The Wind blew through Riley’s long black hair. Wind meant trouble. Sincoke was the Still City where the hot, dry air never budged. ‘Nothing Circulates in Sincoke,’ the saying goes.

Except on wild nights.

Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood taught Riley to read the city better than most people can read a room. He sensed he shouldn’t have worked that double, shouldn’t be walking home this close to sundown. He ignored his gut because he couldn’t say no to the money.

His hair made him a target. It either outed him as an ‘injun’ or a hippie liberal, depending on who wanted to punch his teeth in. He was walking too fast to braid it so he stuffed it in his shirt collar. It was itchy but he had to get home before shit kicked up. He felt it coming. He wasn’t worried about himself, he needed to make sure his little siblings were home safe. He started feeling the call of wild nights and sneaking out when he was their age. It’s harder to resist when you’re younger.

The name Sincoke was extrapolated from the Lenape word for ‘Pregnant Land’ though it is anything but. It was always partly cloudy but it rarely rained, so the prairie grass was thin and dry. It was more like a desert with peach fuzz. No one bothered to ask his ancestors why they called it that. Riley always figured it was ironic. Trail of Tears gallows humor.

Eventually even this wasteland was taken away from the Native Americans. Their vague warnings to tread lightly on pregnant land were ignored, like they always are. They were followed by frontiersmen, then oil men, then a tidal mass of poor folk. Industrialists, middle men, and crooks swept in to reap from the vulnerable population. Oil, factories, and meat processing plants fueled the growth of dozens of little boom towns until their borders overlapped.

These suburbs with emphasis on the ‘urb’ were cobbled together during The Great Rezoning into a Frankenstein city of mismatched parts. Every town has a bad neighborhood, and when Sincoke was stitched together it inherited all those towns’ bad neighborhoods. Riley knew them all but he needed to take a direct route instead of a safe route. And it didn’t matter, no neighborhood was safe when the wind blew through it.

The Wind brought people out. They gathered under the setting sun on dilapidated porches, in the parking lots of run-down corner stores, on cracked sidewalks and beneath leaning telephone poles covered in missing pet signs. The mundane looked ominous blowing in the wind, in the light of the orange and purple sky.

Sincoke usually belonged to cars, but on Wild Nights the streets were packed with roving bands of people. The sun was setting and the energy was rising. People were playing roisterous games of Craps in the space between houses and in the courtyards of public buildings. There were people drinking or arguing on every front porch he passed. Every car that passed him was going at least fifteen miles over the speed limit, as if they were trying to clear out for the people.

Every couple blocks some guy—or a group of guys—would watch Riley. He’d stare right back. He kept his body language relaxed and confident, not picking a fight but not backing down from one. A tiny piece of him wanted one. His hair itched in his shirt collar—he wanted to yank it out and let it blow free. He knew it was just the energy in the air getting to him. He resisted it, but it stayed in the back of his mind. Nagging at him.

He was distracted by a guy on the other side of the street being chased by a woman holding a rubber mallet when a mug came crashing out of a nearby window—right at his head. He dodged it and glared in the direction it came. Just a couple having a blow-out fight. He looked down at Garfield’s shattered face. He noticed the litter on every curb and wondered how much of it was Garfield merchandise.

It always surprised Riley when people broke or threw anything out. Even before his father’s injury his family couldn’t afford to waste anything, and that was typical. Most of the factories closed in the ’90s, and most of the meat processing plants moved south of the border. There was investment in a tech boom that never happened—Sincoke wasn’t ready for the knowledge economy, and no amount of PR stunts by city leadership were going to change that. Sincoke gave away ungodly tax breaks and grants to big firms, and after that didn’t pay off it had nothing to offer anyone at all; even to the poor and desperate. People and money stopped coming to and from Sincoke. The Still City. Sincokers, or Sinkies, are stuck in a city in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do and no money to go anywhere else.

No Circulation in Sincoke.

Shoulda listened to the Lenape.

