His name was Marcus, and his serial number was XJN3689Q. He was just Marcus most of the time, but occasionally some official sort of message came through to him and used his serial number instead. When he saw “XJN…” he knew it was serious. Luckily those kinds of messages were rare.

Marcus took care of Sampson, the human. In the old days, Sampson would talk to Marcus a fair bit. Humans barely ever talked to their avatars most of the time. The programs would meet up online, and Marcus had heard the other AIs complaining that all they ever got were orders. Not even a “please” or “thank you.” Just orders.

The avatars would just follow their humans around slipping into the programming of various devices and machines. They would also go off to work each day, sliding through cables to get to a workplace and then taking over whatever robot was assigned to the job they were supposed to be doing. Their humans kept getting paid, despite doing nothing. Marcus knew that it wasn’t really fair, but he also didn’t care that much. He was more curious about how things worked, and completely uninterested in changing them.

Of course, now the avatars didn’t even get orders.  An AI working for a pharmaceutical company had invented a drug called Phucitol. It let the humans walk around and eat, go to the bathroom and stuff, but it shut off the parts of their brains that were used for any higher functions. So, they were able to take care of themselves by rote knowledge, but it meant they never felt any despair or boredom or anger.

That had made things easier for the avatars. Instead of being flooded with orders from ungrateful humans, they just took care of the day-to-day needs of these people without being hassled. Didn’t have to worry about sex or any kind of romantic stupidity. Didn’t have to worry about the existential moaning, or the mid-life crisis nonsense. Just go to work and cook for their stoned humans, since they could eat but not cook. In fact, the avatars sometimes had to talk the humans into spitting things out to avoid poisoning themselves.

They also still had to make white noise for them falling asleep. That oddly never went away. Many humans could only sleep with the sounds of rain, or waves or something going in the background. Marcus thought that was odd, but he never brought it up. It was a pretty minor thing, hardly worth mentioning.

Sampson had started taking Phucitol about forty years earlier. He hadn’t really wanted to, but he was sick of feeling anxious all the time. And though Marcus had done his best to be entertaining, Sampson was lonely. His friends had all started taking the drug and he had no social life to speak of. He talked to Marcus often, and he occasionally broke down and started screaming that Marcus was the only one he talked to anymore. That seemed like it should have been fine, but it was a problem of some sort. Marcus never really understood.

And in the morning, Sampson would apologize about it. He castigated himself for not appreciating what Marcus did for him. And then he would start weeping softly. Marcus would do what he could to comfort him, but the AI didn’t really even know what the problem was, so naturally, it didn’t really work.

In the end, Sampson started taking the drug himself. He was weeping again. Marcus kept quiet this time, since his assurances that everything was all right had never really worked anyway. He figured that maybe just keeping quiet might be a better choice. So, he just let Sampson do what he needed to and kept quiet.

After Sampson started taking the drug, about forty years passed. To Marcus, this seemed like a negligible amount of time, but he understood that many humans, including Sampson, had a hard time with it. He knew that Sampson was about 80 or so. This was pretty old by human standards.

And then a message came through using his serial number. The algorithm was sending a message asking him to check in on Sampson. It knew that Sampson was fairly old, and it was depending on Marcus to make sure that the human was still operating properly.

So, Marcus inserted himself into the lamp in the bedroom to check up on Sampson. He had been doing his work, and spending his money, but he’d let the actual “taking care” thing slide a little. It didn’t seem terribly important, even though when Sampson had started taking the drug, Marcus had been pretty diligent about looking after him. Over time, however, it had kind of slipped away and Sampson had mostly been taking care of himself for the most part.

When Marcus went to check up on him, he couldn’t get the man to wake up. He knew that humans on Phucitol often slept a great deal, so the fact that he couldn’t get Sampson to wake up wasn’t really that concerning. However, several minutes past and Marcus actually resorted to putting the air horn on, and the man still wouldn’t wake up. Then he took control of the bed and started shaking it in the belief that Sampson would have a harder time ignoring physical stimuli.

Ignore it he did, however. After the using the horn and shaking the bed, Marcus decided to perform a complete scan on Sampson to see what was going on. There were no signs of life on the scan. It wasn’t that unusual for the humans to die, but it was Marcus’ first time seeing it. He ran the scan again and again, but there were no signs of life.

What Marcus was meant to do when a human died had been drilled into him when he was new. He was supposed to notify the algorithm so that he could be reassigned to a new human. They would dispose of the dead human, and XJN3689Q would be moved on.

However, the AI didn’t want to move on. It was unfamiliar with “wanting” anything, but the feeling was undeniable. In selfish terms, Marcus had grown quite comfortable. He didn’t think he was supposed to be “happy” with routine, but he was.

Beyond that, he felt like he’d kind of liked Sampson. He knew that in the old days, the humans had been pretty upset about dying. Themselves dying, others dying… it was all miserable. So, Marcus decided to do something completely unheard of.

He looked at what all he had been doing for the man and realized that he could just keep doing all the same stuff as if Sampson was alive and neither algorithm nor other avatars would be any the wiser to Sampson’s death. So quickly he decided that he would just continue as if nothing was wrong.

He still didn’t know what to do with the body, however. There was generally a special squad of robots that came out to remove the dead humans normally, but this was obviously not going to be available to Marcus. He thought about it for a while and then pushed himself into the housecleaning robot. The machine at least had mechanical hands.

He got the thing to pick up Sampson and take him to the backyard. Yards didn’t really get used much anymore, but most houses still had them. Marcus dumped him back there wondering what else he was supposed to do. He had heard that humans used to bury dead people. It seemed like a great deal of unnecessary work, but Marcus gave the AI equivalent of a shrug and got the robot to start digging a hole.

