I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

by Jason Pargin

“We’re close to the lake, right? Do you ever go? Ride a Jet Ski around, all that?” “No. Dad goes out there and fishes.” “Do you ever go with him?” “If he ever offered that, I’d assume his plan was to drown me.

No, he had to move. He had to think. In that order.

He tossed the shotgun into the Buick and then got low, thinking that if he were about to die, he was going to go out how he’d lived: with absolutely no idea what the hell was going on.

He’d spent half of his life sensing he was in someone’s way and the other half actually being in someone’s way but failing to sense it.

If you think that, say, a cashier failing to wish you a Merry Christmas is a sign of impending Christian genocide, you’re probably not the type to hash out differences over brunch.

If you have seven friends you can play D&D with, you’re not an outcast.”

Abbott had decided early in the trip that it would be a tight contest to decide which US state was the emptiest, but Texas was making a strong case.

He sees the universe as this machine that is designed to give him everything, and he takes it as a personal affront when it misfires.”

the sooner I can get hard information, the quicker we can put the speculation to rest.” “What a wonderful world it would be if it actually worked that way, speculation wilting in the face of evidence.”

Now her phone was ringing, and she was scrambling to remember where she was, or what she was doing, or what phones were for.

Did you know that the western border of Texas is closer to California than it is to the eastern border of Texas?”),

It was a little Fiat 500 or some equally tiny car that looked like something the Navigator would shit.

Winning an argument with his father would be like a dropped egg winning an argument with gravity.

“The AC runs off his solar panels,” said Ether. “It’s funny, he was obsessed with being off-grid because he couldn’t trust anyone, but those panels were manufactured in Germany with Chinese parts, sold by a corporation with employees and stockholders all over the world. Just try to count how many humans operating in perfect sync it took to build and ship all the stuff he needed to live ‘off-the-grid.’”