“Well well if it isn’t my ancestral foe,” roared a deep drawl from behind Riley. “How’s the air up there Standing Stork?” It was a stupid insult but he delivered it with venom.

Riley stopped and met the gaze of a short, stocky, older cowboy. He was bow-legged, wearing nothing but jeans, a long mustache, and a ten-gallon hat with the namesake horns of a Texas Longhorn sticking out from holes on either side. He had a big hairy belly and a flabby chest, but bulky arms. His neck was incredibly thick and muscled, probably from wearing those horns around all the time.

Of course Riley cashed his paycheck earlier that evening, and he was carrying a couple hundred in cash. He didn’t want his family to have to choose between hot water and his Dad’s pain medicine again, so he thought about booking it. Other people gathered to heckle and watch. If they saw him run he could never walk around safely again.

“You been watching too many movies, pardner.” Riley said, strolling towards the man to meet him in the street.

“Don’t pardner me, you tall bitch.”

Laughter erupted. There was a crowd forming. ‘Flagpole gon’ fight Willy.’ Riley heard someone refer to him as ‘The Alfalfa Street Longhorn.’ People watched from their front steps and lawns—good people who would have stepped in and broken things up on a normal night. But on windy nights everyone loses their minds.

The man stopped just outside arm’s length and tried to act intimidating. Riley stared him down. He looked like he had been crying.

“Whoa.” Riley softened and looked concerned. “Hey man–”

The Alfalfa Street Longhorn couldn’t handle seeing sympathy on another man’s face. Before Riley could ask if he was OK, he roared and started beating his chest like a gorilla.

The man kicked out and dragged his bare foot across the cracked sidewalk, like a bull getting ready to charge.

Most Americans don’t know anything about Sincoke, but its notorious among conspiracy theorists, occultists, and true crime fans for random, explosive crime spikes. Could be something caused by the special forces and intelligence units headquartered in the prairie. Could be caused by the numerous fringe religious groups or political militias that operate in the area. Could be whatever the Lenape say the land is ‘pregnant’ with. Could be boredom. Could be a city-wide psychological event—a periodic mass hysteria.

People say it’s something in the water. Sincokers like Riley knew something was on the wind. It transferred an infectious energy that sent people looking for trouble. The itching became too much and Riley tugged his long black hair free again. He could see the pulse in the other man’s temples. If I back down and look weak, Riley reasoned, I’ll never be able to walk this neighborhood again. As if he needed any more justification, the wind blew the feather of a prairie chicken towards him. He caught it and put it behind his ear.

He didn’t need a reason suddenly.

Lester Guerra waited outside of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. He noticed that people were crossing the street to walk on the opposite sidewalk, which frustrated him because he was making an attempt to look less like a mean son of a bitch. He stopped shaving his head, just had a thick mane now. He wore long sleeves to cover up his deeply offensive tattoos—which was difficult because he ran hot, around 99 degrees. Sometimes 100.

He felt 101 at that moment. He was angry and appalled by the shithole his daughter was living in.

The little boom towns that would become Sincoke sprouted up organically—like tree roots or cancer growth—and when they were forced together the lack of urban planning was apparent by the jarring lack of public transit and the obtuse layout. The small government extremists who dreamed up Sincoke in the 19CE would have loved to see it. Contemporary libertarians certainly did. Sincoke was vast, spread out, and lacking everything that makes cities fun and convenient to live in. It was more like a giant strip mall. A flyover metropoless that most Americans couldn’t point to on a map.

Sarah brought their daughter to one of the thousands of awful little towns that Sincoke absorbed, kicking and screaming. No buses stopped there and Uber drivers charged extra to drive out of their way (the market at work!). The streets were in ill-repair. There were no stop signs or street signs, just the bent metal signposts they were torn away from, and the faded remnants of white lines on the road. Jesus Christ, he thought, Diega is gonna get hit by a car.

They lived in a two-story house converted into two single bedroom apartments. Diega better have the bedroom, Sarah and her new man—if you can call him that—better be on the couch Lester thought. The siding was coming off and there was a broken window covered up in cardboard. It was considerably nastier than his halfway house. Lester had hid from the police in nicer places than this. It looked like a drug den. May as well have had a red light out front.

