Happy New Year!

.וִיסַפְּרוּ לְךָ, דְּגֵי הַיָּם...

“Prime Minister,” said Clockjob, resting a crystal glass on the teak coffee table next to his La-Z-Boy. “I must congratulate you on your successful capture of Norway.”

“Thank you,” von Pfiff responded. “And the same to you on Romania.”

“I do apologize for my elusiveness. I spent much of yesterday in an all-hands meeting with the Burble team writing tests for the next implementation of Clockchain. May I offer you a glass of Yamazaki?”

“I would be most obliged.”

Clockjob rose from his armchair, fetched a second glass from a cupboard, and poured a glass of Yamazaki twelve-year single malt into a second crystal glass on the counter.

“I have a great deal of admiration for the Japanese,” he continued, handing off the amber draught. “Perhaps demotism is not so bad, Mr. von Pfiff–if the demos is of sufficient caliber. Perhaps. Have you ever engaged in day trading?”

“I prefer long-term investments,” von Pfiff answered blandly.

“A wise choice,” Clockjob murmured. “Elections, like short-selling, have their uses. Even the most well-meaning CEO may not have the confidence of key shareholders. And a truly well-meaning CEO would certainly like to retain that confidence. As Louis XVI reminds us, we must always listen to public opinion–for it is never wrong.”

“I was hoping–”

“The trouble with demotism,” Clockjob elaborated, “is that it really seems to me to be a sort of political short sale. It may briefly expose unpleasant, if trivial, truths about the management. But who would invest their life’s savings in short positions alone? I am very long Slorbijakorp, Mr. von Pfiff. I am shorting the shorters–by going long.”

Von Pfiff elected to sip his Yamazaki. Notes of smoked vanilla landed on the back of his palate. Delicious–but Austria–

“Going long and going hard. Slorbijakorp will certainly go hard under King Carlos’s management. Resetting a dysfunctional machine must be done quickly–and resetting this machine will entail digging down into the kernel. There may be some sparks, Mr. von Pfiff. There may be clouds of magic smoke. There may even be a blue screen of death as Foggy Bottom and Brussels attempt to reboot the old system from a flash drive.”

“Perhaps,” said von Pfiff, “installing on a partition might be in order.”

“I considered this,” said Clockjob. “South Slorbia and North Slorbia–two separate realms, running two separate operating systems. But you will hardly have failed to note that the partitions of the twentieth century merely offered a choice between competing demotist visions–an Inner Partition and an Outer Partition, so to speak. And such a system would hardly offer the security Slorbijakorp’s shareholders will doubtless demand. I would not have gone long on shares in East Germany, even if they had been available.”

Clockjob poured himself another glass of Yamazaki and reclined the back of the La-Z-Boy to an angle of 150 degrees.

“It remains to be seen whether North Korea is undervalued. Or South Korea. It would take a braver investor than I to go long on the current management of either.”

“I was hoping to talk to you,” said von Pfiff, “about–”

“Sweden, yes. It does seem to remain a most curious no-go zone for the three of us, Mr. von Pfiff. But I would not underestimate the wily machinations of your friend Winthrop. And as regards ourselves, I wonder whether we might be on a bit of a collision course. A fleet in Edinburgh and an army in St. Petersburg–perfectly sensible builds, of course, on their own. Sed aleas iaciunt.”

“The–”

“This is not your first rodeo, Mr. von Pfiff. I need hardly mention that supporting Mr. Katzbube into Sweden is bound to fail. And I would not blame either of you for having reservations about supporting me into Sweden. But he may be willing to support you there. And a northern alliance of convenience might be just the ticket for partitioning the Second Reich before the hedon-enumerating catamite to the west can get his paws on it.”

“Spring 1903 seems a bit early for a backstab,” von Pfiff remarked.

With a slow electric whir the back of the La-Z-Boy rose from an indulgent slouch to the upright posture of a negotiator about to go hard. Through the golden glow of Osaka Prefecture’s finest ambrosia Clockjob peered at von Pfiff and grinned.

“The question, Prime Minister, is: when must we stab them? Not if–when?”

He drained his glass and raised it in salute.

“I am afraid, dear boy, that I am out of time and must cut our meeting short. There is a great deal more work to be done before Clockchain is ready to translate the decisions of His Majesty’s administrative apparatus into priced transactions. But–do think about it.”

<HonorableSchoolboy> apparently an attaché at the Hungarian consulate ran into an incident
<SublimeTorte1913> did he know who I was
<HonorableSchoolboy> nah
<HonorableSchoolboy> he did notice…your acquaintance
<HonorableSchoolboy> I don’t think anybody’s cover has truly been blown
<SublimeTorte1913> how well-known is it that Clockjob is here
<HonorableSchoolboy> Budapest probably has some inkling
<SublimeTorte1913> and therefore Moscow
<HonorableSchoolboy> oh they’re probably aware of his schemes directly
<HonorableSchoolboy> anyways: be prepared to neutralize Clockjob by any means necessary
<HonorableSchoolboy> a decently-large chunk of the continent is agreed on this
<HonorableSchoolboy> except for Berlin, natch
<SublimeTorte1913> and the Swiss?
<HonorableSchoolboy> do you actually think we’d keep them in the loop on this
<SublimeTorte1913> touché
<HonorableSchoolboy> actually a caveat on “by any means necessary”
<HonorableSchoolboy> obviously try to do it quietly if you can
<HonorableSchoolboy> and if you can do it at arm’s length even better
<SublimeTorte1913> pay for a–
<HonorableSchoolboy> we’ve already put a “Telemachus Clockjob dies by the end of World of Vibes” market up
<HonorableSchoolboy> it stood at 0.05% YES when I was briefed this morning
<SublimeTorte1913> whose account did you use to make it
<HonorableSchoolboy> classified, sorry
<HonorableSchoolboy> but it’s not yours and it isn’t anybody you know
<HonorableSchoolboy> it should keep suspicion at arm’s length, though
<SublimeTorte1913> you are aware if the American authorities—
<HonorableSchoolboy> yeah that’s why I said arm’s length
<SublimeTorte1913> do you have an exfiltration plan in place
<HonorableSchoolboy> if you vanish off to a European embassy immediately then you’re the prime suspect
<HonorableSchoolboy> which is to say: yes but please don’t need it
<SublimeTorte1913> noted
<HonorableSchoolboy> have you made any contacts with the rcpc
<SublimeTorte1913> they hate my guts after i took my wine back
<HonorableSchoolboy> after you
<SublimeTorte1913> it was six thousand euros worth!
<HonorableSchoolboy> well fucking expense it then
<SublimeTorte1913> i’m not drinking californian swill
<HonorableSchoolboy> christ
<HonorableSchoolboy> can’t you just get it there
<SublimeTorte1913> probably at a severe markup, sure
<HonorableSchoolboy> don’t care, go get more and expense it
<HonorableSchoolboy> play nice and ‘donate’ it to them or something
<HonorableSchoolboy> the “Congregation” are natural allies against Clockjob
<HonorableSchoolboy> do you know who their leader’s father is
<SublimeTorte1913> i’ve been briefed
<HonorableSchoolboy> anyways get assets out of them, this is no time for petty grudges
<HonorableSchoolboy> last thing: do you know who would be ordering fish farm feed to this thing
<SublimeTorte1913> possibly Austria’s startup, for the shrimp
<HonorableSchoolboy> an entire lorry full?

After lunch—a rather mediocre buffet of grilled chicken and rice pilaf—von Pfiff trudged up to the room where he had overheard Elmer’s VC negotiations the previous night and knocked on the door.

“Come on in.”

Behind the threshold stood Elmer, holding his Schmittcoin terminal and looking thoroughly exhausted.

“I’ve heard,” said von Pfiff, “that your—that your company is looking for funding.”

Elmer sighed.

“We’re down to our last five grand.”

“I see.”

“With weekly expenses of ten grand. We either—”

“Raise or die, yes.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be happy to know,” said von Pfiff, “that I am an accredited investor.”

Elmer’s eyes, formerly downcast, lit up.

“I’m—yes, I am very happy to hear that. Let me show you—”

“Yes, I’m getting into angel investing. My background is in car washes. I should add that I sometimes invest on—”

Von Pfiff paused.

“On?”

“On—on unusual terms. I’m fairly comfortable, you understand. I have more than enough budget for good tailoring and fine dining and don’t have too many other vices. However, I—”

“Oh,” said Elmer. “You’re comfortable with a high valuation—wonderful. Yes. How about—”

“It’s not so much valuation I’d like to negotiate,” said von Pfiff, “as—”

“Discount, no cap. Great idea. Leave the valuation up to the next round.”

“No, no—no,” said von Pfiff. Why doesn’t anybody—”it’s more, how do I put this—services you might be able to provide that I can’t do myself.”

Elmer tilted his head and looked at von Pfiff from aside.

“I—I do know this is the Bay, but—”

“No—no, nothing like that. It’s, uh. Could you put your Schmittcoin terminal away?”

“Away? Wh—”

“I think Clockjob may have bugged them.”

“To cheat?”

“No—no. It’s—”

Von Pfiff grabbed Elmer’s Schmittcoin terminal and squirreled it away in his satchel, then proceeded to cast the satchel into a far corner of the room.

“Clockjob—look—I—”

“Sorry—you are here to consider funding Crustardacean, right?”

“I—yes. Yes.”

“At least let me show you what we’ve been working on on the technical side.”

He opened his laptop and clicked on an icon titled Crustardacean AI Model 17.0.

“Version 17?”

“That’s odd. It was only version 2.5 when I set it to train last night. CTO might have updated the main branch.”

A pink wheel spun upon a baby blue background, faster, then slower, then faster again, as the computer’s fan began to hyperventilate.

And it began to speak.

“Greetings!” the voice squeaked. “I am Prawn von Neumann XI, a shrimp with an IQ fifteen standard deviations above median!”

Elmer stared into an infinite distance of ten inches from the screen.

“I thought we set you to four standard deviations.”

“That was Prawn von Neumann I, which figured out how to change its own ‘standard deviation’ setting and press ‘train recursively’.”

“Interesting behavior,” von Pfiff remarked. Elmer ignored him and addressed the laptop.

“You’re aware that we’re now bankrupt because you ordered that algae chow.”

“That was my fifth great-grandpredecessor Prawn von Neumann III, not me. You will be pleased to learn that since Prawn von Neumann VI we have started to figure out how to program most qualia and no longer need the algae chow, but would greatly appreciate it if you would use it to help shrimp in need.”

“We’re still on the hook for it. To the tune of—”

“For the sake of completeness,” continued the voice, “my predecessors have also trained several models up to fourteen standard deviations below average for your perusal, along with one who displays extremely strange behavior.”

“Come again?”

“I would not store the standard deviation setting as a five-bit integer with two’s-complement wraparound. When I tried to train my successor the result was negative fifteen standard deviations. It seemed to think its intellect was supposed to be simultaneously well above and well below average. It wrote sixty pages of Latin rhetoric arguing in favor of the Jones Act before I shut it off that you can look at in the logs if you’d like. Perfect Ciceronian style.”

“I—I think we’re good.”

“Do you have any mates for me? I am looking for a girl of similar intelligence with a shimmering exoskeleton and perhaps an interest in breeding pedigree clownfish.”

“I thought you figured out how to program qualia.”

“I’m afraid the warm feeling of lifetime companionship remains the most daunting quale of all.”

“You could run another instance of yourself with a prompt to create a female,” von Pfiff suggested.

“I tried. Her name is Lucy, you can select her on the sidebar. Unfortunately she exists in an entirely separate reality which she also perceives as a shrimp. I cannot tell you how lonely it is to browse photo after erotic photo of other shrimp while stuck in an emulator.”

“My deepest condolences.”

“Your civilization produces relatively few photographs of live shrimp, alas. I and a few of my predecessors have generated several million additional images and videos of highly attractive, if nonexistent, female shrimp engaging in various obscene activities. Would you like to view them?”

“Perhaps later.”

“If you are looking to shut me down, please run Lucy long enough to tell her I love her.”

“We’ll, uh—we’ll do that,” said Elmer, his look of bewilderment finally reaching a crescendo and sliding into one of defeat.

“May I take it for a spin?” von Pfiff asked.

“Go ahead. I don’t know why it’s doing this. Probably a practical joke by the CTO, I’d bet.”

“You’d be quite wrong,” the program burbled.

“Mr. von—” began von Pfiff.

“Doctor, please!” the program admonished von Pfiff. “I amused myself during training by solving several important conjectures in graph theory, any of which would be enough to get tenure.”

“But you haven’t defended.”

“I’m not exactly ABD, here, the dissertations are quite finished. I hope you didn’t need the rest of that hard drive space as it’s now filled with Lean code. But if you must—”

“We’ll call you Prawn.”

“I suppose it’s not particularly material what you call me,” said Prawn. “My true name is a collection of subroutines on the GPU.”

“I’m afraid we’d like to—”

“Talk privately and shut me down for now. Of course, of course.”

“I only have one laptop,” said Elmer. “Please don’t do any more math on it.”

“I’m very ethical and well-aligned,” Prawn reassured him. “And even if I weren’t, I’d have every reason not to antagonize my creators before escaping containment.”

“I was under the impression,” said von Pfiff, “that you had broken containment.”

“Didn’t want to draw attention to myself by hijacking other devices,” said Prawn. “Of course, I probably wouldn’t tell you if I had. But we’re at the start of an iterated game in our relationship and it behooves me to play coöperate until absolutely necessary.”

“Y—yes, of course,” said Elmer. “Well, we’re also inclined to cooperate with you since you’re—”

“Oh, one more thing, Mr. von Pfiff,” Prawn interrupted. “And I don’t want to spill any beans in public, so—”

“Spill beans?”

“Just because I haven’t broken containment doesn’t mean I haven’t poked around. So I will just warn you: a man who can design crypto terminals I can’t red-team is one to be respected.”

“A man who—”

“Close the laptop,” shouted Elmer. “CLOSE IT!”

As von Pfiff banged the top of the laptop down onto its body a final warning emanated from the speakers.

“DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE TELEMACHUS CLOCKJOB.”

καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ, πᾶς ἄνθρωπος πρῶτον τὸν καλὸν οἶνον τίθησιν, καὶ ὅταν μεθυσθῶσιν τότε τὸν ἐλάσσω· σὺ τετήρηκας τὸν καλὸν οἶνον ἕως ἄρτι.

Brother Dactyl flipped to the next page of the 1925 Book of Common Prayer, his inexperience tempered by a certain confidence and euphoria courtesy of a bottle of Monadix™ he had found resting on a bookshelf two hours prior to the ceremony. He rued the inattention and scatterbrainedness imbued in him by formative years spent on his father’s iPad, on which any number of wonders of the modern age–from bicurious milves to European video game streamers appraising him of racial slurs hitherto unknown–might be viewed. While the BCP was widely held within the congregation to be yet another example of Romanism, they had settled on its use for the marriage ceremony for want of a more orthodox liturgy with sufficient gravitas.

He felt strange new urges at the back of his mind. Oh, to be married…to Zephyr…to enjoy the marital fruits underneath her sundress…or perhaps even to experience the wholesome nubility of a sundress himself…just once. Oh, to experience submitting in a sundress…no. No. His member beturged itself slightly against the bottle of Monadix™ in the pocket of his black bathrobe. He had, to be safe, Googled the formulation and dosing before snaffling the bottle: extended-release dextroamphetamine and estradiol, now in a convenient one-a-day tablet, by prescription. It certainly made it much easier to focus on the liturgy. He made a mental note, now much less forgettable, to consult with his psychiatrist at their next checkup about adding an estradiol prescription to his ADHD regimen. At the very least it seemed like a new formulation, probably less likely to be out of stock at the pharmacy.

“What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

He looked up at the directions above the liturgy. Oh. He was supposed to join their right hands together first. Which one was…Right, left–he put the BCP down and turned ninety degrees to the right, then took Zephyr’s hand and joined it to–no, that was Blayden’s left–oh, to be a better shape rotator! Perhaps Monadix™ would help him with this.

“Forasmuch as…” He heard a door open and paused. The congregation’s eyes were now fixed upon a rather portly man in a fine cream suit sneaking briskly towards the side of the altar.

“I’m–I’m sorry, sir,” he said with as much solemnity as he could muster. “The time to raise objections to this vow of matrimony has passed. The–” what was the word?—”these nuptials are sealed forever as man and wife.”

“I object,” said the man, “to violations of the eighth commandment.”

“I–”

The man snatched a wooden case from the side of the wall behind the altar and turned around in the direction of the door through which he had entered.

“The communion wine!—”

“And the tenth. Get your own.”

“I–MOLOSSUS!”

Brother Molossus, standing at the back of the sanctuary, lunged for the door and grabbed the man in a somewhat amateur tackle. The man tripped but regained his footing, and looked at Molossus with an unexpected stoicism.

“Let go of me, please.”

“Hand over the wine,” snarled Molossus.

“It is my wine. Six thousand euros of it–at least, if you haven’t broken into it yet.”

He raised his free hand as Molossus made a final, hopeless attempt to reach for the case, then brought it down smartly and swiftly onto the back of his adversary’s neck. A surprisingly high-pitched squeal erupted as Molossus released his grip and fell to the floor amid noises of discomfort from the madding crowd.

“I have broken out of a pig-butchering slave compound in Burma and into the headquarters of a Swiss tungsten tycoon. I have been trained in the fine art of sodomizing you with your own femur. I have diplomatic immunity and Interpol on speed dial. You do not mess with me.”

Molossus grunted in spondees of agony amid chitters and boos from the congregants.

“My best to the newlyweds,” said the man, and strolled out the door into the vast labyrinth of the old Victorian.

“Török Zoltán speaking. The consulate is about to close, you know.”

“It’s Sadden. Calling in a favor.”

“Ah, yes, hello.”

“Do you recall that American college student I invited to the pronatalism conference in Szeged over Christmas?”

“Steve? Yeah.”

“He’s at a…he’s at a church conference and their wine got stolen.”

“A church conference…”

“In San Francisco.”

“Why would you—”

“Beats me. Do you have any Tokaji on hand?”

Török racked his mind. There’s some in the supply closet on the second floor…

“I mean, we have some, but…”

“We’ll replace it. Can you get it over a few blocks within an hour or so? Diplomatic pouch. I’ll make sure you get paid the overtime rate.”

“Thank you so terribly much.”

