Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (Zoey Ashe #2)

by David Wong

“I want you to imagine,” said Zoey, “that I gave you a piece of paper signing over everything I own—this huge mansion, all the businesses, everything—to you, right now. That’s exactly what happened to me a little over a year ago. I’m not a crime person at all. I was a regular girl, just like you. So, what happened was a famous crime boss got a random stripper pregnant and never gave her the time of day after that. Twenty-two years later, he dies and leaves everything he owned to the stripper’s baby that he had no relationship with whatsoever. That’s me, I’m the stripper baby! And when I say everything, I mean everything. Hotels, casinos, apartment buildings, sex workers. That scary guy I showed up with? Will? He was my father’s right-hand man. Same with the guy who brought you over here, his name is Budd. This is a team my father put together years and years ago, I inherited them along with all the rest. But I didn’t know about any of this until last Christmas.”

People don’t want solutions. They want novelty.

It was full of these golf ball–sized brownie things with an ice cream core. They sat at room temperature but opening the wrapper triggered some chemical magic that froze the ice cream inside in about ten seconds, while somehow warming the brownie exterior, creating a light crust.

You’re asking me if this was your fault because you want to know what emotion you’re supposed to be feeling right now. Are you supposed to be beating yourself up? Well, that’s the wrong question. The world doesn’t care about your emotions.” “So what question should I be asking?” “Whether or not you would do it differently next time. Everything that happens matters only in terms of what you can learn from it going forward.”

Echo said, “The city’s Unrest Index is at six point five.” Zoey said, “The what?” “It’s the index that measure’s the city’s unrest,” elaborated Andre. “Same system that predicted the riot,” said Echo. “You go over seven and you get multiple riots across the city in specific hot spots. An eight is general chaos that shuts down entire neighborhoods, a ten means all social norms are gone and your city is no longer a city.”

“There are things people actually believe,” said Andre, “and things they only pretend to believe because it’s convenient. But over time it don’t matter which is which, it all just blurs together. People are like that.”

“Okay, so why would they choose to believe this particular awful thing?” “Because they hate you, Zoey. And because they hate you, they need to come up with a reason to hate you. See, because otherwise, they’re just bad people.” “What? That doesn’t even—why do they hate me in the first place?” “When you played ball, were you best buddies with all the other girls on the team? Did you all hang out together in the off-season?” “No.” “But when you were together on the court, when you won, you felt something. Maybe any other time you couldn’t carry on a conversation with any one of them without wanting to blow your brains out, but on the court, you suddenly had a bond. All of them differences fell away. That’s why we have sports, the game is just a pretext to let you go out there and feel that.” “So it’s just a game to them? Is that it?” “Well, that feeling, you get that in a war zone, too, only a hundred times stronger. So call it a game or a war or whatever, ultimately it’s just about that bond. So, yeah, the thing they hate isn’t even you, it’s a fictional version of you they’ve crafted to be as hateable as possible. The more they hate you, the more they love each other.”

“Wait, the heart-eating guy? That’s who we’re entrusting our safety to?” Will said, “Trust isn’t necessary when everyone has the same goals, that’s how society functions in general.