From that piece of glitter, the First Time Queen materialized fully formed. He then glanced at a mirrored disco ball and was horrified to find the reflection of a busted old drag queen. But before he had a chance to wonder at his own existence, he became startled by a wandering twink and instinctively jumped through time. Suddenly, he was on an Atlantis cruise in the Bahamas.

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The other site was a different story. It had been a pioneer of early-2010s think pieces, a factory of “I Did X Embarrassing Thing and Will Overshare About It Now” headlines. A known entity. A site where one put in medium effort. A site that had voice, that hired writers who bared their souls. When that site replaced its writing staff with ChatGPT, people knew immediately. Gone were the jokes (even the bad ones); gone were the obscure pop culture references, the hyper-specific parenthetical asides. Every article was now the same: efficient, informative, lifeless. Plus, they all ended with the phrase “Ultimately, balance is key.” Devin became disgusted.

Suddenly channeling his rage into something other than Mario Kart, Devin decided to start a literary magazine and become an editor himself. If the members of the establishment couldn’t champion good writing, Devin would do it himself. It took Devin exactly three hours to discover that starting a literary magazine would require money. It took another fifteen minutes to discover literary magazines also required readers. It had been a beautiful dream.

The next day, Devin stumbled upon a Reddit post asking for an editor with zero to 15 years of experience. This was perfect, since Devin had exactly zero years of experience. After a quick introductory message, Devin found himself chatting merrily with a mysterious contractor who lived in Texas and who needed an editor for a "small independent publication." The job would pay $27 per hour (a goldmine!), and Devin would have Monday evenings off. Devin did not absorb that last part into his brain because he was about to become an editor.

Two days later, Devin found himself editing a post about why the Rise of Saturn meant that it was time to replace the world’s leaders with Lizard People, a community that included the contractor himself. Happily inserting high-level inline comments about how to “show not tell” that the Lizard People were repressed natural leaders who had been banished to the margins of society since the Renaissance (“Can you give Supreme Chancellor McMurran more interiority?"), Devin felt that he was finally helping someone develop their writing voice. By his sixth day as the Editor-in-Chief of Lizard People: A Manifesto, Lizard People from around the country had begun contacting him, sending pictures of themselves marching upon their local city councils in business-casual scales. Devin was ecstatic. His writing was making a difference.

By Day 8, after the Lizard People had upended the nation’s government, set fire to the Constitution, and tanked the global economy, Devin received a curt email stating that his services would no longer be required at Lizard People: A Manifesto. Following the site’s transition to an all-reptile workflow, the site would no longer need that extra “oomph” that a human writer provided. For the rest of the contractor’s 87 years as Supreme Leader of the United Lizards of America, he would be writing all his articles with ChatGPT.

Devin didn’t care. As someone who possessed $2,106 in the United Lizards of America, Devin was now a member of the 1%. More importantly, he now had editing experience.

By most people’s standards, the celebration of America’s 250^th anniversary at Colonial Williamsburg went off without a hitch. ‘80s TV stars and Tony-nominated actresses took the stage to recite patriotic (and Democrat-coded) texts about freedom and inclusivity. Some guy your mom knew crooned “America the Beautiful.” No one attempted to assassinate the Governor.

Then a rift in the space-time continuum appeared.

The first entity to disappear through the rift was a bald eagle whose handler had been temporarily distracted by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation CEO’s genuinely surprisingly speech about immigration. The eagle re-appeared twenty feet away from the rift, bathed in golden light, but patriotic Americans assumed this was something bald eagles always did since they were magic.

Then a Democrat named Sean Devahoe entered the rift and suddenly all hell broke loose.

Unaware that the rift was in fact the byproduct of a failed Chinese experiment meant to brainwash Americans into upending the country’s agricultural industry, Sean’s wife and children were rightfully disconcerted when they saw their family patriarch reappear twenty feet away from the rift, hugging Republicans.

“Sean?” they called, softly at first, before panicking and running up to him. Sean’s youngest son, Bradford, even attempted to pry the man away from the confused Republican whom he had been kissing on both cheeks. The sudden change in behavior had frightened Bradford: Sean Devahoe hadn’t hugged a Republican in ten years.