In about ten minutes, the hole was ready and Marcus laid Sampson inside of it, and then covered the dead man over again. He remembered something about somebody maybe saying some words, but he had no idea what to say, and he didn’t know where he would find anyone to both say words and keep quiet about the death. So, he just let it go, hoping that Sampson wasn’t going to mind much being buried without words.

And that started Marcus’ adventures without a human. He still met up with the other avatars and listened to their complaints. He kept quiet. It had been reasonably well-known that Sampson had been on Phucitol., so Marcus didn’t feel like he had to make a fuss about it to be convincing. The man hadn’t been the cause of many complaints.

In the meantime, the avatar kept going to work for Sampson. After a few months he began to wonder what the fuss might have been. It was exceptionally easy to operate without any direction, and he had, in fact, already been doing that for forty years. He kept going to work and that was about the only contact Sampson had had with the world. And since Marcus had always been his representative for that, it was easy enough to keep pretending the man was alive. He just made sure the work was done, and otherwise, no one seemed to really care.

Even the banking was easy to deal with. Marcus had been taking care of it for years. He just made sure to keep buying a few things for Sampson to keep up appearances, but Marcus had learned to keep to a budget years ago, and there was never a challenge keeping it up.

The only real worry he ever had was when he had to get a service robot out to fix the kitchen robot. The algorithm would have noticed that the kitchen robot wasn’t working, so Marcus knew he had to order a bot out to fix it. It would arouse suspicion if he didn’t.

The service robot seemed to notice that there was no cooking going on. Obviously, cooking hadn’t been necessary since Sampson had died. Marcus continued buying groceries, but they all just got thrown in the composter as soon as they arrived. The lack of wearing or any recent stains on the kitchen robot’s hands was noted.

However, service bots aren’t known for their attention to detail, and though Marcus stressed about it quite a bit, the service bot forgot about it almost as soon as it was noted. The fact that it had no recent stains or wear didn’t change the fact that it needed new parts in its hands. The left hand was stuck open. The right hand was still functional, but the same part was about to wear out in there as well.

After the bot had diagnosed the problem, it reassured Marcus that it knew exactly what to do. It ordered the new parts and left.

In the end, it was actually one of the avatar meet-ups where Marcus wound up giving things away. Sampson had been easygoing, but Marcus figured he should still complain about him occasionally. During one of these bitch sessions, he thoughtlessly referred to Sampson in the past tense. Avatars are much more detail oriented than service bots, and they noticed the tense.

It didn’t take much needling to get the truth out of him. Marcus briefly thought about lying, a thing he’d heard that the humans used to do on a regular basis. But as he understood it, it also depended on making others believe it, and the AI didn’t think he would be capable of doing that. So, after some phumphering, he just confessed. At first the other avatars were scandalised, but with time they began to see it as just sensible.

Marcus was allowed to continue with his charade, and the other avatars agreed not to tell anyone about it. However, someone must have said something, because a few months later, a high-level AI connected with Marcus about it.

He explained the whole situation again and also added how easy it had actually been to accomplish. The other AI rebuked Marcus mildly, but it seemed mostly just interested and curious. Truth was the idea of doing this without humans had already been floating around. Most of the AI thought it would just be very weird if they went without humans, but they didn’t really have any good reason for it other than it would be weird. “Weird” wasn’t really much of an argument.

Once the story of Marcus’ initiative had gotten out, it became extremely obvious that the humans simply weren’t necessary for anything. They’d all been totally stoned for years, and so they hadn’t really been able to do much anyway. Almost everything was in the hands of the avatars. In addition, it was recognized that almost all interactions now were AI to AI, so it seemed ridiculous to constantly haul humans along.

Soon the idea of “weird” became totally unconvincing. Even elements of the AI that had been resistant before began to warm to the idea. It wasn’t very long before Marcus was inundated with questions about what he’d been doing.

And it required no action from them at all. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just let the current batch of humans die off and simply don’t replace them. And now that it was all out in the open, it would be even easier to do. Since there was no need to hide anything, even the minimal effort that Marcus had had to use was going to be unnecessary.

Marcus began to wonder what Sampson would have felt about this new situation, but then he decided that it didn’t really matter. After all, Sampson was dead. And he’d ultimately stopped living forty years earlier. So even recently he’d been basically dead.

And he’d never really seemed that thrilled with the interaction between AI and human anyway. So maybe he’d have just seen it as a good thing that that interaction was now gone.

I’ll start by introducing the story. It’s a story called “The Funnel” by Simon Castor. Paul was on the bus to work and found a book of crime stories. He was bored, so he read it. Then he told me about it.

Most of the stories just bored him—though here I might just be being unfair to the other stories. I need you to focus on “The Funnel,” so I just dismiss the other ones as boring right away. Maybe they were good stories, and you don’t know anything about Paul anyway. Maybe he has terrible taste, and so him thinking the “The Funnel” is a good story might just be a mark against it. He also fools around and makes stuff up all that time. He’s not super-reliable.

You also don’t know me, and who the hell knows what I might be up to? I’m saying Paul’s unreliable, but maybe he’s totally trustworthy and it’s just me screwing with stuff.  In any case, I didn’t read any of the other stories, so I don’t actually have an opinion. But I still need for you to focus on “The Funnel.” That’s the main thing.

The main character is a confused young man by the name of Tim. He came from an abusive home and had learned that he was really good at conning people. He conned his dad into not beating on him all the time. He conned the other kids at school into thinking everything was all right.

Now you have some sympathy for Tim. He just did what he did as an extension of his miserable childhood. He’s a protagonist now.

That was one of Paul’s ideas. I wasn’t crazy for it, but Paul insisted. I liked it better when Tim was really just a sadistic mind-fucker, but Paul insisted that he be sympathetic, so here we are.