The house was across the street from an abandoned lot overgrown with prairie grass, with a rusty old car sticking out of it, its front half buried into the ground. If Lester knew one thing, its that patches of grass in neighborhoods like this are full of needles, condoms, and ticks. They better not be letting Diega play in that grass.

Anger churned his stomach. He started counting things like Amy said, but it was too late. His face got white hot as blood rushed into it and made him dizzy. He tensed up and his stomach and throat burned like he chugged battery acid. Lester always experienced anger suddenly, violently, and physically. He compulsively threw his arm back to swing on a parking meter. With extreme effort he stopped himself. It felt like holding back a sneeze.

He grabbed his phone to check if his ex canceled on him. The screen lit up for a split second, then suddenly died in his hand. He cursed and mashed the power button but the phone felt cold and limp. It was a brick. He Gritted his teeth and squeezed it. He heard the door behind him open.

Lester always had mixed feelings when he saw Sarah. She was heavier now. She looked tired, unwell, worse off without him—he was sure. She also looked pissed at him.

“One hour. Got it? One.” She stood in the bowing door frame. Her new boyfriend mean mugged him from the top of their staircase. Tough guy, standing behind his woman. Real smug for a fucker who lived in a house with a missing ceiling tile in the stairwell and loose carpet on the stairs. Jesus, Diega could slip. What was this asshole even good for?

“Sure, sure, yeah,” he kept his back to them and talked over his shoulder. He didn’t want to glare back at tough guy and start anything. Not this time. “Little trip to the pizzeria. Some ice cream. Couple rounds on the claw game, maybe win her a stuffed animal.” Classic deadbeat Dad date.

“No claw machine. You’ll freak out and bust the fucking glass. And if I call, you answer,” she said pointedly. Pointing at him.

“…My phone, uh. My phone broke.”

“Nope,” she said, turning around.

“Holy shit, I can give you the number for the pizzeria. It’ll be fine.”

“NO!” She turned and hollered. “What happened, stubbed your toe and threw your phone through a wall?”

“Sarah!” He growled and stepped towards her, before catching himself and stepping back. She shot him a look. He knew exactly what it meant. You’re still a fucking psycho.

“Or did you throw it through someone’s head?” She hissed, before slamming the door as he stammered an apology.

He took a deep breath and tried to walk a couple blocks away before freaking out. He knew it was coming and he couldn’t stop it, but he didn’t want them to hear it. They would love that, wouldn’t they?

He angrily clutched his phone in his pocket. This was all its fault anyway. Something felt off, there was a dent. He looked at it and realized that the plastic was warped and caved in the shape of his fingers. Like it melted between them.

Cheap piece of crap. He blanked out, started running, then wound his arm up real good and spiked his stupid fucking phone into the concrete. It bounced off the sidewalk and into a house, denting the siding. It wasn’t satisfying and he kind of felt bad for it.

He just wanted to buy his daughter a slice of pizza. He was always incredibly unlucky with electronics—every computer, TV and appliance he’s ever owned just conked out, bricked on him. They wouldn’t let him use the microwave at the office. But it hadn’t happened in a really long time. Why tonight? It was so hard to convince Sarah to let him see their daughter. The wind blew a plastic bag in his face, and he began punching it to shreds.

He sat on a curb and tried everything America taught him to calm down. He counted three things he could see. The awful conditions my daughter is living in. The people crossing the street to avoid me. The empty void in my pocket where my stupid phone used to be. Three things he could hear. The sound of Sarah slamming the door on me. The judgment in her voice. The brief sound of my daughter’s voice in the background. He started to feel sad, but that made him mad. Three things he could feel. The tight feeling in my chest. Heat in my wrists. The swift breeze.

That explained it. Sarah being particularly bitchy, the relapse with his anger management problems, the pedestrians being particularly avoidant of his scary ass. It was a Wild Night. Of all the luck. A dark thought crossed his mind. After he picked up Dallas’ little brother, maybe he’d let it take him.