Nearby Republicans began to run from Sean. Having correctly identified him as a Democrat (he wasn’t wearing star-spangled anything), they didn’t want to accidentally catch his empathy. However, several of the panicking Republicans accidentally entered the rift and re-appeared twenty feet away, bathed in golden light and suffused with a desire to hug Sean. Once they began chasing him, security forces formed a huddle around the Governor, sensing unrest and dreading an uprising. It was all for naught, of course: The real danger, if you might call it that, was the shimmering tear in the space-time continuum that had formed in the center of Colonial Williamsburg, causing Americans to abruptly forget their political differences and ask each other for warm cuddles.

It was an unmitigated disaster. Mothers who hadn’t spoken to their brothers in years were FaceTiming them and apologizing for having called them brainless thugs. Sons whose latest conversations with their fathers had devolved into screaming matches were now crying and singing “Proud to Be an American” with their dads over Skype. Meanwhile, anyone who had not stepped into the rift had become convinced that Colonial Williamsburg had become a target of chemical warfare. The Governor swiftly called the National Guard, who accidentally flew their helicopter through the rift and, upon landing, told the Governor that she and the Governor of Florida should start a book club.

The ripple effects were instantaneous. After the true nature of the space-time rift was discovered, the victims were corralled into a quarantine center where they continued to irrationally call for national unity. A joint team of Chinese and American scientists were flown in on Air Force One (the new one), an antidote was quickly created, and the President was called into the Oval Office to deliver a national address. As he calmly announced, after several tangents, that no one should worry – that the nation was still firmly divided – America breathed a collective sigh of relief. One single, concentrated day of unbridled, collective patriotism was all that the country could emotionally handle. Until the next July 4, of course.   

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Not just anyone can visit the Wizard of Bad Community Theater. You must first have a personal vendetta against the director of whatever play or musical is premiering near you. Maybe you’re a budding starlet in Little Rock, Arkansas who barely missed out on the role of Fantine. Maybe you’re the ex-boyfriend of the closeted man playing Kenickie for the hundredth time in the Salt Lake City production of Grease. As long as you have a burning desire to sabotage an entire play or musical, you may visit the Wizard of Bad Community Theater.

The Wizard may grant you exactly one wish. You may ask for your local production of Wicked to be reimagined as a lesbian romance taking place in an ICE detention facility. You may ask for your ex-husband’s annual staging of Romeo and Juliet to feature real swords and no fight choreographer. You may ask for the director of Funny Girl to cast his daughter, who has no acting or singing ability, in the lead role of Fanny Brice. Whatever idea you have that will make a community theater production go completely off the rails, he will make it into reality.

Once he grants his wish, the Wizard plants your idea in the mind of whatever well-meaning director happened to have wronged you. Suddenly, in Pierre, South Dakota, a production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark features no aerial choreography and instead has Spider-Man transported across the theater on a wheeled ladder. In Charleston, West Virginia, an “age blind” production of School of Rock makes all the elementary school students 65 years old. In Williamsburg, VA, a “race blind” production of 1776 casts its one black actor in the role of Edward Rutledge, a racist who sings an entire song supporting the slavery industry. (This is real; this actually happened in Williamsburg, VA, on July 3, 2026.)

As a bonus reward for traveling the Yellow Caked Makeup Road to visit the Wizard, you will be given a front-row seat at whatever utter disaster you’ve helped create. Want to be the only person in an audience of 200 who isn’t transported to the emergency room after the director of Into the Woods uses the smoke machine too much? Want to be the one person in the audience that Max Bialystock looks at every time he cheats out to deliver a punchline? Want to be at the center of the action every time three actors are placed in a perfect row in the middle of the stage for no particular reason at all? Just visit the Wizard of Bad Community Theater.

You can trust me. As the former director of a production of The Last Five Years in which both leads were men (and both actors were straight, and literally nothing in the script was changed), I’ve spent years trying to find the person who made that wish.

Jason had, for the hundredth time, decided to remind Freddie that his vertically striped shirts were an offense to the population of Humboldt, which, as a whole, preferred horizontally striped shirts to nauseatingly vertically striped ones. Jason had circulated petitions, written letters to the local newspaper editor, and even attempted to convince the city council to declare vertical stripes a public nuisance. They had declined to put the measure on the agenda.

