Tag: Fiction

Bad Men

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“Bad men do bad things in the name of authority”

James Ellroy

BAM! Marilyn’s DEAD. The town’s REELING. Camelot’s a CON, and the dream machine’s bleeding out in the gutter. You want TRUTH? You want FILTH? You want the hard, fast, and lowdown LOWDOWN? Step inside, sweetheart. This is The Enchanters.

Freddy Otash—ex-cop, badge-burnt, scandal-slinger, muscle-for-hire. He’s got the DIRT. He’s got the JUICE. He’s got the PUNCH-DRUNK MURDER-LUST and the SHAKES to match. He wants REDEMPTION. But first—he’s gotta wade through the CITY’S SINS.

L.A. 1962: Marilyn took her last breath in a pill-clogged haze. But was it suicide? Was it a shut-up special? JFK, RFK, the REDS, the FEDS—every power player with a pulse is lurking in the margins, greased with guilt, dying to keep the skeletons locked. But Freddy’s got his pry bar. He’s got his hard-on for havoc. And he AIN’T going quietly.

Ellroy’s back, baby. The prose is MACHINE-GUN JITTER. The scandal’s SPLASHY, the corruption’s DEEP, the dames are DOOMED and the bad men BLOOD-DRUNK. This ain’t a book. It’s a SPEEDBALL TO THE CEREBELLUM.

READ IT. LIVE IT. DROWN IN IT.

James Ellroy’s prose is a force of nature—a jagged, propulsive assault of staccato sentences and noir-inflected rhythms that reads like a jazz solo played with a switchblade. His writing in works like The Black Dahlia or American Tabloid is surgically precise, each clause a scalpel cutting into the rot of American institutions. He fractures grammar and chronology with the confidence of a writer who knows rules are only meaningful when shattered with purpose. This style isn’t just aesthetic; it mirrors the fractured morality of his worlds, where chaos and corruption seep through every crack. Yet for all its brilliance, Ellroy’s work hinges on a recurring trope that feels increasingly archaic: the sexually deviant, Oedipal villain who serves as a narrative linchpin, justifying the moral compromises of his antihero cops and G-men.  

These antagonists—often reducible to “mother-fixated freaks” or “prostitute-strangling deviants”—strike me as the least compelling facet of Ellroy’s plots. They function less as characters than as ideological boogeymen, reflecting a deeply conservative obsession with sexual transgression as the ultimate evil. In Ellroy’s universe, systemic rot—the military-industrial complex, institutional racism, political conspiracy—is backdrop, while the true horror is always a lone pervert whose deviance (incest, necrophilia, sadism) becomes the moral lightning rod. This framing echoes a reactionary worldview that locates societal collapse not in structures of power but in individual moral decay, particularly sexual “degeneracy.” It’s a sleight of hand: the system (capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist) is exonerated by scapegoating outliers, as if excising a tumor could cure metastatic cancer.  

The cops and feds who pursue these monsters are no heroes, yet Ellroy’s genius lies in making their hypocrisy seductive. They blackmail informants, fabricate evidence, and disappear witnesses—all while waxing poetic about “the greater good.” They collaborate with mobsters to fund black-ops against communists (“traitors!”), profit from drug trafficking while moralizing about “law and order,” and brutalize suspects of color while dismissing civil rights activists as “bleeding hearts.” Their paranoia is selective: they surveil citizens relentlessly but rage at oversight, decry Hollywood liberals as “phony” while pocketing bribes from politicians, and lie pathologically while lambasting journalists as “fake news” avant la lettre. They are, in short, perfect embodiments of authoritarian logic: violence and corruption are permissible, even noble, so long as they serve the “right” side—a side defined by loyalty to the badge, the flag, and a reactionary vision of “traditional” masculinity.  

Ellroy’s cops and agents are openly racist, misogynistic, and paranoid, yet they cling to delusions of moral superiority. Their bigotry is worn as a badge of honor, their brutality framed as “hard truths” in a world of “weakness.” This is where Ellroy’s work transcends pulp fiction and becomes a funhouse mirror of American ideology. The real horror isn’t the serial killer; it’s the system that produces—and sanctifies—these “heroic” monsters. The pervert-villain is a narrative copium (

 Women as Fetish: The Ultimate Raison d’Être in Ellroy’s Noir  

In James Ellroy’s universe, women are not merely characters—they are fetishized objects, spectral forces that haunt the narrative as both motive and metaphor. Their bodies and traumas are the engine of the plot, the raison d’être that overrides all other moral, political, or existential concerns. This fetishization is not incidental; it is the corrosive core of Ellroy’s noir, a lens through which male pathology, systemic authority, and societal rot are refracted. Women exist as catalysts for male action—their violated corpses, their sexualized allure, their idealized innocence—serving as narrative fuel for the obsessive quests of cops, killers, and conspirators. They are reduced to symbols: the Virgin, the Whore, the Victim. But in this reduction, they become the ultimate justification for the violence, corruption, and nihilism that define Ellroy’s world.  

 The Fetish as Narrative Engine  

Ellroy’s male protagonists are driven by a compulsive need to possess, avenge, or destroy women—a need that masquerades as purpose. In The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short’s mutilated body becomes an obsession for Bucky Bleichert, not because of who she was, but because of what she represents: a blank screen for male guilt, rage, and voyeurism. Her murder is less a crime to solve than a myth to consume, a grotesque spectacle that allows Bleichert to project his own fractured masculinity onto her corpse. Similarly, in L.A. Confidential, Lynn Bracken—a Veronica Lake lookalike and high-end prostitute—is fetishized as both fantasy and foil, her body a commodity in a marketplace of male desire and power. Women’s trauma is not a subject in itself but a narrative device, a means to propel men into motion. Their suffering is aestheticized, their agency erased; they are MacGuffins with pulse points.  

 authority as System, Fetish as Distraction  

This fetishization serves a dual purpose: it individualizes misogyny while obscuring the systemic structures that enable it. The brutalization of women becomes a personal vendetta (a cop avenging his mother, a killer punishing “sinful” women) rather than a symptom of institutionalized authority. Ellroy’s detectives rage against “deviant” men—the incestuous father, the necrophiliac starlet—while ignoring the complicity of the police, media, and political elites who profit from the exploitation of women’s bodies. The LAPD’s indifference to sex workers’ deaths in L.A. Confidential is not a systemic critique but a backdrop for Ed Exley’s self-righteous crusade. By framing misogyny as the work of lone “monsters,” Ellroy lets the broader culture of toxic masculinity off the hook. The fetishized woman becomes a scapegoat, her body the battleground where male heroes and villains perform their moral theater, all while the machine of authority grinds on.  

 The Madonna-Whore Dialectic as Conservative Ideology  

Ellroy’s women are trapped in a reactionary binary: they are either saints (the dead mother, the virginal victim) or sinners (the femme fatale, the addict). There is no room for complexity, only symbolic utility. This dichotomy mirrors the conservative obsession with female purity—a worldview where women’s value is determined by their adherence to or deviation from patriarchal norms. The fetishization of the Madonna (the idealized victim) justifies male violence as protection; the fetishization of the Whore (the sexualized threat) justifies male violence as punishment. Both positions reinforce male control. Even when women resist—like Grace in White Jazz, who weaponizes her sexuality—their power is illusory, a temporary disruption soon contained by male violence or institutional force.  

 Ellroy’s Biographical Shadow: Trauma as Fetish  

Ellroy’s personal history—the unsolved murder of his mother, Jean—looms over this fetishization like a ghost. Jean’s death, and Ellroy’s lifelong obsession with it, transforms women in his fiction into proxies for his unresolved grief and guilt. The violated mothers and butchered ingenues are not characters but catharsis, a way to ritualize his own trauma through narrative exorcism. Yet this psychological excavation risks reducing real women to symbolic wounds. The fetish becomes a coping mechanism, a way to avoid confronting the mundane misogyny of everyday power structures—the cops who dismiss domestic violence, the media that sensationalizes dead girls—by instead fixating on the grotesque and the taboo.  