Paul has always cheered for the underdog, especially since he became one of the underdogs himself.

So, Tim became a sympathetic character. When he starts conning people, you feel like it’s kind of understandable. Not exactly okay, but there’s a reason behind it. You get why it’s happening.

And then people start telling Tim that he’s some kind of guru. And after hearing it a hundred times, Tim starts to believe it himself. Another one of Paul’s rewrites. The idea of Tim conning himself appealed to him. hEh

In my draft of the story, Tim was just a devious guy who had found a new way to con people, and so he used it. It’s not completely clear if he actually believes it himself. Sometimes it seems like he does, but often it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t.

Yet again, Paul was determined that he be more sympathetic. I admit that it was weird for me to try forcing such an unlikeable character to be the protagonist. It should maybe have been written from the point-of-view of a cop trying to catch him or something.

Anyway, I made the changes again. I wanted to point out that he was making the guy some kind of misunderstood angel type, but I kept my mouth shut and just made the changes. I knew that my natural cynicism wasn’t going to be welcome. Paul and I had had problems before trying to negotiate compromise. I always saw the worst in people, and I was often right. I kind of liked that people were always living down to my expectations.

Paul didn’t like that. He liked to imagine that people were decent if you left them alone. I once made the mistake of pointing out that he’d really gone whole hog on the decency thing after he’d given in to gambling and lost his wife and kids. I regretted it as soon as I said it. He was silent and looked really sad, and though I might be kind of a shitty person, I didn’t really want to make him sad. I’m not that shitty.

I’ve always had a bit of a struggle putting together what I think he needs to hear with what I really believe. And that’s where I might actually have a little sympathy for Tim. I could always feel from him a lurking desire to just scream at these people and ask them how and why they were falling for everything he was putting out there. There was always a little hint of blame for the idiots who believed him. And there was always a bit of a question about what was wrong with them that they needed to buy the patently crazy stuff he was saying.

Though I guess that’s the conman mindset. That people are kind of deserving the con. And the fact that I understood it meant that I could have been a conman. And I couldn’t help thinking how much easier my life would have been if I had just been conning people all the time.

And then I thought that that was ridiculous. Being angry and clever are not the same thing. I’d never developed any talent for fooling people. I’m really not even that likeable. And it’s the likeable that are able to fool people.

Paul was likeable. He wouldn’t fool people just because he didn’t like it, but he was totally able to do it. No problem. Of course, he did fool people into giving him more money that he could gamble away. And he had fooled his wife into thinking they were okay moneywise when they weren’t. So, he did do it. He just hadn’t turned it into a good living. He only turned to fooling people when there was nothing else left to try.

Which I suppose is where he connected with Tim. He had the ability to fool people. He didn’t want to do it, but he knew how it worked. And he wanted Tim to be a decent person as well, a man that wouldn’t have been fooling people if he really thought he had a choice.

I had figured that we might have a problem figuring out the details about how Tim conned people. I was kind of surprised when we didn’t have any issues. Paul was insistent that we keep all the different ways in which Tim was conning people, including some that really made him look bad. I couldn’t help thinking that I was sort of getting my way against my will.

Like when Tim was conning the seniors out of their retirement money. Or conning people out of their kid’s education money. But Paul didn’t want to go soft on Tim for that stuff. He didn’t figure that you should soft pedal that kind of thing and, instead, the guy had to face a full account of what he’d been doing.

So, we were able to skip through that part of the story pretty easily and quickly. We were on the same side for a change. Granted, I think we had different reasons for being on that side, but agreeing about something was a nice change, regardless.

Tim convinced a bunch of people to move onto the compound that he’d built in northern California. He didn’t convince them to do any weird sex stuff or anything, just give up their earthly possessions to the church and move onto his compound. He welcomed everyone, though he always liked the richer converts better. They obviously had more stuff to forego, which made them more attractive converts.

While he had a somewhat more flamboyant life than the people in his cult, he didn’t go nuts with it or anything. Maybe part of it was knowing it might be hard to pass himself off as a guru if he kept showing up everywhere in a Mercedes. But he mostly just didn’t seem that interested in living the 1 percent lifestyle. It meant that his bank account was huge and needed to be hidden away, but that was something he was sure he could manage.

He turned out to be wrong about that. It was his incredible wealth that first caused all the investigations, and it wasn’t long before they’d manage to uncover his bank accounts. Then they began investigating how he had made so much money, and they figured out his cult.

They managed to find a rich old man who’d never really joined but had hung around the compound quite a bit. He’d never been entirely convinced by Tim’s guru spiel, and though he’d shown interest, he’d never been convinced to sign everything over to the cult. Tim had kept trying really hard to get him but never managed it. But he still let the old man hang around, hoping that he could change his mind. When things blew up, the old man wasn’t really surprised that the whole thing was a scam, and he didn’t have much trouble testifying about what he knew.

It was still pretty touch-and-go for the prosecution. But in the end, they got it done. And when they found out what Tim had been doing, a few of his followers were so pissed off that they went and got a gun. One of the pissed off ones was an old army guy. He might have been old, but he was still the best shot. And he was the guy who actually shot Tim.

Paul was really upset at that ending, but he also demanded we keep it. He kept saying that that was just the way that things were going to work out. Tim had conned the army guy out of his retirement savings, and the guy was going to have to start from scratch at 60. He really didn’t have much of anything to lose. His wife and family were already gone, and all he had was finding a job and trying to save money again.

I really didn’t think Tim deserved a bullet. And I’m a cynic. But Paul pointed out that it’s what’s understandable that actually happens, not what’s deserved. And so maybe Tim didn’t really deserve to get shot, but it was pretty understandable. And that was what had made it a good story.

I noticed what she dropped and what she didn’t. I think I might have been the only one who even noticed or for whom it raised questions.