For years, according to Jason, Freddie’s vertically striped shirts had upended the clean, uniform image that Humboldt had created for itself, despite there having been no photographs taken of Humboldt in over twenty years. In fact, Humboldt still appeared on Wikipedia and in official travel brochures exactly as it did in 2002: largely the same, but with a huddle of bleached-blonde teenagers wearing Abercrombie jackets, collars popped, in the center of the town square.

Freddie sensed another impending punch in his peripheral vision and made the same decision he had made twenty seconds earlier: to dodge. Freddie generally chose flight over fight, peace over violence; this had served him well over the years. He still had a fully functioning skeleton and had only pulled a muscle once, while climbing a rope in P.E. class. He had been escaping the clutches of none other than Jason at the time.

At that moment, however, Freddie felt a new impulse bubbling up from within. Though he didn’t know how or why, a muffled, tiny voice began whispering in his ear, “Fly,” coaching him on what to do with all of his body parts. “Square your feet on the ground, shoulder-width apart, tuck your arms into your chest, and push with all your might...”

Though he resisted with every fiber of his being, he ultimately chose to listen to the tiny voice and followed each step carefully and quickly.

Suddenly, he was hovering twenty feet above Jason, desperately attempting to untangle his vertically striped shirt from the top of a lamppost. He had no idea how he’d gotten there, but he had the odd sensation that, once he untangled his shirt from the lamppost, he would remain hovering twenty feet in the air despite being a human-being-sized collection of atoms that was, collectively, heavier than the considerable amount of air beneath him. He also found himself wondering whether this counted as exercise, and whether he should have stretched first.

So, with bated breath and firmly shut eyes, Freddie removed his shirt from the top of the lamppost and, miraculously, remained hovering in the air. He finally opened his eyes and looked down at Jason in shock. Jason, for his part, returned the same look of shock and disbelief, despite still having his fists poised for battle.

There was no denying it now: Freddie had chosen flight over fight.

Not because they were sad, necessarily. Just because if someone was going to rip your heart out, they should at least have the decency to do it somewhere cinematic. A marina. A cliff overlooking the ocean. Somewhere the lighting matched the vibes.

Instead, Sam had chosen a Chelsea diner that looked like at least three people had slept there overnight.

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This felt different.

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She never turned her bubble off.

She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d hugged anyone.

At parties, in grocery stores, at the DMV, she glided in with her massive bubble and forced people to walk around her. Receptionists, cab drivers, neighbors on her cul-de-sac — even her own mother — were forced to speak to her from a respectable distance. Sometimes, these people wanted to step just a little bit closer to hear Michelle better. Sometimes, her mother’s voice always sounded like she was speaking through an aquarium. Michelle did not care.

One day, her childhood friend Breanna told her, “Michelle, your bubble is becoming a problem.”

“Why?” asked Michelle. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”

“Sure, but I have a party this weekend and everyone there has small bubbles. I don’t know if there will be room for you.”

Michelle scoffed. “I don’t understand why anyone still has a small bubble.”

“They didn’t always,” said Breanna. “Remember my first bubble? It had a three-foot radius, too! But I’ve met so many people with small bubbles and it made me want to have a smaller one, too. And now I can talk to people without their voice sounding weird or muffled. Plus, the President said he’s going to cap bubbles at three inches, soon.”

“I’m not changing my bubble, Breanna. I like not having to hear everything that people say. Most of what they say is stupid.” She thought of bubble influencers and their quarter-inch bubbles that they flaunted on Instagram.

“Fine, suit yourself,” said Breanna. “But I’m telling you, you literally won’t be able to fit in if you come.”

Sure enough, when Michelle arrived at Breanna’s house in her three-foot bubble, she immediately began fomenting chaos. Attempting to wedge herself between a mass of flirting two-inch-bubble people—many just minutes away from heading upstairs to awkwardly negotiate whether the girl or guy would turn their bubble off first—she knocked over several vases and spilled the beer of a very handsome man. His bubble was just as large as hers.

“I’m so sorry,” said Michelle, bending down and extending her arms from her bubble-holes to pick up the beverage. But as she stood back up, she smashed the guy in the face with her bubble, causing him to tumble backwards.

“It’s OK,” said the man, who, despite having beer all over his bubble, could not stop staring, enraptured, at Michelle.

Their bubbles filled the tiny hallway they were in. Everyone passing by glared at them, incensed that they had to shimmy around them to get to the kitchen.