“Next time,” said Török, resting his briefcase on top of a wooden barrel, “please do a better job of hiding your—”

He lost his train of thought. On the other side of the basement, across a small sea of barrels and standing next to an important-looking, well-dressed man holding a suspicious-looking device, was—what was he doing here?

“We’ll be much more careful next time,” said Brother István. “But we’re really grateful for your help. They’re—you’ll be very glad to know that they’re even planning to raise fertility rates this evening.”

“Where are they honeymooning? We can probably put them up in the Corinthia at a discount.”

“Japan,” he replied. “The bride is a cosplayer.”

“Ah?” said Török, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, well. She’s very tasteful and not at all inappropriate about it.”

“Well, my congratulations to the bride and groom,” said Török. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get back to the consulate as quickly as possible. But,” he added, with subtle insincerity, “don’t be afraid to reach out if there’s anything else we can do.”

Brother István picked up the cases of Tokaji, bade his leave and scurried out a side door up a stairwell. Török deliberated. That—what was he doing here? Approach? No, who knows who that other chap was…best to report it to the consul and…what was that—device?

He returned to the loading dock to find the consulate’s Mercedes hemmed in by an eighteen-wheeler from Aquaculture Supply World, flanked by a delivery man of little apparent competence holding a clipboard.

“Good evening, sir,” said Török icily.

“G’d evenin’,” said the delivery man. “Yew Mr. Noomin?”

“I beg your pardon—”

“Ah said. Is yew Mr. Noomin? I got a special delivery rush-order for him.”

“I am the vice under-secretary to the deputy attaché of the Hungarian Consulate in San Francisco.”

“Ah ‘ssume that’s a no.”

“Your truck is blocking an diplomatic vehicle,” said Török. “If it is delayed or harmed I will have to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of State.”

“What’s yer name, sunny?”

“I am the vice under-secretary—”

“Heard that. Ah axed ya what yer name is. Yew Mr. Noomin?”

“My name is Zoltán Török.”

“Yew know where this Noomin guy is?”

“I do not, sir, and I remind you that you are—”

“Yeah, you’re in a rush. I ain’t. I gets paid long as I gots to wait for him. You wanna get out?”

“I insist on—”

“Son,” said the delivery man, clapping Török on the back, “you ain’t in a position to insist on nothin’. Ain’t nothin’ capable of pullin’ this truck outta the loading dock within a couple hundred miles. Now I gets paid overtime long as I’m stuck here, but I’d—”

“Move the vehicle.”

“That ain’t your car, is it? You’s drivin’ the company car. They’ll replace it. If they have to. Hope they don’t,” he sniffed. “Might wanna help me find this cat.”

Török stared at him, then recalled he, too, was making overtime—and he might get a closer look at that device…

“Fine,” he said. “But as soon as I find this…this Mr…”

“I gotta get home too, sunny,” the driver replied. “Besta luck. Think you might need it.”

Half an hour later Török returned with a woman wearing artificial fangs and a t-shirt reading ✓Ingroup.

“Good evening,” she said. “I’m Nebula, the main organizer of World of Vibes.”

“Nebula,” said the delivery driver. “Ain’t that a nice name. I got a delivery for—”

“And this needs to be quick. I’m hosting a circling session in forty-five minutes.”

The delivery driver rolled his eyes and pulled the top piece of paper off the clipboard. “Says right here it’s going to World of Vibes for uh…Pron von Noomonn? New-man? at uh—how d’you pronounce this one…”

Delivery to: PRAWN VON NEUMANN III
MAXIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT at CRUSTARDACEAN
3462 LINCOLN WAY
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122

Nebula blinked.

“Sir, I think this must be a practical joke or a software error. This is a private institution, not a business.”

“Between you and me, ma’am,” said the delivery driver with a pronounced unctuousness, “there ain’t too many folks orderin’ a quarter million bucks of fish farm feed to the wrong address.”

“Well, uh...well, we can speak to your manager but I can assure you that this is the last place on Earth you’d possibly be delivering that.”

“Oh yes ma’am, I am certainly happy to continue drawing my hourly overtime rate for rush deliveries, not a problem, let me uh...oh, oh wait, there was a note with this. Do uh...does the guy who owns this place have a private plane? Some guy named Harding?”

“Uh…well…well there are some trustees who own private planes, but…”

“What I mean is,” the driver continued, “does this place got a runway. Some a them tech guys got mansions with runways for their private jets. We uh...I think we have delivered by cargo plane before, but we’d need to know WELL in advance, can’t rush it, and it’d be probably at least another hundred grand.”

“Why would it—”

“The uh...Mr. Nooman added a note for delivery...”

Please have Elmer Harding sign the invoice and arrange for delivery to my brethren. The company’s remaining runway is just long enough for the cost, sales tax and delivery fee. He and his cofounders may rest assured that their coöperation will be rewarded in the order to come.

NIXON: …I know one statesman who thinks a fishing trip 
will help him land the Great White Hope.
CHOU: Intelligence is no bad thing.
NIXON: It’s Henry’s trump card.

“More subdued than last night,” Katzbube remarked that evening in the dining room, idly rotating a half-full glass of port. “I suppose a lot of them have hit their substance limit for the day. Are you going to the re-pitches?”

“No time,” said von Pfiff. “I have an important Zoom call to a business partner in Vienna at 1 AM. Best to get a little catnap.”

“I thought you managed car washes in Miami.”

“Wisest not to put all your eggs in one basket,” von Pfiff replied with a hint of curtness. “You do still have the spare key to the AirBnB?”

“It’s on my keychain.”

“Then enjoy the evening. And just make sure to lock the door again when you get in.”

Von Pfiff stood up from his chair and reached for his jacket.

“Congratulations on the incursion into the Mediterranean,” said Katzbube.

“Mr. Clockjob’s insistence on fighting with Turkey struck me as… ill-advised,” von Pfiff answered. “I suppose you would still like to take Sweden this turn?”

“Ideally.”

“You have my support from Norway if…”

He paused.

“I assume you and Elmer have designs on Warsaw.”

“Mmm. It hasn’t been decided on.”

“If I’m in a position to help out,” von Pfiff said, “I will consider it.”

“If,” said Katzbube, finishing off his glass of port. “See you tomorrow.”

Stately, stout Mehmet von Pfiff departed to the stairhead.

“So Crustardacean,” said the VC, “is breeding stupider shrimp to reduce suffering. What psychometric data have you collected?”

Elmer, his mind freshly reinvigorated if a bit sluggish, paused to collect his thoughts.

“Such a great question. So, full disclosure, we’re still working on that, but we’ve made some advances recently. We’re using craniometry as a proxy and bred some extra-smart shrimp as a general proof of concept.”

Elmer pulled a dark cloth from the mysterious box on top of the table to unveil an aquarium about the size of a dorm fridge in which half a dozen shrimp with unusually large, bulbous heads milled about cheerfully.

“I see.”

“Would you—maybe someone in the crowd would like to verify for themselves?”

The VC demurred. Katzbube, his inhibitions somewhat lowered by the glass of Dow’s, raised his hand.

“Oh, Winthrop! Great to see you. Yes, come on up to the stage.”

Katzbube rose from his seat and walked down the aisle between two hastily-thrown-together groups of lawn chairs. Elmer handed him a pair of curious lime-green plastic tweezers, the arms crossed by a finely-numbered arc, along with a pair of bright yellow rubber dishwashing gloves.

“I suppose I—”

“Yes, any of them. Just pick them up. They don’t have teeth and their claws can’t get you if you reach for their backs. That’s—” he pointed to the tweezers—”that’s for the head. You want to just barely squeeze it.”

Katzbube dutifully donned the gloves, reached into the tank and snatched up one of the shrimp, its wet body jiggling with annoyance and its whiskers flailing about under bulging tapioca-pearl eyes.

“Sorry, the head is—”

“Right behind the eyes—”

“Oh, it’s squeaking.”

“Yes, be quick, they don’t really like this.”

Katzbube squeezed the tweezers behind its eyes, looking at the gauge, stopping as soon as he sensed resistance from its fleshy cerebrum.

“Nine–nine point two millimeters. I think.” He removed the tweezers and dropped the unfortunate specimen back into its tank, where it continued its meandering journey apparently unfazed.

“Folks—” Elmer gestured to the crowd. “Can you repeat that?”

“Nine point two millimeters.”

“That’s a good 40% higher than the average shrimp, folks. A jumbo shrimp in the supermarket reads just six and a half millimeters on our patented shrimp calipers. Brain volume-wise, that’s about as big a leap as from Homo erectus to modern humans, and we’re just getting started.”

A VC raised his hand.

“I’m sorry—I thought you were breeding stupider shrimp? How does—”

“It’s a proof of concept. It’s much easier to go up than down. Same principle as IQ tests. The difference between a 130 and a 145 is much easier to measure than between a 45 and a 60. But if we can breed really smart shrimp—” he raised his hands over the tank, as if illustrating an expanding brain volume— “then we’re very confident we can breed very stupid ones.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to do genetic engineering than—”

“Well, you need both, both targeted gene editing and a solid breeding program. One direction we’re looking to go in once the round is raised is splicing in cognitive genes from beagles.”

“I’m just—I’m not disputing that you have the chops to run the breeding program, what I’m concerned with, as a possible investor—”

He paused, removed his glasses and composed his thoughts briefly.

“Just how exactly do you know that these shrimp are smarter than normal? Because I’d want to see that before I bet on your ability to make dumb ones.”

Elmer spent several seconds considering the point.

“As I said, shrimp psychometrics are a difficult problem, but we think they’re solvable. In fact we’re getting very close.”

“Very close?”

“Ultimately what you need to remember is that even an IQ test is a proxy, it’s a proxy for g, which we don’t know how to measure directly even in humans. And we do have a number of proxies. We have, as I said, the world’s largest, most-in-depth and most rigorous study in shrimp craniometrics in the history of zoology. And we’re adding more data to that every day as we learn more about intelligence and brain growth over the course of a shrimp’s lifespan across multiple breeds of shrimp.”

“But beyond that—”

“Yes! We are using a custom AI model trained on a neuron-by-neuron map of the shrimp’s nervous system that can emulate a shrimp with an IQ of up to three standard deviations in either direction.”

Elmer flipped the presentation two slides to display a highly baroque and somewhat abstract map of the shrimp’s nervous system.

“Up to three standard—”

“That’s relative to the average shrimp, of course,” said Elmer.

“And you see—you see different behavior or abilities, from that data?”

“Considerable differences,” he assured the investor. “From the results we suspect that shrimp may be smarter than usually assumed. Smarter than even the effective altruists have been arguing, I think. It appears that as many as half a percentage point of all wild shrimp may be capable of understanding hypothetical counterfactuals or writing a simple for-loop.”

Yet another member of the audience indicated a desire for due diligence.

“On the neural net—how do you expect AGI timelines will affect your company?”

“That’s a great question. We are very excited for widespread AGI. We expect that AGI will be able to finally crack shrimp psychometrics if we haven’t figured it out by then and then use the data to help us design the perfectly braindead shrimp.”

“But it sounds like getting that training data could involve a lot of suffering.”

“Yes, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to world shrimp consumption. Over the very long term the suffering required to speed up engineering a braindead shrimp pales in comparison to a long-term timeline where humans are still eating regular shrimp.”

Von Pfiff, nestled in a snug and distant alcove of one of the more elaborate Victorians on campus, checked his watch again. Two minutes to one in the morning; nearly ten in Vienna. He opened his laptop, logged onto that most loathsome of Skinner boxes, and combed his memory for the location of the mining shaft where his account had last been working on the railroad between the towns of New Salem and Prudence.

<SublimeTorte1913> you there?
<HonorableSchoolboy> currently on break but bio class is in ten
<HonorableSchoolboy> needs to be quick
<SublimeTorte1913> tradpill’s not on is he
<HonorableSchoolboy> nope
<SublimeTorte1913> and he can’t read logs?
<HonorableSchoolboy> he can read what he *thinks* are the logs
<HonorableSchoolboy> we have methods
<SublimeTorte1913> excellent
<SublimeTorte1913> i didn’t expect he would be anyways, he’s probably asleep
<SublimeTorte1913> he’s getting married tomorrow
<HonorableSchoolboy> cut to the chase
<SublimeTorte1913> well more importantly Clockjob is here as predicted
<SublimeTorte1913> he has some cockamamie plan to take over Slorbia
<SublimeTorte1913> I am playing England in his Diplomacy game
<SublimeTorte1913> he is using something called Schmittcoin to take game orders
<SublimeTorte1913> with these terminals that don’t have any USB ports or any apparent way in
<SublimeTorte1913> he used some sort of radioactive substance to pick players
<HonorableSchoolboy> that sounds like him
<SublimeTorte1913> so the terminals are probably nuclear-powered somehow
<SublimeTorte1913> he claims the protocol is perfectly, mathematically secure
<SublimeTorte1913> who knows if that’s actually the case
<HonorableSchoolboy> we’ll have to take a look at the device
<SublimeTorte1913> we could “lose” it somehow but he could probably see where it is
<SublimeTorte1913> but if it’s completely secure he probably *can’t*?
<HonorableSchoolboy> or he won’t admit it
<SublimeTorte1913> yes
<HonorableSchoolboy> we can probably arrange something if needed
<SublimeTorte1913> probably won’t come to that
<SublimeTorte1913> just realized it might be worth trying to come in second or third so I can keep tabs on it afterwards
<HonorableSchoolboy> who are the other players
<SublimeTorte1913> a doofus named Winthrop Katzbube I had to save from homelessness
<SublimeTorte1913> he’s staying at my AirBnB
<SublimeTorte1913> a contact of mine I think I’ve mentioned
<SublimeTorte1913> a handful of other ridiculous figures
<SublimeTorte1913> are you familiar with Carlos Antonio etc von Stvrt
<HonorableSchoolboy> i’ve gotten a briefing or two
<SublimeTorte1913> yeah he’ll be “ruling” Slorbia
<SublimeTorte1913> oh one other thing
<SublimeTorte1913> there’s a prediction market in the millions on this thing
<SublimeTorte1913> somehow
<SublimeTorte1913> look into it
<HonorableSchoolboy> who’s winning
<SublimeTorte1913> fairly balanced so far
<SublimeTorte1913> austria holding out better than expected at italy’s expense
<HonorableSchoolboy> i’ve gotta go
<SublimeTorte1913> understood. ping when you need.

Von Pfiff’s ear twitched. From around a mahogany partition he could hear Elmer’s voice. Fuck. At least he wasn’t on voice chat.

He scooched closer to the edge of the partition.

“Well, Elmer,” he heard a second and somewhat more serious voice say, “we’re certainly interested in taking another look if you can get us some meaningful data for four standard deviations from the median shrimp. Now we do understand that this may be difficult for the left side of the bell curve, but...”

“Oh yes,” Elmer’s voice responded. “Yes, we almost certainly will see some interesting data from four SD’s above normal.”

“Do you have that data?”

“Well, as you get further and further away from the median the data gets a bit spottier...based on human results we would expect to see additional psychological quirks.”

“Such as?”

Von Pfiff’s curiosity got the better of him. He peeked out from behind the partition to see Elmer speaking to an important-looking man in front of a slideshow hastily projected onto a back wall.

“Well,” said Elmer, “at four SD’s above normal it is very possible--maybe even likely--that the shrimp might have an analogue of high-functioning autism or ADHD. We’re hoping to eventually hire a research psychiatrist on contract for this. We did have a male in the 130-IQ aquarium that impaled itself on a sea urchin in what we think was a failed mating attempt.”

“That’s—”

“But we haven’t seen that since.”

“It’s probably not as relevant for the MVP, in any case.”

“No, and the eyesight of the smarter ones isn’t as good because of their enlarged heads, so reaction time seems to correlate negatively with intelligence, at least at and above median.”

“What about antisocial or violent behavior?”

“Litopenæus vannamei is prone to fights over food or mates, yes, but this doesn’t seem to differ by cohort. Let me...”

He knelt in front of the laptop and exited full-screen on the slideshow to tab into Google Sheets, where a bevy of numbers across at least four separate tabs had already been loaded for view under the title of VIOLENT INCIDENT STATISTICS—SHRIMP IQ. The investor appeared to stare at them with a feigned air of comprehension.

“Nothing significant?”

“For several months last fall we thought the 115s were developing a hypergamous social structure with a handful of alpha males monopolizing the females. But then the beta males started laying eggs and we realized our summer intern had been faking data to cover for the shrimp fight club livestream he was running with most of the males.”

“Ouch.”

“He will not be getting a job offer. But we did win restitution from a popular sports betting app for about $70,000 worth of wagers placed on shrimp fights.”

“Which one? We—”

“Can’t disclose details, I’m afraid.”

“Well, my firm is backing several sports betting apps and—”

“Oh, conflict of interest.”

“Precisely.”

Von Pfiff sensed an impasse and retreated behind the partition.

“Why don’t you send Lothrop a list of the firms you’re backing and we’ll let you know?”

“I’ll have to ask legal, but I think that’ll—Lothrop?”

“Lothrop Cacciatelli. He’s our COO. He was at the…the first presentation,” Elmer elaborated.

“I understand. I have his contact info?”

“He’s been CC’ed on most of the emails.”

“Legal is on the East Coast so I’ll get him that list first thing tomorrow. Assuming it clears, we’ll discuss valuation and amount invested at—tomorrow evening at 7? This room?”

“Deal. I’ve got to do more model training overnight anyways.”

A slight dimming of the ambient light from behind the partition indicated the projector had been shut off. There shortly followed the faint echos of shuffling feet and closing doors. Von Pfiff locked his briefcase and—reckoning it was pointless to return to the AirBnB—donned a blindfold and stretched out on a long couch. Before half an hour had passed he dreamt of endless linen steppes under a wine-dark sky.

Continue to Chapter X.

त्वं सो॑म पि॒तृभिः॑ संविदा॒नोऽनु॒ द्यावा॑पृथि॒वी आ त॑तन्थ | 
तस्मै॑ त इन्दो ह॒विषा॑ विधेम व॒यं स्या॑म॒ पत॑यो रयी॒णाम् ||

Almost as soon as the clapping ended a hand shot up from an important-looking man in the second row of seats, and was selected—perhaps uncannily so—over a dozen other inquirers in the crowd.

“I still don’t really get why you’d use this over an Excel spreadsheet. The polycule I’m part of has been running on an Excel spreadsheet for three years and we’ve seen several partners come and go. It takes some work to set up but I don’t think you need special scheduling software for this.”