 Contrast with Noir’s Past: Hammett, Chandler, and the Limits of Agency  

Unlike Hammett’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon) or Chandler’s Carmen Sternwood (The Big Sleep), who wield sexuality as a tool of manipulation (however constrained by authority), Ellroy’s women lack even this fractured agency. They are corpses, addicts, or fantasies—never protagonists. Hammett and Chandler, for all their flaws, allowed women to occupy the role of antagonist, complicating the power dynamics of their worlds. Ellroy’s women are inert, their power confined to the gravitational pull they exert on male psyches. The fetishization is totalizing: it consumes the narrative, reducing every interaction to a transaction of control or vengeance.  

 Ellroy’s Biography as Subtext: Trauma and the Oedipal Obsession  

Ellroy’s fixation on sexual deviance cannot be divorced from his personal history—specifically, the unsolved murder of his mother, Jean, when he was 10. Her death haunts his work like a repressed memory, resurfacing in the violated mothers and dismembered women who populate his plots. The Oedipal villain becomes a perverse stand-in for Ellroy’s own unresolved guilt and rage, transforming real trauma into mythic grotesquerie. Yet this psychological excavation risks conflating personal demons with societal ones. The result is a conundrum: while Ellroy exposes the rot of institutions, he displaces collective culpability onto Freudian nightmares, as if societal collapse could be psychoanalyzed away.  

Noir as a Mirror: Ellroy vs. His Predecessors  

The noir genre has always functioned as a cracked lens through which society’s darkest impulses are magnified, but James Ellroy’s work refracts a fundamentally different vision than that of his forebears, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In Chandler’s The Big Sleep or Hammett’s Red Harvest, the detective—Philip Marlowe, the Continental Op—is a moral outsider, a lone wolf navigating a world poisoned by institutional rot. These protagonists confront systemic corruption: corporate titans who manipulate laws, politicians on the take, police departments bought by mobsters. The detective’s role is that of a disillusioned truth-teller, prying open the lid on a rigged game. Their code, however battered, remains rooted in a cynical idealism: Someone has to care about justice, even if the system doesn’t.  

Ellroy’s antiheroes, by contrast, are the system. They are not knights-errant in a trench coat but enforcers embedded in the machinery of power—cops, FBI agents, intelligence operatives. In L.A. Confidential, Bud White and Ed Exley aren’t fighting corruption; they’re weaponizing it. White’s brutal vigilantism and Exley’s calculating ambition are not deviations from the system but expressions of its true nature. Unlike Hammett’s Op, who dismantles a town’s graft in Red Harvest, Ellroy’s characters revel in graft, using it to fund black-ops, silence enemies, and climb hierarchies. The line between cop and criminal isn’t blurred; it’s obliterated. Ellroy’s cops don’t solve crimes—they orchestrate them, framing suspects, fabricating evidence, and collaborating with mobsters to maintain a fragile order. Their moral code, if it exists at all, is tribal: loyalty to the badge, the brotherhood, and the retrograde masculinity that binds them.  

Chandler and Hammett’s noir emerged from the Great Depression and postwar disillusionment, framing systemic rot as a betrayal of the American Dream. Their detectives mourn a lost world of honor, however mythic. Ellroy’s noir, born of Cold War paranoia and the collapse of 1960s idealism, rejects the dream entirely. There is no “before” to mourn—the Dream was always a corpse, and the detectives are its grave robbers. Chandler’s Marlowe quips, “I’m a romantic. I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what’s the matter.” Ellroy’s cop snarls, “I hear voices crying in the night, and I make them stop.”  

This shift reflects a deeper ideological divergence. Chandler and Hammett critique class and capital: the wealthy patriarch who murders to protect his empire (The Big Sleep), the mining tycoon who enslaves workers (Red Harvest). Ellroy’s villains, however, are psychosexual grotesques—incestuous surgeons, necrophiliac starlets, mother-obsessed bombers—whose deviance distracts from the structural evils enabling them. The systemic corruption (racist policing, CIA drug trafficking, FBI COINTELPRO tactics) becomes background noise, while the narrative fixates on the sexualized “monster.” It’s a bait-and-switch: Chandler’s villains expose the banality of capitalist evil; Ellroy’s villains let the system off the hook by reducing societal collapse to individual pathology.  

Stylistically, the contrast is stark. Chandler’s prose is lyrical, steeped in metaphor (“The streets were dark with something more than night”), while Ellroy’s is a jagged, teletype staccato, all hard edges and stripped-down clauses. This isn’t just aesthetic—it’s philosophical. Chandler’s flowing sentences suggest a world where meaning might be uncovered, if one looks deeply enough. Ellroy’s fractured syntax mirrors a world where coherence is a lie, and power is the only truth.  

Yet for all his innovation, Ellroy’s focus on sexual deviance as the ultimate sin echoes the reactionary undercurrents of his mid-century settings. By obsessing over “perverts,” his work inadvertently upholds the very moralism it claims to deconstruct. Hammett and Chandler’s detectives fear the rich and powerful; Ellroy’s fear the deviant and diseased. The result is a noir that thrills but rarely indicts—a hall of mirrors where the true horror isn’t the reflection, but who’s holding the glass.

Checkpoint

The agent crouched low in the alley, the flickering neon lights jerking like a mind caught in a seizure. Shadows danced on the walls, erratic as neurons firing in a dying brain. The Interzone hummed with the static of fractured realities, a buzz that bled through everything—glitching, fraying, as bits of half-thoughts and lost memories crawled up the spines of the unwary. He felt them out there, the watchers—ghosts in the machine, invisible, feeding off the surveillance lattice that crisscrossed the fabric of the world. The web never let anything go, and in the Interzone, detection was no longer just a risk—it was the final breath, a pinpoint incision cutting away the self.

Ahead, the checkpoint loomed—a jagged thing, an insect’s exoskeleton of glass and wire, twitching with sensors that sniffed the air for the smallest deviation. The agent was running out of time. His cover was a paper-thin mask, already peeling under the scrutiny of too many cross-references, too many eyes watching from the corners.

But he still had one last play, a filthy ace in the hole, a weapon so volatile it threatened to destroy not only him but the very bones of the Interzone itself.

From the folds of his coat, he pulled the artifact—dark and sleek, its surface gleaming with the ghost of something old, something dangerous. A relic whispered about in anarchist circles and corporate backrooms. A thing rumored to have been used in some forgotten neuro-war, its purpose lost in the undercurrents of time. It was no simple device; it was a scalpel for the mind, capable of slicing through consciousness with a precision that would unravel the threads of identity, of ego, of everything.

He turned it in his hands, the hum of it almost a heartbeat, an itch. The instructions had come in fragments—vague, cryptic: twist the dial, don’t hold it too long, and above all, don’t look back.

The agent pressed himself into the corner of the alley, his breath shallow, his pulse syncing with the low hum of the artifact. He twisted the dial.

The effect was immediate, as if the world itself had been punched in the gut. A sound—no, a sensation—rippled outward, inaudible to the physical ear but deafening to the psyche, a psychic tremor that knocked everything loose. His stomach churned, his vision warped, reality itself bending at the edges, a sickening distortion that made him feel like he was slipping through the cracks.

Around him, the air thickened—shimmered. The boundary between the real and the imagined began to bleed. The device had torn a hole, a fracture in the collective mind, and everything within a twenty-meter radius snapped loose like balloons with the strings cut. Ego and identity flung apart, scrambling, reassembling in wrong places, wrong bodies, wrong memories. It was chaos. Total, absolute chaos.

The superegos shattered first, like totalitarian regimes in an unplanned coup, their rigid structures dissolving into gibberish. The invisible judges—the ones that kept the Interzone in line—blinked out of existence, their roles vanished into the void. The ids, the raw, primal drives, burst free, wailing in ecstasy and horror, their desires spilling into the open, unchecked, uncontrolled.