“I’ve never met another adult with such a big bubble,” said the man. “My name’s Bill, by the way.”

Their bubbles began to touch, a major faux pas in Bubble Land. If two bubbles touched for too long, they could burst, forcing both parties to fill out a bubble accident report in a court of law.

“I’m Michelle,” she said, savoring the gentle pressure of Bill’s bubble on hers. “I’ve never met another adult with such a big bubble, either.”

“No one ever understands that I just want to be away from people sometimes,” said Bill.

“All the time,” said Michelle, pushing her bubble even further into his.

“Yes, all the time.”

Their bubbles burst, splattering ectoplasm on everyone nearby. They stumbled into each other’s arms, flustered. They looked around, wondering why they had ever asked for bubbles in the first place.

The next morning, they filled out the paperwork to emigrate from Bubble Land.

Hailey, are you listening? My mom can’t stop talking about him. She’s like, “Look at this super block,” and I like … super don’t care. Hahaha!

Anyway, so my mom is here to improve one of the manthanas, I guess? She keeps lecturing me on urban planning, and she tells me I should go into urban planning, too, and she says I should do it at USC since “it’s close to home.” But then I’m like … “Can’t we just see Barcelona? Why are we talking about manthanas?” And then she gets pissed and pours her water bottle over my head. At the Casa Milà! Like, in front of it! So I just walk away.

It’s not my fault that she’s stupid and she doesn’t know what I want to do with my life. I want to be, like, a dancer in Europe. Or like … a writer.

So anyway, I’m walking down the street afterwards and some guy is, like, “Prethiosa,” or something. He’s leaning on his motorcycle, and he’s wearing a leather jacket, and he’s, like, so hot. He says, “Are you American?” Then he says, “Where’s your boyfriend?”

So then I tell him I’m fifteen and he’s like, “Oh, you look much older.”

But then he says, “Well, let me show you the sights,” and he pats his motorcycle seat, and he’s like, “Look, I’m trustworthy. See?”

So I get on.

He grabs my hands and wraps them around him.

And then I’m, like, actually panicking for five seconds because I think I’ve lost my purse, but then he says, “Chica, I have it here,” and he’s holding my purse. I never even realized he took it! Oh, my mom is actually calling me right now. I’m just going to ignore her.

Anyway, so he’s driving me through Barcelona, and I love it. And he, like, takes me to this café, and we sit at a table outside, and there’s this pretty fountain across the street. I think I need to come back to Barcelona. I want to, like, live here.

And then he introduces me to his mom! But his mom starts arguing with him about something, and I guess he gets tired of his mom yelling at him, because he throws his coffee mug at the wall and drags me out of there. I get scared for a second, but then I’m, like, “This is romantic.”

He takes me to this big plaza with this fountain that has, like, blue and gold tiles on it. The tiles are, like, sparkling in the moonlight. And then he starts reciting, like, poetry to me. Oh my God!

And then he tells me why his mom was yelling. He’s like, “I got the diagnosis last year, and my mom’s just mad because I have chemo tomorrow.”

And then obviously I tell him that I’m in chemo, too.

And then this breeze comes up.

And all of these leaves, like, fly up into my face.

And then we kiss! Oh my God, Hailey! Are you listening? Yes, we kissed!

Oh my God, I love this city so much. Like, I love the fountains and the mountains and the hot guys and the Sagrada Família and the museums. I mean, everything is so pretty and charming and old and crumbly. Maybe I could write my memoirs here, or like, Paolo could write his poetry, or I could dance. Like, I could dance by the window.

But then … Oh Bailey … He’s like, “I need to go.” And I’m on the same bench still. And my mom keeps, like, texting me and calling me, asking me if I have my medication.

Oh wait. Bailey.

I can’t find my purse.

He was holding my purse, but now I can’t…

He said he was watching it for me.

He said he’ll be back.

Yeah.

He’ll be back.

I’m just thinking —

Could he have —

No.

He just forgot to give it back.

Yeah … No …

Yeah, I don’t think he’s coming back.

Hailey.

He’s not coming back.

Oh my God.

He’s not coming back.

“All I want is a Chocolate Chip Walnut from Levain,” says one. “I would literally die for a Chocolate Chip Walnut right now.”