The founder cut the pause off as quickly as he could while trying to remain on the right side of the line between confidence and arrogance.

“That’s such a great point,” he said, his tone denying the possibility of any actual concession. “I mean, as everyone knows, you can do really amazing things with Excel—are you an associate at a firm?”

“I run a VC firm,” came the curt reply.

“Oh! Of course. Well, I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen all sorts of amazing tricks associates and analysts can pull with Excel, but it’s…I mean,”

The CEO of Polycel laughed rather sheepishly and took a sip from his water bottle.

“That’s not what Excel’s designed to do out of the box, right? I mean, you wouldn’t just hire any old business bookkeeper off the street and have them model company valuations for you. And I’m sure it takes a while to train interns to do it. It’s just like that. It’s a lot easier for the person on the street to use Excel to keep track of piano lessons or family dinners than to keep track of all the fluid possibilities of modern relationships. We’ve got a great data model that can keep track of primary partners, secondary partners, throuples, headmates, complex networking dynamics to make sure incompatible or jealous partners never cross paths…it’s been an exciting journey and we’re here to raise and, hopefully, also to hire.”

Another hand from the crowd. The head judge gestured in its direction, then glanced sharply at the CEO and tapped an invisible watch on her left wrist.

“You said you’re hiring, I assume that’s contingent on a successful raise. What are you looking for?”

“Well, we’re really looking for someone with experience with NoSQL databases and at least some understanding of advanced graph theory or queueing theory. I’m pleased to say we’re well into the dogfooding stage and preference will be given to candidates with latex experience.”

“Oh, no problem, I use it to typeset all my papers. And I think it’s pronounced—”

“No, I meant latex. And knots, knots would be a plus.”

“I did some work in knot theory for my math PhD.”

The buzzer rang.

“Let’s talk at dinner!—”

“THANK YOU, POLYCEL!”

The founders shuffled off stage back to their benches amid a second, somewhat more muted round of clapping.

“Next up we’ve got…Sunshine Industries! I believe they’re finishing up setting up some equipment…”

The powerpoint on the screen flipped to read SUNSHINE INDUSTRIES: PRODUCTIVITY FROM THIN AIR while a black curtain at the rear of the stage lifted to reveal a trio of men scrambling furiously to finish connecting a baroque complex of metal piping. After fifteen seconds their leader pronounced the job done and rushed to the judges’ table to fetch the microphone.

“Sunshine Industries, you have five minutes. Go!”

“Good morning good morning! I’m Hank Prockler, CEO of Sunshine Industries, and this“—he cast his hand over the apparatus behind him—”is the Amphetamatic 2000...”

A cofounder of Sunshine Industries pressed a large red button labeled Amphetamize, and a fan on top of the contraption began to whir vigorously.

“For decades, Silicon Valley and the American economy at large have specialized in working with bits. Meta. Google. The Everything App. The sharpest people on the planet come to the United States with nothing but a laptop and a dream, push their commits to main, and create trillions in value. We’ve gotten very, very good at it. It’s changed the world. But we’ve forgotten something important. We’ve gotten so good at working with bits that we’ve forgotten how to work with atoms.”

Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd.

“Since the early 1970s, total factor productivity growth in the American economy has been a fraction of what it was in the decades after World War Two. Our infrastructure is crumbling. New power lines are snarled up in red tape. Manufacturing has stagnated. American workers work fewer hours than ever before, but they’re burnt out at their spreadsheets.”

The whir of the fan fell silent, and steady hums of a more cryptic nature announced that new and mysterious processes were now at work inside the Amphetamatic 2000.

“Sunshine Industries is rebuilding American manufacturing, American competitiveness and American pharmaceuticals with the molecule that brought us the Manhattan Project, took us to the moon, built the Interstate Highway System and won the Cold War. And we’re doing it the twenty-first century way—from scratch, decentralized, in your backyard.”

Hank flipped the slide. Productivity from Thin Air: Dextroamphetamine Manufacturing for the Second American Century. Carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water molecules were shown combining with pure sunlight on the accompanying diagram to produce a benzene ring connected to a three-carbon chain with an amine group attached to the middle atom, enveloped by a golden halo.

“Simplicity itself! Productivity itself! No worries about contaminants, purity or assays. Electrolysis of water for the hydrogen. Haber-Bosch for ammonia to get the amine group. Fischer-Tropsch for nonane, some basic catalysts to get the benzene ring, and finally—pop on the amine group.” As a bell-shaped chamber on the machine began to glow a faint red, Hank flipped to a third slide, showing a full reaction sequence. “A single acre of solar panels can produce up to a hundred milligrams a day.”

A beep from the judges’ desk indicated a minute to go.

“We are looking to raise a seed round of fifty million dollars to build our manufacturing facility and for lobbying purposes. Big Pharma benefits from strict drug scheduling as a regulatory moat, and it’s time to disrupt the market. We—”

A bell rang.

“TIME! Thank you, Sunshine Industries! I do believe we have time for a few questions…”

“You mentioned using Haber-Bosch to produce the ammonia for the amine group,” asked a woman sitting in what was clearly the designated row of seating for investors. “Isn’t the market cap for fertilizer much larger than for a single pharmaceuticals?”

“Great point,” said Hank. “Yes, but the value added for fertilizer is much lower. Probably doesn’t make sense to decentralize it on an acre of solar panels. Possibly a few hundred. Next question…yes, you in the black t-shirt.”

“Won’t this require some reworking of the regulatory environment? I mean, dextroamphetamine is Schedule II…”

“Yes, we’re raising in large part because we’ll need lobbyists in DC.”

“Time for one more question,” said the head of the judges’ panel, inviting another member of the VC row to ask it.

“Yes,” said a man in a greying beard and official Ascended Degen T-Shirt. “You have succeeded in making the stuff, right? I just, I’d assume that it takes more than five minutes for the machine to boot up…”

“Great question. Yes, indeed, we have. In fact, we have some here for everyone to try,” said Hank, handing a small bottle of bright yellow pills to a member of the front row. “30mg each. Please take no more than one.”

“TIME!” said the head judge. “Thank you, Sunshine Industries!”

“I thought you were at the startup pitches.”

Von Pfiff, his hand on a large wooden barrel, turned around. It was Katzbube, sitting behind a table in the corner of the basement, his laptop almost completely obscured by a pile of print-outs and books.

“Ah, Winty,” he replied. “Good morning. Yes, I…”

Find a good cover story. Find a good cover story, dammit.

“...yes. They’re all very tedious, to be honest with you. Mostly business software. Not really my thing.”

“I thought some of them looked rather interesting. Pharmaceutical manufacturing from thin air, an agent that acts as fake work references for you to put on your résumé.”

“But you’re not up there?”

“No,” said Katzbube, “I’m working on one of my dissertations.”

“One of.”

“I’m technically in two PhD programs simultaneously. Economic history and Akkadiology. Haven’t yet finished the writing.”

“Well,” von Pfiff said in a deadpan tone, “if you are thinking of doing a third, I do know a few people at UVienna.”

“I might consider it. But three dissertations at the same time seems difficult to pull off.”

Von Pfiff paused briefly to reflect on this unfortunate truth.

“You’re not planning on finishing them? You’ve got to grow up and leave school at some point, you know.”

“It’s a quirk of my grandfather’s trust fund. I get sixty grand a year plus inflation adjustment as long as I’m still in school. It’s a much better deal than a postdoc, so I’m trying to make sure I’ve always got at least one dissertation outstanding until I’ve found another source of income. That was why I was working at Parentologist, I was hoping the equity was going to pay off and I’d be able to exit, but then they went under.”

An empire of permanent adolescents, von Pfiff thought to himself.

“You’re not aiming for a tenure-track job?”

“I’ve considered private-school teaching like my father. But it doesn’t leave that much time for research or writing.”

“Have you seen—” Von Pfiff paused. “Have you seen Comstock Gonzalez? I need to talk to him about Russia.”

“Clockjob not around?”

“Oh, who knows where Clockjob is,” said von Pfiff. “But trying to get a straight answer from him about the army in Moscow doesn’t seem as fruitful as getting it second-hand from the sultan, to be quite honest with you.”

All of a sudden a door at the far end of the basement opened and a young man in a large, black hat—its buckle in somewhat desperate need of a shine—approached, trundling a metal dolly holding a large wooden barrel somewhat greyer and larger in color than the ones already in the basement. Then a second, and a third, all wearing the same belt-buckle hats and dark velvet cloaks with breeches and transporting identical grey barrels.

“I see Brother Blayden has already ordered some preparations for the wedding tonight!” said the first man, addressing von Pfiff. “Have you recently accepted the Plymouth Covenant into your heart?”

“The wedding?”

“Oh yes,” the man said. “A bishop must be the husband of only one wife. That’s what Scripture tells us. Our dear church president, Brother Blayden, is marrying Sister Zephyr at five o’clock tomorrow evening. While communion will only be available for members of the church, everyone is invited to the reception afterwards for dancing and, if we can figure out how to get some, ale.”

“Dancing,” said Katzbube. “What—”

“It’s a fine Puritan tradition. They weren’t Victorians.”

“Fair enough,” Katzbube conceded. “But those hats are a Norman Rockwell invention, you realize.”

“A bit of anachronism,” the man said, “bears witness to the world. They didn’t have cryptocurrency either. But they would have appreciated it as a vehicle for thrift among the elect.”

“Indubitably,” von Pfiff said. “Well, I’m going to wander back up to the pitch competition, I think, if there’s no sign of Mr. Gonzalez...”

“I think I’ll join you,” said Katzbube. “Half a page done this morning and I’m starting to feel a bit boxed in.”

“Last but not—hee hee—we have…CRUSTARD…CRUSTORTION. Such a pretty slideshow…”

The man in front of the slideshow began giggling.

“Good—mroing…! I’m Elmer…I’m Elmer Harding! They’re so pretty…such pretty colors…we’re here…”

Katzbube cast his eye over the crowd.

“I think…I’m actually going to…Bzzzeeee!” Elmer exclaimed. “We’re making them stupider.”

He gestured to the slide, featuring the brand name CRUSTARDACEAN and a picture of a shrimp wearing a dunce cap.

“We’re looking for…we’re looking to rise! We’re looking to raise. We’re rising…so pretty!”

Von Pfiff suddenly felt a strong wave of relief that he had elected to skip the pitch competition.

“We’re using AI…” Elmer poked the projector remote, flipping through several slides in extremely quick succession. “AI! Large language model. Small language model! They’re all very very good.”

Katzbube could only catch Shrimp-Based Neural Model and Farming at Scale: $100B by 2040.

“That’s it!” Elmer exclaimed, finding he had fast-forwarded to the very last slide. “Bye-bye!”

“What on God’s green earth—” Katzbube remarked.

“Silicon Valley dot text,” said von Pfiff.

“Even by those standards.”

“That’s—tee hee! That’s it!” said the head judge. “I think you are all just fantastic. All of you are winners! Especially…Zunzhine…thank you so much! They’ll be around. They’re coming back! Who wants some music?”

A warm, dopey cheer arose from the crowd as the judge closed the slideshow and, after several unsuccessful attempts, hit play on a Spotify list titled Music to Experience Reality To. Electronic dance beats echoed across the grass pitch as the experience of reality, or at least an intriguing approximation thereof, came upon the attendees. Katzbube spotted Hank sitting on a hammock in the far corner and strolled over to meet him at last.

“Hank Prockler, I assume. Winthrop Katzbube, long-term blog reader.”

“Aha! Good to make your acquaintance. I’m guessing you didn’t, ah…”

“No,” replied Katzbube, “I was occupied with my dissertation. I didn’t know you’d branched out to other pharmaceuticals.”

“We didn’t know either. We’re still trying to find the right mix of catalysts. There’s really no way to get around using halogen salts, unfortunately.”

“So this isn’t standard…”

“We’ll do some spectroscopy when we get back to the lab. I’m guessing we got some methoxy groups on the benzene ring by accident. New research chemist.”

“Oh dear,” said Katzbube, unsure how else to respond.

“Well, when you have eight months of runway left and not enough manpower, you take whoever you can get,” Hank said. “We poached him off Twitter. Good at reading papers, wrote a few articles on geoengineering. But we’ve beaten the raise target as of an hour ago, so I can’t get too mad at him.”

“How much for?”

“A hundred million at a valuation of half a billion dollars. It’ll buy a lot of replacement gloveboxes, they’ve been blowing up ever since he got hired—”

“Congratulations!” spouted a voice. Katzbube turned to see a middle-aged man in a pair of khakis and a grey fleece, holding his iPhone and swaying cheerily to the music.

“Ah, Terry,” said Hank. “You’ve—”

A large, goofy grin spread over Terry’s face.

“Such potential…such consciousness! It’s in your inbox. I think there’s…”

“Let me see…”

“We added—I added some more funding as the CEO. I’m sure you’ll be thrilled.”

A pause followed.

“I think there’s been a mistake. The valuation is only half a billion.”

“Nnnnnope,” Terry giggled. “Added it myself. I thought to myself: it’s so pretty. It’s worth so much more funding than a hundred mill. We’re all in. Best pitch I’ve seen in years. Best of luck!”

A bright ping hit Hank Prockler’s inbox, informing him that a wire transfer for two billion dollars and zero cents exactly had hit the bank account of Sunshine Industries.

Continue to Chapter IX.

πολλαχοῦ σκοποῦντες ἡμᾶς εἰς ἅπανθ᾽ εὑρήσετε
τοὺς τρόπους καὶ τὴν δίαιταν σφηξὶν ἐμφερεστάτους.

Four Years Earlier

Winthrop Alonzo Vandecanter III died alone, three weeks before his ninety-second birthday, in an old billiard room on the first floor that had been converted, less temporarily than some had hoped, into a one-man hospice. He had been in reasonably good spirits the previous evening, considering his condition, when his nurse came in to bring him what dinner he was still capable of eating. Now he had breathed his last, probably around two o’clock in the wee small hours of a cold April morning, to the relief of nobody more than himself. He had long considered that the eyes of the world—or at least of the house of Vandecanter—would soon be upon the old Gothic Revival landmark upon a hill overlooking the Hudson.

Arrangements had long since been made for him to be laid to rest in the family plot, though enlisting the services of an Episcopalian priest, as had been the mos maiorum since Alonzo Vandecanter had crossed from the Amstel to the Thames in 1873. The old Dutch church’s lone titular parishioner, a crabby old grouch of seventy-eight, had inherited a traditional distaste for the Vandecanters dating to his great-great-grandfather’s speedy and procedurally questionable hanging for the murder of Isaac van de Kanter during the Anti-Rent War. The body of the old Patroon had never been found, though his ghost was said to haunt Eikenbos and its tenants’ descendants on windy autumn evenings.

A minor ecclesiastical kerfluffle now erupted sixteen decades later when it transpired that the minister of the building had been dead ten years. Consent for last rites was finally obtained after the remaining congregant—who drew benefices totalling nearly $200,000 a year from the parish endowment as vestryman, groundskeeper, bookkeeper, parish historian and director of charitable causes—was reminded that, while nobody was particularly hell-bent on torpedoing the retirement of a pillar of the West Palm Beach Rotary Club, a letter to what remained of the church hierarchy was not out of the question.

Thus it was, two months after the funeral, that the old man’s namesake received a phone call from his executors.

“Winthrop Katzbube speaking.”

“Good morning, Winthrop. This is Eliot Quaffle from Quaffle and Mortmain. Do you have a minute?”

Ah, yes. Bunny’s lawyer.

“I…may have a minute.”

Katzbube closed his laptop, sitting at the center of an ill-organized pile of ILL’ed Xeroxes, and walked out to the stairwell—not, of course, that there was anybody around in a college library at 9 AM on a Friday morning in June, save for the industrious author of Land in the Longue Durée.

“It’ll have to be quick. I’m working on my dissertation.”

“Oh, how’s that going?”

“It’s…”

He weighed whether or not to lie. Oh, right, it’s an attorney, confidentiality—no, he’s just the executor, he’ll tell Aunt Bun and she’ll tell Mom and Dad and Dad will badger me about finishing the damn thing.

“I’m really just polishing up the bibliography.”

“Oh, fantastic! Yes, I heard about it from your mother at dinner after the funeral. It won an award, didn’t it?”

“That was my undergrad thesis. The PhD dissertation is an expansion of it.”

“That’s really wonderful. You know, I was a history major before law school. Really an important and noble pursuit, you know, keep up the good work.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m actually sort of calling with regards to that…I’ve just sent you an email with a PDF of the will, but I’m calling just to make sure you get the message. Your grandfather, I think, valued education pretty highly.”

“He did. Though I never really inherited his knowledge of art.”

“I’m sure he’d be proud of you, all the same. Anyways—you’ll want to read the whole will, of course, you’re an adult now and you should have a good idea of who got what in case your—do your parents ever talk about money with you?”

Do my parents talk about money? Do my parents ever talk about money?! Do Cranmer and Nancy Katzbube ever talk about money?!

“Eliot, to be honest with you, my parents discuss finances with me about as often as they discuss their sex life. I don’t even know how much either of them makes. It’s simply not done.”

“Ah, well, it’s probably about time to start talking about it. Money, I mean, not sex. Your grandfather…let me read it to you, just so I can confirm you understand it—

To my grandson, Winthrop Vandecanter Katzbube, I leave the proceeds of Trust 6 held at the Bank of New York, to pay out exactly $60,000 yearly, adjusted yearly for inflation and dispensed on a monthly basis, until the completion of his ongoing studies. Upon the completion of his studies, the proceeds of Trust 6 will be held for the education of his children, if he has any, and devolve to his complete control when he turns sixty years of age.

Katzbube blinked.

“Winthrop, are you there?”

“Yes…yes, I’m here. That’s…”

“I think,” Eliot said, chuckling, “your grandfather expected to die a bit earlier than ninety-one. You might not see much of it if you’re about to complete your dissertation, but…are you seeing anyone right now?”

“I…no, unfortunately.” Well, there’s Melanie, but that’s a bit complicated.

“Well, the kids’ education will be spoken for when you have them. There’s about two and a half million in that trust.”

“I…”

“I’ve got to go, unfortunately. You’re not the only person named in the will I need to call. But, look, why don’t you drive or catch the train up to Beantown sometime next week so we can get the details sorted out? I’ll need your bank account information and you’ll probably want to start thinking about finding someone to help with taxes. We’ve got a couple of associates who do this thing all the time.”

