big Ray’s work schedule and Paul Ray’s Sheri schedule, no one was around much to care about the house. But the yard. The yard was perfect, with an Aqua Leader pool, and a little wooden deck Big Ray built out of scrap from the privacy fence.

Teddy made us homemade Nesquik chocolate milk since my mom wouldn’t let me have it at home. We sat on the deck. Our feet dangling in the water. Teddy found a cloud that looked like a snow cone with human baby head. I found a buffalo.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do What.”

“The X-ACTO Knife.”

The big green turtle floats towards us, gently bumping its face into my foot.

“They were calling me fat.”

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“They always do that.”

“Exactly.”

“So, you’re saying, exactly?” I say in my best Ms. Judi voice.

Teddy smiles. Nods.

The snow-cone-baby-head cloud passes over us, blocking out the sun. For a minute the traffic seems to stop, and we can hear the wind and the birds of Copper Canyon.

“I got so tired of being the fat kid. I just wanted to be something else. You ever feel that way?”

Teddy’s looking at me now. He’s almost always looking down. But now his eyes are wide. His face is open. A chocolate milk mustache beginning to dry and crumble around his lips. He looks innocent. Like maybe how he looked before any of this happened.

“We should swim,” I say.

Teddy looks down again.

“No, I… I don’t –” “You don’t swim?”

“I swim.”

“So, let’s swim!”

“No, I don’t – I don’t –" “You don’t what?”

He takes a moment, then makes a decision.

“I don’t take my shirt off. Around other people.”

My father’s favorite quote. The one he recited to me every night before I fell sleep, was the simplest, and hardest, one of all. In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. That one haunted me. Before you act, it feels like a riddle or a curse. After you act, it feels like absolution and freedom. If you do not act at all, it is regret. Pure and simple.

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uniform shirt. Teddy looks up. I grab the bottom of my shirt and pull it up over my head. My skin tingles in the sunlight, still sensitive to heat and light after three years. The doctors said I was lucky. Forty percent usually means your face is burned as well. But my scars hide under my shirt.

“You can touch it,” I say.

I take his hand and rub his fingers across the scar tissue on my chest and stomach. It is fierce skin, tough skin, skin that has held together in strenuous performance of duty.

“It protects my heart,” I say.

The sky goes white hot. The snow cone baby and the buffalo are long gone. The sun beats down on my bare back, and it feels good.

Teddy leans over to untuck the last part of his shirt that is still clinging to his uniform khakis. He pulls his shirt up over his head and tosses it behind him. The stretch marks are pink and veiny. They wrap around from his armpits to his boobs, and from his love handles to his belly button.

“You can touch them,” he says.

They are smooth. Scars inside his skin.

“They protect my fat,” he says. His high-pitched little boy laugh becomes hysterical. Contagious. We get loud. And we don’t care.

“Fuck you Teddy!

“Fuck You Rosie!”

I stand on the deck and I proclaim to all of Copper Canyon, “It is a fact that Teddy Roosevelt would skinny dip in the Potomac with his trusted advisors and closet allies!”

I kick off my shoes. A neighbor’s dog begins to bark.

“And as a symbol of that solemn solidarity and kindred camaraderie!”

“Don’t do it,” Teddy says.

Off go my pants.

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Teddy – to honor the great Theodore Roosevelt and the great kinship and camaraderie that is right here between Theodore and Roosevelt.”

I drop my underwear and dive in the water. The cold water shocks and stings, then embraces. I hold my breath and wait at the bottom. A second later, still underwater, I hear an even bigger splash. We break the surface together, laughing and splashing. Total immersion. Complete the surrender.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Paul Ray is standing on the deck, looking down on us between our two piles of clothes. “Teddy what the fuck are you doing!”

“We were just –” “You shut the fuck up! I was talking to him!”

Teddy’s gaze drops to the bottom of the pool. He walks to the ladder without saying a word. And climbs out of the pool. Paul Ray throws his uniform pants at him, “Put your clothes on you little faggot.” *** When I get to my locker the following Monday, Tommy Stanick’s stuff is gone. The note inside says his parents are no longer comfortable with him sharing a locker with me. It goes on to talk about HIV and the tragic unknowns of the disease.

On my way to homeroom I see the first Teddy + Rosie sign written in lipstick on the boy’s bathroom mirror. Michael Drostey makes kissing noises when he sees me in the hall. Ronnie Bootrie grabs himself and follows me until a teacher breaks it up. In one day, I went from the only black kid at St. Agatha, to the only black kid found naked in a pool with a naked white boy at St. Agatha. Notes. Signs. Handwritten letters. All within the first three hours of my first day back. I become Rosie Palm. Rosie Bottom. All because Paul Ray didn’t want people to think he was gay. *** “I can’t be here. Not today.”

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“How do you feel?”

“Please don’t.”

“Roosevelt – “ “I don’t need your stupid questions or these stupid fucking stress dolls!” The stress toys fly. The candy bowl shatters.

“Stop!”

Her phone rings. She drops the call.

“You need to talk to me, Roosevelt.”

“Where’s Teddy.”

“What happened your book?”

She puts the file away and waits. “Where’s your book, Roosevelt?”

I shake my head. “It was all bullshit anyway.” *** The hospital room smells like rubbing alcohol and cafeteria gravy.

When I walk in, Teddy is asleep. His nose is packed. Both eyes purple with pooled blood. I sit next to the bed and hold his hand. His eyes flutter, then focus. He smiles.

“Let’s go swimming,” he says. “It’ll be fun,” he says. His laugh more of a congested exhale.

I nod. “Yeah. Bad Idea.”

“Hey, could you cover –” I move his gown over to cover an exposed stretch mark on his left side.

“I got you this.” I place a gift shop teddy bear on his tray.

He nods. Smiles.

“In 1902,” he says. “Teddy Roosevelt went hunting – “ “Mississippi,” I say.

“Right. Mississippi. And his assistant –” “Holt Collier,” I say.

“Right. Tied a bear to a tree. But Roosevelt wouldn’t shoot it.”

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“Because it was too easy,” I say.

Teddy nods and shoots me with a finger pistol.

“Some people think that’s just a myth,” I say.

“I believe it,” he says.

A nurse comes in to change the dressing on his forehead. She asks him if I should leave. He says no. She cleans the gash above his eye.

Replaces his gauze and refills his ice chips.

I touch his face. “Paul Ray?” He shakes his head. “Big Ray.” “Because I was naked in your pool.”

“Because you were black in my pool.” *** Over the next month Teddy and I didn’t talk. We didn’t sit together at lunch. We saw Ms. Judi individually, and if we saw each other in the hall, we would turn the other way. Outside of teachers, neither of us spoke to anyone at school. In 1981, in Copper Canyon, if you were two boys swimming naked, you were fags who probably had AIDS. And there was no way to undo the damage that had been done. But from a distance I would watch Teddy. I could see him healing. Getting stronger. His color getting better. The purple under his eyes fading to yellow. The mark on his forehead growing smaller and less pronounced. His scars becoming more obscure and invisible like stretchmarks under a school uniform shirt.