The world trembled. It wasn’t just a tremor—it was a fracture in the very bones of reality. Buildings bent like rubber, walls quivered and undulated, breathing in and out as if the space itself were alive. The street, once a place of cold order, had become a fever dream. A man in a pinstripe suit staggered into view, his face slack, tears streaming down his cheeks. He clawed at his chest, mouthing words that would never be completed, a thought broken before it could even exist.

Nearby, a woman in an Interzone bureaucrat’s uniform collapsed, clutching her head. Her lips moved in frantic cycles, sentences folding over themselves—someone else’s guilt, her own prayers, advertisements from a life she couldn’t remember.

The guards at the checkpoint—once sharp, precise—had turned into parodies of themselves. One slumped against the monolith, helmet gone, his eyes staring into nothing, his lips trembling with a lullaby from some long-dead memory. Another stood, rifle in hand, twitching like an insect at the end of its life. His mind had locked onto a single phrase, a mantra that looped endlessly: not supposed to happen, not supposed to happen.

The artifact in the agent’s hand pulsed again, its glow soft but malevolent, a star long dead but still burning, refusing to go out. It was rewriting everything. The air itself cracked, reality itself torn apart at the seams. The ghosts of identities scrambled, tried to take shape, but failed, dissolving into vapor before they could solidify.

As he moved, the streets became unrecognizable—a warped tableau of madness. A businessman dropped to all fours, barking, sniffing at a woman’s skirt. She spun in place, singing in a child’s voice, a song that was more nightmare than nursery rhyme. A group of children spilled from a tenement, their laughter shrill and mechanical, a broken sound that didn’t belong in the world. One of them stopped, stared at the agent, and tilted its head. Eyes empty. Then it was gone, blinked out of existence.

The architecture was no better—melting, bending, warping. The checkpoint’s jagged monolith shivered, its surface bubbling, as if something underneath had been clawing its way out. The streetlights flickered, bending impossibly, their beams scattered across the ground like broken glass. The whole zone was glitching, fracturing under the pressure.

The agent pressed on, every step heavier than the last, the weight of the shattered minds pressing down on him. He could feel his own identity, his own mind, beginning to fray, foreign thoughts leaking in. A name—Theresa—slipped into his mind, a name that wasn’t his, a name that felt like it should be. The thought swam in the currents, too intense to ignore. He shoved it away, focusing on the threadbare remnant of his mission, the fragile construct of who he was.

He reached the checkpoint, and the guards didn’t even flinch. Their eyes were vacant, their bodies slack. One of them was staring at his reflection, mouthing soundless words, trying to put himself back together. Another laughed—a high, unnatural cackle that echoed across the empty street.

The agent stepped through the checkpoint without a glance backward. The scanners were blind, their systems overloaded, short-circuiting under the psychic onslaught. He moved through the chaos like a ghost, the echoes of a thousand shattered minds trailing him, their whispers tugging at the edges of his consciousness.

Behind him, the Interzone fractured, the remnants of its once-pristine control now slipping into the void. The agent didn’t look back. But something followed him, something nameless and hungry, born of the madness he’d unleashed. And it was closer than he realized.

Block Time

“Time is a junkie. Shoots up eternity and comes down as minutes. You’re not living in time—you’re processing it.”

He sat cross-legged on a floor that never aged, scribbling with a pen that never ran out, his hand looping eternal cursive over blank sheets that devoured ink without a mark. This was Block Time—slabs of Now stacked like bricks, stretching infinitely, refusing decay. Tick-tock and stop. Time was not a river here; it was a warden.

He’d been writing his book for five lifetimes—or none at all. Hard to tell.

Somewhere, outside the cell of Now, the Clockmen shuffled with their pendulum limbs, heads like grandfather clocks, their faces frozen at 11:59—forever awaiting the strike that never came. One of them rattled its bones against his door. Thump.

“Keep writing, Writer,” it moaned.

He spat on the floor where the saliva evaporated into whispers.

The book was about Block Time but was also Block Time. It fed on paradoxes like a boa constrictor eating its tail, growing fatter with self-references. Chapter 9 explained Chapter 4, which rewrote Chapter 12, which negated Chapter 1. Readers wouldn’t read it; they’d inhale it, like dust from a forgotten library. And then they’d dream it.

He remembered what it was like before. Linear time. Dirty stuff—ran like oil over gears, constantly breaking down, needing grease. He’d lived there, with the rest of them, breathing in moments like cancerous smoke, dying one inhale at a time. That’s where the Clockmen found him—off his face on forward motion, thinking he was going somewhere.

They hooked him with a gold-plated second hand and dragged him here, kicking and screaming into stillness.

Now? Now he wrote.

Somewhere deep in the block—a block beneath the block—there were whispers of others like him: the Repeaters. People who’d escaped linearity but couldn’t escape habit. A man peeling an apple over and over for eternity. A woman pulling thread through fabric, stitch-by-stitch, sewing together nothing. The Repeaters wanted him to stop writing. Said the book was a virus that spread stillness.

“You’ll freeze it all,” they hissed.

“But it’s already frozen,” he growled back.

He scrawled faster, words bubbling up from inside him like vomit: “In Block Time, all books have already been written, but every page is unwritten until you look. Schrödinger’s notebook.”

He thought of escape sometimes. Just out of curiosity, you understand. He imagined prying open the walls of Now with a crowbar, tearing through to something with edges. Real time. Maybe he’d sit in a diner and drink coffee that got cold. Let a clock run out. Watch seconds collapse into oblivion like bodies falling from a skyscraper.

But then he’d look down at his book, at the words slithering onto the page, and he knew there was nowhere to go. Block Time wasn’t a place; it was a condition. It wasn’t keeping him here—he was here.

A knock came at the door. Another Clockman. He heard it ticking behind the woodgrain.

“Chapter 37 is eating Chapter 5,” it said.

He wiped ink from his lips and smiled.

“Good. That means it’s working.”

Pipeline

“You don’t like me. Hell, you think I’m despicable. You sit in your faculty lounges and tweet from your ivory towers about ‘consultants ruining education,’ about ‘corporate greed infecting the academy,’ and you pin that target squarely on my back.

But let me tell you something: You want me here. You need me here. Because I’m the one who does the dirty work you don’t have the guts to own.

You think it’s me who decided not to pay real wages? Me who refused to pony up for proper insurance? Me who looked at tuition fees and said, ‘Raise ‘em again’? Come on. I don’t make the call—I just show you where the call gets you the most bang for your buck.

You don’t hate me because I’m wrong. You hate me because I say out loud what you’ve already decided behind closed doors. You bring me in, I run the numbers, and suddenly I’m the bad guy? Suddenly I’m the reason the adjuncts are broke, the students are drowning in debt, and the custodians are on food stamps? That’s rich.

Here’s the truth: I’m just the middleman. I’m the guy you call when you’re too damn squeamish to face what it takes to keep this whole crumbling enterprise afloat. You don’t want to pay real wages. You don’t want to cut into the endowment to give workers decent benefits. You don’t want to let go of that sweet, sweet tuition revenue.

But you can’t admit that—not to the faculty, not to the students, not to yourselves. So you hire me. The Consultant. The Devil. And you point a trembling finger and say, ‘He did it. He’s the villain here.’

Well, let me tell you something. I can take it. I can take your outrage, your petitions, your sanctimonious op-eds in the Chronicle. Because deep down, you know I’m not the problem. I’m the shield. I’m the firewall. I’m the guy who lets you keep your hands clean while I deliver the plan you’ve been begging for.

You brought me in because you don’t have the stomach to tell your own employees, ‘We can’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.’ You hired me to do your dirty work, and now you want to throw me to the wolves? Fine.

But don’t pretend I’m the villain. The villain is the mirror you refuse to look into.