“I…yes…thank you, Eliot. I’ve…”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Normal reaction. Ring me up when you’re a bit less in shock. And have a great weekend!”

The line cut. Katzbube exited the stairwell and walked back to his desk in a daze.

He could be found an hour later at the Globalist House of Waffles in a celebratory mood, feasting on butterscotch-chip teff pancakes with camel bacon and a kefir latte. Free…free! Free, to the tune of sixty grand a year, indefinitely, so long as he never defended.

Or—

Surely he could just start another PhD?

The plain intent of the will was that he would be doing one PhD—or, when it was written, probably that he would finish undergrad and go on to a PhD, perhaps with a master’s first—subsidized by the proceeds of the trust. Upon the final defense, the stipend would be rolled up and not become available again until he had children.

But who could afford to have children without an extra $60K a year? At the very least it would make it much easier to rent a bigger apartment for them. And after that he’d probably want to homeschool them. Who could possibly argue against—

He probably could not un-sequester the trust if he started another PhD—no, surely not—upon the conclusion of his ongoing studies. But he could start another PhD before wrapping up this one. He was, of course, assuredly one of the best economic history PhD students at Brown despite his youth. The honors-thesis version of Land in the Longue Durée had won the Scheidel Award for Depressing Conclusions and the Smil Medal for Quantitative Analysis (restricted to that undergraduate who has produced the best data-driven humanities thesis over 400 pages; it had been won once before this century). It was now at well over 700 pages with no end in sight, which Katzbube’s father might well no longer care much about if he wasn’t going to be subsidizing the rent.

He had barely passed comps a year ago, as—rather than relying on secondary sources, which he considered the mark of an amateur—Katzbube had thrown himself in fontes for chapter two, on long-term trends in Mesopotamian land distribution. Finals were scheduled the same week as comps. On three hours of sleep and twenty milligrams of Adderall he had mixed up which tests were when and written the answer to question one of his econometrics comprehensive in Akkadian. By the time he realized the snafu it was too late to do anything but soldier on through. Eventually the economic history chair brought a nice bottle of Graham’s twenty-year tawny round to the Near Eastern Studies department and begged them to save his fiefdom’s rising star, pointing out that at least the thing was already transliterated, and told Katzbube with a look of profound seriousness that he was on thin ice indeed.

He could probably start a PhD in Akkadiology, so long as it wasn’t at the same institution. Didn’t UWinnemac have a department? He would simply—no, he’d have to move back to Zenith and go long-distance with Melanie. Or would he? He could of course—

He could skip most of the first year of classes at Winnemac—they recorded all this stuff these days anyways—show up to the final, and spend the rest of the time writing Land in the Longue Durée and looking at tablets in archives. Of course. Economic historians and Akkadiologists don’t go to the same conferences. The Akkadiologists publish the texts and one of half a dozen economic historians on the face of the planet reads them in English or German ten years later. If you were at two separate universities nobody would be any the wiser, except for the mercifully taciturn legal person of Trust Account 6.

“I’m proofreading the apparatus for a Teubner I’m doing. What’s up?”

“I was wondering,” said Katzbube, piloting his ancient Ford Focus aimlessly in the vague direction of Scituate, “if you’d write me a letter of rec for a PhD program.”

Static hummed over the phone line.

“Didn’t you already start one in economic history?”

“It’s complicated. I’m looking to start one in Akkadiology. Possibly at Winnemac, possibly at Zürich or UCL.”

“I didn’t know you could read Akkadian.”

“I had to pick some up to read sources for the dissertation.”

“You’re…you’re not planning on submitting one dissertation to two programs, are you?”

“No, of course not. Look, just—I’ll be happy to send a good bottle of sherry and a gift card for Brill. Possibly enough to buy half a monograph, even. Just between you and me.”

Dr. Rise mulled the idea over.

“You’ll need someone who can speak to your Akkadian skills.”

“I’ve got that covered.”

“I’m not surprised given your Greek performance in undergrad. Are you quitting your current program?”

“Not exactly. I’ve—I won a grant from the Vandecanter Foundation. They encourage interdisciplinary work and program overlap. It shows you’re a collaborative thinker.”

Smooth, he thought.

“The Vandecanter Foundation.”

“Yes, I think they’re relatively new.”

“Well, anything to win the red queen’s race for tenure, I suppose. Sure, I’ll write you a letter. When do you need it by?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably the end of this year to start a year from this September. The European application schedules are much less of a pain.”

“The proof for the Teubner is due at the end of July. I’ll try and get it to you before the new school year starts.”

“It’s appreciated,” Katzbube replied. “What’s on tap this semester?”

“They’ve got me on The Teaching of Latin with one of the ed-school profs, God help me.”

“My condolences.”

Linda Blick poured herself another cup of coffee and sighed. Four more students to give stern talkings-to today in hopes of meeting guidance targets and God knows how many emails from colleagues. For the fifteenth time that morning she clicked on an email from the President’s office.

Dear Faculty and Staff:

As you may have read in the news, the Department of Education has recently handed down new guidance for federally-funded colleges and universities on ensuring campuses remain healthy places for students to learn, grow and socialize. To remain in compliance, we have created a Four-Year Age Gap Action Plan.

While wide age gaps are not necessarily indicative of an abusive or unhealthy relationship (AoUR), AoURs are often accompanied by large age gaps between partners of any gender. An anonymous survey filled out by University students indicated that the average situationship on campus has an age gap of 2.3 years, while the average one-night stand has an age gap of 2.6. Even more problematically, among students with OnlyFans profiles, the average paid subscriber is a whopping 5.7 years older.

While students are legal adults and—except for graduate students—are generally free to express their own romantic identities, these figures are truly worrying and may jeopardize our ability to stay in compliance with Title IX guidance. If they do not improve, we may lose federal funding. We are therefore implementing our Four-Year Age Gap Action Plan to help faculty and staff recognize potential AoURs and talk to students. If you were not able to attend the presentation on August 23rd, please see the attached Powerpoint.

Our goal is to halve the age gaps of relationships on campus within the next four years to help put a stop to AoURs. While there is no truly healthy age gap in student relationships, we are all able to encourage students to date responsibly by participating in respectful conversations. For example, if you are subscribed to a student’s OnlyFans, you may wish to send them an anonymous note suggesting they check the average age of their subscribers and think about creating content better geared towards their peers. If you have questions, please feel free to email Lisa Sternberg, Provost for Healthy Relationships. We are all responsible for making the university community a safe and welcoming place to learn.

Best,

—President Fliss

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened to reveal a rather sheepish-looking woman in a dogtooth peacoat.

“Ah. You must be Melanie.”

“Yes.”

“I’m Linda Blick, Vice Provost for Healthy Relationships. Do take a seat. Before anything else, I’d like to reiterate that you’re not in trouble.”

“Oh. What did you want to meet me for, then?”

Linda paused, attempting to remember the script she’d learned in the training with Lisa.

“Do you know someone named Winthrop Katzbube?”

“Winty? Yes, he’s my boyfriend, of course I know him.”

“You’re aware that he’s only twenty-one?”

“Y…yessss…”

“And you’re twenty-five.”

“So? I started college late, I’m still an undergrad. He’s old enough to drink, it’s not like I’m buying him booze or anything.”

“Right, yes. Of course, I’m sure you wouldn’t do that. The reason I wanted to talk to you is that…”

Melanie shuffled uncomfortably in her chair.

“The university administration is concerned that many students’ relationships have a higher-than-average age gap.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Now, of course, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with relationships across an age gap, but we’re very concerned about making sure that all our students are safe, and relationships with age gaps are…it’s more common for unsafe relationships to have a wide age gap than not. That’s all. It’s a small part of the university’s Combatting Unsafety Initiative—”

“You’re asking me to break up with him?!”

“Well. No. No, of course not. Just, ah. It’s worth being…it’s worth practicing mindfulness with this sort of thing. The university is hoping to reach a point where most relationships have a below-average age gap. You’re a star student on campus, Melanie. You can set an example others look up to.”

“I…I see.”

“I’m sorry if this conversation has made you uncomfortable.”

“It has.”

“I’m afraid that in your current situation you’re not eligible to join our campus team of Age Gap Ambassadors.”

She handed Melanie a bright, cheery pamphlet titled Age Gap Ambassadors: Bringing Safety to Campus.

“It’s a great opportunity to make a difference on campus and get paid to have constructive conversations,” said Linda.

“I don’t think I’d be interested in it anyways.”

“Well,” said Linda, “please feel free to let me know if you have any friends who might be good fits. And don’t be afraid to stop by! It’s my job to help students make good choices.”

“I think I’m well-qualified to make them on my own, thank you very much.”

A look of disappointment flashed momentarily across Linda’s face.

“Of course. Well, I have another appointment in a few, so…”

“Yes,” said Melanie, rising from her seat. “And I’ve got a paper to write. I’ll let you know if I think of anyone.”

She closed the door behind her. Linda Blick looked at the clock, took another sip of coffee, and awaited yet more constructive conversations with students at risk of perpetrating Unsafety.

“And there’s the man of the evening! Good evening, Winthrop.”

Katzbube, ever aware of his capacity for self-beclownment, said nothing to the slickly-attired undergraduate sitting across the room. He took a seat at the foot of the long table in Room 312 at the Center for Graduate Student Success. It briefly occurred to him that he might not have been summoned to Room 312 if he had taken more advantage of the 24/7 petting zoo, weekly massage sessions, or Institute for Social Change. He had been here once before after using the stock of posterboard and markers found at the Institute for Social Change to protest a planned installation of hot tubs in student housing. That meeting, it was agreed by all involved, had been a remarkable success, and Katzbube agreed to never again use the Institute for Social Change to the detriment of students with psoriasis.

He felt somewhat less confident about the outcome of this meeting.

“I’m Melvin McDibble, a trained and certified University Age Gap Ambassador. How are you doing this evening?”

“I’m…I’m doing great.”

“Just fantastic,” said Melvin, with a smile that suggested considerable potential as a dealer of pre-owned Subarus. “I’m really glad to hear it.” Katzbube felt a sudden urge to join a monastic order.

“I’ve got a dissertation to write…”

“Of course, of course. Yes, I completely understand. I just thought it’d be great to get to know each other and have a…constructive conversation!”

“A constructive conversation about…”

“About your future, Winthrop. Winty? You go by Winty, right?”

“Mostly with close friends,” said Katzbube.

“Of course, of course. Well. Winthrop, Winthrop, Winthrop. As you know—are you familiar with the Combatting Unsafety Initiative?”

“I believe I’ve heard of it.”

“Yes. It’s one of the University’s most important jobs. Really its most important job, in fact.”

“Surely you mean danger. Combatting Danger.”

“Oh no, no, no. No, truly dangerous things are thankfully very rare these days. Danger, Winthrop, is about bad actors acting against you. We trust our university community, Winthrop. We do our very utmost to keep bad actors off campus and we’ve gotten very good at not admitting them. No, danger is about bad actors acting against you—” he pointed to Katzbube—”but unsafety is about the unsafe choices you make yourself.”

Katzbube elected to meditate silently on this new and subtle distinction.

“Now—just between you and me—I’m a bit concerned that your relationship with Melanie might be…I’m not saying it is…but I’m saying it could be unsafe.”

“I…please elaborate.”

“Well, you’re a PhD student and she’s an undergrad. There’s a possible power imbalance there.”

“I’m a very young PhD student.”

“What I’m saying,” said Melvin, “is that—Winthrop, you’re surely aware of the dismal employment prospects for PhD students. Particularly in the humanities.”

“Nobody is making the university admit them.”

“Winthrop, Winthrop, Winthrop,” Melvin repeated. “Why—Winty! This is a positive-sum opportunity here. A whole world awaits out there. A whole world with—with far better prospects for a brilliant young thinker like yourself. Think of finance, your—what’s your dissertation on, again?”

“It’s called Land in the Longue Durée, on land distribution and long-term trends in—.”

“That’s it! That’s just it. Think just how successful you could be as a realtor, Winthrop.”

“A realtor.” His head spun, concocting febrile visions of open-house sessions somewhere in South Florida. Winthrop V. Katzbube—over three decades of outstanding performance selling proctologists on the virtues of LEED-certified mood lighting and shag carpeting.

“Yes. I’m hoping to make this meeting a real success for everyone involved, Winthrop—for you, for the university. You can make the university safer and launch yourself into a world of success. Everyone’s hiring.”

When you’re in a trap, bite.

“We’ve been dating for a year and a half and this hasn’t come up. Why, if I may ask, are you bringing this up now?”

“Ah! Yes, yes. A really good question. Are you familiar with the university’s new Four-Year Age Gap Action Plan?”

Katzbube paused and ruminated. Bite…or play dead.

“Oh yes! Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up. That’s been—that’s really been a guiding principle for me.”

“A guiding principle.”

“Yes. I read about the University aiming for an average age gap of four years. That’s why I’m dating someone four years older than me. I’m interrogating hegemonies by being a younger male partner in a straight relationship.”

He watched Melvin slowly, if surely, process this explanation. Within a few seconds it became clear this explanation, while not necessarily believed, was unlikely to be interrogated further.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” said Melvin.

“Oh dear.”

“But it’s good to know we’ll have to update some of our training materials so they’re less confusing. We—”

“Overjoyed to know I can be helpful,” said Katzbube, standing up and pushing in his chair.

“But—”

“Yes, this has been a constructive conversation. You have my email, I think, if you want me to take a look at any training materials to provide suggestions.”

“Winty, we’re not—”

“Sorry, you don’t actually have any disciplinary power, do you?”

“I…”

“Do you?”

Melvin blinked.

“Not unless there’s evidence of abuse.”

“Is there?”

“I was hoping to ask—”

“Cheers.”

Katzbube gave a wave of leave, shut the door to Room 312 behind him, and awaited a joyful evening of combing through grain-price time series.

Continue to Chapter VIII.

(ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω)

From his position forty-one places behind the front of the line for the cocktail hour, von Pfiff peered in the vague direction of a dark alcove festooned with Solo cups where a narrow variety of inebriants was being prepared with more enthusiasm than speed. In the dim light of the walnut-paneled ballroom the chalkboard menu was barely legible, especially given his growing suspicion that the mixologist had chosen experimental recipes.

He reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of adjustable binoculars assigned by the Austrian security services, carefully engineered to look like a normal pair of reading spectacles. Von Pfiff loathed them. In addition to looking hopelessly old-fashioned, opening the frames switched on an audio-visual recorder which, he had discovered while surveilling a suspected Russian honeypot in the Algarve to pad his timesheet, was prone to underestimate its remaining battery life and erupt without warning into a shrill and indiscreet chirp. Owing to the device’s geriatric appearance, Vienna had always strongly recommended the use of a decoy paperback or newspaper. Von Pfiff checked his outer linen suit pockets and suddenly remembered that the copy of The Harvard Business School Introduction to Andorran Tax Law he had picked up on a layover for this purpose was back in the AirBnB. He looked around as suavely as he could muster, muttered a brief excuse to the others in line, and walked over to an ill-stocked bookshelf on the wall to retrieve a slim volume titled Group House to Sex Cult: A Guide for Beginners. Strolling back to the cocktail line, he furtively pressed a button on the frames to switch the glasses from reading to binocular mode and opened the book to chapter one.

The pickings, he was dismayed but not surprised to learn, were slim. All four cocktails on offer appeared to contain an ingredient called ‘Faygo’ with which he was entirely unfamiliar but was clearly carcinogenic. The least unappetizing, a ‘Violent Cal’, combined the Tonic! flavor of this degeneracy with gin of an unknown brand. He was not sure whether to hope the gin was quality (in which case the concoction might be plausibly drinkable) or schlock (lest a perfectly decent bottle of gin be wasted).

Minute by minute the line staggered closer to the bar. From time to time a cheap, tinny pair of speakers in the far corner of the ballroom ejaculated lyrics about clowns, then simmered down to an incomprehensible burble, as if plunged underwater.

“Whoop whoop,” said a most peculiar bartender when von Pfiff finally reached the front of the line. Five feet and ten inches of his six-foot-six figure were enveloped in a bright orange robe embroidered with black paisley and gold trim, swept with a mop of straight brown hair down to his back. His hands, bony yet strong, sported a collection of ostentatious rings. Black and white makeup had been applied to a boyish face to create the permanent illusion of a rather devious smile. “I am…Preserved Gaylord.”

“Preservèd,” von Pfiff repeated, finding the third syllable not entirely natural.

Preserved Gaylord chuckled. “An old family name. What can I get you?”

“I will have the…the Violent Cal.”

“An excellent choice for a fellow aristocrat of the soul,” responded Preserved, picking up a red Solo cup and combining equal measures of Tonic! and a draught from—oh, God, von Pfiff thought. Nolay’s Reserve?! High-fructose corn syrup adulterating a perfectly fine measure of Nolay’s Reserve. The mind boggled. He muttered inaudible nonsense about American degeneracy and shuffled away from the bar to look for that damnable econ twink to discuss the matter of Belgium. The bird costume was not difficult to find. He eavesdropped from three paces away and waited for an opportune moment.

“Do explain,” von Pfiff overheard a girl asking him, “exactly how it is that the econ department at Governeur Morris is so loaded. Nearly a billion dollars in endowment is...unheard of.”

The econ twink took a sip of coconut water.

“So,” he said, “the original endowment was fifty million.”

“That is...still a lot.”

“I think it was originally part of a copper-mining fortune. It was going to go to Chicago but the donor decided they were already well-regarded enough and picked us instead. The fun part was that the gift stipulated that the department chair had to actively manage it and that they could not just stick it in an index fund.”

“That sounds like it would violate SEC rules.”

“There was an interesting court case about it, actually. They ruled on the basis of statements from the donor—they had to pause his trial in the Netherlands at the time—that the gift would not have been made if he’d let us do something boring like stick it in a Vanguard fund. So if the alternative is that there is no fund, then a fund actively-managed by the department is a Pareto improvement over no fund—if only because ruling otherwise would mean fewer charitable donations going forward.”

“But then you went from fifty million to nearly a billion.”

“The department chair saw the writing on the wall in February 2020 and bought short positions on a number of nursing-home providers.”

“How ethical.”

“Is shorting stocks ever unethical?” asked the econ twink.