The last time I actually talked to Teddy, it was on the phone. I told him about my mom’s new job with the state. About the house we found in Lansing and the school I would be attending next year. He said, yeah, a lot, and wouldn’t even say my name, because we both knew that I was going to be anonymous in Lansing next year, and he was going to be the fat, possibly gay, X-ACTO kid, sitting by himself in Friends Group for the next two years. He was destined. And sentenced. And I was free. And neither of us understood it or deserved it.

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*** On the last day of school, you could feel a restless energy building.

For weeks Tommy Stanick had been talking about a fag fight between me and Teddy. We were the drama. We were the gossip. The beef. And now they wanted blood. This was how it works. You didn’t fight when you wanted to – you fought when they decided you would. All throughout the day I heard about Me and Teddy settling the score. Homeroom, lunch hour, fifth hour. You could hear the stories - how I came to his pool and tried to have sex with him. How he lured me into his pool to have sex with me. How we broke up, and now we hate each other, and the only thing left to do is settle it on the big lot behind the middle school gym, where all things like this get settled.

As soon as Mrs. Garko left the lot to have a smoke, a circle began to form around us. That’s when I knew we were actually going to fight. That this was going to happen. Kids who never even talked to me were yelling my name, telling me to kick his ass.

Fag Fight! Fag Fight!

Tommy Stanick. Waving his arms right in my face. Trying to get people to join him. They do. Ron Bootry and Michael Pawlick, still a little high from their walk to school, giggle and fall into each as I pass. Someone takes my backpack off my shoulder. A group of seventh graders begin pushing me in the back, shoving me toward Teddy who is now being pushed toward me, his belly heaving, his cheeks flushed red, his uniform shirt sweat-soaked and hopelessly untucked from his ever-descending khakis. We end up face to face. He still won’t look at me.

“Fucking Fight!” Someone says.

A seventh grader pushes me into Teddy. He swings wildly. After all our lessons he is still terrible. And they all see this. They see the fat kid. The kid with the X-ACTO. The one who swam naked.

He swings wildly again.

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I slip and counter.

Teddy is off balance, out of sorts.

At some time in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.

I drop my hands.

I show him my chin.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body - to risk his well-being - to risk his life - in a great cause.

Teddy pauses.

I scream, “Don’t foul! Don’t Flinch! Hit the line hard!”

Teddy connects. Solidly. Beautifully. Right on the button. Just like I taught him. My hearing goes dull and watery. But I can hear them cheering.

My vision goes soft and fuzzy, but I can see them celebrating. And as the seventh graders pick me up and pull me away, Teddy becomes something else. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. The first Roosevelt quote the narrator reads is, “far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Do you agree with this statement? How does a person know if they are living this truth?

2. Do you think it is healthy (or helpful) that the narrator is so obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt? What role does Roosevelt seem to play in his life?

3. Teddy got put into the special classroom because he pulled an X-ACTO Knife on the kids who routinely called him fat. What, if anything, do you think should have been Teddy’s response to the daily taunting?

4. Before they go swimming, the narrator recites the Roosevelt quote, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing.

The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Do you agree with this statement, why or why not?

5. Do you think the narrator did a good thing by encouraging, then allowing, Teddy to hit him and knock him down? Is there another way he should have handled the situation? ***

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Believing In Ghosts André Lopes ***

CHAPTER ONE The politician stood on the podium and addressed the nation.

Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, he answered all the questions the reporter asked him.

“The people are tired of the same old faces in charge of policy.

Policy that has been a disaster, particularly among the young,” said the politician.

“And how are you planning to overturn the course of this nation, Mr. Booker?” asked the reporter.

“We need to take a look at our healthcare options. Currently the system is a disaster. Our young workers are underpaid and overworked, and our elderly, after a whole life of working for this nation, are left abandoned in poverty,” said Booker.

Booker was an experienced politician who came from a long line of JANUARY 2021

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famous lawyers and economists. His immaculate presentation, charisma and natural knack for leadership were certainly three of the main reasons why he was the frontrunner on the polls nationwide.

A campaign employee approached him as he left the conference room: “We just got confirmation of another ghost,” informed Booker’s prime assistant.

“Who?” replied Booker.

“Jared Benjamin.”

Booker paused for a second: “The one that spread those fake sextapes a few months ago?”

“Yes, the one. Our intel team just confirmed that he’s a composite.”

“Any word on who’s the puppet master?”

“No clue yet, the platform he was using for his webseries is very proud of their privacy policy.”

Booker checked if he was already away from the cameras.

“No one is liable for defamation in this country anymore, fucking bullshit,” Booker said.

“We’ll continue to pressure for them to identify the ghost.”

CHAPTER TWO Rain rolled on her bed and stared at her mobile phone’s screen.

Most of her social media feed was auto-generated clickbait articles written

by AI. She received job offers received on a professional social network sent by non-existent human resources employees. The effortless creation of content made its supply near endless. This was fine, no moral panic concerning technology has ever produced anything of note. She scrolled through social media and saw an ad for a quack medicine, the man JANUARY 2021

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promoting it, bald, with a shirt and green tie talks about all of the benefits this all-natural drug has, he may be an actual person passionate about bullshit medicine, a complete fabrication or something in between.

Rain felt lazy today but she made an effort to be productive. Mr. Booker had emailed her a new scope for security auditing. She did most of her work remotely and this gig at candidate Booker’s campaign wasn’t her only show. Despite that, she had no schedules, which meant that most days were a foggy mess of sleep. In the winter, she regularly woke up to almost dark outside and her diet was mediocre at best. Grocery shopping she felt like an astronaut stepping on a foreign planet.

“Not again,” she thought. The clock on her phone marked 1pm, “I swore I’d wake up at decent hours.”

While heavy work late in the night was more productive to her, the almost flipped schedules compared to a regular person intensified the feeling of alienation to regular people. Now with the dramatic failure of an early get-up plan, the routine was the usual: get out of bed, make something to eat and sit in front of the computer, scroll through work eemail and, of course, procrastinate on social media. After a while, she fired up the virtual machine used to work.

As a cybersecurity consultant or, as better known in popular culture, a hacker, her job was to find security vulnerabilities on her clients.

Hacking is not the same as breaking things, well, not necessarily, hacking is the art of exploring a piece of tech’s features and try to make it perform amusing things - amusing to the hacker at least. This philosophy allows a competent hacker to explore the infrastructure of a client in a way a regular user might not, but a malicious user might. If, filling up an online form, it is prompted to insert your age what would you put in? Something between 0 and 120, any sane person would guess. The hacker might input -2, 9999999999999999, or a piece of code. If this online form, when presented with these strange inputs exhibits a weird, unexpected behavior, JANUARY 2021

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congratulations, you’ve hacked it. Now time for exploitation, how can you manipulate this weird behavior in your favor? If you’re lucky, you might gain access to a database, if you’re not so lucky, then nothing interesting will happen beyond that. This process of trying all these different things to trigger unexpected, potentially dangerous, behavior is what Rain would call, perhaps in poor taste, weaponized obsessive-compulsive disorder.

She opened the website of her favorite news outlet. The headline caught her attention.

