The Armadillo Effect

Yeah, what the hell, here's an excerpt from my upcoming novel, The Times of Clouds and Sun.

“How are you doing?” Larry came over to Baxter’s desk and leaned over the wall.

“Pretty messed up, right?”

“Yeah,” said Baxter. “But for now I take some comfort that even as we are doing the bidding of Satan, giving hand jobs and happy endings to all his followers, as far as I can tell these people are harmless and have no real power to do the things that they are claiming they want to do.”

“Right.” Larry yawned. “They just have a lot of money and we keep taking it. And the world continues on unabated no matter what we do.”

“I’ve always taken a special level of comfort in the fact that what I do has no value whatsoever. It’s the Armadillo Effect.”

“The what?”

“It’s something Julie says.” He couldn’t help but smile a little at the thought of it.”

Larry didn’t seem to react. “The mysterious Julie…”

“She’s not that mysterious…I mean, she works for this company. She works right on our floor…you could probably even see her if you took a few steps over there…”

“Yeah, sure, whatever, I got my own problems, I just got up to see how you were doing.”

Larry left and Baxter returned to his work. His harmless yet still soul crushing work…