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dir: /troff/051.ms/
\" This master file produces text suitable for a 6"x9" paperback. .ds CH \" turn off page numbering (top) .B .nr HM 1i \" header margin .nr FM 1i \" footer margin .nr LL 4.25i \" line length .pl 9i \" page length .po .87i \" page offset (from left) .nr PS 8 \" font point size \" .kern \" pairwise kerning (groff only) .hy 14 \" automatic hyphenation \" .nr VS 24 \" double space .fp 1 R GA \" URW Garamond .fp 2 I GI .fp 3 B GM .fp 4 BI GMI .fp 5 CW H \" Helvetica .LP \& .nr % 139 \ " start with this page number .ds CF [%] \" first numbered page (bottom) .ps 10 .SH ANTIGONE'S PLACE IN ALL THIS .R .PP .ps 10 Long ago. .PP .ps 10 Spiro found himself deposited at Nana's. Not much different than most days, except that today his father was actually at home, next door, sleeping off an unplanned production surge. Dad was at home, but Spiro was here. The injustice rankled him, it was palpable, and it would not fall by the wayside, ignored in favor of slashing budgets, shipping units, or domestic tranquility. Dad was going to wake up. .PP .ps 10 Everyone was supposed to call her Nana, but Spiro never did. The woman was actually his aunt, his mother's sister, Antigone, and she was hardly old enough to be anybody's mother, let alone their grandmother, a revered figure in their family's hierarchy. Her stature in the scheme of things was distinctly unearned. The other kids at her daycare weren't blood relatives, and probably wouldn't have noticed this discrepancy even if they had been. Spiro accepted that this level of inattention was, historically, the norm. Lacking automatic identification friend or foe it was no wonder there was so much incest in the world. .PP .ps 10 "Come to Nana," Antigone said, after spying Spiro frozen in the doorway, hesitant to venture inside. She reached out to him, awkwardly, her shawl an extension of her frail, spindly arms. In Spiro's mind, a dead tree shrouded in a yarn tarp. .PP .ps 10 He could see down her shirt. .PP .ps 10 Belatedly, he entered. .SH MILLIONS DEAD .R .PP .ps 10 Spiro lay on the living room floor behind Eugene's chair, face pressed tightly against the register. Central heat whistled maniacally as it ablated his youthful cheeks. .PP .ps 10 It was hot, down there. .PP .ps 10 Eugene was home from work, no explanation asked or given. But that meant he controlled the telescreen, the lunch menu, and all other variables of the domestic battlespace. He'd already thrown out Spiro's comic books, even the ones he'd stolen from under Eugene's son's bed. Scotty was going to be pissed when he got home from school. How might \fIhe\fR act out when he learned his dad was a huge dick? The joke's on you, Gene. .PP .ps 10 Something about black mold on the telescreen. Everybody on Mars had to deal with it, sooner or later. Some people got sick. Eugene had lost .bp his hair at the age of thirty, forever impacting his performance of self. Maybe the fallout was moving again, and that's why everyone was home from work. .PP .ps 10 At lunch Spiro made an ill\-advised crack about [something] and Antigone had hauled off and slapped him across the face with the electric fly swatter she carried holstered in her belt. He'd seen it used in anger before, but never expected to take a shot from it himself. He knew his mother would land on Antigone's side of any perceived slight, so he didn't say anything about it when he got home. .PP .ps 10 Even so, he quietly let himself out the front door while everyone else was busy washing up. Careful not to slam the screen or rattle the weathered floor boards on the front porch. .PP .ps 10 Wandered next door to his own house, his nighttime home, where his dad was still asleep. .PP .ps 10 Threw rocks at the window until Dad woke up.