On the Utility of Towels

A bright summer sun shone on the children playing in the suburb street. Their play echoed through the neighborhood. "Let's be superheroes!" rang into the bathroom where Allen slouched under the shower of hot water. After every motion, he paused, unable to focus on the work ahead of him. "I'm super fast!" came in through the open window, as Allen scrubbed his skin. Ms. Grommel was after him for another revision on the proposal. And he couldn't keep his mind on the lawn care product or how to sell it to suburban homeowners.

"My power is building giant machines and controlling them!" called someone else outside. As he washed his hair, Allen's mind wandered. He imagined super lawn service, superheroes flying down from the sky and using their Selectoxin vision to kill the weeds but leave the lush grass untouched.

Toweling off, he put on shorts instead of slacks, and a t-shirt instead of a business shirt. Slipping on shoes, he walked out his front door. Tying the corners of the towel around his neck so it hung down his back, he shouted "I can fly and I have poison vision!" and he flew out to join the superhero team.

End Notes

When I pulled open my underwear drawer that morning, I was looking for underwear. I found a book, hardcover, with a sticky note on it saying, "Read NOW." Since I live alone, I was rather curious how it got there. I looked it over. Beneath the sticky note, the cover showed an image of a chalk outline on the street, a book lying at the outline's outstretched hand. The title "End Notes" loomed large over the image, but I couldn't find an author's name anywhere on the book.

I checked the summary on the inside book flap. "When Peter finds a strange novel about a book-related murder in his closet, untangling the mystery puts his very life in danger!" That being my name, I sat at my desk to think about it and found myself staring at the cover of the book — the small one drawn on the cover, that is.

It had the same title, but the illustration was different. I had to root around for a magnifying glass before I could make out the image of a man at a desk, hunched over a book with a magnifying glass, a figure with a knife looming behind him.

Looking Down

"Looking down at your feet won't help you, son." He looked up at a woman as thin as her shadow and old enough to get away with giving advice to strangers. "I'm not really looking there, am I? I'm just... thinking."

She shrugged and puttered off along the path that circled the park. He kept thinking, listening to the cars drive by and the yells of kids playing baseball, and he wound up on his back staring into the sky.

"Looking up into the clouds won't help, either," came the voice.

"I said I'm thinking," he said. "Who cares where I point my eyes?" She smiled a knowing smile and walked on. Scowling, he turned this way and that until he was looking out at the cars driving by.

This time he saw her coming. "No," he said, "I don't think this way will help either, okay?"

"Well," she said, "maybe if one of those cars loses control." A crack thundered and a baseball missed his head by inches. "But if you'd been facing that way, you might not have shit your pants just now." She leaned close. "Whatever else is going on, always keep your eye on the ball."

How Nice

I don't know where my powers came from. Freak genetic accident, probably. The sort of thing no one can predict. I never thought puberty would see me picking up on thoughts from people nearby. It's not like you see in books and movies. I never mistook it for people talking, never thought people were actually saying... those things. It just feels totally different.

Media gets one thing right, though. It doesn't turn off. And it's all self-centered arrogance, vitriol, and pettiness. I thought I could learn to shut it out, but no. Isolation made everything calm, but eventually I needed more and more, until no matter where I went, I wasn't alone. Because as I aged, my power grew.

Grew enough that I could push back. Change minds as easily as you change your socks. When I figured that out, I turned into a power-hungry puppet master for about five minutes. That's all it took to get bored of that.

But it helps, because it gave me the means to get the one thing I want. Tranquility. It's impossible as long as all you little monkey-instinct brains are polluting the mental landscape. Which, to answer your question, is why I'm going to kill everyone. I could shut people off one by one, but that takes far too long. And even changing your socks chafes when you do it ten thousand times a day.

So I'm going to kill everyone on earth. Including you. Oh, you want to help?

How nice.

Small Victories

"Janet, have you done your laundry?" Her father's voice came down the stairs, and she set her jaw and waited. "Janet—" "Not yet, Dad," she yelled. She stared at her hamper, overflowing with a dribble of shirts and a bra hanging down to pile up on the floor, like it had torn her favorite book. "Fine," she said under her breath. She lugged the hamper down the hall to the washing machine.

