Status Updates From The Place of Dead Roads

…with the sleek pomaded smug expression of a man who has just sold the widow a fraudulent peach orchard.

It’s not a question of shoot first and ask questions later. We never ask questions. We are here strictly in the capacity of Stoppers, our function to Stop. To arrest.

…the smell of modern evil is said to resemble burnt plastic and rotten oranges…only different…so many smells you can’t quite classify because you never quite smelled them before and you have to approximate.

Kim dislikes England on first contact. The porters are deferring to the signal presented by his clothes and luggage. They don’t see him. He infers correctly that the whole place operates on hierarchical categories that determine how everybody treats everybody else, categories carefully designed to make sure no one ever sees anyone else.

The Johnson family is a cooperative structure. There isn’t any boss man. People know what they are supposed to do and they do it. We’re all actors and we change roles. Today’s millionaire might be tomorrow’s busboy. There’s none of that ruling-class old school tie…‘Hey boy, manicure my toenails and look sharp about it…I’m sweating my bloody balls off…saddle my horse nigger…’

It was dead easy. The townspeople were antivaccinationists…“polluting the Blood of Christ,” they called it. Around the turn of the century there were a number of these antivaccination cults, a self-limiting phenomenon since all the cultists contracted smallpox sooner or later.

He knew that once an article goes into mass production, the last thing a manufacturer wants to hear about is a better and simpler article that is basically different. And they are not interested in a more efficient, simpler or better product. They are interested in making money.