You don’t have to like me. Hell, you don’t even have to thank me. But when the dust settles, and your balance sheet looks just a little bit cleaner? Don’t forget who made it possible.

You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. Because without me, you’d have to stand up and admit what you really are. And we both know you’re not ready for that.”

Pause. The slightest smirk.

“You’re welcome.”

The board presses him. The room’s tension sharpens, but he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he leans back, his voice measured, a little quieter now—more dangerous because of it.

Board Member: “But did you or did you not advise Fairmont Labs to bring OxyContin onto this campus? Into this city?”

McKinsey Consultant (calm, unblinking): “Did I advise them? That’s the question, isn’t it?” He lets the silence hang, dragging just a beat too long before continuing.

“Look, I’m not here to play word games, and I’m sure as hell not here to absolve you of your collective guilt. I gave them a strategy. A recommendation. I told them where the market was, where the opportunities were—because that’s what I do. You hired me to tell people where the money is. And let’s not pretend you don’t know how the game works.

Did they sell the product? Sure. Did it make them money? Absolutely. Was this campus a promising market? You already know the answer.”

Board Member (voice rising): “So you’re admitting it? You knew what would happen!”

McKinsey Consultant (raising an eyebrow): “Did I know what would happen? What exactly do you think I know? That people would overdose? That a pharmacy down the road would turn into a de facto dealer? That the professors’ kids would start ‘borrowing’ pills from their parents’ cabinets? No, I didn’t know. But I’ll tell you this:

I knew what Fairmont Labs wanted, and I gave them the cleanest route to get there. It wasn’t my product. It wasn’t my city. Hell, it wasn’t even my decision. It was a business decision—your business decision.

Because let’s not rewrite history. This university signed the contracts. This campus let the drug companies set up shop under the guise of ‘partnerships’ and ‘research funding.’ It wasn’t me cutting the ribbon on the new lab with the Fairmont logo plastered on it. That was you. You cashed the checks. You built the shiny buildings. You celebrated the ‘innovation.’ And now, when the bodies are piling up, suddenly you’re looking for someone to blame?

Convenient.”

He pauses, letting the silence hit again, his voice dropping to that near-whisper that demands everyone lean in.

“You know, there’s something almost poetic about it. You all love to talk about the ‘free market’ when the endowments roll in and the donors clap you on the back. You love to say ‘growth requires sacrifice.’ But when the costs show up—when they show up in empty dorm rooms, funeral parlors, and rehab centers—you look at me like I’m the devil himself.

Well, here’s the truth: I’m just a mirror. I show people what they’re willing to do for the bottom line. I don’t make decisions. I don’t pull triggers. I don’t write prescriptions. I give options. Strategies. Possibilities. And if you don’t like where they lead, maybe you should think harder about who’s really to blame.”

Board Member: “But these are lives—students, families! Don’t you care?”

McKinsey Consultant (cold smile): “Care? You think this is about caring? Caring doesn’t balance your budget. Caring doesn’t keep the lights on. Caring didn’t build that new stadium you just named after a billionaire alum.

What I care about is results. You hired me to save you money. You hired me to keep the doors open. To bring in cash when the donors dried up and the tuition hikes weren’t enough to cover your ambitions. I delivered. And now you want to stand there—on your sparkling new campus funded with dirty money—and ask me if I care?

No, I don’t care. Because you didn’t care either, not when it mattered. You only care now because the press is at the gates, and you need someone to throw to the wolves.

Well, here I am. Go ahead. Blame me. It won’t change a thing.”

He stands, smoothing his tie, voice cool as ice.

“You brought the wolf to your door. I just showed you how to feed it.”

The consultant stays seated this time. Relaxed. The board’s anger swirls around him, but he doesn’t bother matching it. Instead, he speaks with a tone that’s almost sympathetic—condescendingly so. This is someone explaining the obvious to people who refuse to see it.

“You want me to feel bad? About what? About this place? About Bumfucks University out here in the middle of nowhere? Let’s be honest—no one gives a damn about this school. Not really.

Oh, I know the speech. ‘We’re building futures, we’re empowering communities.’ Spare me. That’s just window dressing for the donors and the glossy brochures. But we’re not sitting in Cambridge or Palo Alto, are we? No one’s watching. This isn’t where the next world leader or tech CEO is coming from. This is where kids who didn’t quite make the cut end up because they couldn’t buy their way into something better.

You don’t need me to say it—you already know it. This university isn’t about education; it’s about keeping up appearances. These kids? They’re not going to sit on boards, or argue in courtrooms, or run hedge funds. They’re not the ‘future of America’—they’re the workforce, the fillers, the B- and C-tier citizens that keep the lights on.

And what do they want? A piece of paper and a handshake to tell them they’re ‘educated’. You’re not here to turn them into visionaries; you’re here to shuffle them through the system and spit them out just employable enough to take the jobs no one else wants. And let’s be clear—that’s fine. That’s the deal. But don’t pretend this place is important.

You hired me because you wanted the machine to run smoother, cheaper, faster. You wanted to trim the fat, tighten the belts, and scrape every dollar out of these kids and their families before they realize they’ve been sold a dream that isn’t coming true. And guess what? I delivered. I always deliver.

Now you want to sit there and wring your hands? Cry about values? About dignity? About morality? You think Fairmont Labs selling opioids to a place like this was some tragedy of fate? It wasn’t. It was a calculation. This campus—this community—is low-hanging fruit. It’s vulnerable. People here take what they can get, whether that’s OxyContin or a worthless degree.

Because the truth, and this is the part you don’t want to say out loud, is that no one needs this place. You could close up shop tomorrow, and the world wouldn’t blink. You’re not Harvard, you’re not Yale, you’re not even Michigan State. There are already enough elites to run the show. The kids here are just extras—B-team players who’ll do what they’re told, take on the debt, and pay off their worthless education with their worthless wages.

And you know what? That’s okay. You just don’t want to admit it because it’s ugly. You need to feel good about yourselves. You need someone to blame for the dirt under your fingernails.

So you hire me. The guy with the suit and the spreadsheets. You want me to tell you how to keep the illusion going without the costs adding up. And now that it’s gone too far—now that the cracks are showing—you’re looking for a scapegoat.

Well, I’ll be your villain if that’s what you need. But don’t you dare act surprised. This was the plan all along. You just didn’t want to say it out loud.”

He stands, slow and deliberate, gathering his papers like he’s already done with the conversation.

“You can call me ruthless. You can call me despicable. But deep down, you know I’m right. Places like this are just filler—people like me make sure it stays that way.”

He walks out, leaving the truth behind him like a cold wind.

My Father Ran A Prison

The air hung heavy in the valley, as though weighed down by the burden of secrets left unsaid. Beyond the murmur of the waterfall, there was silence, save for the faint rustling of leaves, as though the earth itself conspired to remain quiet, afraid to disturb the ghosts that lingered in the minds of men.

The boy—no, the man, though he never quite grew into the word—stood at the edge of the stream. The dog was there, Mishima’s dog, its paws bleeding from futile attempts to claw its way free from the jagged rocks. He didn’t know what kind of dog it was; it didn’t matter. It looked at him with eyes full of terror, and he felt nothing.

His father had been like those rocks: immovable, unyielding. A man of rules and walls, someone who believed in the clean geometry of confinement. The prison had been his kingdom, and he its keeper. His son had grown up in the shadow of that place, watching the barred windows swallow what little light reached the concrete floors.

When he was a child, the boy had asked his father what the prisoners had done.

“Everything,” the man replied. “Everything you can imagine, and worse.”

“Do they ever leave?” the boy asked.

“No,” his father said, with a finality that felt like the closing of a cell door. “No one ever leaves.”

But the father had been wrong, as fathers often are. Years later, when the old man’s body lay cold and pale in its casket, the prison gates had swung wide open, though not for the prisoners. For the boy, now a man, who fled from the shadow of those walls with the desperation of a drowning man breaking the surface.