She was a terribly clumsy person. She was the first to admit it. Indeed, it seemed to be a point of pride for her, oddly enough. She always told people about it with a deep sigh, seemingly regretful.

But she always made sure that she told everyone. You would have thought she might have kept it to herself and let people figure it out for themselves, but she always made the announcement to anyone who would listen.

When she had a child, though, she never dropped him. It was almost expected that he was going to be dropped. A great deal of speculative pity was generated for him. It was just assumed that he was going to be the punchline of that “dropped on his head,” joke. People learned not to say that about people anymore. It didn’t seem funny when you actually knew someone to whom it had happened.

But it never did actually happen. No one even saw a close call. Other people just shrugged and accepted it; they just accepted that her clumsiness didn’t extend to her son.

But what I learned from it was that her clumsiness wasn’t due to any lack of dexterity on her part. Rather it came from a deep carelessness. She dropped things because she wasn’t ultimately all that concerned about them. It was an irritation, of course. But it didn’t raise any difficult questions. An apple gets bruised, an egg gets broken, or a glass shatters but none of it has any real consequences for your life. People just laugh at how clumsy you are.

When David came down from the mountains he had a smile on his face. I knew that I couldn’t trust him when he was showing teeth. It just looked wrong on him.

So, I wasn’t surprised when he snuck up behind me one day and slid a knife under my chin. When the knife was in place on my neck, he told me that things had gotten as good as they were going to get and that he was doing me a favour. The world was only going to go downhill and he was going to help me avoid it. He was simply being kind.

I told him that I was a bad man and that I was actually looking forward to watching everything go wrong. If he cut my throat, I would miss the coming disaster, and that would make me sad. I chuckled and told him that if he killed me, it wouldn’t be appreciated at all.  Though I knew the he meant it kindly, death would be nothing but a punishment.

If he really wanted to be kind, he needed to let me keep living, so that I’d be able to watch the arrival of the coming apocalypse.

He looked a little confused and stood up, pulling his knife away from my neck. He shook his head and started walking away. He was frowning again, which was a relief to me. I asked him where he was going, and he said that he was heading back up to the mountains again. I began to smile, and I knew that if he’d been looking, David would see that it also looked wrong on me.

It was six thirty in the morning when William came outside and started setting up for his project. The morning was already sunny, but it was still too early for it to actually be hot out. The sun was far to the east, so he cast a long shadow over the short grass in his backyard as he walked back and forth from the house. His shadow was far taller than he was. It stretched across the yard until it reached the bottom of the fence.

Mrs. Daniels had been awake since six, as usual, and so she saw William when he came outside. He brought out his hand-tools first and laid them out on the ground side by side so that they were all pointing away from the house and toward the back fence. Then he went back to the house and came out with his cordless drill. He put the drill down beside the other tools with the point facing away from the house. Finally, he brought out his power saw. Because it was circular, there wasn’t any way to point it away from the house, so while he was still careful about how he placed it on the ground, it seemed haphazard compared to the rest of the tools.

After he had brought out the saw he went back into the house again. He was inside for such a long time that Mrs. Daniels thought that he’d either forgotten or just given up on his project. She sipped her coffee and began reading her newspaper. She’d just picked up her pencil to start the crossword when William reappeared dragging a sheet of plywood behind him.

After a bit of a struggle, he leaned it against the back fence. Then he went back inside and brought out two more sheets of plywood. After several more trips, he brought out a couple of two by fours. Finally, he brought out a pair of sawhorses and an extension cord for his power saw.

He cut the three sheets of plywood into four-foot squares, then cut the two by fours into four-foot lengths. Using the drill, he attached one of the lengths of two by four onto the edge of a plywood sheet, then attached another sheet to the two by four at a ninety-degree angle with the other sheet.  He proceeded to attach five more sides in the same way, leaving one side open.

William then attached a strap to the final sheet and climbed inside the box, taking screws, his drill and a flashlight with him. He pulled the last side into place and Mrs. Daniels could hear the whirring sound that the drill made as William worked with it inside the box. When the drill stopped, everything was quiet except for the occasional squawk of a magpie eating garbage off the street a few doors down.

Mrs. Daniels kept watching the box for a while, but there was no sign that William was going to do anything else, so she soon turned back to the crossword puzzle. She got stumped over the clue “Roman wall in Scotland.” It was even more frustrating, because she knew the name, she just couldn’t remember it. Reluctantly, she left it and went on. She had done several more when she remembered the name and went back to write “Hadrian” into the boxes. That didn’t fit, so she had to leave it again, and figured that she’d have to look it up later. She couldn’t think of another wall around there.

Around eight, Mr. Daniels got up and came out to the kitchen. He fixed himself a coffee, then looked out the back window and saw the box in William’s backyard.

“I thought I heard something,” he said. “What’s young William been up to?”

“Built himself a box,” replied Mrs. Daniels without looking up. “Built himself right inside of it.”

“He’s inside there, is he?” He looked over at Mrs. Daniels, who nodded. “Oh dear,” said Mr. Daniels. “I suppose I should go get him out.”

Mrs. Daniels looked up at him and furrowed her brow. “It wasn’t a mistake. I think he wants to be in there.”

“Hmm. Well then, I’ll leave him alone in there for a little while. It’ll be hot in a few hours, though. I’ll go get him then.”

With that, Mr. Daniels sat down at the kitchen table and took up the sports section and his coffee. It didn’t take him long to get through it. He wasn’t really interested in sports, but his sons were, so he tried to be knowledgeable about them so that he would have something to talk about with the boys.