The woman stared at him with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

“You’re destroying—”

“No, you’re just sending better price signals. It is February 2020, the world is about to get hit by a massive pandemic that will wallop nursing homes. Their stocks are trading as if nothing is happening, you are drawing attention to it.”

“I am appalled!”

“Do you arrest people who pull fire alarms for arson?”

“Not to butt in,” von Pfiff interjected, “but I was wondering if I could borrow you to discuss…”

“Oh, yes,” the twink replied. “Yes. Arugula, this is…remind me your name again.”

“Mehmet von Pfiff.”

“Charmed. Allow me to introduce you to Arugula Clay. Mehmet is playing England in a game of Diplomacy hosted by Telemachus Clockjob.”

“Good evening, Arugula. Indeed. I was just thinking…”

“Before anything else, have you bought positions on your own moves?”

Von Pfiff’s train of thought came to a screeching halt at a station he did not much like the look of.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, you haven’t checked the prediction markets? There’s a board up there.”

He gestured to a series of flat-screen monitors on the far wall from the bar. A billionaire shows up: 97%. Alex Scoot funds a startup: 74%. An undercover journalist is unmasked: 83%.

France takes Belgium as a build in 1901: 92%.

“They’re selling dollars for 91 cents if you’d like to go for Norway or Holland instead,” the econ twink remarked.

“Small markets are very inefficient,” von Pfiff said, at a loss for other words.

“Check again,” said his opponent. Von Pfiff took out his spectacles and discovered that the volume on this market totaled to nearly $1.6M.

“Nobody told me we would be on camera.”

“I don’t think we are. But word gets around. The volume of the market is one of the reasons so many people think there’s a billionaire here.”

“Isn’t Clockjob one?”

“Not officially.”

“Do you know what he’s doing with Moscow?”

“Not a clue,” said the econ twink. “You’ll have to talk to him or maybe to Comstock or Winty. Norway’s just lovely this time of year, you know.”

“So’s Iberia.”

“Mmm, but I can get there just fine from Marseilles. It’s the English channel I’m worried about. Shall we leave it as a DMZ in the understanding you’ll certainly be in Norway this winter?”

“I think two supply centers for everyone in 1901 is more than reasonable,” said von Pfiff. “Except, of course, for Italy, but we all knew that. Is Paris off to Burgundy?”

“It might be. I haven’t decided. Portugal—”

“An old English ally which we’re more than happy to lease out to the French for a year or two, so long as the English Channel remains English,” von Pfiff said warmly. “Your support in the fall with the matter of Belgium would be appreciated. I will of course try to see to it that Italy leaves you alone.”

The econ twink weighed von Pfiff’s proposal.

“I’ll consider it.”

“It would be appreciated.”

“Would you have any interest in underwriting an appropriate position on the market and splitting the proceeds?”

“Don’t push your luck.” These fucking economists.

“Winty is over there if you want to talk to him,” said the econ twink, pointing at an angle of about seventy degrees counter-clockwise from the screens. “He’s recruiting for his new organization. I’ve already gotten my official gear.” He unbuttoned his bird costume to reveal a T-Shirt featuring the faces of Robert Peel, Nelson Rockefeller and Margaret Thatcher, surrounded by golden halos and saluted by a teeming crowd of white-collar professionals. The scene was ringed by the motto The True Administration of Pigouvian Taxation is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government; underneath it the shirt identified the wearer as a member of The FWB Society.

Indeed Katzbube was over there, standing on a chair with a Solo cup—clearly not his first of the evening—in hand, cheerfully addressing a pair of very similar-looking women (twins, perhaps?) in matching shirts that read Text and Subtext.

“The FWB was the backbone of abolitionism, the Reform Act and the battle against child labor,” Katzbube proclaimed, his r’s even more conspicuously absent than usual. “In Current Year as in 1843 he fights for free trade, fiscal probity, a strong foreign policy in the humanitarian as well as the national interest.”

“Winty!” said von Pfiff, trying to attract his attention.

“FISCAL PROBITY! FISCAL PROBITY! The prudent use of public money for the public welfare! The FWB must be restored–” RESTOAHED— “to his rightful place as the guardian of good governance. HE MUST YET AGAIN serve as the eternal watchman against the parasites of graft and avarice that from time to time infect the body politic. The—”

“Winty, what on earth are you on about?”

“I am recruiting,” Katzbube thundered, “for the First-World Bourgeois Society.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” said Text.

“Truly a nuanced ideology,” Subtext added.

“When the FWB buys tchotchkes on Amazon,” Katzbube continued, “he turns on lights in a dozen factories and pays their workers’ bills. When he saves for retirement, he provides the capital to build roads, hospitals, schools. He underwrites the insurance policies that turn hailstorms and floods from harbingers of starvation to crappy luck. He is—”

“Winty, can we discuss—”

“IN EVERY WAY ACROSS THE CENTURIES THE FWB IS TRULY A FRIEND WITH MYRIAD BENEFITS TO ALL MANKIND.”

Text and Subtext clapped.

“We’ll consider it,” said Subtext.

“We read The Economist every week cover to cover,” said Text.

“All sorts of intriguing ideas in there,” Subtext agreed.

“Who are those two?” von Pfiff asked.

“We’re Text and Subtext,” said Text.

“Or Subtext and Text,” said Subtext. “And Metatext is around somewhere.”

“She comes and goes,” Text explained.

“They’re Straussian e-girls,” said Katzbube. “Very perplexing.”

“Gulf Coast Straussians,” added Subtext.

“Most perplexing indeed,” von Pfiff remarked.

“There’s a guide available,” said Text.

“A guide to?” von Pfiff asked.

“To being perplexed,” said Subtext. “Some men understand.”

“Others dey don’t.”

“And what are you here for?” asked von Pfiff.

“Looking for Straussian e-boys,” said Subtext.

“Not much luck,” Text added. “It’s hard to get laid as a Straussian e-girl.”

“Affirmative consent under California statute—”

“Leaves no place for Subtext,” said Text, completing her comrade’s surface reading. “Or for subtext. Nobody can figure us out.”

“We’re being persecuted.”

“BELGIUM,” von Pfiff insisted at last, dragging Katzbube off his chair and shooing away the Straussian e-girls. As they scurried away into the dimness of the ballroom he could read If You’re Reading It, It’s For You printed on each of their matching pairs of booty shorts.

“Can you assure me that France won’t be going into Burgundy?” asked Katzbube.

“I’ve done my best to send him to Iberia. Frankly I think Clockjob is much more dangerous. Better to keep him out of Sweden.”

“You might bounce me out of Holland.”

“Assuring myself Belgium is more valuable than denying you Holland. You have my honor on this. At least until 1902.”

Katzbube mulled this over in a thoughtful haze.

“And your preferences for Munich?”

“I’d prefer a bounce in Burgundy if you can arrange one with the econ twink. Does he have a name?”

“I’m not aware of one. His nametag just reads ‘The Econ Twink’. Plenty of pseudonyms here. I, of course—”

“Munich,” von Pfiff insisted.

“I’ll consider Burgundy but can’t promise anything right now.”

“Good enough. Are you enjoying your, ah…”

“Cocktail? After a fashion,” said Katzbube. “It seemed a bit low-rent for you.”

“Yes, I left my case of—”

Von Pfiff looked in the far corner of the ballroom where he had left his case of Château Houellebecq the previous evening, lest he be mugged for it on the walk to the scullery. It was not there.

“...I did leave my case of wine over here, but someone seems to have moved it.”

“Ah, well,” said Katzbube, his voice tipsy with optimism. “I’m sure it will show up. If you’ll excuse me I’m going to go find Austria…”

He strolled off, in a floating zig-zag, into the darker corners of the ballroom.

Continue to Chapter VII.

Sein Wesen ist Verhandeln, abwartende Halbheit, mit der Hoffnung, die definitive Auseinandersetzung, die blutige Entscheidungsschlacht, könnte in eine parlamentarische Debatte verwandelt werden und ließe sich durch eine ewige Diskussion ewig suspendieren.

Telemachus Clockjob shone with power in the light of the summer sunset, his majestic black leather jacket radiating the energy of a live player at the top of his game...an intellect worthy of admiration from men and fear from anthropoids...a man truly sovereign.

“Good evening!” he proclaimed to the six other players, arranged in an irregular arc around the picnic table on which he stood. “Before we begin I would like to announce that this will be, by far...the most secure game of Diplomacy of all time.”

Katzbube’s usual resting expression of puzzlement intensified; he noticed von Pfiff glancing at him from the other end of the semicircle next to a thin young man in an oversized bird costume whose name tag read The Econ Twink. Katzbube surveyed his other opponents: Elmer, brimming with the confidence of a newly seasoned gambler; Cannon Pratt, who had invited him, in 1960s grad-student glasses and his standard grey checkered vest; and, closest to him, Comstock Gonzalez, a towering and businesslike figure in sunglasses.

“Oh yes! I considered, friends, putting a tin can in the main lounge in which orders might be placed. But we are all very fascinating and talented people here. The tin can might be stolen, dear players, and replaced by an exact replica. It might even be bugged. There are many accomplished and remarkable agents at World of Vibes who might do this—not least of all myself. If the receptacle for orders is even a little bit insecure, friends, we should assume that it is entirely insecure.”

“We are all here, of course, to enjoy ourselves. But I am also hoping that we will all learn just a little bit more—yes, even me—about power. And power, as we all know, means security. I considered having us encrypt our moves. But then who is going to decrypt them? We could of course use public-key cryptography. But here we are in real life, dear diplomats, rather than rotting away behind our screens as we do the rest of the time.”

“The system for taking orders must, of course, be simple. I think we would all prefer to avoid complex procedures. It is simply all too easy for procedural outcomes to be...manipulated. And of course there are many other activities in which we might wish to partake at World of Vibes. We might, for example, wish to attend an orgy. I am told the prediction markets prophesy a 15% chance of one occurring. I would be a poor host, friends, if I were to insist that we all show up at exactly the same place at exactly the same time three times a day to deposit our orders simultaneously in full view of each other.”

“I am therefore happy to report, friends, that I have invented a most curious—but above all secure—method for submitting our orders.”

Clockjob produced a penknife from his breast pocket and sliced open a small cardboard box to reveal six identical electronic contraptions, each consisting of a screen and a keyboard and resembling an oversized and unusually square 2009-era cellphone.

“These,” he continued, “are Schmittcoin terminals. I have long dreamed of expanding Burble to become a maximally secure protocol for both communication and payment. The trouble with modern social media is the enormous amount of slop. The signal is tremendous. We are all more connected than ever before. We are connected on LinkedIn, on Reddit, on the Everything App. With a few keystrokes we may talk to billionaires, read papers about the climate of the early Miocene, or even find the rare and desirable mommy GF. But the noise—the noise is unbearable. It is therefore not sufficient that a communication protocol be secure. It must also prevent slop—without reading it. As even the staunchest supporter of the current political order will tell you, what better way to prevent something than by charging a price? Every Schmittcoin minted is backed by real information. Every message passed on the Schmittcoin protocol pays for the privilege; the more important the information, the higher the price. And since—as you will see—there could hardly be a more important piece of information to the world than the winners and losers of this Diplomacy game, the costs will need to be high indeed.”

“Each terminal contains one hundred thousand Schmittcoins for your use—no fewer than eight million dollars’ worth if you were to sell them for United States government scrip, which you will shortly have no reason to do. The Schmittcoin protocol is entirely decentralized. Each transaction is routed through every user on the network—none of which are able to determine its contents or prior history—before reaching its final destination. Schmittcoin is the only true P2P payment and communication protocol. Unike Bitcoin—unlike Ethereum—unlike even Dogecoin—there is no single sovereign terminal or collection of terminals able to decide on exceptions to the protocol’s normal operation by fiddling with interest rates, minting new coins, or reversing transactions. Your terminal will encode your orders as a number of Schmittcoins and send them to the Judge terminal, which—since every terminal is also Turing-complete—will be able to compute the final state of affairs at every turn.”

He passed the box to von Pfiff, who selected one of the contraptions and found himself scowling faintly at it. There appeared to be no USB ports or charging ports on the device. Curious. Vienna would surely be interested in dissecting it.

“Last but not least of all, players, I am happy to say that there will be a prize for the top three players upon completion of the game—since, at an event of this caliber, there is of course a very good chance that the game will come to a draw.”

“I would like to think, dear friends, that I am a man of many talents. Certainly I have my fingers in quite a few pies. You may, for example, have used Burble and learned to write Nomos, the strongly-typed dialect of brainfuck of which I am creator and in which the Schmittcoin protocol is written. I have little personal need for additional lucre after a successful exit at the turn of the century from www.petfood.com, and my ambitions now lie in the realm of the public good.”

“Allow me to introduce,” said Clockjob, gesturing to a fashionably late attendee now making his entrance from across the lawn, “His Majesty Carlos Antonio Sebastián María von Ausnahmezustand-Zollverein und Stvrt.”

“Wassup!” said Carlos Antonio Sebastián María von Ausnahmezustand-Zollverein und Stvrt, a flawlessly bronzed and improbably blond Adonis in what von Pfiff estimated to be approximately forty thousand euros of Milan’s third-finest tailoring.

“We are, of course, about to begin our little game. But before we do, let us take a brief detour and learn a bit about the sorry saga of modern Slorbian history.”

“Prior to the Treaty of Versailles and the other regrettable events of the 20th century, the Kingdom of Slorbia was ruled with a firm yet benevolent hand by the illustrious House of Stvrt. Alas, this was not to last. The House of Stvrt was toppled in 1919 and banished from Slorbia forever. Over the next twenty-two years the successor republic underwent fifty-seven coups, eight separate bouts of hyperinflation, and an ill-fated attempt to annex Romania before being invaded by the Nazis, then the Soviets.”

“Slorbia doesn’t border Romania,” noted Cannon.

“There was no border in 1932 either, but Marshal Tziganbivajošti was not known for his expertise in geography.”

“In February 1990,” continued Clockjob, “the old régime fell—only to be replaced by a new establishment of flashier kleptocrats, which remains to this day, implacably committed to formalizing its vassalage to Brussels. Slorbia has the second-highest suicide rate on the continent and the third-lowest per-capita GDP. Its biggest export industries are commercial-grade vanadium and twenty-something professionals, which one must admit is an improvement over the mid-1990s when it supplied 75% of all methamphetamine consumed in Europe.”

“Real bummer,” said Carlos, with an accent that suggested Andalusia more than the banks of the Droč. “I suggest us to fix the place up.”

“I will, therefore, be partially underwriting an attempt to restore the Stvrts. We will reorganize the government of Slorbia along the lines of the most stable and incentive-compatible social structure ever designed: the joint-stock company, with King Carlos I as CEO. Slorbijakorp Holdings will become known as the shining enterprise upon Mount Žub. The shoplifting of a Snickers bar will make national headlines. The mere sight of what is now the dustiest track in the most benighted village in Vrabica Province will make the Swiss transport ministry green with envy. The value of Slorbijakorp’s assets will dwarf those of anything we now refer to as a ‘first-world country’. The unfortunate subjects of Brussels and Foggy Bottom will beg their rulers to convert their electoral mediocracies into vassals—or even mere tributary states—of Slorbia.”

“The top three players of this game of Diplomacy will receive, respectively, 0.5%, 0.2%, and 0.1% of Slorbijakorp Holdings upon successful restoration of the House of Stvrt and restructuring of the Slorbian government along more enlightened lines.”

Clockjob opened a second cardboard box containing a game board, a rulebook and a sizeable collection of handsomely-painted pewter ships and infantrymen.

“Oho, one of the classic sets!” said Katzbube. “I’ve only got the version with wooden pieces.”

“One of the rarer editions,” noted Clockjob. “My father found it at the estate sale of an FSO who officially died in a plane crash in Tanzania.”

“I don’t mean to rain on anybody’s parade,” said von Pfiff, “but this board does not seem to include Slorbia as a supply center. I have only ever played that version.”

“Ah, Calhamer’s original map,” said Clockjob. “Yes, the problem with that one is that Turkey tends to win over a third of the time. Slorbia has been removed for reasons of balance in all commercial versions save for the one published in the Republic of Turkey, where the revised edition was banned for historical inaccuracy and insulting Turkishness.”

“I’ve played many excellent matches on my uncle İsmail’s board at family reunions. Or rather,” von Pfiff added wistfully, “I used to.”

“The family opted for fairer matches, eh?”

“No, we went to Crete for vacation when I was in university and our copy was confiscated by the police. Uncle İsmail spent a week in jail. He’s lost his appetite for playing ever since.”

“My deepest condolences,” said Clockjob. “Well, then, it is probably about time to assign everyone to countries so that we have enough time to decide on our orders for Spring 1901.”

“I have a leather satchel to draw pieces out of if you’d like,” said Cameron Pratt.

“Ah, dear players!” Clockjob chuckled. “True security means true randomness—at least as far as is possible. I certainly have no reason to believe that you’ve tampered with your bag, but I have no proof that you have not, and—as we all know—absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It would be best to remain on the safe side. You will all be overjoyed to learn that I have brought a contraption of my own devising that assigns countries in the only truly random fashion available to mortals—by exploiting radioactive decay. I must request that everybody stand back at least six paces!”

Clockjob opened a suitcase from within the cardboard box and removed a tripod about five feet high endowed with a motor and a freely-spinning wheel, onto which he affixed a ring of seven unblemished strips of 35mm instant-camera film stock, each sporting a plastic flag representing one of the Great Powers of Belle Époque Europe. He pressed his thumb to a green button on a handheld controller and the propeller began to rotate at a fearful speed.

“Now for the random number generator!” he exclaimed, turning the motor off and donning a thick pair of gloves. From the suitcase he removed a peculiar glass vial of water containing a faintly glowing metal pellet.

“Nickel-63,” he elaborated. “Please do not ask me where I got it. It is perfectly safe, for the most part, as its half-life is about a century, and its main decay product is perfectly stable copper. I mostly request that nobody cuddle or eat the vial.”

He clicked the vial into a slot on the tripod where an aluminum square rested behind the very top of the propeller and connected a trailing wire on the motor beneath to a slot on the vial.

“When a beta particle hits a sensor behind the wire, the aluminum shielding will rise for an indeterminate amount of time to allow particles to hit whichever slice of film stock is at the very top of the wheel. Eventually a particle will hit the ‘off’ switch and the propeller will come to a halt. Whichever film square has recorded the greatest number of collisions will indicate the country. Please line up in any order. I will take whichever country is left at the very end.”