THE PHANTOM VLOGGER: JARED BENJAMIN IS THE LATEST CONFIRMED GHOST IN THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR SPHERE “So JB’s a ghost.” Jared Benjamin was a treasured vlogger and internet political commentator so him being a ghost shocked somewhat, but it didn’t surprise a whole lot of people. A ghost was the common term used to describe a fabricated person, from looks to voice and personality, all made up using clever algorithms.

Rain had entertained the thought Booker was himself a ghost prior to meeting the man in person, not only because the use of ghosts in mainstream life has made an entire generation completely apathetic and awary of media in general but also because the man had this aura of an almost perfect leader, an effective populist which still managed to keep bridges between political enemies.

As a general trusted freelancer, and since she was already Booker’s security consultant on the campaign, Rain earned an additional client for security auditing: the candidate’s main business, a well known supermarket chain. After checking the provided test scope she smiled, this was huge, there were at least three full web applications that contain online shopping and an online contest. All of this provides entertainment for days or weeks.

“This is unexpected.” Rain found a SSH server with a trivial password B00K3R. Really? This was usually where the fun ended, as a white JANUARY 2021

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hat you’re supposed to write a report on how you got in, how shit the security is and the best way to improve it.

“But what if there’s something here that would allow me to obtain access to a parallel system?” she thought, as she tried to convince herself into investigating this server, knowing fully well that this was out of regular procedure, digging into personal files is not the job of a white hat.

There were four projects stored in this machine, some very early versions of a future redesigned website for online shopping, a new experimental service for regular clients and another project, the most interesting, it didn’t appear to have anything functional but, upon inspection, the code inside was littered with advanced math and statistics, Rain didn’t reach any conclusion regarding that code.

“Maybe I should call it a day.”

The clock ticked 6 a.m.

CHAPTER THREE Rain woke up with a phone call, she searched the phone around the pillow, still half-asleep, and opened her eyes just enough to read the name on the screen: “Booker Project Manager.”

“Why is he calling at the crack of…” she checked the clock, “...noon.” She picked up the call.

“We need you here right now, we’ve been attacked.”

“Attacked, how?”

“Our boys in the Security Operation Center caught a huge data exfiltration from within our network, some kind of malware snuck in and the attackers were trying to steal as much info as possible.”

“And I’m absolutely needed there?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Isn’t it obvious how serious this is?” His yelling and panicked voice suggested something in the scale of an JANUARY 2021

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H-bomb blowing up all of downtown.

“Sure… I’ll be there asap.”

Booker's PM was what she thought the result of a secret CIA PsyOp program to create the most insufferable prick on Earth. He had an obvious disdain towards her, not only because he saw her as a mercenary criminal wannabe but also because she lived beyond the usual rules of the Corporation. Despite being, by all accounts, a recent employee, she was not an intern bringing him coffee and cookies, but instead a living exception to Corp with a very substantial monthly compensation.

Her look was the typical of these days. Messy, short black hair, clothing on its second day of use. T-shirts and jeans laid on one side of the closet and business-friendly clothing on the other. She sighed and grabbed a formal shirt and pair of business-friendly trousers. She hated formal clothing, but Rain had spent way too much time arguing about dress codes.

There were dishes from the day before, and the day before on the desk where the computer was, clothing scattered all throughout the floor, an empty bottle of wine on a corner of her room sat there since last May. The whole apartment was not bigger than 25m^2 which made the space look even more cluttered, an absolute mess. But at least, it was her apartment, no strangers around invading her personal space.

Rain stepped outside, a chill wind swept the busy streets, a dim winter sun embraced the downtown buildings, the constant noise of car horns, excited and/or drunk tourists spoiled what would be a perfect cold day.

She walked down the street to catch public transportation, the bus takes half the time, however riding the bus meant interacting with the driver in order to pay the ticket and Rain wouldn’t have any of that.

“The subway it is.”

She stepped outside the subway station and into the corporate HQ, a huge screen outdoor marked Booker’s building.

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A CANDIDATE WITH SERIOUS PROPOSALS A REALISTIC VISION FOR OUR FUTURE BOOKER FOR PRESIDENT Booker’s face showing his typical confident smile was seen on the outdoor screen.

Going in, Rain had to identify herself, since she was not a regular employee this proved to be an awkward hassle. The temporary employee card in her possession, depending on the security guy calling the shots that week, might be good enough or not. That interaction alone was enough to deplete Rain’s social fuel.

She approached the Booker’s PM’s office already tensed up, she expected a storm, yelling and overall unhelpful rage.

“How did they get in?! This is your job!” Booker’s PM shouted.

“I’ll have to do some forensics. Infrastructure auditing didn’t reveal anything problematic.” Rain tried to keep her composure but it was difficult to disguise her anxiety and the slight shaking on her hands.

“Find the hole, this is very serious! Are you listening? We’re not paying you to sit at home and play on your computer, this is your responsibility!”

As annoying as the yelling was, she found that the despair of this man to get rid of all responsibility drove him to make some pretty bold claims, claims that hurt her pride.

“There are many ways this could have happened, not necessarily an attack from outside that exploited your defense against threats that come from the Internet but something internal, an employee inserting an infected SD card or pen drive for instance…”

“The people working here are not idiots!”

“I’m not implying that, but this sort of thing…”

“They are all trained, there is a very strict policy against SD cards and pen drives on our machines,” he interrupted.

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“Sure but it still can happen, people make these sort of mistakes all the time.”

“It seems to me that you’re trying to weasel your way out of this.”

“Not at all, like I told you I need to do some forensics before claiming anything.”

“Then do it.”

Rain grabbed her laptop and started the investigation. After awhile she got a sample from the malware responsible for the attack.

“Ok, this is new.”

This malware targeted a specific software installed on the affected machines using an exploit that she has never seen. This attack was elegant, smart and efficient. She didn’t understand the whole logic of the program, but the code took advantage of a specific feature on a printer within the network, allowing the attacker to insert some of his own code thus giving him administrator privileges: a complete take-over.

Jealousy built up in her eyes, she was a competent professional, but not extraordinary, to pull something like this you need to be way ahead of the competition. Rain took the sample and ran home. The toxic corporate environment was already getting to her. She grabbed a cigarette and smoked outside the subway station still shaking from being yelled at

by Mr. Booker’s Project Manager.

“It’s not my fault,” she told herself, “Some idiot put an SD card in a computer. Happens every week.”

Even if they were compromised over the Internet, she couldn’t prevent every possible attack on every possible device on this huge network, right?

She finished the cigarette and dashed home as fast as the barely functional subway allowed. This was one of these days where all your insecurities were poked.

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CHAPTER FOUR Benjamin uploaded a new video, simply titled “So I'm not real.” On this 20-minute rant JB argued that this revelation wouldn't hinder his productivity. “This channel is not going to die because of this. It's meaningless, my mission was not to present you a face or a body, it is to present and discuss ideas. This relentless witch hunt is an attack on free speech!” Benjamin, despite being exposed as a ghost, was still using his ghost persona: a black-haired man using a long, but well kept, graying beard.

