Player One: What Is to Become of Us

In his early twenties, Rick worked at a Texaco gas station, and when he was pumping gas, he liked to watch the numbers rev higher and higher on the pumps. He pretended these speedily increasing numbers didn’t represent money at all; rather, one penny equalled one year. H

Here’s one: by the age of twenty, you know you’re not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you’re not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in — you wonder if you’re ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate.”

I’ve learned that you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul will still want to hang out with you. Souls ought to have some kind of legal right to bail once you cross certain behaviour thresholds.”

Society was frozen, with no means of thawing out. No more cheap, easy food, no more travel, and, most likely, no more middle class.

“You should write stories,” he had suggested, but Rachel told him stories were pointless. “Things go from A to B to C,” she said. “Calling it a story changes nothing. It’s just a sequence. That’s all it is.” “What about the emotions stories stir up?” he protested. “Sequences don’t cause emotions.” “But they help us understand the universe — our reason for living!” “3.1415926535897932384626433 . . .”

And there will then be big news from the TV set. And then Leslie Freemont will arrive. A photo will be taken. And then later, there will be rifle shots. And that is when there will be blood.

You can have information or you can have a life, but you can’t have both.