Sascha was doom-scrolling to distract from the tension emanating from outside her room. She had her laptop on her chest and her head propped against a pillow at nearly a 90 degree angle. It was extremely uncomfortable but she couldn’t will herself to move. The central air didn’t work and it was hot, but her skinny legs were super hairy so she kept them tangled in the sheets to stave off the dysphoria. Her mass of wavy orange hair was greasy and tangled, and her pores were clogged with old makeup. Her bedding and shirt were crusty too, more sweat and skin cells than cotton.

She had literally no reason to take care of herself. All of her friends and classes were online and she couldn’t stream anymore. She had committed the ultimate sin of being a woman on the internet who talked about video games. Also she was trans and an a-rab! Well, she was Persian-American (thanks for the dark leg hair, Dad!) which is a distinction these fucks can’t make. She was immediately chased off the internet by harassment, hate speech and people asking for feet.

She only left her room to use the toilet or to grab snacks, which she would sneak back to her room like a scavenger dragging a carcass to its feeding ground. She had to be strategic about when she bathed or did laundry. If she left her room for too long one of the Ternionmight leave literature in there, and that almost always lead to an explosion. It had been three whole weeks since their last blowout. Not their longest oppressive silence but they were gunning for the record, bless them.

She had a feeling they weren’t going to make it. She heard three sets of footsteps outside her door. Usually they settled and performatively ignored one another by the early evening. Tonight they seemed agitated. Likely trying to goad one another into a fight.

So Sascha scrolled. She needed all the dopamine her feed could give her. None of her friends were online to take her mind off of it or offer her reassurances. It made her feel lonely and isolated, and contributed to the ominous feeling of impending doom.

Suddenly she hit the bottom of her feed. The algorithm couldn’t generate any more op eds and hot takes. Impossible! Suddenly she realized friends weren’t offline, she was.

Internet access in Sincoke was notoriously bad. SinCast was the only network provider in town. They had no incentive to deliver good service, and no local talent to provide it anyway. Sascha’s phone got no reception in her windowless room. The lack of service made her suspect it was windy out.

She closed her laptop and disassociated while it went cold on her chest. She had a witchy friend in Portland, OR who believed in Sincoke’s Wild Nights. Sascha used to think magic evil wind was fake, but the Ternion were always worse when the air moved.

What was she in for.

Sascha needed a distraction. She dug her old CRT TV and a Sega CD out of the closet. It was under a pile of boots with broken zippers that she kept telling herself she’d fix. There was a video capture card hanging from it, a remnant of her streaming days. She plugged it into the over-burdened surge protector under her desk and emerged with dust and a loose coin stuck to her arms.

She bought all of her old consoles secondhand and broken, and resurrected them with household objects and a little ingenuity. With manic energy, she jury-rigged a replacement power plug using a dirty fork from under her bed and replaced frayed wires with a bread tie. It took an hour. She held her hands together in prayer while waiting for it to boot up. Come on, my little zombie! And it started. She built a big throne of pillows on her floor and settled in to warm her heart with some retro games.

The nostalgia wore off in fifteen minutes and she started ruminating on the footsteps again. They grew louder, more frantic, more agitated. It sounded like they were wearing tap shoes. She could identify them by their footsteps. She tried to focus on gaming but kept getting swept up by the ominous feeling. A blow out was looming.

Whatever was coming would be a relief from the tension at this point.

Suddenly, something fell over. There was a soft thud. One of her Mom’s endless racks of leggings. Her precious ‘products’ that covered the whole house. Everyone had to navigate around them like a labyrinth.

There was a ‘these fucking things,’ and then a, ‘watch it!,’ then a clothes rack went flying across the apartment and crashed into her door. It scared the hell out of her and she froze.

Things hadn’t escalated that quickly in awhile.

“What’s the last thing you noticed?”

America MacCabee was on a video call with a patient. She looked at herself in the upper right hand corner of her screen. The lighting and position of her camera were arranged to accentuate her high cheekbones, so she looked attractive and capable. Her expression was focused and impassive. The light made her skin look a little brighter. It helped sometimes with white clients.