Rain didn’t love JB or agreed with everything he said, but found his rants amusing enough to warrant some late nights of binge watching. And he was right, who cares about his appearance? Maybe he just wanted to keep himself anonymous, maybe he didn’t want to deal with people like Mr Booker bringing him to court. Well, those sex tapes could be real! Who knows? In the good old days if you didn’t want to be identified on the internet you used a ski mask or presented yourself as an animal avatar or something, this was basically the same thing, she thought.

Now that she updated herself on the latest e-drama she resumed work, the malware that she brought home was too much to chew; time to bring a third-party’s help, while this was not technically allowed by her contract, she found it to be better than to do a lousy job.

Mark was a beast at malware analysis, one of the top dogs on a huge multinational company and an old college friend, he was a valuable asset when extra input or ideas were needed. Rain sent him the sample and waited for his feedback. About 2 hours later she got a text: “Hey, can you meet me in the coffee shop? I really don’t like giving feedback over the internet and this one looks like a piece of work.”

“Understatement of the year, alright, I’ll be there in 20.”

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had decent Wi-Fi, was quiet enough and power sockets were always available. It was a chain coffee shop which made Mark a bit uncomfortable, these places are exploitative and parasitic by nature according to him.

There were around 20 places of the same chain on the city, all with the same minimalistic, Nordic style decoration. It was sickening to him. But they were convenient and cheap.

“So the bug on this printer you said the malware was taking advantage of…” Mark paused and turned his laptop’s screen to Rain “This is new, this piece of code in particular, this was what you were talking about right?” He pointed at the piece of code that made Rain reconsider her competence.

“Yeah, that’s what made me realize that this was not a complete idiot going after low-hanging fruit.” Rain turned her eyes away from the code and straight into Mark. “Wait, what do you mean by new? Is this a zero-day?!”

“Looks like it.”

A zero-day is the holy grail of a security professional. This means that the hacker who programmed this malware had the knowledge of a weak point in this specific software that no one else in the world had. This is huge. Zero-days are rare. You’re lucky to find a zero-day in a year working full-time. And to find one and use it on a real attack? This was not some kid on his mom’s basement.

“Wait, holy shit, who made this?” Rain asked, it was clear they were dealing with something on a whole other league.

“That’s not even the best part!”

“What could be possibly be better than a zero-day?”

Mark looked straight at her with a smile.

“Three of them.”

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CHAPTER FIVE Rain tuned in on her favorite podcast. She didn’t want to deal with any more work today. This malware situation was complete and utter bullshit.

“I do not deserve this, no one deserves this, you’d need to beat baby penguins with a club to deserve this.” She grabbed a cigarette, the pack was drying up way too fast. “I’m an average security person trying to pay rent, the bills and not die, I don’t want to be put against someone who pulls three zero-days out of his ass. No, absolutely not.”

Today’s guest on the podcast was a PhD on AI discussing the recent phenomena concerning the use of ghosts on mainstream society: “It’s not only that we can fabricate people. We can fabricate people that mirror the image we want,” he said, in an excited tone. “You can throw in the data set you want and a person comes out, you can personify concepts!”

“Concepts? Like love or hope?” the podcast’s host asked, in a confused but curious tone.

“Make a data set with all of what people associate with ‘love’ or ‘hope’ and we can turn it into a person.”

The next day was another drag, Rain had to do grocery shopping which implied another trip to the outside world and Mark insisted on another meeting to discuss the malware situation. Right outside the building was her neighbor from the apartment below. Mrs Quinn was a 40 something typical woman, graying hair, mellow hazel eyes that do not lift from the screen of her smartphone.

With the rise of AI-powered services, certain, more out there, services were offered. Imagine an AI capable of learning from all of the chats, all posts on social media from a certain person, if this software can accurately absorb language mannerisms, vocabulary and opinions it is JANUARY 2021

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possible to produce a sort of chatbot which replicates a person’s presence online. One of the most unsettling applications of this principle is to manufacture a sort of online immortality. Certain moms have been found to be spending days talking with an AI-copy of their dead sons. Since Quinn’s son died in a car crash one year ago this was basically her life.

“Imagine spending hours upon hours talking with a cold unconscious pseudo-AI,” Mark answered when Rain told him about Mrs Quinn’s new hobby.

“If it feels like their son enough for them to spend so much time talking to it, I’d say it’s impressive enough as a piece of tech and, who knows, maybe one day we can actually manufacture a truly alive chatbot out of dead person’s online presence,” retorted Rain.

“Are you familiar with the Chinese Room?”

“I don’t think so” “It’s a thought experiment. Imagine you’re locked in a room with a bunch of Chinese characters and an instruction manual containing exact instructions on what to answer in Chinese, given a certain input, again, in Chinese.”

“So basically, a stupidly large book containing if/then statements?”

“Yes, that’s it. Now, you don’t know a word of Chinese, however if you receive a message from a native Chinese speaker you are able, using this godly instruction book, to assemble an answer to any question in perfect Chinese. From the perspective of this messenger, outside of the room, you are a perfect Chinese speaker. But could you really say you know the language?”

“Well, my first thought would be obviously not.”

“And that’s, in a nutshell, a rather convincing argument on why ‘strong’ AI isn’t possible. You’re giving a machine an extensive, precise instruction set on how to interpret a certain input and what output is acceptable. Even though it spits out convincing answers, you can’t in good JANUARY 2021

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faith argue that the machine is conscious.”

“Nevertheless, this hypothetical Chinese speaker is completely convinced.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then what difference does it make?”

“On a surface level none, however we can confidently say a machine that transforms input A into output B using a sort of ultraadvanced formal grammar isn’t alive.”

“Aren’t we basically that after all? According to certain stimuli we exhibit certain behavior according to our ‘program’ which ‘code’ is a combination of education and nature. It does seem a bit silly to argue what’s truly ‘human’ or ‘conscious’ if we can’t tell what makes us conscious or human.”

“Alright, we are hitting some impossible questions, we already have enough hardship on our hands with this piece of evil work.” Mark returned his focus to the open text editor on his laptop.

“Right right, so about those zero-days, should we report them for bug bounty money?” Rain’s dark eyes shined. Certain companies have bug bounty programs, these allow freelance hackers to report found security bugs on their products, usually for a monetary reward.

“Yeah, about that, I really don’t like that idea.”

“Why not? It’s flawless, it’s not like this mysterious hacker is going to tell on us.”

“Three zero-days Rain. Three of them. All of them on devices that your client coincidentally just happened to own on his internal network.

This is not a fat dude on his underwear posting screenshots of his attacks on the internet for street cred.”

“What do you mean?”

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this up, tell Booker’s people that someone opened an infected email attachment or something.”

“What if they find out? My career would be over.”

“If they had the ability to find this out by themselves you wouldn’t have been hired.”

“Point taken.”

She was unsatisfied with this conclusion. Of course, she never dreamed of actually catching the perpetrator. But, goddamn, just calling it quits by submitting a fake report and forget that she never saw this amazing malware didn’t feel right. If she dug just a little bit more maybe, just maybe, she could find evidence of who was behind this, but she lacked the skills to do this by herself and Mark didn’t want to get mixed on this.

“Fuck it.”