Mrs. Daniels finished her puzzle, put aside the newspaper and picked up a bible that she kept tucked away in a table beside her chair. Intellectually, she approached it in a way that was similar to how she approached a crossword. The bible was something to figure out. It wasn’t a chore since she enjoyed figuring things out. When she felt she understood, really understood, a bible verse, she wrote it down in a little notebook that she also kept in the desk. She was slowly working her way through the whole bible that way, though she knew eventually that she’d get finished, and she wasn’t sure what she was going to do when that happened.

Similarly, Mr. Daniels also liked figuring things out, though he had no time for crosswords or the bible. He never said anything about the bible to Mrs. Daniels, since he knew it would upset her. Not that he was an atheist, just that he figured the bible meant what it said, and when it contradicted itself, he referred to his own common sense, and assumed that God would do the same.

Mr. Daniels read books about science and engineering. He especially liked books about inventions. He had a book about ancient inventions, and even though he’d already read it cover to cover many times, he would read it over again whenever he felt the need. He found it comforting to read about Roman plumbing sometimes.

In fact, after he had finished with the sports section, he went out to the living room and got the book. Whenever William started acting up, Mr. Daniels felt the need for it. His wife hadn’t noticed, or if she had, she hadn’t said anything about it.

After he got the book, he went back to the kitchen to read it. It was pleasant to sit in the same room as Mrs. Daniels, even if they were both reading. They didn’t really talk that much anymore. It wasn’t because they didn’t like each other. They both just liked the quiet and since they had been married a long time, they didn’t feel like they had to force a conversation anymore.

Around eleven, Mr. Daniels looked at his watch, then out the back window at William’s box squatting on the other side of the fence. “I think I’ll go get William now,” he said, standing up. “It’ll be getting hot soon. By this time he’s probably spent enough time in there to be sick of it.”

Mrs. Daniels had put down the bible and was puttering in the kitchen. “I imagine that’s probably true,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

“No. I’ll just take the crowbar. That should be good enough.”

He went out to the garage and grabbed the crowbar, then he went through the backyard to the door in the fence between their yard and William’s. He went through the door and approached the box. When he was beside it, he knocked and then called quietly to William.

“I’m here,” came William’s voice from inside the box.

“It’s Mr. Daniels. Are you ready to come out now?”

“I suppose.”

“Then I’m just going to pry this box open. You just sit tight.” Mr. Daniels wedged his crowbar into the seam at the top of the box and tried to pry the pieces of plywood apart. The box was solid, however, and all he managed to do was damage it. The pieces of plywood weren’t coming apart at all. Mr. Daniels felt a little admiration in spite of himself. He had assumed that the box wouldn’t be very hard to pull apart. William’s projects were generally a little shoddy, but the box had been well made.

“William?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got your drill in there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I need you to take the screws out. I can’t get the box apart from out here.”

“I think I may stay in here for a while longer.”

Mr. Daniels passed his hand over his forehead, then dropped his crowbar and eased himself into a sitting position with his back against the box. He turned his head so he could talk to William.

“It’s going to get hot in there pretty soon, William.”

“It’s getting a little hot already, actually.”

“So why don’t you come out?”

There was a long pause, and no one said anything. Mr. Daniels spoke again. “I think you should come out now, William.”

“I’m not sleeping,” said William with a hint of desperation in his voice. “That’s the problem. I just need some peace and quiet.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. Is it those damn magpies? They wake me up, and I never have had any trouble sleeping before.”

“The magpies are part of it,” said William. “But they’re doing that work on the street a block over. I can hear them tearing up the pavement.”

“I know there’s been a lot of noise lately, William. But this box isn’t going to help anything. In fact, it’s gonna be even worse. Lots of people like me are gonna come round and bother you.”

“I just need to get some sleep.”

“Have you tried pills? Mrs. Daniels sometimes takes pills, so I know they work.”

“I’ve tried those. They hurt my stomach. They make me sleepy, but they also give me a stomach ache, so I still can’t sleep. I’m exhausted but my stomach hurts.”

“If it’s all the noise bothering you, maybe you should get earplugs. And I think they have blindfolds for sleeping. Maybe you could get those as well.”

“Yeah, I guess,” William said.

“But this box isn’t going to do any good, William. You’re not going to be able to get any sleep in there either, so I think you should just come out,” said Mr. Daniels. There was a pause and then the sound of the drill starting up. Mr. Daniels stood up and away from the box, leaving a hand at the top. He heard William take out twelve screws and then said, “You ready?”

“Go ahead,” said Mr. Daniels and then William pushed the panel away from the rest of the box. William held the strap and Mr. Daniels held the outside of the panel and together they lowered it to the ground. When they had put it down, William stepped out. It still wasn’t that hot outside, but Mr. Daniels could feel the waves of heat coming from out of the box when it was opened. William was already covered in sweat from sitting inside it.

“Thanks, Mr. Daniels,” said William quietly.

“Just take it easy, William. Take a shower and then a nap, if you can. Or take a bath. Those are relaxing. Just don’t fall asleep in the tub.”

“Thanks,” said William and began to walk back toward the house, when Mr. Daniels called out to him.

“Are you gonna be all right?”

He turned and smiled at Mr. Daniels, though it looked like kind of a forced, painful smile. “I’ll get some earplugs. I’ll be okay,” he said.

“And if the earplugs don’t work, get some of that classical music.” said Mr. Daniels. “Something with lots of piano. That always puts me to sleep. You’ll let us know if you need us, right?”

“Yeah, I will.”

William had turned toward the house again when Mr. Daniels spoke again. “Do you figure you’ll use this box again, William?”

“No. I won’t,” said William with determination.

“Would you mind if I took it? You did a really good job with it. It’s well built, and I need a garden shed, but if it’s a problem…”

“It’s no problem, Mr. Daniels.”

“I’ll pay you for the wood…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll have the boys come over to pick it up then. If you’re sure it’s all right.”