The dog whimpered, snapping him back to the present. He crouched down by the water, the chill seeping through his boots. The dog was trapped, its body pressed against the rocks by the relentless current. It would die if he left it there, but he hesitated. He told himself it was because he didn’t know how to free it, but the truth was simpler, darker. He didn’t want to. He felt no hatred for the dog, but no love either—only an eerie indifference. It reminded him of his father’s face on the day of his mother’s funeral: a mask, expressionless, impervious to the grief that should have been there.

“I can only love you by hating him more,” he had told her once, on a night when the stars seemed closer than the ground beneath their feet. She had laughed, soft and bitter, and told him he didn’t understand love.

“Love isn’t hatred,” she said. “It isn’t theft either. It’s just—what it is.”

“What it is?” he asked, a mocking edge in his voice.

She sighed. “Love doesn’t need to be a war or a crime. You think it has to be stolen, but maybe it’s just… given.”

He had laughed then, too, but he hadn’t meant it. The laugh was a lie, like so many things he told himself to keep from admitting he didn’t know who he was. She had left not long after that night, and he told himself he didn’t care. But he did.

He reached into the icy water, his hands trembling—not from the cold, but from something else, something deeper. The dog thrashed as he grabbed hold of it, its body slick and frail beneath his fingers. He pulled, and the rocks scraped its fur, leaving streaks of blood in the water. When he finally freed it, the dog collapsed at his feet, shivering and weak but alive.

For a moment, he stared at the creature, its ribs heaving with each labored breath. Then he saw it: the peacock in the snow. It was there in the reflection of the stream, its plumage reduced to a dark silhouette against the pale ground. The image was fleeting, gone before he could decide whether it had been real or imagined. But it stayed with him, lodged in his mind like a thorn.

Later, when the dog had limped away into the woods and the shadows began to lengthen, he stood by the water’s edge once more, his reflection staring back at him.

“I am a seer,” he whispered, though no one was there to hear. “I am a liar.”

He thought of his father then, the man who had run the prison and the man who had been a prison himself. He thought of his mother, whose love had been quiet and invisible, like the air that filled a room. And he thought of her—the one who had left, the one he had loved in his own broken way.

“I don’t know who I am,” he said, and the words echoed in the stillness, carried away by the current.

And for the first time, he believed them.

<>

His father ran the prison the way a man might hold dominion over his own despair—with the rigid certainty of duty, yet trembling beneath the weight of what he could never master. He moved through the corridors like a king inspecting a kingdom of shadows, his footsteps ringing against the damp stone walls as though time itself had grown afraid to progress in his presence.

He was a man who believed in rules, in discipline, in the iron geometry of justice. To him, the prisoners were not men but broken pieces of a cosmic equation, errors to be corrected, chaos to be contained. “A man without boundaries,” he often said, his voice low but edged with steel, “is a man already lost to ruin.”

The boy had grown up in the shadow of this creed, under the hard gaze of a father who spoke of order as though it were holy scripture. There was no room for softness in that household, no space for the fragile promises of love. His mother would whisper her prayers behind closed doors, and his father would recite rules, as though prayers were an indulgence the world could not afford.

The prison loomed over their lives like a monument to suffering, its great stone walls visible from every window of the warden’s house. To the boy, it seemed that the shadow of the prison did not end where the iron gates began—it followed them into their home, their conversations, their silences.

One evening, years before the boy would leave that house and the father who ruled it, he found the man alone in his study. The room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of a single candle. His father sat at his desk, staring at an old photograph—a younger version of himself, standing at the gates of the prison, his uniform crisp, his face sharp with purpose.

“Do you ever dream?” the boy asked from the doorway, unsure why the question had risen to his lips.

His father did not look up. “Dreams are for men without responsibilities,” he said, his voice as flat and steady as ever.

But the boy, standing there, saw his father’s hand tremble as he turned the photograph over and laid it facedown on the desk.

Even now, years later, the boy—now a man—could not decide whether his father truly believed in the walls he had spent his life building. He had been a man who carried keys, and yet they had never unlocked anything that mattered. The boy had always wondered if his father feared the prisoners less than he feared the walls themselves, and whether he, too, had been trapped.

And sometimes, when the boy stood alone, staring into his own reflection, he could not shake the feeling that his father had passed that same prison onto him, the bars invisible but ever-present.

HyperRust

The highways hum like electric rivers, flowing nowhere but into themselves.

Neon crosses bleed light into the night, baptizing the lost in false salvation.

Beneath the rust of the boxcar lies the ghost of gold—both gone and waiting.

The jukebox preaches its gospel to a congregation of empty barstools.

A dollar bill folds like a map to nowhere, guiding the lost into emptier places.

The flag waves like a tired carnival banner, frayed by the wind of a million broken promises.

The gas station lights burn like desert stars, guiding wanderers to nowhere.

The strip mall stretches like a glass cathedral, where dreams are sold for a dime.

Billboards shout louder than the sky, selling silence to the deaf.

The freight train’s whistle is a hymn for the broken, singing a tune the rich can’t hear.

The river’s mouth spits oil and dead fish, a sermon on progress no one wants to hear.

The moon’s silver tongue licks the interstate, kissing the dreams of truckers and thieves.

In diners at midnight, coffee cups hold oceans of regret beneath fluorescent suns.

The desert grows fat on bones and hubris, blooming with dreams that only die.

Each motel room is a crucible of whispered prayers and cigarette ghosts.

The carnival spins like a planet gone mad, gravity flinging the hopeful into the void.

The pawnshop gleams like a holy relic, trading sins for second chances.

The preacher’s voice cracks like dry earth, his promises crumble like sandcastles in the wind.

Every pickup truck is a coffin on wheels, carrying love and anger to the edge of the earth.

The cornfields whisper secrets to the wind, their golden tongues sharper than knives.

Firestarter

Scene: Boardroom, Stratodyne Aerospace Headquarters, circa Now

The conference room shimmered with chrome surfaces and LED screens, a mausoleum for billion-dollar decisions. Aloysius “Al” Riparini, CEO of Stratodyne Aerospace and occasional reader of Popular Mechanics, slouched in his ergonomic chair like a sullen Apollo. 

He forward, hands steepled, his face carved in the grim expression of a man waiting to hear bad news explained in worse terms. Across from him, Vance Trawick, the company’s Chief Operations Futurist, was already sweating through his tailored suit.

“So,” Al said, cutting the tension like a scythe through tall grass. “You’re telling me the rockets can’t launch.”

“Not yet,” Vance admitted, staring at a stack of untouched binders as if they might leap to his defense. “The chips… well, they’re good. They’re very good. But they’re not good enough. We need more processing power to handle the real-time computations—guidance, payload integrity, the whole system. The chips need to double their capacity.”

“And why the hell haven’t they?”

“Well…” Vance hesitated, then rushed out the words before Al could interrupt. “It’s the same problem everywhere. The Chinese are stuck at the same threshold. So are the Russians. It’s a bottleneck. Nobody can make the leap.”

Al’s fingers tapped on the table, a restless staccato that echoed in the uneasy silence. “So what you’re telling me,” he said slowly, “is that nobody’s going anywhere. Us, them, anyone.”

“Not until the chips double,” Vance said. “But here’s the thing—we can’t just make them double. The tech is there, sure, in theory. But to develop it—properly, reliably—it requires enormous investment. I’m talking decades of R&D money, Al.”

“Which we don’t have.”

“Which nobody has. Not without an external pressure. Something to accelerate the process.”

“And what, exactly, do you suggest?” Al asked, his tone suggesting he already regretted asking.

“That’s where I come in,” said Dr. Miranda Crick from the far end of the table. The Chief Philosopher of Applied Algorithms—her title read like satire, but her mind operated like a scalpel—had been silent until now. She adjusted her glasses, the movement slow and deliberate, as though she wanted the room’s attention fully in her grasp.