Rain opened a bug bounty platform. The company that made one of the devices affected by this malware had a public bounty program. The prize money for a bug, similar to the one exploited by the zero-days, was $10,000.

“Fuck it.”

She submitted a report detailing how the zero-days worked and copy pasted the snippet of code from the malware to the report, showing a proof-of-concept for this bug. She pressed “submit.”

“Fuck it.”

CHAPTER SIX A few weeks went by. Rain was a bit nervous, the bug report was an impulsive move but she couldn’t possibly contain that secret to herself.

The following days were typical, the depressingly cold, grey, albeit cozy, days continued and Rain was, as usual, doing a mix of heavy procrastination and security auditing. After her third coffee mug and fourth cigarette an JANUARY 2021

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email arrived on her inbox: Dear Mrs Wynn: Due to a contractual breach ( Section V, article 6), we are terminating you from your contractual obligations, effective immediately.

Best Regards The dry tone of the email didn’t match Rain’s mood at all. Her stomach sank, she fetched a copy of the contract and looked for the socalled Section V, article 6 she was barely able to go through the pages of the contract due to her shaky hands. Losing both the job at the campaign and the supermarket chain was not an immediate sentence to homelessness but a contractual breach like this could seriously damage her career. Word travels fast in the world of Information Security.

What was written on Section V, article 6 left her more puzzled than angry or anxious: 6 - Under no circumstances should confidential information resulting of the security auditing leave the authorized devices or presented to anyone not in possession of the required security clearance to handle such information.

Rain had intense paranoia about handling information. Since most of this job relied on confidentiality she exercised extreme care about what data was on her possession and tried to keep everything required to be present on her devices encrypted.

Given that, this termination was absolute nonsense. Then came a phone call. “Booker PM” showed up on the screen.

“I’m just confirming that you’ve received the email. We’ll probably see each other in court.”

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“Wait, you’re pressing charges? I haven’t leaked anything, where’s the evidence?”

“I’m emailing it to you.”

She opened the email’s attachment. An audio file started to play: “So, you received the documentation I sent you, there is clear evidence that the CFO is going to resign soon,” a voice, that appeared to be Rain’s, said.

“This is absolutely huge, for sure their stock prices are going to be hit,” another voice said.

The audio went on for a few more seconds, discussing this dramatic information. Rain was not impressed.

“Nice conversation with your reporter friend,” said Booker’s PM. “This could be literally anyone,” she said.

“Voice recognition matches with yours,” replied Booker’s PM. “Could be a ghost.”

“I hired a specialized team; they found no evidence of such thing.”

“This is absolutely bogus; this evidence won’t hold up in court.”

“The leaked documents have your watermark.” Rain froze, her whole body shut down for a few seconds.

Every employee had a personal card that granted access to doors, elevators, computers and certain applications. When you logged into an internal application and downloaded anything, said application watermarked the documents. It was trivial to check who was responsible for the leakage unless you removed this watermark. Rain knew about this system, everyone knew about this. However, this signature is mathematically impossible to forge, if a document had someone’s watermark, it was almost certain that’s who that copy came from. While the thesis that she leaked the information was absurd given her knowledge of the system, this was foolproof evidence legally speaking.

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mystery.

“Motherfucker…”

CHAPTER SEVEN She logged remotely into one of Booker’s servers that she had previously hacked into. Rain, enraged, looked for evidence on the identity of the attacker. Not only was she now very much deep intp criminal territory, this mysterious hacker most likely hadn’t left a note with cut out letters spelling a riddle waiting a smart detective to find it and solve it.

Nevertheless, she still looked into this far-fetched possibility.

Once again, she stumbled on a bunch of incomprehensible code.

Rain had no time to look into it, actually that was no longer her job, but this piece of weird code could be something left by the attacker before the data ex-filtration.

“Machine learning.”

AI… all AI. But what was it learning to do? To find out, she dug the data fed into the machine. After scrambling through walls of code she found the input to this giant neural network. It did not get any easier.

“Well, an all-nighter it is,” she said.

Rain grabbed her phone and ringed Mark.

“I really shouldn’t get involved in your little psychotic episode,” said Mark.

“But you really couldn’t resist the draw of adventure,” replied Rain.

Mark was setting up his laptop on Rain’s cramped desk, littered with receipts, books and USB cables of every kind. He cracked an energy drink open and began to analyze the code.

“So basically, you think this was planted by the hacker,” Mark said.

“I mean, I absolutely did not take part in that phone conversation,” Rain said.

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“You think the hacker somehow used an avant-garde voice replication technique to incriminate you and… left the evidence right on his target’s machine.”

“Look, I don’t know, it’s just that it seems to fit the narrative and someone somehow produced an exact replica of my voice, a replica so good that even a specialist can’t find marks of it being generated.”

Rain and Mark stayed in silence for a couple of hours, trying to reverse engineer the purpose of this learning algorithm with only the sound of keys, clicks and the occasional airplane in the background.

“I think I’m starting to get it, the data set is very far from being readable as it is but… look,” Mark said.

Mark isolated a few words from the huge data set. As a whole it was not human-readable, which was normal when it comes to this kind of thing, you can’t just throw in the whole works of Shakespeare to an AI and expect the machine to become a legendary writer, the input has to be trimmed down to its essentials to the core of what is actually needed, going from this core to the original format was not always a direct affair. In this case, Mark found words like “hope,” “democracy,” “people.”

“Is this like a … speech?” Rain said.

“Kind of,” Mark said.

“Is… is this motherfucker using AI to generate speeches?”

“I’m not entirely surprised if that’s the case.”

“I mean, it’s cleaver, but wow, fuck.” Rain threw herself into her tiny, badly maintained sofa.

“This does not solve your problem however, there is no evidence of voice generation or anything like it,” said Mark.

“There’s already AI in there, might be part of the same project, there was a ton of material in there.”

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stood up, grabbed a cigarette and lighted it. The data being fed into the AI wasn’t only speeches. They found something more “human” in there, personality traits, actions associated with certain personality traits, data from Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, even Hitler. Cultural DNA fed this software, data from all of the most successful and well-known leaders in History.

“You know I hate that,” said Mark, waving a hand in protest to the smoke.

“You don't get it. It's not just the speeches, it's everything,” said Rain.

“Everything?” asked Mark.

“It's a fucking ghost.”

Mark stood in silence and thought about her words, Rain was on her feet, cigarette in one hand, mouse on the other, she scrolled through the recovered data sets to make a point.

“It's all bullshit,” said Rain.

“But, you met the guy. Everyone has met the guy, he does public appearances regularly, how can he be a composite?”

“There’s a vessel for the ghost I guess.”

“Please elaborate,” replied Mark.

“This is not just a speech generator. This is a politics generator; speeches are just a component. This whole… thing... is generating a person.”

“Like a ghost.”

“Yes.” “They are generating the ‘perfect’ politician?”

“Hmm, yeah you could say that.”

“But Booker exists, he’s a person.”

“That’s what I was saying. He’s a vessel.”

“An actor?”

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“Something like that.”

Booker existed but he didn’t, his words, look and even mannerisms were not his. Mr. Booker was the shell of the ghost, a way of the code to interact with the real world, a mere actor.