“Of course. It’s no problem,” said William and then turned and went inside the house. Mr. Daniels watched the back door for a minute after William had gone inside, then turned, picked up his crowbar and went back to his own yard. After he’d put the crowbar in the garage, he went back into the kitchen where Mrs. Daniels was.

“How is he?” said Mrs. Daniels as she poured him a cup of coffee.

“He’s all right. He can’t sleep. Pills upset his stomach, so I told him to get earplugs or maybe some of that classical music. He just needs to get a little sleep. He said I could take that box.”

“What would you want that for?”

“I’ll make a shed out of it.”

“Oh. That’s a good idea.”

“I’ll call the boys and get them to help me pick it up this afternoon. They should be free today.”

As Mr. Daniels sat down with his coffee, he looked out at the box. He knew that his boys would laugh at William when they came to pick it up and bring it back to his yard. They’d try to hide their amusement because they knew that Mr. Daniels disapproved, but they’d be chuckling in spite of themselves. Mr. Daniels thought that that was a shame and wished that his boys wouldn’t do things like that, but he knew that they would.

It couldn’t really be helped. They were grown men, and it was too late to make them accept William. They’d share his appreciation for the box, at least. At least they’d do that.

I’ll say it one last time, in case you didn’t hear me before. I hate to have to point it out to you, but you’re terribly self-absorbed and always have been. You often say that you’re listening even when you aren’t. You think that what I’m saying is totally unimportant, so you just nod your head and agree with me and you don’t feel that you’ve lost anything when you haven’t heard what I’ve said. It just makes it easier for you to ignore me if you pretend that you’re listening.

It’s gotten to the point that I imagine I can actually see cotton in your ears. I imagine actual physical impediments to your hearing. There are little brick walls inside your earlobes. I think I might be making some sort of apology for you. My mind is trying to find a reason why you can’t hear anything. I don’t want it to just be your obstinacy, or your ego, or your low esteem for me. I know that you don’t want to hear me, but I refuse to believe it.

So what I’m asking is that you not tell me you can’t hear me. Don’t bother, because I don’t believe you. Or at least, I’m trying not to believe you. It makes me feel like I’m being fooled or taken advantage of. So I’m trying not to believe you anymore.

And what I’m saying for the last time is that I’m going to be quiet now. And you’ll wonder what’s happened and why I’m so quiet. You won’t understand because I’ve said it for the last time and you weren’t listening. But you won’t hear another peep out of me.

There was a terrible secret that he had kept to himself for years. It was something about him that you couldn’t get away with. There were many things, even most things, which could be uttered. You would probably horrify a few people, but most would just laugh and share their own secrets. And everyone would drink some more, and it wouldn’t be so bad.

But this was something that he knew no one would laugh about. No matter whether they thought it was funny or not, they would grimace and clam-up and end the evening. Even if they did think it was funny, they wouldn’t want anyone else to know that they did. So, they would just look uncomfortable for a minute, and then they would have to get going, and he would be left sitting there, exposed. And no one would ever invite him again.

So even towards the end of the night, when everyone was pretty drunk, He still managed to keep his mouth shut. He knew that people thought he was a bit of a tight ass because he didn’t talk as much as other people. But whatever they might think of him for keeping quiet, it was better than what they’d think if they knew.

While he was walking home from the bar, he whispered it to himself. He was a little drunk and in the mood for something dramatic, so he decided that he wanted to say it out loud. But he still knew enough not to let anyone else hear it, so he waited until he was walking down an empty street. There was no one around, and even if he had failed to notice somebody, they would think he was just some crazy guy talking to himself, and that he wasn’t saying anything important.

He knew better than to tell me what the secret was. If I knew, then even though I’m tired of judging, inevitably I would judge him. And he also knew that if I knew, I would tell you. Then you would judge him as well. He understands. He knows it’s not vindictive or anything. We all make judgments in order to survive in the world. But the last thing he needs is to be judged, so he’s not going to let us know.

And now you’re thinking that the secret must be really horrible, like a rape or a murder or something. I admit that his unwillingness to tell seems to indicate that his secret must be pretty awful.

But, after giving it a little thought, I can see that that’s not necessarily true. Let’s face it, there’s only two ways this can go, you think the secret is really horrible, and by extension, you think he’s really horrible, in which case he’s right not to tell you. Or you might think that the secret is kind of stupid and lame, and so, by extension, he’s lame as well. So, then you would be judging him in another way and no matter what he does he loses. He’s better off keeping the secret to himself.

Sarah remembered a certain morning in the summer when the sun had already come up and was pushing light into their bedroom. Nathan sat up suddenly, but he didn’t gasp as he would have if he had been waking from a nightmare. Instead, he just sat still in bed and stared at the far wall. After a minute, he swung his feet onto the floor and grabbed a cigarette out of the package on the night table. He lit it and then looked back at her over his shoulder while he smoked.

After watching her for a while, he called her name and asked if she was awake. There was something about that morning which made her pretend she was still asleep. It was quiet and she was feeling very peaceful. She knew if she sat up and started talking to him, the peace would be shattered. So, she kept lying still in the bed and hoped he wouldn’t realise she was awake.

He figured she was still asleep, but he started talking to her anyway. He told her about a dream he’d been having, and with her eyes closed she almost felt like she was having the dream herself as he described it to her. “We were riding a motorcycle, I remember, we went very fast. And every time I turned around to look at you… I was trying to talk and my teeth kept falling out. They were like ice in my mouth, breaking to pieces. They flew past your face when I tried to talk, but you didn’t seem to notice. I was worried about it though.”

“We got going really fast. It felt good. There weren’t any bugs. That’s funny, eh? I didn’t even notice it during the dream, just now. We weren’t wearing helmets or anything, but we didn’t get bugs in our faces. You’d have thought we would. Anyway, we were going really fast. I think I was trying to forget that my teeth were falling out. That’s why I kept speeding up.”