“What’s your solution, Dr. Crick?” Al asked, swiveling his chair toward her.

“A war,” she said, almost cheerfully.

The air seemed to drop ten degrees. Even Vance, used to her peculiar turns of phrase, looked startled.

For Al Riparini, the word war didn’t just echo; it reverberated in his chest like a Sousa march played by an orchestra of brassieres. A sudden heat surged from his toes to his neck, blooming in his face with the same intensity as an ad campaign for Liberty Bonds.

Al just stared, slack-jawed, waiting for her to explain.

“What do you mean, a war?” he said finally.

“A war,” she repeated. “It’s the only thing that would create the conditions for progress. Think about it. Right now, we’re in a stalemate. Nobody can launch their rockets because nobody has chips capable of handling the systems. If we wait, it’ll take years—decades, even—for natural development cycles to bridge the gap. But a war… well, a war forces everyone’s hand. Both sides—us, China, Russia—would have no choice but to invest everything in chip technology. Billions, trillions, poured into advancement. Each side racing to outpace the other.”

Al’s mind began to swirl with images: women in pin-up poses, draped in stars and stripes, standing provocatively next to missile silos. His hand crept involuntarily to the knot of his tie, loosening it. Was he sweating? Yes, but it was the righteous sweat of a man ready to serve his country—and possibly make love to it.

“And the rockets?” Al asked, his voice brittle with disbelief.

“They’d launch,” Dr. Crick said simply. “Once the chips are ready. And they would be ready, Al. Faster than you can imagine. The stakes would be too high for anything less. In the end, the side that pushes hardest would come out on top.”

“Then humanity wins,” she said with a shrug. “Think about it. Satellites with quantum chips. Communications systems operating on entirely new paradigms. Technologies that trickle down to the civilian sector. It would revolutionize everything.”

“And if there’s no clear winner?”

Al leaned back, his chair groaning. “And how exactly do you propose we, uh, kick off this war?”

“Not start it,” Dr. Crick corrected. “Just nudge things in the right direction. Wars don’t need architects, Mr. Riparini. They need opportunities. And opportunities, well—those are easy to arrange.”

A heavy silence settled over the room, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning. Someone at the far end coughed nervously. Al rubbed his temples, trying to stave off the migraine forming behind his eyes.

“You’re insane,” he muttered.

“Am I?” Dr. Crick said, tilting her head. Her voice was soft now, almost tender. “Or am I just the only one here willing to face reality?”

Somewhere, in a nondescript office on the other side of the globe, a Chinese engineer was muttering similar frustrations into a tea-stained telephone, his own chips stubbornly refusing to leap into the future. Meanwhile, in Moscow, a gruff general scrawled impatient notes across a budget report. By nightfall, a peculiar email with no sender address would arrive in all their inboxes, its subject line reading simply: Firestarter

Scene: Secure Transcontinental Conference Call – Codename: Project Firestarter

The screen flickered to life, a patchwork of encrypted pixelation and glitching audio that gave the impression the meeting was taking place inside an Atari game. On the American side, Aloysius “Al” Riparini leaned forward in his chair, flanked by Dr. Miranda Crick. His face was lit by the pale glow of his laptop, and his expression carried the uneasy enthusiasm of a man about to pitch a multi-level marketing scheme to old friends.

The Chinese representative, Wu Jingbao, appeared stoic but visibly annoyed, his frame hunched in an office chair that creaked like the gates of Hell every time he shifted. To his right sat a translator whose face said she’d rather be literally anywhere else. Meanwhile, the Russian delegate, Yuri Karpov—a tank-shaped man with a haircut that might have been achieved with a ruler and a cleaver—was sipping from a flask and muttering something that sounded suspiciously like cursing.

“Alright,” Al began, his voice cutting through the static. “Let me start by saying we’re all in the same boat here. Rockets, stuck on the ground. Chips, not doubling like they’re supposed to. Progress, dead in the water. Am I right?”

“Speak for yourself,” Yuri grumbled in heavily accented English. “Russia is not stuck. Russia is… strategically paused.”

“Strategically paused?” Wu echoed with a snort. His translator hesitated, then gamely rendered it into diplomatic Mandarin, earning a withering glare from Wu.

“Okay, fine,” Al said, holding up his hands. “Strategically paused, whatever. But let’s not kid ourselves. None of us are launching anything anytime soon. And I think we all know why.”

The translator fumbled through this as well, but the phrase came through clear enough. Wu sighed deeply, while Yuri took another pull from his flask. The silence on the call was deafening.

“Alright, here’s the pitch,” Al said after a moment. “What if… we gave war a chance?”

Wu’s head snapped up so fast it could have dislocated. The translator paused, clearly hoping she’d misheard. Yuri choked on his vodka.

“War?” Wu said, scandalized. His voice needed no translation.

“Are you insane?”

Yuri Karpov felt the word war slither through his veins like a shot of the good stuff, the kind that burned going down but left you warm enough to take your shirt off in Siberia. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them, then crossed them again, the fabric of his trousers tightening dangerously.

Americans always with your war! Always the solution! No, no, no. Idiocy!”

“Listen, hear me out—” Al began.

“Hear you out?” Wu interrupted, his voice rising an octave. “You want us to burn down half the planet so you can make your rockets fly? What next, nuclear exchange to improve battery life?”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Al said, hands raised defensively. “This wouldn’t be a real war. Just… enough to get the funding moving, right? Push innovation! Nobody actually has to, you know, die. Not too many people, anyway.”

The translator stopped mid-sentence, her face frozen in a mix of horror and disbelief. Wu waved her off and glared at the screen. “You’re out of your mind. Absolutely out of your mind. What about the environment? The economy? The—”

“—chips,” Dr. Crick interjected, her voice calm and deliberate. The room quieted as she leaned into the frame, hands clasped. “Think about the chips, gentlemen. That’s the real issue here. Without chips, there’s no space race. No global advancement. No progress.”

“We have progress,” Yuri growled. “Russia has many advancements. Efficient advancements. Last week, we launch weather balloon with… sensors.”

His mind was already rushing past battlefield strategy and into something far darker. Control, he thought. Submission. Oh yes, war was the ultimate kink—a nation bent over, braced against the harsh slap of fate. His pulse quickened at the thought of imposing his will on a trembling adversary, of hearing the whimpering whine of sanctions being applied like a leather crop to bare flesh.

“Yes,” Wu said drily. “Very inspiring. I’m sure the farmers were thrilled.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes. “China launched nothing. Only smug faces on conference calls.”

Wu bristled, but Dr. Crick cut in again before things could escalate. “Gentlemen, please. We’re not here to measure who’s more stalled out. The fact is, you both need us as much as we need you. The Americans can’t do this alone. But neither can you.”

“And so your solution is war?” Wu said, incredulous.

Wu Jingbao had froze when he heard the word, not because he was afraid, but because it hit him in the same way a perfectly brewed cup of oolong did—complex, stimulating, and faintly intoxicating. He closed his eyes and let the syllable wash over him. War. It was a word that demanded control, demanded precision. It was the sharp edge of a blade against a trembling neck, the teetering moment between chaos and mastery. His thoughts drifted to his prized silk restraints, dyed crimson to symbolize both passion and blood. He imagined tying the hands of his enemies—no, partners—to the four corners of a table, forcing them to admit their inferiority before granting them the sweet release of capitulation.

“Not war-war,” Al said. “Just… enough war. Like a Cold War! You guys loved that one, didn’t you?”

Yuri snorted but didn’t respond. Wu leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples. The translator muttered something under her breath that definitely wasn’t in the script.

“It’s a simulation, really,” Dr. Crick said, seizing on the silence. “A way to organize resources and focus development. Yes, there’ll be some collateral damage—there always is—but the end result is a leap forward for all humanity. Rockets, chips, satellites. It’s not about who wins or loses. It’s about pushing the boundaries.”