Hamper on the floor before the machine's yawning mouth, she heard it. "Oooonnnneeeee moooooorrrrreeee," it croaked. "Ooooooonnnnneeeeee lllloooooosssssssst sssssoooooock." She stared into its dark maw. "Aaannnnnnnnnd IIIIIIII aaammmmmmmm fffrrrreeeeeeeeee."

Janet looked around its edges, hoping yet again she'd see a power cord she could cut. "Janet, would you get that load started already?" Janet growled to herself and started heaving her laundry wad by wad into the hungry, thieving mouth. It laughed, low and quiet and evil.

She had a lot of laundry after putting it off for so long. The arrogant laughter grew muted under the fill of soiled clothes, but no less arrogant. She slammed the machine closed and set it running.

"It's sandal weather, asshole," she said, and its victorious laughter turned to shocked surprise.

The Mortalist

"Welcome to the Shady Hills Funeral Home," said the scarecrow of a man. "I am Jonathan, and I will be your mortalist for the event." "Isn't the word 'mortician?'" I asked. He turned to me with hollow eyes. I leaned away.

"Morticians? Fuh! Hod carriers and backdrop painters at best. I am an artist with death. Come this way." He led me through to the display room. "Here is where your bereaved will experience my art."

I looked around. "Isn't there usually a coffin, or an altar for one? And chairs for a service?"

The mortalist wheeled around on me. "Did you often gaze upon the canvas while he slept?" I shrank back and shook my head. "Then why would you choose to remember him so?"

"Well, it's kind of... canvas?"

"The tableau will remember him to you as he was. A father, a thinker, a lover, not as some dead piece of meat."

"He is dead."

"Only for a short while." He turned to survey his workspace. "Here," he exclaimed, "he shall be reborn as art! And my art shall live forever!"

I snuck out while his back was turned. He can keep the deposit, I don't care.

Americansplaining: Democracy 3

Taking only one hour in a game before writing about it is a special torture. I don't have long to make decisions or poke around. I can't indulge the analysis paralysis that usually gets me. I just have to go. So here I go.

Democracy 3 puts me in a nation's driver's seat. Choose a nation, select policies, manage influence, and make a better world. Let's see how much trouble I get into.

The game gives me several options for which country to rule with an iron fist, but I take the first. I am going to command the strange, foreign land known as the UK.

I take as much time as I can afford with the tutorial, and maybe five minutes in, I get to institute my choice of new policy. The Space Program it is, then!

After that capricious choice, I notice that, excuse me, Britons, your country is labeled a technological backwater! What have you lot done with yourselves? This cannot stand! Up education! Up science spending!

One year into a four-year term, I find the statistics button. I've dropped crime by 23% and violent crime by 19%. Equality is up 10%. That sounds good. But GDP is down almost 10% That's probably bad.

I have a plan to help the GDP, but it'll have to wait until I've crushed creationism in schools, which I promptly do. I didn't realize that was a problem over there, I thought it was just in backwards places like Kentucky. You poor bastards.

Heading into year three, my credit rating has been downgraded to CC, but my polls are at 42%.

I admit, money is tight. But my policies are good! If I make it through the election, I promise I'll jack up income tax and balance the budget. I'll make the hard choices for our economy. I'll make a difference.

That's when the game freezes on me. Having a legislative body lock completely up is a pretty familiar feeling to me over here, so I am unperturbed. I ponder the lack of a CTRL-ALT-DLT option for Congress while rebooting the game. Happily, it autosaved.

A capitalist plot, the Battenburg group, forms to unseat me. That seems malicious.

I legalize pot in an effort to create more tax revenue.

With only one year left, I go all in. My space program is nearing completion, and our debt may be mounting, but an educated, tech-savvy populace is worth it.

With half a year to go, technological advantage replaces technological backwater. I've done it! In a frantic effort to curry favor with my enemies, I plummet taxes, but it's not enough. The popular vote dumps me from office, 38% to 28%.

In four years, I dropped crime by 48%, unemployment by 12%, CO2 emissions by 32%, and traffic congestion by 18%. I've raised technology by 21% and equality by 45%. But high salaries dropped by 25% and middle-class salaries dropped by 50%, with the GDP dropping 15%.

Ingrates. I'm going back to the colonies.