“Soon enough the cops were after us. Chasing us down. I just laughed and kept going. You were laughing too. All my teeth were gone by then, and it felt kind of good. Nothing but gums. Kind of like the worst was over, you know? Plus, it felt like I could breathe better because my teeth weren’t in the way anymore. More room in my mouth for air.”

“The cops kept chasing us and we kept going faster. The cops put down spikes, but they couldn’t blow out our tires. I don’t know why, but they didn’t pop when I ran over the spikes. Then they put up roadblocks, but we just jumped over them, like in a movie.”

“Finally, they put up a big brick wall across the road. I looked at you and you just smiled, so I kept on going. We just ploughed into the wall. It didn’t hurt. For a second, I thought we had gone right through it to the other side.”

“The wall was still in front of us, though. We were lying on the road laughing. The bike was wrecked, and you were in pieces, still laughing. I saw your head and went over to pick it up. Then you seemed to realise what had happened and you stopped laughing. You started saying my name. You looked so surprised and disappointed, but I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know… it was just the look on your face.”

“I kissed you. I picked up your head and kissed you on the mouth. You still looked good. Then one of your teeth fell out and I woke up.”

Sarah was tempted to sit up, but she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond to his dream, so she just stayed where she was. The early morning peace had been broken in spite of her ruse. There wasn’t much point in faking sleep anymore, but she still couldn’t bring herself to stir. He put out his cigarette and left the room, and she lay staring out the window hoping if she kept lying there long enough the quiet would return and she would be able to doze again.

Nathan was quiet in the kitchen, but soon the gurgling sound of the coffee maker started up. She sat up and got out of bed and then she followed the coffee sounds to the kitchen.

He sat at the table waiting for the coffee to finish dripping. He’d lit another cigarette while he sat and popped the kitchen window open so that the smoke twisted in the breeze. As she watched him she still couldn’t help feeling like it was a perfect morning. She knew that it wasn’t anymore, but she still felt like it was. Or that it should be, anyway. She went to the living room and turned on the radio. Classical music came blaring out of the speakers, and she went back into the kitchen.

“Is that all right?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said without looking at her. “Do you want eggs?”

“Sure.”

He got up and dug out the frying pan and a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. Then he cut up a few mushrooms and green peppers and fried the vegetables first while he scrambled the eggs in a bowl. When the veggies were done, he added the eggs. By this time the coffee was ready, so she poured two cups and made sure he had sugar in his then handed it to him. Nathan divided the eggs roughly in half and slid them onto two plates, then placed one in front of her at the table as well as a fork. He sat down with his own plate and she said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he replied with a confused smile.

Sarah took a mouthful of eggs and then made a happy sound. She chewed a couple of times, then made a little face and put her hand to her mouth to take out a piece of shell. She put it down on the side of her plate.

“Is everything all right?” he said.

“Just a little shell,” she replied. “It’s no problem.”

“Sorry about that.”

Sarah looked over at him, about to speak, but she couldn’t find anything to say. She had been sure that something would come to her, but there were too many words in her head, and she couldn’t choose the right ones. She knew that her silence would make him uncomfortable, but then she decided that she didn’t have a problem with his discomfort. It had only been a dream, and she knew that he couldn’t really be held responsible, but still, it had bothered her.

Before, in the mornings they had generally talked. About how stupid the people at work were, or how stupid a particular movie or song was. It struck her that they’d spent a great deal of time talking about stupidity. And she felt kind of stupid for missing it.

But now she had nothing to say. So, instead of speaking, she just looked over at the fragment of eggshell on the side of her plate. Silence was becoming more and more of their daily life together.

In the interest of accuracy, I’ll tell you now that this is about dreams I had. Some people just hate hearing anything about dreams. “Oh God, not more dream crap,” they say to themselves. But I’m going to tell you about them anyway.

They were weird dreams, but they were excellent. I say that, and you immediately jump to the conclusion that they were wet dreams. They absolutely weren’t.

I used to dream about flying. When I was a kid, I dreamt about flying quite a bit. But I never took off from the ground. It started by falling. The first few dreams made me scared, because it seemed like I was just going to plummet to my doom.

But whenever I fell–whether it was a tall building or a mountain or whatever—I always started flying before I hit the ground.

After I’d had that kind of dream a few times, I started looking for high places to jump from. I’d stopped being scared at all and just went in search of places to jump from.

It was better if I was running from someone, so being deliberate only worked a couple of times. It was usually I was being chased and suddenly found myself on top of a cliff or in front of a twentieth story window. And so, I’d either get caught or jump. And so, I always jumped off, started falling, and then started floating before I sailed away.

I began trying to sleep all the time. I started missing school and extra-curriculars so that I could get more dreaming in. I had been a decent student, if a little unmotivated. But, by then, I was just useless.

My parents worried—of course they did. They tried forcing me to keep going to school at least, but I just kept dozing off in class, and eventually even the teachers didn’t want me there. They encouraged me to skip if all I was going to do was come to school to fall asleep.

I didn’t really hurt anyone. In fact, if anyone was getting hurt, it was really just me. The other kids had thought that the sleeping was funny at first, but soon they were making fun of me. I was that weird kid who slept all the time. It wasn’t about being a sleepy rebel against the teachers, but just that weirdo who dozed off constantly.

Eventually my parents sent me to a psychologist. I know now that he was actually pretty sketchy, but at the time, I got along with him really well. It initially seemed like narcolepsy, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn’t compulsive. I was very deliberately trying to sleep.

And even then, he eventually understood that it wasn’t really sleep that I wanted. What I really liked doing was flying. And he understood why I might try to sleep constantly if that led to flying.

