Wayward (Wanderers, #2)

by Chuck Wendig

They knew how to puppeteer Twitter, Facebook, something called “search optimization,” whatever the fuck that was. They’d create—what was it? Bots? Sock puppets? Fake accounts, some just programs, some manned by actual people. Fake outrage, ginned up on both sides. Just to keep the temperature high. Just to keep people cranked up and pissed off.

Already, through Proof Logic, Ed had been sowing seeds of distrust in what turned out to be the rich, fertile fields of the collective conspiratorial American mind. They already feared doctors and thought Big Pharma was out to get them—so, it was easy enough to make them doubt that masks or other prophylactic measures worked against White Mask. They were already convinced of both their exceptionalism and the God-given right of their individual liberties, so it was simple enough to tell them that they shouldn’t have to give up anything, not one goddamn little thing, in order to fight this pandemic.

You gave them an enemy. Gave them a target. And you made them so willing to forgo their own rights because if they got something like healthcare or education, then so did Those People, and better to deny other people things instead of having to share it with Them. Get them fighting one another instead of you.

Hell as an idea, with the demons poking you with pointy forks as you boiled in a fiery pot, was a medieval notion given teeth by someone like Dante in The Inferno. But Matthew always favored the original view of Hell, which was simply being in the darkness outside of God’s light. A place of ignorance and isolation.

I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another. —Madeline Miller, Circe

I got this moment right here. I don’t have yesterday, and no promise of tomorrow. I have this moment stuck between all the other moments, so I might as well live here instead of in a day that’s gone, or a day that might never come.”

I hope she never dies. Though she damn sure deserves her saintly rest, I also fear she’s the final column holding up all of our reality. Bowie gone, Prince dead, we cannot lose Dolly.”

Claudia? I don’t like her, I’ll tell you that. She’s creepy. Like if a pair of scissors got struck by lightning and turned into a person.”

the twenty-four-hour news cycle, an endless carousel of bad news designed to poke the limbic system with its pointy stick. React, react, react, it told you.