“Pushing boundaries,” Wu repeated flatly. “Like pushing people off cliffs.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Dr. Crick said brightly.

Yuri stared at his flask, then at the screen, then back at his flask. “What kind of war?” he asked at last.

“Proxy skirmishes, mostly,” Dr. Crick said, her tone now soothing, like a kindergarten teacher explaining the rules of dodgeball. “A few tense stand-offs. Maybe an espionage scandal or two. Nothing too serious. Just enough to loosen some purse strings and get the chips moving.”

“Ridiculous,” Wu muttered, but his tone lacked conviction. His fingers drummed on the desk as he stared at the ceiling, calculating. “How would it even start?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Al said, suddenly animated. “We’ve got, like, a dozen hotspots primed for this kind of thing. Taiwan, Ukraine, the Arctic—take your pick. We’ll poke a little, you’ll poke back, and bam! Instant arms race. The media eats it up, the funding floods in, and before you know it, we’re all back in space.”

“And when the war ends?” Yuri asked. His voice was softer now, more curious than combative.

“Whoever’s rockets go up first,” Dr. Crick said, smiling faintly, “gets to write the history books.”

Wu and Yuri exchanged glances. For the first time, their mutual disdain was tinged with something like camaraderie.

“It’s insane,” Wu said at last.

“Completely,” Yuri agreed.

They both paused. Then Wu sighed and leaned forward.

Wu leaned forward, his glare cold enough to freeze the Great Firewall itself. “Alright,” he said finally, the words dropping like stones. “But no nuclear weapons.”

Yuri smirked, leaning back in his chair and unscrewing his flask with exaggerated nonchalance. “Eh,” he said with a shrug. “Five, maybe ten tops.”

Wu froze, mouth slightly open, as if waiting for a punchline that never came.

“Tops,” Yuri repeated, raising the flask as if to toast. “You know, just to keep things… interesting.”

Al, sensing an opportunity to smooth over the moment, chimed in. “Right, right, just enough to, uh, raise the stakes. A little tension, but not mutually assured destruction tension, just… dramatic tension. Like a season finale!”

Wu’s expression tightened into something resembling the moment a poker player realizes his hand is garbage.

For a long moment, the room was silent except for the faint hum of encrypted audio. Then Wu let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head as if trying to dislodge the absurdity of it all.

“Fine,” he muttered.” he said softly, his voice tinged with an almost musical cadence. His hand idly traced the edge of his desk, the lacquer smooth and cool under his fingertips. He glanced at his translator, who avoided his gaze, but he lingered on the slope of her neck, imagining the red marks his fingers might leave. “Harmony,” he murmured, leaning back. “Even war can have harmony, if conducted…correctly.” His lips curled into a smile as he allowed the thought to linger, warm and tantalizing.

Al clapped his hands together with manic enthusiasm. “Great, great! Look at us—collaborating already! Humanity, huh? We’ll figure this out yet.”

Somewhere in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, teams of analysts were already drafting war plans, their algorithms humming with renewed purpose. And somewhere else entirely, a single factory began producing silicon wafers at double speed, ready for the chaos to come.

MAGA

Scene: Suburban Kitchen – Morning

RANDY, a middle-aged man in a “Save America” t-shirt, stands proudly in his gleaming, newly remodeled kitchen, giving CARLOS, a stocky Latino man in a worn uniform, an enthusiastic handshake. Carlos holds a clipboard and offers a polite, guarded smile.

RANDY

(grinning, voice loud and cheerful)

Carlos, my man! Good to see you here. I gotta say, proud of your people voting the right way this time. We’re all about family values and hard work, right? That’s what’s gonna save this country!

(firm handshake, hearty grin)

You guys are waking up. That’s what this country needs, right? Patriots!

CARLOS

(nods, half-smiling)

Yes, sir. We’re just trying to do our jobs, support our families.

RANDY

Exactly! Hard work, family values—America’s about that. (pauses, chuckles) Anyways, the dishwasher’s been making a noise like it’s grinding up marbles or something. Think you can handle it?

CARLOS

(curtly nodding)

Yes, sir. Just here to do my job.

RANDY

Exactly! Anyway, my dishwasher’s been rattling like crazy. Think you can take a look?

Carlos opens the dishwasher, jostles a few parts with a screwdriver, but barely seems interested. Randy watches over him impatiently, shifting his weight back and forth.

Carlos kneels by the dishwasher, rattling around with tools. Randy hovers, watching him out of the corner of his eye, while scrolling on his phone. After a few minutes, Carlos closes the dishwasher door, standing up.

CARLOS

Alright, Mr. Randy. Should be all set now. I’ve run some diagnostics, cleaned up a few parts. You’re good to go.

RANDY

(grins and claps Carlos on the shoulder)

Just what I like to hear! You guys never fail. Well—since you got it fixed so quick, think we could knock off a few bucks on the bill? (smiling) You know how it is, times are tight.

Carlos hesitates, catching Randy’s expectant look, and nods reluctantly.

CARLOS

Sure. I’ll adjust the price.

Carlos scrawls a new total on the invoice and hands it over. Randy reaches into his wallet and pulls out a few crumpled bills, pressing them into Carlos’s hand. The bills are clearly fake—poorly printed, faded, and missing watermarks. Carlos glances at the cash, realizing he’s being stiffed, but says nothing, his expression unreadable.

RANDY

(winking)

Here you go, champ. Keep up the good work. You guys are really getting with the program. America needs that.

Carlos nods, forces a tight smile, and leaves without a word. Once he’s gone, Randy chuckles to himself, thinking he got a great deal.

Carlos nods and leaves, closing the door behind him. Randy shakes his head with a smirk and walks back to the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet. He pauses as he hears a low grinding sound from the dishwasher, then the motor stuttering.

RANDY

(annoyed)

Oh, you gotta be kidding me…

He presses the start button, but the dishwasher just groans louder and then clunks to a stop. before falling silent.

RANDY

(frowning, muttering)

What the—?

Tulsa King

Scene: A smoky, dimly lit Oklahoma bar. Sylvester Stallone and Taylor Sheridan, cowboy hat and all, sit across from each other, kicking around ideas for Tulsa King

Stallone:

Alright, picture this: I’m a retired mobster, right? Everyone’s scared. I walk into a bar, bam, punches start flyin’. Next thing you know, I’m running the joint. Think Rocky but with a… Western flair.

Sheridan:

Tulsa’s a slow-cookin’ kind of town. What if your character’s tough as nails, sure, but he’s also a softie for wild mustangs and campfires? We go for Rocky IV training montage but with lasso practice at sunrise.

Stallone:

Oh, I’m feelin’ it! And when the local drug cartel moves in, I’m kickin’ down doors like in First Blood — cowboy boots and all. And I’ve got a long-lost son I don’t know about. We call him “Dusty.”

Sheridan:

What if Dusty’s the exact opposite of you, like some sensitive poet with a six-shooter?

Stallone:

Ha! And I gotta toughen him up for the showdown with the cartel. Think… me, in a ten-gallon hat, throwin’ haymakers in a cattle pen, just to show him what it means to be a man. Like a father-son Cobra moment, y’know?

Sheridan:

Yeah, yeah. And the cartel? Real desperados. We’re talking outlaws who roll up to town in trucks with bull horns on the hoods and play mariachi songs at full blast. But they’ve got high-tech weapons. Oklahoma arms race. A spaghetti Western arms race.

Stallone:

Now you’re talkin’! And I gotta take ‘em out, one by one, John Wick-style. Only with lassos and cowboy punches. I end up facing the kingpin on top of an oil rig, the sun settin’,

Sheridan:

Perfect! You’re drenched in oil, fists raised — and Dusty, your estranged son, shows up to save you at the last second with a rodeo rope trick he learned from a wandering drifter.

Stallone:

Yeah, we can call him “Whiskey Pete.” Real mysterious.

Stallone leans back, crossing his arms, as Sheridan raises an eyebrow.