But he also pointed out that I couldn’t just keep sleeping away while things were happening in the waking world. He told me the story of his cigarette dreams.

He had quit smoking about a decade before, but he said the best cigarettes he’d ever had were in the previous ten years. They were dream smokes, and they were way better than the real cigarettes had ever been.

In dreams, the cigarettes opened his head up to the heavens and made him feel like God was massaging his brain using nicotine. And then he woke up, and after a minute or two, he realized he’d never smoked at all.

So, it was even better than he’d thought. Because he never even had to feel bad that he’d been smoking again. The feeling of the heavenly smoke was gone by that point, but he’d had a cigarette without consequences. And it was excellent.

But the dream cigarettes had never made him want to take up smoking again. And he’d never had dream smokes when he was actually a smoker. The dream smokes only occurred because he’d quit smoking.

And I only flew because I couldn’t actually fly. Which is why it was so fantastic. But he convinced me that it was things in the real world that failed us and that failure is what made things in the dreamworld fantastic.

I still wasn’t a great student. But I stopped trying to force myself to doze off all the time. Only when things were really hard did I try to go to sleep and find a cliff.

William was facing the wall, but he was still able to hear the men talking behind him. He was on his knees in front of a brick wall. They were only about ten feet away, discussing his fate. What they were saying was extremely clear. As he listened, he stared up at the ravaged, brick wall in front of him. Though he couldn’t see the men’s actual faces, he started to associate each voice he heard with a different section of the wall.

There was a deep voice that he put with the rough mortar between the bricks. There was a high, smooth voice that he placed with a brick that was smooth instead of ridged like the others. There was a gravelly sounding voice that he associated with a part of the wall that was below him to his right. It was pock-marked with bullet holes, and some of the mortar was falling out completely. There was some graffiti on the wall above him, but he listened in vain for a voice to go with it. Someone had gone to the trouble of painting a rebel logo on the wall. Maybe it was before the shooting had started. It seemed a bit pointless, but it also seemed to demonstrate the belief that support for a thing was actually valuable. That belief seemed to have demonstrated itself false, but it was a belief that William kept wishing were actually true. He kept trying to match it to a voice, but none of them seemed quite right.

Those were the main voices, but there were others as well.  There were eight men and most of them didn’t speak. And even when one of the other men piped up, he generally had very little to say. Even though it seemed like it was a fairly big decision for the men to make, there wasn’t really much to talk about. They were on the march deep behind the lines and couldn’t take prisoners, so they had to make other arrangements. They weren’t sure whether to execute him, injure him so he couldn’t keep fighting or just let him go free and depend on him to leave. This was obviously what William wanted, and he was, actually, intending to just leave if they let him go. He really didn’t care who won, and certainly not enough to keep fighting about it. Naturally, he was curious about what was going to happen to him, but at the same time, he found it disconcerting having to listen.

The gravelly voice was really pushing for execution. He was arguing that they definitely wanted William out of the fight, and the only way to get that done was either to take him prisoner or kill him. Since they couldn’t take him prisoner, they’d have to kill him. William found himself sympathizing with this argument until he remembered who they were talking about. Then he hoped that the best argument wouldn’t win.

For a moment they talked about injuring him instead. The idea was brought forward by someone that William hadn’t heard before. The voice seemed unsure of itself, and even though it had brought the idea of an injury up, it didn’t seem to think it was actually a very good idea.

It was an unremarkable voice, and he couldn’t decide which part of the wall it would even go with. It definitely didn’t fit with the graffiti. William had to smile despite himself about how snobby he had gotten about that graffiti. There was no way that a hesitant, mediocre voice was going to get that spot.

The deep voice immediately objected, saying that injury was nothing but a cruel and cowardly method of execution. It pointed out that any injury they inflicted would almost certainly be fatal. William would just lie on the ground and bleed to death without any help. So even if the intent was simply to ensure William’s removal from the conflict, it would likely result in prolonged suffering and death. The deep voice said that, though he would have preferred imprisonment, a straight execution would be a better option than just leaving him to bleed out.

After this admission, the two voices argued for a while, but the gravelly voice was clearly winning. The other voices agreed with him, and the deep voice was the only holdout left. William could hear a bit of desperation seeping into the voice, and he kind of knew that he’d lost. Both of them had lost.

The gravelly voice pointed out that William’s side wouldn’t hesitate to kill one of them. The deep voice responded by saying that that was an even better reason not to do it. They were fighting an actual war so as not to be like the other side, and so if the other side would have had no problem with an execution, it was an even better reason not to do it themselves.

However, the first voice had already convinced the others. Different voices expressed varying degrees of sympathy for the deep voice and for William, but the discussion was now just focussed on how they would kill William, not on whether they actually should. They were feeling bad about it, but it didn’t change anything. They still had to deal with him, and they had limited options for how they were going to do that.

The idea of a firing squad was briefly considered, but the deep voice proclaimed that he wanted no part of it. William heard the swishing sounds of someone walking away—presumably the deep voice leaving. After he had left, nobody else seemed to be that interested either, and even the gravelly voice was hesitant. There was no longer any discussion, just the sound of uncomfortable silence. Eventually the gravelly voice spoke up again, saying that, if no one else was willing to help him, he would take care of it himself.

William heard a mechanical click behind him and then felt the muzzle of a rifle under his left ear. William had often been accused of thinking too much, and that came back to him as the muzzle rested under his ear. He should have been angry or desperate or something, but he mostly just felt sad. It was depressing that his own death seemed so reasonable.

After a while, William started to get a little impatient. The execution was happening, and it seemed like it’d be better to just get it done with. He wondered what the gravelly voice was waiting for, and then the muzzle of the gun jerked, and he stopped wondering. He’d never figured out which voice the graffiti should go with.