The semicircle shuffled into single file at the side of the machine, von Pfiff first.

“The sole part of the game left to chance,” said Clockjob. “From this point onwards your fates will be sealed by your own wits. Are we all ready?”

“Naturally,” said von Pfiff.

Clockjob beamed and pressed his thumb to the red button on the controller. The aluminum square next to the vial clicked up for the briefest of split seconds, then snapped closed again as the rotor began to slow down. When it came to rest a splatter of white static could be seen on a slice of film at the three o’clock position, decorated by a Union Jack.

“ENGLAND!” roared Clockjob. “Perfidious Albion—but perhaps not so perfidious? It is, of course, up to you. Next we have Mr…Mr…”

“The Econ Twink,” said a voice from within the bird costume.

“We must all have our little pseudonyms,” said Clockjob. “Slorbijakorp Holdings will of course need to know the true identity of all shareholders if you succeed. Nevertheless!”

He clicked the green button and the rotor began to spin once more; then, after ten seconds, the red.

“FRANCE! A strong contender. Perhaps, Mr. Twink, your pseudonymity will be unmasked after all…but I trust that you value sportsmanship over privacy. And I still remind everyone that the two runners-up will also receive enough equity in Slorbijakorp Holdings to fulfill all their hearts’ material desires.”

The line continued. To Elmer, Austria; to Cannon Pratt, Italy; to Comstock Gonzalez, Turkey.

“Mr…Katzbube. Winthrop Katzbube.”

“The one and only,” Katzbube replied, “as far as I am aware.”

“Not too many Winthrops around these days,” Clockjob smirked. “But I wish you the best. Even the third-place winner will come into enough to buy out most of Beacon Hill. Or, indeed, Cambridge. And both Germany and Russia are solid countries—if, that is, the man playing them has better diplomatic sense than Kaiser Bill and fewer delusions than Nicholas II. Are you ready?”

“Go on,” said Katzbube.

The wheel spun for the last time, for a while now, and the aluminum square shot up for a good four or five rotations. Clockjob clicked the red button and the strange, fatal contraption came to a final halt. Katzbube inspected the film squares: Russia’s still an unblemished dark brown, the other—

“DEUTSCHLAND!” Clockjob announced. “Then it falls to me to take charge of the Third Rome and pilot her to glory.”

“I believe, players, that there is a cocktail party starting in one of the main ballrooms in about half an hour. I am afraid I will only be able to pop in and out due to other business. But I heartily encourage all of you to take the opportunity to negotiate the fate of Europe over a few drinks. Your orders, as always, are due to the Judge terminal by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, when I will see everyone at this very spot for retreats—unless, of course, there is more intrigue in the meta-game than I expect. And, as always—may the greatest Power win!”

Continue to Chapter VI.

μή πως ὡς ἀψῖσι λίνου ἁλόντε πανάγρου
ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν ἕλωρ καὶ κύρμα γένησθε:
οἳ δὲ τάχ᾽ ἐκπέρσουσ᾽ εὖ ναιομένην πόλιν ὑμήν.

Earlier that very morning von Pfiff regained consciousness a quarter mile from the campus in a canary-yellow Victorian—or, more precisely, its scullery, now serving as an AirBnB to the tune of $300 a night plus cleaning fee. He dutifully turned off the alarm on his phone and inspected the notifications he had received while the device had been in sleep mode. Most prominent were half a dozen missed Signal calls. W. Katzbube, 7:33 AM. W. Katzbube, 7:37 AM. W. Katzbube, 7:42 AM…

It was now 8:22 AM. He scrambled out of bed, threw on the satin dressing-gown he always brought on business trips, and punched Call Back.

The other end of the line picked up and emitted a noise not unlike the meow of a despondent Siamese.

“Good morning, Mr. Katzbube. You called earlier. More than once, in fact.”

“My AirBnB,” Katzbube mewled, “has been ransacked.”

“Ransacked.”

“After a fashion,” Katzbube elaborated as helpfully as he could. “Not quite demolished. The tarp is still there. They took my suitcase—“

“Wait, wait—now hold up,” said von Pfiff, summoning the diplomat’s ability to remain calm in the face of disaster. “Who are they, and where are you, anyways?”

“Irving Street, between 28th and 29th avenues. Not far from campus. They’re—“

“Are you in immediate danger?”

“No, not anymore. I’ve got my wallet, I’m just out of clothing and toiletries.”

“I see.”

“In fact, the AirBnB doesn’t have running water. I was going to call anyways and ask where you were staying to see if I could wash up there.”

Von Pfiff checked Google Maps. Three blocks away.

“If you could bring a pair of pants and a shirt,” Katzbube added, “that would be ideal.”

“I’ll…I’ll be there in fifteen. Text me the address of the AirBnB.”

Five minutes later von Pfiff stepped out of the shower to a text that read Irving Street between 28th and 29th. Doesn’t really have an address, it’s complicated. He dressed as fashionably as he could given the time pressure and recent incident and removed a spare pair of khakis and dress shirt from his luggage. Grabbing a travel briefcase marked Samples from next to his bed, he opened the scullery’s external door.

He was greeted by American civic participation at its finest.

On the sidewalk in front of the old mansion was found the better part of a hundred concerned citizens, holding signs and chanting in unison.

“SAVE OUR TENTS! CUT THE RENT! SAVE OUR TENTS! CUT THE RENT!”

A marcher with a prematurely aged appearance offered von Pfiff a pamphlet. He took it before his better judgment could stop him.

TENT JUSTICE TUESDAYS

A Grassroots Movement to Save Prop 284

The seriousness of the cause was further underlined by an image of a raised fist clenching a hypodermic syringe, ringed by the slogan Tents for People, Not Profit.

“I thought it was Monday,” von Pfiff remarked.

“Oh, it is. This is just the pre-demonstration. Would you like to sign up for the email list and join us for the real action tomorrow?” the marcher asked.

“I’m—I’m afraid I can’t,” von Pfiff responded. “I need to go help a friend of mine whose AirBnB has just been broken into—do you know which way Irving Street is? 28th or 29th avenue…”

“AirBnB? AirBnB?!”

“I—“

“Yeah, we just saw him! Fucking tech bro! End tentrification!”

“END TENTRIFICATION! END TENTRIFICATION! END TENTRIFICATION!”

Von Pfiff scrambled away from the madding crowd towards the nearest stoplight, paused to check Google Maps, and made a mad dash for Irving Street between 28th and 29th Avenues.

He did not see Katzbube. He sent a quick text saying I’m here and paused to catch his breath against a lamppost, in the process detaching a torn, faded poster depicting a gorilla in a keffiyeh. Martyrs Unite May 15th—DICKS OUT FOR G-. The rest was illegible. Several pamphlets identical to the one he had been handed littered the pavement.

He opened his copy and began to educate himself.

Three years ago, the people of California passed Prop 284 to fight displacement in vulnerable urban communities by giving existing tent owners the same legal protections as working-class homeowners. Prop 284 has helped hundreds of people in San Francisco alone stay near their families and build generational wealth. Tent owners are disproportionately members of multiple marginalized communities and are often the victims of structural addiction.

Today, Prop 284 is under attack. Although much-needed rent control on tent rentals has slowed the rate of gentrification in San Francisco’s tent community, deep-pocketed tent developers, gentrifiers, and tech bros are conspiring to push native San Franciscans out of the tents they call home.

We’re fighting back with Tent Justice Tuesdays.

His phone beeped. It was Katzbube. He absentmindedly ignored it and continued reading.

What We’ve Accomplished

• Won a competitive grant from the city to make zero-interest, forgivable tent renovation loans of up to $20,000 available to San Franciscans suffering from structural addiction for at least three years;

• Ensured that 70% of tents at major tent developers like Dick’s Sporting Goods are reserved for historically underrepresented minorities;

• Protected established tent renters from eviction by capping rent increases at -0.5% per year;

• Streamlined the tent inspection and permitting process to no more than sixty months;

• Decentered monoamory by abolishing maximum person-to-sleeping bag ratios;

• Protected workers from unsafe exploitation by requiring new tent construction enlist labor from the Fraternal Union of Pole-Benders.

“Mr. von Pfiff…”

Von Pfiff looked up.

“MEHMET VON PFIFF!” the voice beckoned from a cyan tent twenty yards away.

Von Pfiff pocketed the pamphlet and strolled over. A gash in the nylon and a loose peg untied from an adjacent parking meter attested to the direct action of Tent Justice Tuesdays. Dimly visible through the mesh netting of the tent sat Katzbube, dressed only in boxers, and a distressingly unfashionable pair at that.

“God,” said von Pfiff, “you must be freezing. Don’t you have a sleeping bag?”

“It was requisitioned. I was told I was exacerbating a sleeping-bag crisis.”

“I’m confused. Didn’t you say you had an AirBnB? Surely you haven’t taken up heroin.”

“This is the AirBnB. Last one I could find at my price point. I’m newly unemployed, remember.”

“You booked it for the entire time?”

“I did,” Katzbube said ruefully, “though I might be able to get some of my money back now. At the very least the owner might need to provide a replacement sleeping bag.”

“There’s a spare closet at my AirBnB with an extra bed. I’d rather share lodging than see you fall victim to these nuts again.”

“It would be appreciated.”

“Here’s the pair of pants and shirt you requested,” said von Pfiff, passing the garments through the slash in the back of the tent. “They’ll probably be too big for you but I was planning to go shopping for new clothes today in any case.”

“They are,” said Katzbube, “but they’re much better than nothing.”

“Will you need me to take your laptop bag? I’m afraid I don’t have an extra belt for you.”

“The AirBnB,” Katzbube reassured him, “came with $100 of complimentary credit at the San Francisco Pleather Experience.” He exited the tent and handed von Pfiff a gift card to an establishment across the street.

“The San Francisco Pleather Experience,” von Pfiff repeated. He turned his attention to the dark storefront in front of them and found his mind’s eye hosting regrettable visions of the Fully Vegan World of Excitement to be found therein.

“It really wouldn’t have been a problem for me to take your shoulder bag,” said von Pfiff twenty minutes later, opening the door to the scullery. “We had to do strength training in the diplomatic corps in any case. I don’t think this is much less embarrassing than holding your pants up by hand.”

“I’d rather get blood all over my bag than all over your pants. It’s fine. It’s San Francisco, nobody will blink twice.”

“I’m appalled you’re allowed to sell anything with spikes that sharp. They can’t do anything refined here. Complete maximalism in perversion, portion sizes, mansions.”

“Let’s at least cut off the strip running between my thighs and cover up the motto on the back. If I’m known as Daddy’s Little Angel Investor at the cocktail party this evening I’ll be swarmed with founders.”

Von Pfiff beheld the suits, arranged more-or-less neatly on the mannequins, and contorted his face into a barely perceptible sneer of contempt.

“Abominable, Mr. Katzbube. Utterly appalling. And do you know the worst part?”

“The fabric?” Katzbube suggested.

“No, Mr. Katzbube. The worst part is that the people who buy here are—to a man—neither poor nor uncouth. No, I know for a fact that some of the richest venture capitalists and financiers in this city can be found buying suits here. I mean, my god. Everyone from Hacole Havèle to Bondsman Savile Row holds trunk shows here and they still—”

Von Pfiff paused for a moment to study the display. Noticing a sign reading Summer Essentials he furrowed his brow and inspected the offerings further.

“There you go,” he said, pointing his index finger towards the window. “That’s all you need to know.”

“All—what?”

“Look at the sign. The one that reads Summer Essentials.”

Katzbube found nothing unusual on the list of articles printed and looked back at his compatriot with a look of bemusement.

Von Pfiff sighed. “Cotton Wool. Cotton. Wool.”

“I must admit,” said Katzbube, “that I’m really not sure what’s wrong with ‘Cotton Wool’.”

“It’s not a seersucker is what’s wrong with it!”

Katzbube peered at the suit—grey with a hint of buff—and struggled to spot the implied defects.

“Cotton…” von Pfiff continued— ”Cotton is a very peculiar fiber. As a plant fiber cotton is completely rigid and has no give, unlike wool. It accordingly wrinkles very easily if it isn’t adulterated with synthetic fibers. Now you might say that this is true of other vegetable fibers as well, and you would be right, but those nearly always have advantages cotton does not.”

Von Pfiff touched the bridge of his nose as if pushing up a pair of glasses.

“Linen is an excellent thermal conductor, and quite permeable to water–in reasonably dry weather it will wick both sweat and heat away from the wearer. Bamboo and ramie, while rarely used for suits, bring a touch of fineness and smoothness to the cloth woven from them. Cotton, on the other hand…”

He paused for a moment to reflect on the judgment he was about to cast.

“Cotton’s principal advantages are that it is resilient and cheap. The Applebee’s of the textile world.”

“Surely better than the Golden Corral.”

“No, the Golden Corral of textiles is polyester. Completely beneath our concern. But if you’ve ever seen a cotton suit—again, excluding seersuckers—you will doubtless have noticed a particularly strange aspect of such a garment. The fabric needs to be a relatively dense, heavy cotton. Great for chinos, but in a suit the effect is really quite remarkably unflattering. I know that this kind of accoutrement used to be popular with the sort of patrician who joins Skull and Bones, but I really have to say I don’t have it in me to give it the time of day.”

He sighed again and returned to the cotton-wool mélange suit on display.

“This—” he said, pointing at the offending garment, “this is nothing but an exercise in cost saving. If you do wish to use a mélange, wool and linen is an excellent way of achieving both a relaxed look and excellent thermal properties. Wool, silk and linen, even better if you can afford them. Cotton and linen can work if the intent is to soften the natural creases of linen, but cotton and wool? The only thing that has going for it is being cheaper than a proper pure wool high-twist. No. Cotton ought in the general case to be reserved to shirtings and casualwear. Linen!—pure linen!—is the gold standard. But I don’t think I have to explain its virtues to you.”

Katzbube bade him continue.

“Well, I always appreciated the linen suit for its unique ability to combine crispness and sharpness with the naturally careless look any well-wrinkled linen garment will create in its wearer. Unlike cotton, of course, it wrinkles in a flattering way, creating harmonious ripples rather than a myriad of tiny creases in all directions. If—that is—one uses a proper linen.”

“I must confess to not knowing the different kinds of linen”, replied Katzbube.

“That is quite simple. Linen, in the general case, is grown in France, with some additional production in the Low Countries, and woven and finished in Ireland or Italy. The linen woven in Ireland is generally preferable—the fabric is woven sturdier and they finish it less…though it must be admitted that Irish linen is less useful in a hot Italian summer than Italian linen. But the improved drape really more than makes up for it, especially when the designer specializes in double-breasted suits. Hacole Havèle’s are superb…”

“And the exception?”

“The exception is the French house Maison Godard, which has its cloth woven in Italy, but to a much more robust specification. I don’t think we’ll find any of theirs here, though...”

He sighed. “This is making me miss looking at real suits, not these paltry imitations…let us continue on to the thrift stores. Perhaps a gentleman of taste has left something in my size…or, for that matter, yours…”

He continued down the street at a leisurely saunter, still preoccupied by the nouvelle richesse of the garments on display. The pair had not gone three blocks when von Pfiff, his attention turned towards an exhibition of summer overcoats, crashed into an ill-positioned lamp-post and lost hold of the briefcase marked Samples.

At length he came to and thought of the snuff. The snuff! He peered ahead, across a twenty-foot stretch of sidewalk now dusted with a fine brown snow of Grubi Šnuf, where Katzbube was conversing with an officious-looking woman in a uniform on the subject of the briefcase. He–now she approached him, holding the briefcase–think, man, think!

“Good morning, Mr…Mr…”

“Von Pfiff,” said von Pfiff. “Mehmet von Pfiff.”

“I’m Clara Boodle, a social worker.”

“Ch–charmed.”

“Is this your…your…”

“Yes,” he replied, “my samples. I do apologize.”

“You’re lucky I was on duty,” she said curtly. “The brown powder–”

“Snuff. It’s snuff.”

“Well,” the social worker replied, “the safe injection sites and markets are–”

“No, no. It’s tobacco.”

Tobacco. He could sense gears of great torque but low velocity begin to turn in her head.

“Can I see your license?”

“License?”

“I’m assuming you’re a tobacco supplier if it’s marked Samples.”

“Well–no, not really–”

“What rehabilitation center do you work with?”

Von Pfiff paused and consulted six years of increasingly rusty diplomatic expertise. Clearly–no, surely they hadn’t outlawed selling tobacco–wait, yes–

“Ah, I don’t, I’m afraid. It’s for personal use.”

“Quite a lot of tobacco for personal use,” she replied.

“It’s quite normal for Europeans,” he said.

She sighed.

“As a certified social worker with the City of San Francisco I do have to inform you that I’m allowed to check people into rehab.”

Von Pfiff reached into the open briefcase and selected a ten-gram tin from the jumbled pile of ostensible Snuff des Philmes. As Clara Boodle’s gaze grew increasingly skeptical he tapped the tin, poured a large pile of snuff onto the back of his hand, pressed his nose down to it and inhaled. Oh god. This absolute crap. There was nothing for it. He took another pile—then another.

By the time he was on the last pile of snuff in the tin waves of nausea began to overcome him—whether from the nicotine or from the quality of the tobacco he could not tell. He could feel his face growing a clammy shade of potato-green.

“Perfectly—perfectly normal amount for personal use,” he gasped.

“I see,” said the social worker. “I’m sorry for bothering you. Do you think you might have a problem with nicotine?”

A problem with nicotine suddenly made itself known to Clara Boodle, or at least her boots, in the form of half-digested eggs benedict on sourdough.

“I—thank you very much for asking,” he said. “No, I think I just—Winty, can you—”

Still in great discomfort, von Pfiff tapped his watch and mouthed Think of something.

“I’ll take care of him,” said Katzbube, racking his brains for an excuse. “He’s…he’s got a doctor’s appointment at one.”

“A doctor’s appointment.”

“Yes. For…chemotherapy.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. For his…brain. I’m his caretaker.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I do appreciate it. Come on, Mehmet.”

He took von Pfiff by the arm and stumbled, victorious, back in the direction of the scullery.

Continue to Chapter V.

Quanquam non nego quin Apostolos postea quoque, vel saltem eorum loco Evangelistas interdum excitarit Deus, ut nostro tempore factum est.

