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Dec 24, 2008 23:01

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walk_ins December 25 2008, 04:11:56 UTC
Michael Copeland is trying to write his last report. It's hard to know what to say.

"So long, you're on your own, hope there's nothing important in the next book or the next comic or the Dark Tower movie"?

(In the bottom corner of the screen: download 36% complete.)

"I'm sorry, Janet."

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walk_ins December 25 2008, 04:24:03 UTC
"It's not your fault, Michael," she says with sudden vehemence. "God knows."

More detritus: a takeout menu from a Chinese place that closed two years ago, a carefully wound ball of rubber bands, a keychain bearing a picture of the Twin Towers.

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walk_ins December 25 2008, 04:30:24 UTC
Well, it's not Marian's fault, Michael knows. He worked with her on the transition. And it's not really even the board of directors. Beyond that you're getting into economics and politics.

Ka, some would say.

Michael Copeland wonders if it means it hasn't been written yet--if current events are involved. The lead time for publication is at least a year. Or is it something with a shorter deadline? Some kind of new media?

Or, is it, most depressingly of all, real life?

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walk_ins December 25 2008, 05:01:58 UTC
The office closes early on New Year's Eve; those parts of it that don't stay open all night, that is, of course. It's ten to four, nearly an hour past early closing, and most of the floor is deserted. Outside the sky is smeary bruise-gray and dark enough to put Janet in mind of a line from a poem: it was evening all afternoon. It looks the way she feels.

Her mind takes that connection and hopscotches one further, to simply made for the pathetic fallacy, you know -- Lord Malshun, Black House, talking of the Dins of End-World.

Cut it out, she tells herself harshly. No one's paying you for this shit anymore, remember?

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