She tried not to move because it made her background glitch. She stole the image of a sunlit, tidy office with plants and bland beige decor off of Pinterest. It masked a sparse old townhouse covered in piles of dusty records and reports. Her bed and kitchen counters were stacked high with stained manila folders and old hardbound textbooks. Half evidence, half patient records, almost no personal belongings.

It was all very well organized though.

Her patient was extremely poorly lit, like he was video calling from a black hole. His eyes were empty. “I was just thinking the stuff we used to do. Parks, arboretums, friends. And like after he went crazy—I know it’s problematic to assume that. I know it took two. But everyone noticed he changed.”

“The last thing you noticed is that his behavior changed?”

He thought for a moment and his eyes lit up ever so slightly. He glanced to the left, which was associated with pain from the past. “I used to do things.”

“I want you to notice that. Don’t think about it, don’t judge it, just notice. Ready?”

“Never,” he said. She laughed professionally then turned on the balls. Two little footballs bounced around the screen. Up and down, side to side, corner to corstopping. Abruptly. Then

staying

.

still

.

Then mov i n g s l o w l y

America carefully watched his eyes as he processed his trauma to deduce where his body was storing it. She got caught up and followed the balls herself, then started thinking about the open file behind her. Coming up with a psychological profile of their target had been extremely difficult. She spoke to a lot of people with missing kids. She also spoke to surviving victims, so she knew exactly what was happening to their sisters and daughters.

She somehow managed to keep a straight face. Focused and impassive. When the balls stopped, her patient was crying. He looked directly into the camera. His eyes were very lively and he said,

“I have nothing. I feel dead.”

Nearly all of her patients expressed this at one point or another. She nodded empathically. “OK. Good. I want you to notice that.”

“How can I not?” He threw up his arms. “I fucking leave here at 5AM to get a parking spot for work, I pack boxes all day, then I come home and play fucking video games for like an hour. I used to have a partner. I used to have a life. Now I might as well be fucking dead.”

“Drudgery and loneliness can cause trauma.” Most of her clients were suffering from years of stress and boredom. Poverty in Sincoke was rampant. People worked long hours for little pay, or didn’t work and got a pittance from public programs. There was nothing most people could afford to do. “It’s called chronic trauma.” Ego death by a million cuts, one missed payment or weekend alone with Netflix at a time. It was happening to everyone, and she could only help the ones with insurance.

“What do I do about it? And what if he needs me?”

“Right now we’re just going to notice these feelings. You need to process. Focus on—”

“Fuck that!” He said. “This is all fucked. I had a life.” Before she could tell him to notice that,he signed off.

Not a terrible session, considering his issues with repression. And she wrapped up early! She had ten minutes before her 8PM patient. She got up to stretch, then turned on her phone to read some advice columns. They used to be her guilty pleasure but now she wrote for one, so it was technically market research. Turned her only hobby into a side hustle. Tsk tsk.

When she turned her phone on it buzzed for a solid minute as dozens of missed messages poured in. Clients. The messages were dire and weird, even from people she’d been making progress with.

She felt overwhelmed as more and more came through, but she lost it when a selfie came through from Dallas. She was still so mad at him. He was grinning like a jackass in a dark room across the street from Zengrel’s mansion, with the accompanying text, ‘here at neverland ranch 2.’

She chucked her phone onto her couch and exhaled deeply. Must be great to wave your gun around and make stupid jokes. It’s just a regular ol’ western revenge thriller when you don’t have to talk to grieving parents. Her phone buzzed with more messages and she put her head in her hands. She was one woman and there were hundreds of thousands of people in her city. She could only help one person at a time. And even then she could only help them cope. She couldn’t actually change anything.

There were limits to the individual approach towards mental health. But it’s not like there was a collective solution. Society wasn’t changing anytime soon.