His voters were trying to elect not a person, instead, an idea. If this worked, democracy, much like tic-tac-toe, was a solved game.

“There is a precedent now,” said Mark. “Are we already being ruled over by AI over proxy?” Rain sat down and rested her head on the palms of her hands, still processing what this all meant.

“How many people are actually ghosts? How many of my acquaintances are actors?” said Rain.

“When our parents and grandparents complained about “fake” people on social media they were onto something,” said Mark.

“All human interaction is now performance. What do we make of all this?”

“We’ll keep this under wraps, of course.”

“Why of course? Isn’t it like a civic duty to expose this?”

“For what purpose?” replied Mark. “He’s giving them what people want. Why does it matter how he managed to figure out what they wanted in the first place?”

Mark was right, the cost/benefit relation to uncover all of this conspiracy was completely not worth the trouble.

“But… why would this hacker try to incriminate you anyway?” asked Mark.

“I may have submitted a bug report with one of those zero-days,” replied Rain.

“Dude... I clearly told you to… fuck, never mind.”

Too exhausted to get mad, Mark tried to summarize the situation: “Booker’s strongest evidence that you were the person on the tape talking with the reporter is the smart card you guys use to log in, right?”

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“Right.”

“You still have remote access to their systems, is there any chance you can access the database with the smart cards’ keys? Maybe you could...”

“Ohhhhh that’s so illegal,” Rain said.

“I mean, if that signature is changed there’s nothing they can do right?” Mark said.

“I don’t like it, but I also don’t like jail,” replied Rain. Mark shut his laptop down and grabbed his jacket.

“Just keep me out of this.”

CHAPTER EIGHT Rain rolled on her bed and stared at her mobile phone’s screen.

Most of her social media feed was auto-generated clickbait articles written

by AI. She received job offers received on a professional social network sent by non-existent human resources employees and some of the actual existent humans online were merely performing an optimized character.

Human interaction, life itself, was becoming Theater. All of the ancient metaphors comparing life to theater and equating people with mere actors following a script were becoming literal. And all of this was fine, no moral panic concerning technology has ever produced anything of note. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. The story talks about a “Chinese Room,” a place with an enormous book of if/then statements that tell a non-Chinese speaker how to respond to every possible question asked to them in Chinese. In this hypothetical scenario, can it be said that the person “speaks” or knows Chinese? Is it the exact approximation of Chinese speech makes you a Chinese speaker, or something else?

2. How are you, as a person, different than the “Chinese Room” thought problem? Are you more than a series of if/then statements accumulated over time? Isn’t your answer to the above question exactly what an if/then statement book would tell you to say?

3. Does it matter if entertainment personalities are ghosts and not real people? How is a ghost actor in an action movie in the future any different than an animated character in an animated movie today?

Does the fact that the ghost is so good it tricks you, matter?

4. Would you feel comfortable having a ghost serve in other roles, such as a doctor, police officer, or teacher? If perfection (and lack of bias) is the point, shouldn’t you want someone doing the job that never makes a mistake?

5. Are you okay with the ghost candidate in the story? Is the goal of a politician to be the perfect reflection of the desires of the people he/she represents? If so, what is wrong with programming that information and taking away the personal bias or corruptibility of a real person? ***

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Monsters Ana Carolina Pereira *** The ice cream truck rolled down the street where the Pinketts lived. It passed slowly and kept on going, towards the park that was three blocks away, its siren song got lost in the distance like a popsicle melting in the heat of that summer day.

Nancy was lying in bed with her daughter Carrie Mae. Both dozed under the canopy of the child’s four-poster bed. The canopy curtains were white with pink lace flowers and they matched the motif of the wallpaper, a repeated pattern of a delicate bouquet of roses. Most things in the room had touches of pink and white. Outside, a blue jay landed on a branch of the oak tree that stood next to the house, chirped its heart out for a few seconds, and then flew away. It was a soft and sweet afternoon in a strawberry vanilla little girl’s room.

Activated by the truck’s music, Carrie Mae got up from the bed and began to jump. Her two thick braided ponytails, which Nancy had made for her in the morning and tied with brightly colored elastic bands, bounced lively in all directions.

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“Did you hear, ma? An ice cream truck! Buy me an ice cream.

Pleeease.”

Nancy had not seen her daughter so happy since they had moved to that house, just two weeks ago.

“All right, Carrie Mae. Let's see what the ice cream man brought today.”

As soon as she said those words, Nancy regretted them. Her first impulse had been to say no, to make up some excuse not to leave their small heaven. But her daughter's enthusiasm had disarmed her. It was Saturday afternoon and the park must be full of people. Nancy imagined herself standing on the grass, holding hands with Carrie Mae, surrounded by those strangers, and shuddered. The scene resembled a nightmare that had been visiting her for the past few days: the crowd approached them, closed in on both of them, slowly choking them like a boa constrictor.

She went with her daughter to the bathroom and helped her wash her hands. Then she retouched her makeup, applied some hairspray to her bob, checked that there was enough change and a new bag of tissues in her purse, and went outside.

Melvin was in the front yard, dipping a brush into a can of light blue paint, his face varnished with sweat. It was the third time he had to paint the outside of the house and Nancy was already beginning to hate that color. As soon as he saw his wife and daughter, Melvin smiled and then raised his eyebrows when he noticed that Nancy was carrying her purse.

“I'm going with Carrie Mae to the park to get some ice cream,” she said.

The smile vanished from Melvin's face. He frowned. A reflex. Fear.

First, he tried to dissuade Nancy from going. Then, he wanted to go with them.

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“Hurry up, the ice cream cart is leaving, ma.”

“Let me finish talking to your dad, dear. The ice cream man isn’t going anywhere yet,” Nancy said to the child as she took her hand. Then she looked seriously at her husband: “I don't think they'll do anything to us… they wouldn't dare. And this has to stop, Melvin. Going together everywhere, joined at the hip like Siamese twins. You stay here and finish what you’re doing. I’ll let you know if something happens.”

“Really? How?” Melvin took a handkerchief from his pocket with an impatient gesture and wiped the sweat off his face.

“I’ll yell. You’re always telling me that I speak loud, that my voice is too strong, no? If we don't come back in half an hour, you go look for us.

See you in a while, Mel.” Without waiting for her husband's reply and without looking back, Nancy began to walk away from the house with Carrie Mae, feeling Melvin's eyes glued to her back. She held her daughter’s hand tight.

Nothing, not even a tornado could separate them. They were both sweating, Carrie Mae because of the heat and she because of the anxiety.

The child trotted along beside her mother and sang: Ice cream man, ice cream man Ring the bell, ring the bell One scoop, two scoops, three scoops Straaw… erry, chocolate, pecan Quick! Gimme the cone bee-fore they melt Nancy counted the steps in silence. One, two, three, four, five ... It was only three blocks to the park, how many steps were in that distance?

They walked by a house with a ‘For Sale’ sign freshly planted in the ground. It seemed to Nancy that the sign was shaped like a giant hand pointing its index finger to the two of them.