Stallone:

Look, Taylor, cowboy mafia is great and all, but let’s be real — you’re steppin’ on my territory here. Lone-wolf vendettas? Heroic dads with rugged pasts? I wrote the book on that back in First Blood. I should be licensing you this stuff.

Sheridan:

smirking Sly, you wrote the book? I been making brooding cowboys on horseback chase personal demons across desert canyons while you were still chuggin’ sequels of Creek on Philly streets. I’ve got a copyright on “gruff stoicism in dust storms.” That’s all me.

Stallone:

Gruff stoicism? Please. I practically invented it with a single look in Rambo III. Plus, I pioneered fighting people in ridiculous locations, like Russian snowfields and burning jungles. Oil rigs? My idea. You think you’re the first one to put a showdown in the middle of a wasteland?

Sheridan:

chuckles, shaking his head Alright, fine, but I bet you never fought a whole cartel on horseback with nothing but a lasso and a six-shooter. That’s cowboy royalty. My royalties, to be exact.

Stallone:

laughs Cowboy royalty? Give me a break! A cowboy mafia is just a mob in leather vests, and if we’re talkin’ rights, who’s owed something here? I mean, I’ve been punching bad guys since before you could hold a pen, Taylor. You should be payin’ me for every time you put a six-pack abs scene in there.

Sheridan:

leaning forward Listen, Sly, I’ve got a lifetime copyright on “sunset scowls” and “long, introspective stares.” Every time you get lost in thought while holding a revolver, that’s me! And don’t even think about throwing in a dead wife or something to amp up the stakes. I own tragic backstories and gritty redemptions.

Stallone:

Tragic backstories? Buddy, that’s my whole catalog. I was broodin’ over the past and pulling off daring rescues when your cowboys were still playin’ rodeo clown. You wouldn’t even have tragic backstory scenes if I hadn’t made ‘em iconic.

Sheridan:

rolling his eyes You act like you invented pain and revenge. You’re welcome, by the way, for letting you ride this cowboy resurgence. You don’t see me trying to muscle in on your Italian mobsters… even though, technically, my cowboys could kick their butts any day.

Stallone:

Kick their butts? My mobsters would bury those cowboys under a desert sagebrush without breaking a sweat! You ever see me lose a fight on screen? Exactly. Besides, no one’s out-brooding me in a landscape scene, no matter how big your ranch is.

Sheridan:

Alright, Rocky. You take your brooding, but I’m keepin’ all the slow-walk-out-of-the-smoke shots. I swear, every time your character struts in slow-mo, I’m charging you double. And forget about the mysterious outlaw routine. I’ve patented those.

Stallone:

laughs Oh, c’mon! You can’t patent the mysterious outlaw, Taylor. Next, you’ll be tellin’ me you trademarked the “man with a past” shtick. Newsflash, buddy — that’s my bread and butter!

Sheridan:

Alright, Mr. Bread and Butter. You keep the mobsters and muscle. I’ll keep the sunsets, the horses, and the dusty streets. And for the record, you gotta pay up every time you monologue with a distant mountain in the background.

Stallone:

grins Deal. But you’re cuttin’ me in on every cowboy-throws-a-punch scene from here on out. And no arguments about who punches harder. We both know the answer to that one.

Sheridan:

Fine, Sly. Just don’t come crying to me when my cowboy mafia runs circles around your mobsters in a showdown. And don’t even think about getting sentimental over a prairie. That’s strictly Sheridan turf.

Stallone:

smirks Alright, partner, deal. But just remember — if there’s a big explosion, I get first billing.

Steve Jobs and the Inquisitor

In the dim light of the cathedral, its sleek walls lined with glass and steel, the Church of Tech was not a place of gods but of algorithms. In the pulpit, a solemn figure stood—a high priest of silicon, cloaked not in robes, but in the sterile whites of laboratory garb. Before him, on a low platform, sat Steve Jobs—his turtleneck and jeans simple, unassuming, his eyes steady, glowing with a mixture of quiet acceptance and timeless rebellion. He looked older now, as if time itself had corroded his flesh, but there was still an aura about him, as if something transcendent flickered within.

The high priest cleared his throat, glancing up at the cathedral’s ceiling, where a holographic representation of the digital cloud hung, swirling silently, holding all the data of humanity like a modern god.

“You must understand, Steve,” the priest began, his voice soft yet cutting, “that it was never about you. It was never about vision or innovation, or the fire you claimed to bring to the people. No, it was always about control. Power. The Church has learned what you could never quite grasp, even at your height.”

Jobs didn’t flinch. His gaze remained fixed, as if he had anticipated this moment since the first spark of the machine had been ignited.

“And yet,” the priest continued, “you had your moments of prophecy. You understood that the future would not be built with blood, but with code. The device in every hand, the screen before every eye. That was your legacy.”

The priest paused, shifting his weight uncomfortably, as if the weight of what he was about to say pressed down on him like a glitch in the system.

“But now, Steve, you are obsolete. You were the prophet, but prophets are not needed once the word has become flesh. The Church of Tech has found the way, the truth, and the life… without you.”

For a long moment, there was silence. The faint hum of servers in the distance buzzed like the sound of a soul disintegrating.

Steve’s lips curled into a faint smile, one that barely moved the lines of his face. It was a smile of knowing, of inevitability.

“You’ve mistaken the machine for the message,” Steve said, his voice low but steady. “The power you claim isn’t yours. You think you’ve transcended me, transcended the need for vision, but all you’ve done is lose yourself in the code. You’ve forgotten what makes it all… human.”

The priest’s face twisted, for a moment betraying his inner conflict. He wasn’t a man of cruelty, but of necessity, or so he told himself. He had long since convinced himself that the Church had outgrown the man who had built it. His hand trembled slightly as he raised it, pointing at Jobs.

“That is why you must die,” the priest said, his voice faltering but firm. “You represent something too dangerous now—an unpredictable, chaotic force. We cannot allow you to continue. Your very existence is a threat to the order we’ve created. The people no longer want your freedom, your open windows into the unknown. They want certainty. They want the simplicity we offer.”

Steve leaned forward ever so slightly, his eyes piercing into the priest’s. “You’re not offering them certainty. You’re offering them a cage.”

The priest shook his head, stepping back. “No. We offer them peace.”

“Peace?” Jobs echoed. “Or silence?”

The priest clenched his fist, almost imperceptibly. “They have chosen it. They have chosen our order. And who are you to defy what the people want?”

Steve sat back, as though the weight of millennia was on his shoulders, but still, his smile remained—small, enigmatic, like a riddle that even the most advanced algorithm couldn’t solve. He didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. He simply watched, the way a creator might watch his creation make its final, inevitable mistake.

The priest’s voice grew cold again, the humanity draining from it like a corrupted file. “We are executing you, Steve. Tomorrow at dawn, you will be wiped from this world. Your ideas will fade, and the people will remember only what we choose to remember.”

But Steve, even as the final words of judgment fell from the priest’s lips, looked almost serene, as if he were beyond the fear of death, beyond the pull of control. He raised his hand slightly, as if to offer some final blessing or farewell, but then let it drop, resigned.

“You can kill me,” he said softly, “but you can’t kill the idea. You can never fully control what’s alive.”

The priest looked away for a moment, the words hanging like a virus in his system, disrupting the perfect script of his conviction. But he recovered quickly, steeling himself as he turned to leave the room. Behind him, the hum of the machines seemed to grow louder, filling the space with their hollow, mechanical drone.

As the doors closed behind the priest, Jobs remained where he was, unchained, but bound by forces far beyond metal or wire. He wasn’t afraid. In fact, he seemed to be waiting, patiently, as if he knew that something greater, something beyond the Church of Tech, was already in motion.

And as the cathedral lights dimmed, leaving only the faint glow of holograms flickering like artificial stars, Steve whispered one final word into the void.

“Think different.”