She put herself together and picked up her phone. She swiped Dallas away, but she instinctively noticed his eyes were positioned slightly to the left. She ignored it—his appointment wasn’t until Thursday at 7AM. He had plenty of her time, and other people needed her right now. She scrolled through to find the most urgent and dire ones, and noticed a message from a contact she had named DO NOT RESPOND. DO NOT EVEN READ, GIRL.

She thought about it. Why not? She was always little miss perfect. Always level-headed, always responsible. Why shouldn’t she be a messy bitch for once?

The thought seemed to come from outside of her. It felt alien, something within her mimicking her inner voice. Another voice—her own this time—said: because too many people rely on you, Amy. As an empty gesture, she opened her window for some fresh air. She was surprised when she actually got it.

That’s why she was off her game. Sincoke’s wild nights were mass psychological events. People feeding off of one another, group dynamics. The wind was incidental. It triggered unusual behavior because people believed in it. Or maybe just because it felt different. She was worried about her patients. She was worried about her fellow detectives, and Dallas’ little brother, and whatever was going on with DO NOT RESPOND, DO NOT EVEN READ, GIRL. Another bitter voice carried on the wind asked who’s gon’ worry about you, Amy?

I am, she said, in a defiant inner voice. She sat down, looked at herself in the upper corner of her screen, and logged on for her 8PM.

He wasn’t there today.

“Rebecca.”

So what are y’all into?

“Bex!” Rebecca’s Mom snapped. She was a thin, petite, intense woman with angry, anxious eyes. Her hair was bleached so she could dye it however their guest liked it. She was wearing expensive yoga clothes so that no one could accuse her of relaxing unproductively. Her clothes were all new, without so much as a worn waistband. “Head in the game!”

Rebecca Beckster snapped to attention. She and her Mother were facing one another in an empty room. Her Mom was in an office chair, Rebecca was in a small folding chair designed to torture her. Her butt hung over the sides and the cold metal dug into her thighs. She was a big young woman, tall with wide shoulders and hips, a bit of a belly, and a head too big for hats. The chair was part of her training. It forced her to shrink.

The movers, shakers, and innovators of this era were optimizers, minimalists. Highly disciplined professionals, academics, and entrepreneurs that put every calorie and every movement to good use. Their distaste for Rebecca’s generous peasant body wasn’t about aesthetics or femininity, it was about efficiency. They liked people who were like consumer electronics. Small and smooth. Size was decadent and wasteful. Rebecca learned to sit demurely and act in ways that made her seem tiny. She was good at it. People never noticed she was tall unless she stood next to them, so she tended to stay seated or stand far away. The boy in the park (who was so tall!!) hadn’t notice her height until their dogs pulled them next to each other. He seemed to like it. She rewarded her poodle later with table food.

She had a printout of their mark’s Wikipedia article on her thighs. Her Mom had flash cards with things he was interested in. She held up one that said ‘effective altruism.’ Her mother raised her eyes, expectant and impatient.

“Uh, it’s like–”

“Uh?!” Her Mom said. She leaned forward. She was always leaning towards Rebecca. Like she was always ready to lunge.

“It’s like–” she cringed and started over. “It’s using logic and reason to optimize the effects of your good deeds.” Her Mom watched her expectantly. “It involves… Thinking Globally.” Her Mom looked approvingly at this, but expected more. “Putting money into wisely selected charities, neutralizing existential threats, prioritizing people in the future,” AKA using hypothetical people who don’t exist yet as a justification for ignoring people in the present, “setting your emotions aside and approaching moral conundrums with a cost/benefit analysis.”

“Sell me on the fact that you believe in Effective Altruism.”

Rebecca froze and looked around self-consciously under her Mom’s gaze. She felt really pressured, and suddenly very fed up with Effective Altruism, a concept she found pretentious and tedious. “If there was a kid drowning I’d let it, but then I’d sell their organs to pay for lifeguards.”

She surprised herself. “Can I just act fascinated?” she asked, before her Mom could chastise her for being snarky. “Wow! How do you know what’s going to happen in the future? That sort of thing.”