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other with big gestures, but as soon as they saw Nancy and Carrie Mae, their countenance shifted from fear to disgust. One man, walking on the opposite sidewalk, spat in their direction. No one greeted them. Carrie Mae stopped singing and trotting, and began to walk very close to her mother, with her head down. Nancy kept her back straight and her chin up, while she felt her daughter shrinking beside her, as if trying to disappear. She wished Carrie Mae were a chick and she a giant bird to cover her, to protect her with her wings, to tear and drill with her beak the flesh of anyone who dared to hurt her child. She wanted to be a mother-bird with huge wings.

They crossed the street and arrived at the park. It was empty but for the ice cream truck, painted in pink, white and mint green, with giant vanilla cones on the sides. There didn’t appear to be any threat nearby, perhaps the neighbors had learned that the two were heading to the park and decided to humiliate them once again by leaving them alone there, like a couple of lepers. Carrie Mae returned to her usual exuberance. She started running through the grass, pulling her mother's hand, who didn't let go… not yet. They traversed the park towards the truck. The ice cream man was in there, with his back turned on them.

Nancy hoisted her daughter up and perched her on her hip so that she could look inside. The girl was getting bigger and heavier and Nancy realized that it wouldn’t be long before she stopped lifting her for good.

She thought that the day she picked her up for the last time would go unnoticed to both of them, it would be just like any other. She wished there was something, a tangible object she could put in a scrapbook to commemorate that sad occasion, a postcard with a picture of the two that said: “The last time I picked up my daughter.”

“Hello, ice cream man!” shouted Carrie Mae. The man turned around and Nancy was so surprised that she almost ran away in fear. Carrie Mae screamed and buried her head on her mother's shoulder, covering her eyes with her hand.

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Huge dark violet lumps populated the man’s face. It seemed as if an epidemic of bright tumors, similar to eggplants, had taken over and that they were on the verge of exploding. A few small areas were free of lumps and there the skin was white, the bone structure harmonious. Perhaps, without his condition, he would have been a handsome man —tall, slender and broad-shouldered—, but like this, he was the ugliest person Nancy had ever set eyes on.

She took a couple of steps back and pressed her daughter against her chest. But then she managed to control herself and kept her gaze on the eyes and mouth of the man. Eyes that were blue and lively, and a mouth that smiled at her with perfect white teeth. One of the few smiles she had seen on the streets of Windsor Woods.

“What are you two beautiful ladies having today? Marshmallow mint, Hawaiian sherbet, banana strawberry, coconut fudge? Those are the day’s specials. Delicious for a sunny afternoon.” The man said this beaming, as if he were one of those cheery TV announcers. As if he were handsome.

He wore his impeccable soda jerk outfit with flair: a white short-sleeved shirt accessorized with a black bowtie and a white hat. Their unease didn’t seem to bother him a bit and this somehow reassured Nancy.

“Two banana strawberry cones. Just one scoop, please.”

“Jolly good choice, ma’am! They’ll be ready in a minute.”

Nancy hadn’t thought for quite a while about little Marcus, a childhood neighbor who had a deformed and very thick leg, like that of an elephant. Her mother always warned her and her siblings that they should be good to little Marcus because his cross was already too heavy. One time, Nancy’s mother overheard her brother Tom —the second oldest of her children— making a joke about the boy, saying that maybe someone should prick his leg with needles to deflate it so that his cross wouldn’t be as heavy. She took Tom by the ear and dragged him into another room, where she chastised her son and made him stay for the rest of the day.

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While the man was scooping the ice cream, Nancy felt how Carrie Mae's tense body relaxed, she saw how her daughter withdrew her hand from her face and peeked at the stranger with her left eye, somewhere between frightened and curious.

“Here we go.” The man extended a banana strawberry cone, not knowing whom to hand it to.

“Take the cone, dear,” said Nancy. Carrie Mae reached out an undecided hand, trying not to look at the man. “What do you say?”

“Thank you,” the girl uttered in a whisper.

Nancy put the child down on the sidewalk and told her to go to the park. Ambling to the playground, Carrie Mae took turns licking the ice cream and turning to watch her mother and the stranger.

“Nice neighborhood. Have you lived here for long?” said the man as he scooped the other ice cream. “My name is Tom, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Tom. I’m Nancy. No, we just moved. We’re still getting used to it.”

“You’re the only ones here, I suppose. I mean… I was just ‘greeted’ by some of your neighbors,” he said sarcastically as he handed Nancy her cone.

“That’s right, we’re the only ones.”

Nancy kept wondering whether they had done the right thing by moving to Windsor Woods. On paper it seemed like a great idea: it was a suburb-style neighborhood just fifteen minutes from downtown, where Melvin worked an office job. The school was good, not overcrowded and with only one shift. Trees lined the streets and everything looked welltended and pleasant, like a postcard of the American Dream. The house had three rooms: one for the couple, one for Carrie Mae and one for the baby they expected to conceive soon. At last, they would go from tenants to homeowners. Despite these advantages, she balked initially at the idea of buying the house, knowing that for many of their potential neighbors, JANUARY 2021

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people like them were a stain that had to be erased from the postcard of the American Dream. But Melvin ended up convincing her. Sometimes she almost hated him for that. With each new humiliation by the neighbors, the rage she felt towards them was transferred to Melvin, amplified.

“I guess they haven't made things too easy for you?” said Tom. “I’ve seen what they’ve done in other neighborhoods, those so-called church-going, God-fearing folks.” For an instant, his face turned sour.

“You guessed right. It could be worse, I know: in Woodland, they burned a house down the other day. In Roseland, they broke the windows of another. Here they haven’t gone that far, though it’s been exhausting.”

“People like that… they want things to be a certain way —their way— and when they see stuff shifting, they take it badly, I know them all too well. But you’re doing the right thing. It's none of my business, of course, and it’s hard to walk in someone else’s shoes, but if I was you I’d stay put.”

“Well, we may have no other choice. At least for now.” Nancy licked the ice cream and held back the tears that were starting to blur her vision. Melancholy overcame her as she remembered the lazy Sunday afternoons spent hanging out and talking to her friends in her old neighborhood.

“Can I tell you a story, Mrs. Nancy?”

“Go ahead, Tom.” “As a child my mother kept me locked up all day and only took me out at night now and then. When she left home without me, she tied me with a rope to the bars of the bed. She said that people shouldn't have to see a monster like me, that I scared them. But I was scared to death of people, too. Tell me who gets the most frightened: the person who fears a spider because it seems hideous to him, or the spider facing a giant that can crush it with his foot?”

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himself because a huge spider is crawling on his lap.”

Nancy recalled that the real estate agent had shown them the house at night. They went in to see it camouflaged by the dark, hidden from the neighbors like criminals.

“All the same, I believe it’s necessary to educate folks, Mrs. Nancy.

Maybe that's why people like me came to this world. When I turned six, my mother ran away with someone she’d just met, a good-for-nothing lecher… she was always falling hook and sinker for those. An uncle and his wife, who weren’t blessed with children, took me in and raised me as their son.

Best thing that ever happened to me! They went with me everywhere and were always so proud of their boy. Little by little, they took the shame off me. The ugly duckling turned into a swan… well, so to speak, ha ha.”

