Eyes forward through the window, his shadow travelling more of the room than his feet. The enormous weight of calculation translated through posture and tilt, fingers thrumming the desk. The traffic sounded canned, arriving by pipe, maybe. Soon, his voice stirred betwixt his lips. A round dollop of sound at first until it became a vicious bark. Don’t I live in the future? Shouldn’t things I need materialize right before my eyes at my whim? It’s because it’s controlled by the government, you idiot, he scolded himself.  They don’t make it easy. These things are precious. Probably made of the finest materials the You-Ass Government can procure. I hear the paper is a parchment from the original Declaration of Independence, marked with the blood of Civil War soldiers and dipped in the sweat of actual Grenada invaders. Grenada invaders have that real champion perspiration, right? The purest of all the veterans, I would imagine. The excretions of real winners.

“Ever think about it? Suicide?”
“Why do people ask that question? The answer is always yes. Like every time. The whole planet by age 10 answers yes. ”
“That’s not a no.”
“Tower, I am not currently considering taking my life.”
“Okay. I believe you. I just worry about you.”
“I believe you. And I worry about you.”
“Do I seem depressed?"
“Do you have to be depressed? I mean, you think there are some really happy people with everything going for them who just think, this it, I might as well jump?”
“Pretty sure that’s a Van Halen song.”
“Fuck those guys.”
“They’ve lived too long.”
“Let’s kill one of them.”
“But who do you choose? It’s impossible.”
“Easy. All of them except the bass player.”
“Michael Anthony lives. Seriously, though, I’ve thought about it. I had my nihilistic moments out there when I was a baby. The one thing I always boiled it down to was the fact that regardless of all the variables and the chaos, something is going to happen in the next moment and then something else is going to happen in the very next moment. Even when the world is kicking me in the teeth, there’s always a certain gallows humor in challenging the chaos to throw something even more fucked up at me. ”
“You are making me want to kill myself.”
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