The Sirens of Titan

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"I don’t know what’s going on," said Boaz in his thoughts, "and I’m probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we’re being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it’s over."

Winston Niles Rumfoord was lying, fully materialized, on his back on his lavender contour chair by the pool. His eyes were directed at the sky, unblinkingly and seemingly sightless. One fine hand dangled over the side of the chair, its limp fingers laced in the choke chain of Kazak, the hound of space. The chain was empty. An explosion on the Sun had separated man and dog. A Universe schemed in mercy would have kept man and dog together. The Universe inhabited by Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog was not schemed in mercy. Kazak had been sent ahead of his master on the great mission to nowhere and nothing. Kazak had left howling in a puff of ozone and sick light, in a hum like swarming bees. Rumfoord let the empty choke chain slip from his fingers. The chain expressed deadness, made a formless sound and a formless heap, was a soulless slave of gravity, born with a broken spine.

"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody," she said, "would be to not be used for anything by anybody."