His laughter had a tinge of sadness in it. He went on: “Thanks to them, I didn’t become a freak both inside and out. I know, it’s hard for others to get used to my face and I’ll never get used to the staring, the whispering, the jokes, all that. But I like being outside, around people, and I won’t spend my life locked up just to keep others from being uncomfortable… no way, ma’am.”

“It’s a nice story, Tom.” “A true story, Mrs. Nancy.”

She nodded without comment, nibbling her cone. He was right, of course: they were both destined to walk in difficult shoes. His shoes and hers were of a different kind, though. “There but for the grace of God, go I,” most people would say in hushed tones upon meeting someone like Tom. A lot of those same people would have other words for the likes of her.

She finished her cone, paid Tom and went to one of the park benches, where her daughter was sitting.

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that happened, she liked to put the fingertips of her index and thumb together, and see how the skin stretched as she tried to separate them. As Nancy wiped her with a tissue, the girl kept looking at Tom, fascinated, as if trying to decipher his strangeness at a safe distance.

“Don't stare at him, sweetheart. It's rude.”

“Why is that man so ugly, ma? What happened to his face?”

“His name is Tom. He was born like that. He’s a normal person, like you and me, it’s just that his face is different.”

“Oh, he was a child like that? Why? Did his mom love him with that face?”

“Of course his mother loved him, moms love their children very much.”

“And God?” “Of course God loves him, God loves everyone.”

“And if God loves him, why did he make him so ugly, ma?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dear. Your mom doesn’t have all the answers.

Hey, let’s go play instead!”

Nancy pushed her daughter on the swing —“Higher! Higher!” demanded the girl incessantly, and her laughter soared with her to the sky—, and then helped her climb up the slide and caught her at the bottom.

Carrie Mae wanted to get on the seesaw but there was no child to counterbalance her at the other end. She sat there anyway, and Nancy tried to push the device up and down with her arms, but it was too heavy.

As it happened to her sometimes, she felt guilty for not giving Carrie Mae a little brother or sister before. But kids were expensive. She and Melvin had decided that it was better to welcome a second child into their own house, not crammed into a rented one with just two bedrooms, and it took them a good while to save the money for the down payment. Next year, if things worked out.

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to say goodbye. During all that time only the three of them were in the park, like outcasts in their own private Purgatory. The girl still glanced furtively at the ice cream man, and Nancy —despite liking him, despite her efforts to treat him naturally and look him in the eye without staring away at the incongruous bulges in his face, to not feel in her gut a mixture of repulsion and compassion— had to acknowledge to herself that his face would take some getting used to… maybe if she saw him often, as it had happened with little Marcus.

“Will you come back again sometime soon?” she asked Tom. “Not likely, Mrs. Nancy. I’m covering for a colleague who’s sick. But you can find me not too far from here: Tuesdays and Thursdays at Westfield, Wednesdays and Fridays at Willow Creek and weekends at Peach Blossom Terrace. Feel free to drop by any day. Much more neighborly folks in those places, you’ll see.”

On their way home, they passed again in front of the ‘For Sale’ sign.

Nancy knew that those signs would likely soon spread throughout the block. It had happened already in other neighborhoods, and in other cities.

Newspaper articles had been published about this phenomenon. She knew it was their neighbors’ biggest fear. Sometimes, she imagined their conversations at dinnertime, behind closed curtains and shut doors, behind those hostile façades: Now that the Pinketts had arrived, should they sell quickly and get out of there while they still could, before the prices of their homes plummeted like a stone down into the sea? Or should they stay and try to contain the tide?

She and Carrie Mae kept on walking, always holding hands. Their house was now only a block and a half away. All of a sudden, Nancy felt unease. She turned her head around swiftly and saw a crew-cut brownhaired man in a buttoned down plaid shirt, standing in the middle of the sidewalk a few feet behind them. He took a long drag on his cigarette, his squinting eyes focused on her.

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“Let’s hurry up, baby, let’s not keep your dad waiting anymore,” she said to Carrie Mae, hastening the pace and squeezing her daughter’s hand.

As they walked, Nancy pricked up her ears, trying to catch the sound of the man’s footsteps behind them. She felt her armpits, her forehead, drenched in sweat. They crossed the street almost running. Once they were on the other side, on the safe side, where they could now see their home, Nancy turned around. The man was still standing on the same spot, his eyes still fixed on her. He threw down the butt of his cigarette, stamped it out, and then turned on his heel and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Dad! Dad!” yelled Carrie Mae, as she pulled her mother’s hand.

Melvin looked like a stick figure in the distance, a few houses down the street. The child kept on pulling, trying to break free and run towards her father. Her little girl was a paper kite that wanted to fly and the wind was blowing strong. But Nancy didn’t want to let her loose… not yet.

They reached the edge of their front yard. Melvin lifted his left arm and waved at them, while he used his right hand to wipe the sweat off his face with the hankie. He smiled with relief and they smiled back. The paint can lay next to him, with the lid on. The words that strangers had written with giant letters on the façade of their home had now been covered for the third time since they had moved. But for how long before they reappeared? Sometimes, Nancy imagined that the wood had a disease, an incurable fungus that always came back a few days after applying the treatment.

Whites only Negroes get out Each word was a bullet aimed at the three of them: Melvin, Nancy and Carrie Mae... even at the child that was yet to be conceived. Each word had stung Nancy's heart. Her consolation was that her daughter still could JANUARY 2021

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not read.

“Daddy, daddy!” Carrie Mae pulled harder.

Melvin crouched down, extending both arms. Nancy loosened her grip and let go of her daughter. Carrie Mae ran fast to her father’s embrace, as Nancy watched her child, her paper kite, soar towards the bright blue sky. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Why is the title of the story, “Monsters?”

2. The ice cream truck driver (Tom) says, “Tell me who gets the most frightened: the person who fears a spider because it seems hideous to him, or the spider facing a giant that can crush it with his foot?” What does this sentence mean in the context of the story? Who do you think is the most frightened in the story?

3. Is Tom right, is the antidote to fear of the unknown exposure? If that is the case, isn’t the only way to get the community over their fear for the Pinketts to move in?

4. Are the Pinketts brave or foolish for moving into a neighborhood that doesn’t want them? Does the fact that they have a daughter change your answer?

5. How would you have answered Carrie Mae’s question, “...if God loves him, why did he make him so ugly, ma?” Does this question also apply to the neighbors? If so, what is your answer? ***

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From The Editor The story of Sisyphus is one I have never understood as it is told.

In the Greek story, Sisyphus is “punished” by Zeus by being forced to eternally roll a boulder up a hill.

In my opinion, this was not a punishment, but a gift. Sisyphus was gifted a life purpose. He will never wonder if he should go left or right.

Forever, he has moral reason to get out of bed, and moral reason he does not want to go to sleep. In short, he has a goal.

Years ago I saw an interview with big wave surfer Laird Hamilton and he said the biggest fear of a dragon slayer is not that he would die, but that there will be no dragons left to slay.

That is my wish to you for the new year. May you always think what you are doing is the moral equivalent of “curing cancer.” May you always have a rock to push up a hill. May you always have a dragon to slay.

Best Wishes, Kolby Granville