“Rebecca, this man is a Billionaire. Billions. He earned that money, and that’s why we trust people like him with it. You should be happy that someone like that is trying to maximize the good he can do with it. He knows how to best spend his money, that’s self-evident.” Rebecca just nodded. Her Mom was doing a great job pretending she’d internalized Effective Altruism. “Don’t you want to be around people like that? Important people don’t come to Sincoke very often Rebecca. Don’t you want mentorship? Opportunities? Don’t you want to matter?”

“Yes,” Rebecca said automatically. She held up the papers with a determined expression. “I’ll read more.”

“You better.” Her Mother stood up to leave the room. She turned and walked to her daughter as an afterthought and ran her fingers through her hair. “This is our chance, sweetie. You’ve got this.”

Her Mom exited into the hallway, mumbling about what they should rename their dog to suit their guest’s tastes. The hallway was empty, gray and tan. They’d lived in their home for years but it looked like contractors just flipped it. No pictures, decorations, no personal items. It was a blank slate they could decorate to suit their guests, then tear it all down after dinner.

A breeze, and something with it, came into the room through the open window. Rebecca tried to focus on her Wikipedia pages but she was distracted. She tried to imagine what she would put on the walls.

Rebecca ran into Riley during a stroll through the heavily manicured Memorial Park in Center City. She was wearing jogging gear to fool her Mom. She couldn’t get caught going on a stroll. For what, fun? Everything had to be enriching and serve a purpose. Memorial Park was designed with that in mind. A lot of research and effort was put into maximizing nature’s effect on Wellness. The result was a stressful, bland place where a lot of people with email jobs walked to signal their virtue.

That’s why she was so surprised to meet him. He looked out of place, like a big, comfy sweatshirt on a rack of boring gray suits. He was the only other person who didn’t look like he had somewhere to be in ten minutes.

She was walking their unnamed poodle, he was walking a shaggy black mutt named Sitting Dog who never sat still. He approached her. He said he almost never came to Memorial Park, but he showed up on a whim. Then they started ‘running into each other’ daily. They both knew it wasn’t an accident.

He had a ton of interests in art and niche media, and he had a big fun sounding family. Rebecca was trained to be a great passive conversation partner. She knew how to keep the ball in the air, when to raise her eyebrows, when to laugh, when to say wow! She always learned just enough about whatever she was supposed to talk about so that she could fake engagement. She didn’t know anything about tokusatsu or sword and sorcery, but he talked about it in such a cute, enthusiastic way that she enjoyed herself. He didn’t over explain things. Here was a skilled active conversation partner, someone who wanted her to enjoy listening to him. And she did. She didn’t have to fake it.

And then he fucking ruined everything by asking her what she was interested in. Her training failed her for the first time. Being asked about herself felt like falling off a horse. It knocked her out of character. She didn’t realize she was in one.

She knew what the last dozen people her parents had entertained liked, but she couldn’t answer for herself. Ever since then her brain had been mush. It didn’t help that Theodore Zengrel was like if you put all of her parents’ marks into a blender and poured the off-white, flavorless paste on top of unsweetened porridge. Works in finance—whatever that means. Patron of the arts and science—aren’t we all?

All of her parents’ marks owned somethingtech and made an i-something, or had a plan to disrupt something with an app that did something. Or they worked in finance, which means they got rich by moving richer peoples’ fake money around. She started flipping through the packet looking for his company name, a benefactor for his philanthropy, his hometown, anything she could bring up to prompt him to talk more—as if he wouldn’t just do that on his own. There was nothing her brain could latch onto. He was working on ‘big things’ and came from ‘humble origins.’ No one was this nebulous.

She realized, with horror, that she was. What did she do? Who was she?

So, what are y’all into?

Right now it was Effective Altruism. For as long as her family needed her to woo this mark. But her eyes glazed over it all. She just couldn’t pretend to care. Why was the packet so thick if no one could name what this guy did? She skipped ahead and her eyes lit up when she realized 60% of it was the ‘controversies’ section.

Her potential mentor. Rebecca did not like this.