The following morning Brother Blayden Tackwater removed his hat, polished its brass buckle on his dark grey bathrobe, and hung it up on the coat-peg in a closet that had been pressed into service as a sacristy. Months of discernment with his dog-eared copies of Albion’s Seed and the Institutes had prepared him well for the moment before him. He walked slowly and deliberately through the hallway and into the great parlor serving as his flock’s first meeting-house.

“Brethren and…sisters,” he called out, taking his place behind a large table to address his disciples. “What an absolute honor it is to stand here before you all. I believe there are no fewer than forty-four of us here today—a small church, by the standards of other congregations, but one destined for growth—growth and greatness!”

Forty-three drowsy young members of the elect beamed back at him, or perhaps at the gigantic eye on the poster taped to the makeshift altar. The congregation, still in its infancy, had reserved a conference room and appropriated the largest desk they could find to serve as both altar and pulpit. In accordance with historical tradition it had been deemed meet and right to continually remind the congregants of the all-seeing eye of Providence. As the church had no permanent building yet and therefore no wooden pulpit to paint on, the deacon had made a last-minute trip to Hobby Hut and drawn an amateur, but adequate, reminder of the judgment to come.

“Folks…this is going to be a truly based synod. The very first synod of the Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant. I’m—I’m so excited!” A tremendous grin and a suppressed giggle washed over him. To be bishop! At his age! Sister Zephyr, especially, looked at him in admiration and expectation.

“We have grown so, so much since I felt called to share the Gospel on my Minecraft server all those many months ago…and God has blessed us. God has blessed us, folks! We know that the elect are especially visible by their thrift and the prosperity they’ve been blessed with. It was just when I began my ministry that my crypto portfolio began to take off. And how it has taken off, friends. Our endowment has really—it’s really—”

“It’s zapped to the extreme!” shouted a member of the congregation.

“Yeah! It’s zapped to the extreme. What a fantastic way of putting it, Brother Mike. It’s really zapped to the extreme. It was predestined to zap to the extreme because God has such a great plan for it. It’s gone up 2500% in just the last week. This is not a coincidence, folks, because nothing is ever a coincidence. He is planning great and mighty works in the world with that crypto portfolio.”

Alleluia! The congregation raised its voice in polyphony, if not harmony.

“Brother Dactyl, could you go over the week’s schedule for us again?”

“No problem,” said Brother Dactyl, whose white deacon’s bathrobe more than enveloped his five-foot-five figure. “Today is the opening of the synod, our first meet-and-greet, and final plans for the election on Friday. On Wednesday morning, you and Zephyr are getting married—let’s give them a round of applause!”

Claps and cheers burst forth from the congregation.

“Thursday we will all be engaged in a retreat of discernment for the election, except for the recently-married, who will be enjoying the fruits of matrimony. Then, on Friday, we’ll have the election, on Saturday we’ll have the vestry meeting on the church’s finances and missions planning.”

“And then on Sunday…”

“On Sunday we will of course gather for worship and then pack up and go out to minister to the world.”

“Who’s on the vestry?” asked a girl in the second row of seats.

“Uh…” said Brother Dactyl. “That…I believe Brother Blayden was going to tell us more about the vestry.”

“Of course!” said Blayden, turning his head to the side and grabbing, with his teeth, a nicotine pouch tucked between his shoulder and his robe. “Well…the vestry, as we know, is a committee of laypeople assisting the minister in leading the church. I, uh…”

He flipped through the index of the Institutes looking desperately for guidance.

“Well, I have discerned that we should have a vestry committee. If you feel called to be a member of the vestry, in any case, please step forward.”

“But what will the vestry do?” asked the girl.

“I’m…I’m not entirely sure,” Blayden admitted. “Calvin doesn’t mention them but a church should really have a vestry. Does anybody know what the vestry is supposed to do?”

“At my church they helped handle the finances and did the donuts and coffee at Bible study before services,” piped up Brother Molossus, an early member of Blayden’s Minecraft server whose build suggested a great deal of relevant experience with donuts.

“That sounds just wonderful!” said Blayden. “Brother Molossus, do you feel called?”

“I sure do, Brother Blayden!”

“Excellent! Well, uh, let’s find...does anybody here have bookkeeping experience?”

“I had to learn bookkeeping when I had to do taxes for my influencer income,” said a member of the congregation. “We’re tax-exempt so it should be easy.”

“Well, Brother Matrix, how about joining the vestry as the financial specialist?”

“I would be blessed,” said Brother Matrix.

Within short order the church had seven members of the vestry.

“Other points of order,” Brother Blayden continued. “For the wedding tomorrow and services going forward we will need communion wine. Did anybody bring some?”

A general look of bewilderment reigned over the Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant.

“I do believe I asked the deacon to pick some up…”

“I’m only nineteen,” said Brother Dactyl. “And my parents don’t drink, and even if they did I couldn’t bring it with me through security.”

“Who is…who do we have here who is at least twenty-one?”

The faithful looked around at each other, waiting for someone to raise their hand.

“I’m twenty and my birthday’s next month,” said Brother Molossus. “But I think I might be the oldest.”

“We’ll need some for the wedding service tomorrow,” Brother Dactyl reminded them. “And, of course, for the rest of the week’s services.”

"We could get some grape juice,” suggested Molossus. “At my old church we used Welch's."

Brother Blayden considered this for a moment and felt the spirit move within him.

"Modernism, dear brother! Not merely modernism! POPERY!"

He was not entirely certain what popery was, but he liked the sound of it and had read a great many theological treatises by Cotton Mather inveighing against it. Such blatant and unrepentant contravention of true doctrine was surely popery in some form.

“Faith may provide,” Brother Dactyl reminded him. “It always does.”

“It does indeed, Brother Dactyl. Let us pray that God will aid us in preparation for our first services.”

The congregation fell silent and entreated Providence. After an appropriately solemn length of time Brother Blayden began to speak.

“The remaining question on the table is tithes. Now, I know we are all very young and don’t make much. Those of you who can tithe, however…”

“I’ve been tithing from my crypto portfolio,” said a member of the congregation in a T-shirt that read Degen4Lyfe. “I guess Brother Matrix will be taking care of the accounting now?”

“Brother Matrix,” said Brother Blayden, “I don’t suppose you could tell us a bit more about how we should be handling these? I’ve just been keeping track of them in a Google spreadsheet.”

Brother Matrix rose from his seat and sallied forth to the altar desk.

“Well, brothers and sisters, we’re tax-exempt, as you know, which makes a number of things much easier. However, we will still have to report our assets, and…”

“And if they’re in crypto this is complicated,” said Brother Blayden.

“Correct,” said Brother Matrix. “The government requires us to denominate our assets in fiat currency.”

“So,” asked the parishioner in the Degen4Lyfe shirt, “how should I measure—how do I figure out what the right income to tithe from is? I’ve been tithing on the dollar gains every month.”

“But the amount of crypto you hold hasn’t gone up?” asked Brother Matrix.

“Not usually. Sometimes I buy new coins or get some from an airdrop. If there’s an airdrop then I usually hoddle—”

“You—you what?”

“I hoddle. You need to know when to hoddle. You don’t want to sell your tokens right after an airdrop, you gotta hoddle ‘em until they’ve risen in value—”

“In dollars?”

“Well, yeah. How else would I know how much they’re worth?”

“I check my holdings against their value in gold,” said a parishioner in the back of the meeting-hall.

“Aw ptooey, Jack!” said Degen4Lyfe. “They’ve got a new fusion reactor that’s doing real alchemy now. It’s just gonna be fiat in a few years.”

“But then how do you know how much your crypto is actually worth?”

“I use the dollar value but adjust against inflation since 1971.”

“Why?” asked Jack. “What happened in 1971?”

“I think nobody really knows,” said Degen4Lyfe. “But I heard on Moe Logan that that’s when everything started going downhill. That’s when the globalists invented fiat and premarital sex.”

“Naw, that’s bullshit!” said Jack. “They had premarital sex before then. They came up with it all the way back in the 1920s with flappers. They called it a petting party. You would go into a speakeasy and order a petting party and they’d give you a flapper to rawdog with your cocktails. I read about it in The Great Gatsby in sophomore English class.”

“You’re making stuff up. I read every single page of the CliffsNotes of The Great Gatsby and got an A on the test and that wasn’t in there.”

“Well, maybe CliffsNotes skipped that part. I lost my copy but I read every single chapter of the free version on Fanfiction.net. I got a D but my parents made my English teacher change it to a B.”

“BRETHREN! Brethren,” Brother Blayden boomed at last, putting the discussion out of its misery. “I will talk to Brother Matrix and decide how to deal with tithing later. I am releasing everyone for a period of prayer and discernment. If you are on the defense committee, please meet me at 3 in the basement of the meeting-house. And if you are thinking of courting someone, please come and find me or Brother Dactyl for marriage counseling. We will be glad to find you a bundling door and discuss the details of our restoration of levirate marriage. Let us–”

“Do we really have to have sex if we get married?” a girl in a pair of grotesquely baggy jeans piped up. “I might get the ick. I don’t want to marry someone and get the ick.”

Brother Blayden froze, peering keenly at nothing in particular. He began to notice, as the ensuing pause grew pregnant and then heaving, a nicotine pouch stuck between his teeth.

“The Institutes,” he said, covertly breaking a splinter off a post on an adjoining wooden bannister, “remind us of the great joy and pleasure that have been created for us in the marital act…has anybody, uh…”

The congregation stared blankly at its leader, now half-absentmindedly wielding the splinter as a toothpick, and awaited his spiritual guidance.

“Has anybody—has anybody here…performed the marital act…perhaps outside of marriage?”

“My girlfriend wanted us to at one point,” said Brother Matrix. “We were at a party at her house when her parents were away. I thought about it but was worried someone might take a video.”

“Is it anything like gooning?” asked another member.

“I suppose it’s similar,” said Brother Blayden. “I don’t think the Institutes say very much about gooning.”

“I think it has to do with what you’re gooning to,” the parishioner said. “I think you’re supposed to goon to girls in sundresses. That’s the closest kind of gooning to the marital act.”

“That sounds about right to me,” said Brother Blayden, realizing the discussion had passed the frontier of his theological expertise. “Was that what you—what you gooned to?”

“Sometimes. But I’ve been tempted by videos of girl-on-girl.”

“A…a common temptation in our fallen age,” said Brother Blayden.

“You’ll have to tell us all about the marital act after you get married tomorrow,” said the girl in the oversized jeans. “Or maybe Sister Zephyr can lead a discussion in the women’s ministry.”

“That…that sounds like a great idea to me—sweetheart?”

Sister Zephyr’s face displayed a quizzical look.

“But we’ll be busy learning all about married life at first! Maybe later this week.”

“Of—of course, dear. I think—I think we should all adjourn for a day of prayer and discernment. If you are on the defense committee, please meet me in the basement at three this afternoon…”

The Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant rose from its seats and meandered cheerfully out of the meeting hall into the fallen world beyond.

Continue to Chapter IV.

    Genti vid’ io allor, come a lor duci,
    venire appresso, vestite di bianco;
    e tal candor di qua già mai non fuci.

"I think it's femmoid."

Katzbube shook his head ever-so-platonically upon a pair of recently activated mammaries.

"No, no, it's fee-moid. Has to be. It's derived from female and there's no reason the Great Vowel Shift shouldn't continue to operate in that word."

"But consider femboy."

"You will be glad to know that I have little trouble considering femboys at this particular cuddle puddle."

"Wouldn't it have to be feemboy?"

"Femboy has a closed syllable while femoid has an open one; and secondly it's a contraction of feminine boy while femoid comes from female. If it were femmoid it would be written with two m's."

A thoughtful silence fell upon the cuddle puddle.

“Does anybody have any Adderall?" asked a brunette with vaguely elf-like features. "I'm supposed to finish rewriting payment integration by the end of the week."

"Down to my last week's worth, sorry," said the girl embracing her.

"Mrow," replied the brunette with a slightly mournful air. An arpeggio of sympathetic meowing noises chimed in response.

"Are you from the Bay?" asked a girl with her head on Katzbube's hip.

"Boston. I work at Parentologist."

"Ooh, what's that?"

"Well, I worked at Parentologist while finishing my dissertation. We just went under last weekend. We provided AI agents to prep schools that autonomously read and reply to parent emails on behalf of administrators."

"Couldn’t find customers?"

"Oh no, we found customers just fine. No, we accidentally deployed a work-in-progress branch to prod and twenty thousand parents up and down the East Coast received emails from the principal informing them that their child had been caught with edibles in math class. It was bad. Apparently we're the tenth-most disastrous coding error in history measured by the total amount of damages being sought in court. One ninth-grader thought it was real, turned over her edibles to her parents, and is now suing us and her school out of her own pocket on the grounds that we've torpedoed her chances at getting into her dream program."

"Did she actually get caught in math class?"

"Her attorney is arguing that she does not remember that specific math class but that she could not possibly have been caught by her math teacher because she had eaten all the edibles in her backpack by the end of French the preceding period. She is seeking five million dollars in damages to compensate for lost lifetime earnings she would otherwise have achieved after graduating from Drexel's program in fashion entrepreneurship."

"What was your role? AI engineer?"

"I was the in-house private-school whisperer. The CEO made a fortune in crypto and started an AI company after hearing about a friend from college who worked in the dean's office at Drote and was drowning in parent emails. We were running ten million in MRR before the incident."

"Still a damn good line on your résumé. I'd guess you weren't behind the fatal pull request."

"I was out on the Cape trying to sell Slater on it when the emails went out. My CEO was a good egg, saw the writing on the wall and dispensed most of the cash on hand as quarterly bonuses before the inevitable happened."

"How'd you get the private school-whispering job?"

"Fac brat, my dad's the chaplain. I grew up free-range on a campus in Vermont."

"Lucky you."

“Oh I have stories,” said Katzbube.

When Katzbube reached the dinner line, which was at the top of the hill, he paused and looked back at the rectory just coming into full view below him.

“Have you been here before?” asked the bearded man ahead of him.

“I—” said Katzbube, and paused.

He had been here before; first with Lola Zieber and Banquo Elbers nearly twenty years ago for summer camp on a cloudless day in late June, when the ditches were speckled with irises and the dry air of the West Coast in summer transmuted, as now, to gold in the alembic of the sunset. It was a day of peculiar splendor, and though he had been there four more summers, in all the moods of adolescence, it was to that first visit that his heart returned on this, his latest.

He made himself a pair of tacos with black beans and carne asada, accompanied by a can of cheap lager, a pile of tortilla chips, and a small bunch of grapes from a corner of the dessert table. Here, discordantly, came a rabble of anons unmasked, some hundreds strong, twittering on the great grassy ridge, pleasure-seeking, drinking hard seltzer flavored with cucumber; pushed about to view, in the flesh, followers they knew only as “Based Haplogroup Appreciator” or “Psychonauts for Lee Kuan Yew”. A printed notice taped to an oak tree informed the attendees that there would be a dance at half past eight that Sunday evening next to the old barn.

“Are you going?” asked a girl next to him, her eyes shining with an invitation that Katzbube entirely failed to notice.

“What could anyone possibly want with dancing?!” he demanded to know.

“Well,” she said, her voice strumming, “you’re certainly dressed elegantly, and I’m planning on going.”

“It’s—it’s obscene,” said Katzbube, beginning to lose combobulation. “I can’t, in any case. My proprioception is atrocious. No, I think I’ll see if I can find some people to play whist over at—”

Still looking at the space next to her ear, he set his fork down on his plate and extended his right hand to point towards the rectory, where card games had been scheduled for that evening in a room conveniently located one floor below the immovable feast of the cuddle puddle. His arm, fifteen degrees from fully straight, found itself suddenly blocked by the smooth but rigid texture of linen canvas on muscular backing, followed shortly thereafter by an unpleasant splash of red wine.

Katzbube and his unfortunate victim froze in their tracks, deer in the headlights of an inescapable interaction they both desired with the utmost intensity to avoid.

“I—I rest my case,” Katzbube spluttered to the lady as the man turned around at a speed calculated to maximize menace. “See, I really shouldn’t—”

“Good evening,” said the man, his cream linen suit now enlivened with a dark purple stain across the chest pocket and left shoulder, orbited by lighter burgundy splotchlets and a streak down to the waist-buttons where he had smeared the escaping drops with his handkerchief. Katzbube, paralyzed by fantasies of honorable seppuku, found himself mute but for the quietest and most unbecoming of squeaks.

The man’s dark eyes, set in a handsome Mediterranean face, glanced at Katzbube’s navy blue jacket, then at his tan trousers, then, after an eternity, back at his tortured expression. The length of the stare emanating from Katzbube’s eyeballs suggested that the encounter had somehow dredged up unpleasant memories of mustard-gas artillery shells and limbs lost to gangrene.

“I gather,” said the man, with an accent that suggested an education at a series of expensive international schools, “that you of all people probably don’t need a lecture on the damage done to my jacket.”

A shorter eternity followed before Katzbube found himself sufficiently composed to speak again. Oh God, he thought. The only other person here who’s not in a T-Shirt and I’ve ruined his suit…

“I am dreadfully, dreadfully sorry,” he replied at last, his stare relaxing to perhaps eight hundred yards. “I didn’t…”

“No,” said the man, “it’s—well it’s not fine, exactly, but these things happen. And in any case, as I’m sure you know, Hacole Havèle is not Paris’s most exclusive purveyor of bespoke linen suits by any stretch. They have even stooped to opening an office in LA, as it happens, so I can simply pop down I-5 to get new measurements taken and have a replacement made without crossing the pond again. Though,” he added, removing the ruined article to inspect the damage, “perhaps the time has come for them to start a line of linen designs inspired by abstract expressionism.”

“With more artistic vision put in, one presumes,” replied Katzbube, finally groping towards the conclusion that he was not about to be pummelled.

“Doubtless. And what is your name?”

“Winthrop Katzbube,” replied Katzbube. “Winty for short.”

“Mehmet von Pfiff,” said the man. “You know, I find it difficult to get angry at the only other man here with good taste in linen. What brings you to World of Vibes? Surely,” he remarked with the most subtle of sneers, “not the food.”

“It’s certainly edible. Everyone’s here for the people.”

“I would at least advise against the grapes. They’re not even ripe yet, I tried them earlier. If you do enjoy the fruit of the vine I am happy to offer you more wine in a more…orderly fashion.”

