K. A. Bedford

“Maybe he was crazy, he thought. It would explain everything. Insanity was good that way.”

“He swore, pissed off, trying to keep the past in the past instead of stinking up the present.”

“The future was not what it used to be.”

“He felt a trickle of cold fear in the depths of his belly, a dread that he was going to get his wish.”

“It was hard to just sit and relax. Everyone he saw somehow looked suspicious, especially all those people who appeared perfectly innocuous: nobody who looked that innocuous could be anything but guilty, Spider thought.”

“The coffee, when he tried it, was strong almost to the point of being unbearable, but not quite. In short, it was divine.”

““So what is this Final Secret? Any Ideas?” Spider asked, trying to sound reasonable.“They communicate through a living channel, yes, and that is, of course, me.””

“You up for it, or am I going in again? Please note, by the way, there is only one correct answer to this question.”

“It was a hard thing to contemplate, even harder to accept, the inevitable tide of technological progress, which even as it created careers for some, also destroyed careers for others.”

“He’d lived with a mad sculptress for long enough that he knew (believed, really) that much of what passed for art these days was bullshit, all naked emperors and nobody commenting on it. In any case, as soon as he registered, “ah, sculpture”, he lost interest and looked away.”

“And in that moment, Spider noticed a strange thing. He found to his surprise that he did not dislike Mr. Patel. Which, obviously, was a long way from liking the man, but who knew? Maybe that would come in time.”

“The great majority of them came back a week later, complaining that it was all Spider’s fault. Yes, he thought, it was his fault. It was his fault for trying to help idiots.”

““Spider, please, sit. I will explain everything.”“You’ll explain everything. Fine. Great!” Spider said, but inside, in his mind, he was thinking, Bag and cat have now parted company.”

“Spider had to keep that firmly in his mind. It was a lesson he had learned on the job: things are not always as they seem. Sometimes, even most times, they are far stranger than you’d imagine, and most likely more perverse than you’d care to consider.”

““Okay, then,” Spider said. “I have the D6. I have the wicked power of pseudo-random number generation right here in my hot little hand.””

““The bloody future,” Spider muttered. “What’s it ever done for us?””

““Spider!” Mr. Patel said, coming up to him, taking his hand, pumping it hard. “You’re a hard man to find!”“Evidently not hard enough.””

“You going somewhere with this, Spider, or can we just take it as read that you’re a bit cranky today?”

““What about your art?”...“Gave it up? How could you give it up?” He was shaken at the news. Molly no longer an artist? He didn’t know artists could even do that; he thought it was a lifetime thing, like a sentence.”