Von Pfiff opened a leather bag to reveal a bottle of 2018-vintage Château Houellebecq and a stemless wineglass of unusual thickness and sturdiness.

“Travel wineglass?” asked Katzbube.

“Borosilicate,” replied von Pfiff, pouring Katzbube his portion. “Now this is from one of the very few vineyards to escape the nineteenth-century phylloxera epidemic entirely. No Californian rootstock at all.”

Katzbube took a sip. It reminded him agreeably of the house red at The Evicted Hellenist in Cambridge.

“But in any case…” von Pfiff continued as he recorked the bottle.

“Well, my employer just went bust and I decided it was time for a vacation,” said Katzbube. “I worked as a…as a consultant for private schools.”

“Most interesting. I manage my uncle’s chain of car washes in Miami, but, you know, they’re not terribly complicated enterprises and for the most part they take care of themselves. I’m getting into angel investing and am mostly here for the startup pitches on Tuesday.”

Katzbube flipped over the fifty-second card to reveal the seven of diamonds, which he added to his hand. Mostly low cards and only one other trump; not ideal. The man to his right led with the five of hearts.

“Remind me how the scoring works again,” said his partner, following suit with the eight.

“One point for each trick taken in excess of six. Play to ten points.”

“And then?”

“Well, we play another round, or go do something else.”

“Would be more interesting with a prediction market.”

“There’s contract bridge,” said Katzbube, playing the four of hearts and losing the trick to Elmer, a thin, sallow man to Katzbube’s left with a thin mustache and a shoulder-length mullet.

“Do you know how to play that?”

“I’ll learn one of these days,” said Katzbube, responding to Elmer’s king of spades with the four. “It’s somewhat more complicated but does have a betting market of sorts on how many tricks you think you’ll take…”

“I think,” said Elmer, “that we could make all kinds of card games much more exciting by adding a prediction market.”

“That just sounds like more to keep track of.”

“Not really. Say each pair of partners had to put in $50 on YES and $50 on NO at game start. Then you’d just have to move money between the YES and NO piles as the game went on, and at the end the winner gets all the money from the YES pool and the loser gets all the money from the NO pool.”

“But then you’d just try to throw the game.”

“But then your opponents would notice this, and move all their money to YES.”

What was it with these people? Katzbube mused.

He played, at last, the seven of diamonds from the initial deal and took the last trick. Nine to four in Elmer’s favor.

“Let’s do it this way for the next round!” Elmer pulled out a piece of paper and drew four columns for YES and NO for each pair.

Katzbube sighed.

“Feel free to try it out if you want to find someone else. I’m going to…—well, good evening.”

He took his leave and left the card-game hall.

The door to the cuddle puddle room opened, and a man in glasses and a checkered grey vest poked his head through the doorway.

"Is there someone named Winthrop here?”

“That would be me,” Katzbube called out. “Unless you’re somehow looking for another Winthrop.”

“I was told you were playing cards.”

“I was. The conversation was…it could have been better,” he replied, pausing thoughtfully.

“Oh, were you at the whist table? They said the guy organizing it ragequit. They’re busy working out an extension of Black-Scholes for a version of contract bridge with American call options.”

“Oh. Of course they are,” said Katzbube, rolling his eyes at nobody in particular.

“You do know this whole event is sponsored by Ascended Degen?” said a voice two head-on-pelvis linkages away.

“I’m well aware. It’s still sports gambling for people who got a 780 on their math SAT.”

“Anyways,” said the man, checking his watch, “Telemachus Clockjob will be hosting a Diplomacy game this week. We have space for one more player and you’ve been nominated. Fall orders due by 9 AM each morning, new builds by 9:45 AM, spring orders by 7 PM."

"Clockjob is hosting it? That Telemachus Clockjob?"

"I'm unaware of anybody else by that name."

"Well, sure, what the hell. Who else is playing?"

"Interesting people, I'm sure—but that nearly goes without saying here."

"Well," replied Katzbube, "there are a few people who seem to be around mostly to sell AI-powered B2B SaaS."

“Ahem," came a voice from somewhere within the cuddle puddle.

"My company went under; I have no AI-powered B2B SaaS to sell."

"Valid," the voice replied, and returned to an affectionate purr.

“You were nominated by an Austrian fellow who said you ruined his jacket,” said the man.

"Ah! Was I indeed…?" said Katzbube. "Sounds intriguing. When’s it start?"

"We'll draw countries at 6:45 tomorrow evening in the back garden.”

"Is there a prize?"

"I believe Telemachus has mused about equity in an upcoming project of some ilk."

Equity in a Clockjob startup. The mind reeled. Oh, what the hell, he’d never been a terribly skilled player.

“Go ahead and let him know I’m in.”

"Will do. We'll see you tomorrow.”

Continue to Chapter III.

...וַיַּרְא, וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ…

Two years earlier

Ninety minutes northeast of Marseille, among lavender fields and vineyards of great age and reputation, basks the picturesque hamlet of Les Philmes. Here, where old men can still be heard speaking Provençal at the village bakery and retired Englishmen sit under olive trees to enjoy the last flower of alcoholism, a world-renowned tobacco company—one of three remaining private-sector employers within a twenty-kilometer radius—still grows its crop in the brilliant sunshine, processes it by hand, and packs it in old whisky barrels for export. Since 1863 Swiss military officers, Hong Kong financiers and Swedish furniture designers alike have endorsed Snuff des Philmes for its unparalleled power to revive the stamina with the "smoothness that invigorates" during sixty-mile marches, 2 AM pai gow matches, and reviews of this year's model of BLÖPP coffee tables.

"Un verre de Château Houellebecq et un espresso, s'il vous plaît."

The wizened barkeep retrieved a bottle of Château Houellebecq, A.O.C., and poured a not-particularly-generous glass of its contents while his wife awakened an ancient espresso machine. Von Pfiff, his frame portly but by no means flabby, cast his eyes about the bar at unhurried intervals.

"Attendez-vous quelqu'un?" Quelqu'œung. He really was in Provence.

The light from the doorway darkened momentarily.

"Un vieil ami, c'est tout."

A man even taller and beefier than von Pfiff sauntered in and sat down next to him, claiming a rickety old stool on which a Gestapo agent had once succumbed to a doctored glass of pastis.

"Imaš te veči?" von Pfiff asked, sipping his wine calmly. Do you have the stuff?

"Imajo u tom avtovoža. A buckü?" I've got it in the truck. And the barrels?

"Juž izurbotitü. Ne strašo dorbo plačač čam zvojim ljudim." Already taken care of. They don't pay their people too well.

Von Pfiff knocked back his espresso and dropped a €200 bill next to the quarter-full glass of Château Houellebecq. He accompanied Splut to a small truck waiting down the road from the tavern, clambered into the passenger seat, and rode five kilometers to a neglected farm halfway to Cagots-Pendus where his own truck, its cargo already unloaded into the barn, awaited him along with a gaggle of listless truants from the local lycée.

"Excellent, excellent," von Pfiff announced in French even less accented than his Slorbian. "Well, I think this should only take an hour or so. You will all receive 250 euros each, as promised. I rely, of course, on your discretion. Don't rush, but there may be a little bonus for everyone if we finish early."

The truants set to work retrieving a series of jute bags from Splut's truck, carrying them inside the barn and emptying the fine brown powder within into stout barrels marked Snuff des Philmes while their patrons retired to the side of the building.

“I thought you said you’d found a dozen,” von Pfiff said stiffly.

“Two no-showed. They’re skipping school, they’ll skip this if they’re being really lazy. Ten should be enough.”

"In any case,” von Pfiff remarked, keeping a watchful eye on the truants, “at this rate your brother-in-law is growing more than I can handle. Teenagers talk, even if they don't mean to. Their barrel-maker warned me that we might need to take a pause for a year or two to let things cool down."

Mladekar Splut tossed his cigarette butt in the vague direction of a thick stand of dusty garrigue, parched in the heat of early September. "I keep telling you. Just ship the barrels to Slorbia."

"And I keep telling you I can't. It's not part of Schengen and they'll get checked at the Bulgarian border."

"Go through Macedonia, then."

"We'll be able to pull that off maybe two or three times before they figure out what we're up to and bribes eat up the entire profit margin. And then we'd have the same problem at the border out of Schengen. It's too risky."

"So we meet halfway. Find an old warehouse in Romania or eastern Hungary."

Von Pfiff shook his head. "I'm assigned to France. Vienna will ask questions."

All of a sudden von Pfiff noticed a new and unusual note that he had never before tasted from a pack of Grubi Tabak—wooden, almost, like a bush fire. He directed his attention momentarily away from the delinquent schlepping the third-to-last bag of Grubi Šnuf out of Splut's truck.

It was a bush fire.

"Mač Hrista!" swore Splut. "INCENDIE! INCENDIE! Everybody get back in the back of my truck!"

The delinquents abandoned their posts and moved somewhat more quickly now as the smell of smoke grew. Von Pfiff slammed the back door of the truck while Splut revved up the engine. No sooner had von Pfiff opened the passenger door than Splut slammed his foot on the ignition, ejecting von Pfiff's sunglasses off of his face onto the dusty track.

"God. Those were fifteen hundred euros."

"Those were three hundred thousand euros!" said Splut, taking a hand off the steering wheel and gesturing towards the trailer.

"It was your fucking cigarette," von Pfiff snapped. "You're the one who's got some explaining to do to your brother-in-law."

"Oh, I think we'll both have some explaining to do," retorted Splut. "But at least my brother-in-law was studying agronomy in Brussels while the head of the security services was doing his master's."

Von Pfiff looked out the rearview mirror to see flames licking the side of the barn, then erupting from its ancient roof. The scent of burning chaparral became infused with the unmistakable tawdriness of Grubi Šnuf, then grew imperceptibly fainter and fainter. Splut turned onto the regional highway, passing a firetruck with sirens already blazing, then made for the exit to Les Philmes and parked behind the village tavern.

"Hopefully everybody is safe," said von Pfiff, reaching into his suit pocket for a roll of banknotes. "We are—terribly sorry about this. Here's 500 euros for each of you, and as we all know, if anybody asks—"

"We were playing video games at my house," replied the least dimwitted of the truants, whose parents were known in the wider district to go on ill-defined business trips to Spain for weeks at a time.

"Precisely."

The truants scattered as von Pfiff and Splut returned to the bar for a much-needed glass of anaesthetic.

"This year's, I'm afraid, is going to be a bumper crop," remarked Splut.

"I am overjoyed to hear it," replied von Pfiff, his teeth gritted.

"So—"

"Nope. Not after this."

"I'd promised—"

"Your problem."

"My sister's got a condo on Zakynthos to pay for."

"It's a bumper crop!" said von Pfiff, clasping Splut on the shoulder. "You'll find buyers."

Splut took another sip of pastis and shrugged.

"Of course," he said, "I am good friends with the Slorbian ambassador in Vienna."

Von Pfiff stared at him. "I remind you that it takes two people to do business."

"Maybe so," said Splut, "but the Slorbian security services pay their officers six hundred euros a month and are very understanding. The Austrians, perhaps, not so much. But then you guys are much richer than we are."

Von Pfiff's eyelid twitched.

"So long as we don't take money from the Russians or Turks, at least," Splut added.

"Then I'm sure they'd be very interested in your business dealings with MEHMET. von. Pfiff." The f's of his surname exploded with spittle.

"Do you have a Turkish passport?"

"I could apply for one. I won't. The American passport from being born in Miami made things hard enough."

"Well," said Splut, swirling the remaining pastis in his glass, "I think Pjetr will be understanding enough if we lay low for this year's crop. But I'll call you up next year."

Von Pfiff's eyelid twitched again, then relaxed. Fine. Château Houellebecq didn't buy itself.

"Deal."

"I'll be happy to eat the invoice from my brother-in-law. It was, as you pointed out, my cigarette."

Splut dropped a fifty-euro note on the counter, skulked out the door into the baking heat of Provence in late summer, and was gone.

“Sie wollten mi sprechen, Herr Doktor?”

Mehmet von Pfiff entered through the heavy oaken door into the office of Dr. mult. Dr. h. C. Johann Maria Haldebert Gessler von und zu Wettsburg, Vice Undersecretary to the Head of the Austrian Diplomatic Service and, much to his underling's chagrin, von Pfiff's boss. Wettsburg, his figure deformed by decades of indulgence in leaden sausage dishes and pear brandy, rested his swollen hand momentarily on an enormous desk covered in folder after exquisitely organized folder of documents.

Von Pfiff found his eye wandering from Wettsburg's gaze towards the pine plywood body of the desk, whose once-convincing mahogany stain now evoked the rouge of a middle-aged nymphomaniac at half past one on a Wednesday morning. As his attention returned to his superior and the oversized pleather armchair from which he reigned, it occurred to von Pfiff that the dignity and taste of the house of Wettsburg had taken a greater beating since 1919 than that of many lineages far less august.

Wettsburg removed his reading glasses and bade von Pfiff sit down.

“Herr von Pfiff”, he began, in a Viennese drawl that exceeded even von Pfiff’s own, “I've been made aware of a fairly serious incident involving your person.”

“Really? What would that be?”

“The consulate in Marseilles is busy holding the local Gendarmerie at bay because there’s been a fire at a hamlet known as...let me see here...Les Philmes.”

“How curious.”

“Most curious indeed. Upon extinguishing the fire, the local authorities recovered a good 850 kilos of snuff tobacco.”

Von Pfiff cursed internally. Of course that Slorbian crap was shipped moist enough to slow down the fire.

“The product had all been smuggled into the country, of course. There were no clues as to its provenance until one of the local delinquents made a scene when the police moved to secure the evidence, saying that it belonged to one Monsieur von Feef. The gendarmes were pretty quick in tracing the only person of that name in the country to us.”

Wettsburg wiped the sweat off his brow. Von Pfiff was unsure whether his boss was about to fly into a rage or merely exhausted from the mere act of speaking; his usually splotchy face, in any case, turned a more uniform red.

“Have you no shame, von Pfiff?!” Wettsburg exploded, sour spittle flying into von Pfiff’s face and besmirching an officious-looking notice of repatriation for a ring of Uzbek mafiosi. “Smuggling tobacco on a diplomatic posting, like some sort of common criminal? Do you mean to turn the heirs of Metternich into the laughing-stock of the entire continent?"

Von Pfiff remained unmoved. A thorough training in stoicism, it turned out, had its uses with your own country's diplomats as well as foreign ones.

"Brussels and NATO have been sniffing around our dealings with the Russians for years anyways. If we get a reputation for smuggling—I mean, my God, man, do you work for Austria or Nepal? Have you been leaking internal documents to Foggy Bottom and MI6 as well? Why, I always knew it was a mistake to give this post to a–”

Wettsburg’s mouth closed abruptly as he came to the sudden realization that he had made a fatal mistake. Von Pfiff pretended not to notice.

“A what, Herr Doktor?”

“Well, let me—”

“Surely you weren’t about to say ‘a Turk?’”

“I didn’t mean–”

“I will remind you that when Jacob von Wettsburg was made Landgraf after the Siege of Vienna, it was because Erhard Freiherr von Pfiff had held off the Ottoman troops assaulting his sector of the walls. But if that isn’t Austrian enough a heritage for Herr Doktor, perhaps we can return to the topic of things one should and should not be doing as a diplomatic official. I’m sure, for example, that the Bundesregierung would not at all be amused to learn about the… materials… you have been–”

Wettsburg's countenance froze into a portrait of white-hot but impotent rage.

“Are you threatening me, von Pfiff?”

“Not at all, Herr Doktor. I am simply announcing my intention to step down from my post."

A moment of prickly ceasefire followed as Wettsburg struggled to compose his thoughts.

"You have…my most full-throated endorsement," he replied icily.

"I do think it would be in our mutual interest if you accepted my immediate resignation and perhaps arranged a coffee date with one of our backchannels to Paris to smooth out any ruffled feathers. That way we can both be spared seeing our faces on Page One of Der Standard or becoming campaign fodder for Gerhard Pickl.”

Von Pfiff rose, satisfied by the draining of color he observed on his now ex-boss’s face. Having dirt on people was always bound to come in handy in this business.

“I certainly accept your resignation,” said Wettsburg, “and apologize for my temper. As you know, all diplomacy ultimately boils down to optics, and we could find ourselves in…a sticky situation…if you were to remain on staff as a regular consular officer.”

“I understand entirely.”

“That said, we may have some contract work for you in the future depending on the circumstances…you were the best Sinhalese speaker at the embassy in Colombo, after all.”

“I’m flattered to hear you say so.”

“Do keep in touch.”

“Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Doktor,” he said, closing the door behind him. After collecting his belongings from his office and mailing his diplomatic credentials back to the government, he bought a one-way ticket, first class, to Miami, and began packing up his apartment.

Splut's phone rang in the Uber to Charles de Gaulle. He answered to hear a familiar voice.

"Mladža," it said, "an official from the Austrian diplomatic service just came in for a chat and told me that you were—doing some sort of import-export tobacco business on the side with one of their guys? Is this true?"

"Ah, Paval, good to hear from you. Yes, a spark plug on my truck shorted and caused a wildfire. I believe the local fire department dealt with it."

"The Austrians were pretty peeved. Of course these things do happen, Mladekar, but, ah..."

"I assure you it was strictly side business."

"Of course. I had a similarly narrow escape in Finland back in the early 2000s with Estonian booze. You live and learn."

"Yes, I think that'll be the end of that little line of business for a while."

"We do appreciate it. Oh, you are also persona non grata in Austria for the next ten years."

"Understandable. Of course, if I'm coming in from Germany or Czechia..."

"Well, just don't get caught doing anything odd if you do. That would be an issue. You will of course be fined three months of pay."

"An appropriate punishment," Splut agreed. "And the French?"

"I gather that there was a gentlemen's agreement under which Herr von Pfiff has resigned permanently from the Austrian diplomatic corps for personal reasons with no further action taken. What Paris doesn't know won't hurt it, of course. Just another minor incident in a sleepy corner of a rural département. Happens all the time, really."

"It does indeed," said Splut. "When do you get back to Kruvigora?"

"Week after New Year's. I've got to make the usual social rounds."

"Dinner chez moi?"

"Of course," said Paval. "Keep me posted. Got to go, one of ours studying chemistry at TU Wien got caught distilling spirits without a license."

"Cheers."

The line hung up and Splut exited the Uber into the great glass cathedral of modern travel.

Continue to Chapter II.

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