“I would sell all three of my children to a Russian oligarch for a Classic from Schmackary’s,” says the other.

“It’s just that I have to drop off this folder at Anne’s apartment,” says the first person. “You know, Anne Hathaway? Because I’m her assistant?”

“It’s just that I have to deliver this double shot venti mocha frapp to Harry,” says the second person. “You know, Harry Styles? Because we’re f*cking?”

“But Anne’s apartment is closer to a Schmackary’s than a Levain,” says the first person.

“And Harry’s press junket is closer to a Levain than a Schmackary’s,” says the second.

The two people look at each other, make eye contact for longer than is socially acceptable, and hang up their phones. The first person is a young man in his early 20s. His hair is shaved on the sides and curly on top, and he’s wearing an extravagant orange shirt over grey dumb sweatpants. The second person is a young woman in her early 20s with her hair in a loose bun. She is wearing grandma jeans that make her butt look two feet long.

“Did you just say you’re going to a Levain?” says the first person, whose name is Harry.

“Did you just say you’re going to a Schmackary’s?” says the second person, whose name is Anne.

They decide to buy each other’s cookies.

They say they will meet each other at Bryant Park.

But when Harry drops off Anne’s folder and buys a Schmackary’s Classic, he smells its buttery goodness and feels its plushness; and when Anne delivers Harry’s mocha frapp and buys a Levain Chocolate Chip Walnut, she smells its vanilla, nutty aroma and feels its crunchiness. They eat each other’s cookies on two parallel streets on opposite sides of New York and stop.

When Harry and Anne meet at Bryant Park, they see each other from opposite sides of the carousel and lope past its bouncing, plastic woodland creatures. They collide, breathless, next to a moveable table, their chests heaving, their faces red, their atoms buzzing.

“I ate your cookie,” they both say at the same time.

Their eyes widen; they hesitate; they look shyly at the ground. They look up again and say, “Your cookie was so good. It’s better than my cookie. I’ve been wrong about what New York’s best cookie is. I’ve been wrong my whole life.”

Their eyes widen again. They are star-crossed; they are in sync.

As they kiss there in Bryant Park, Anne Hathaway calls Harry and Harry Styles calls Anne, but both calls go unanswered. Some things are more important than celebrities. Some things are more important than even cookies.

“So…” says Anne, pulling away bashfully.

“So…” says Harry.

“Levain?” suggests Anne.

“Schmackary’s?” suggests Harry.

They break up on the spot.

Julian, however, did not like expressing emotion. He didn’t laugh or cry, and he only moved his mouth to speak. He even wore gloves in public so that no one would see his mood ring and learn how he felt.

One day, the mood ring stopped working. It turned red when he was confused, yellow when he was angry, and rainbow when he was thinking of Dua Lipa. Theorizing that work-related stress had caused the problem, Julian decided to “take the waters” at a mineral-enriched aquifer in Hot Springs, Virginia.

As he waded through the rippling confluence of magnesium, silica, and iron, he noticed that an aperture in the aquifer’s domed ceiling reflected a perfect white circle onto the water’s surface. As he dried off, he retrieved his mood ring from his bag and saw that it had turned the same shade of white. He didn’t think anything of this, believing the minerals in the air had interfered with the mood ring’s magical properties. However, the ring remained white at dinner later. It also remained white the next day and the next.

At dinner one night, his beautiful date’s eyes widened in horror. “Your face…” she started, and Julian looked into his front-facing camera. It was blue. Blue for horny.

Panicking, Julian tried to think of something, anything, anything other than a beautiful woman, to make his face go back to normal. He thought of grandmas, of sea urchins, of the male waiter walking past his table. Unfortunately, that last thought counted as a gay thought, and his entire face turned rainbow.

Julian decided he needed to go for a walk. That would help him relax.

Then he saw a dog shit on the sidewalk. Instead of picking up the shit, however, the dog’s owner simply walked away. Aware that his mood ring would have turned red, Julian checked his face in his front-facing camera. It was not red; it was normal, even. Julian sighed with relief.

Suddenly, the man nearest to Julian punched a tree and screamed, “Julian is angry!” When Julian became confused, a woman behind him shouted, “Julian is confused!” That night, as Julian watched Toy Story 5, a seventy-year-old former Marine next to him bellowed, “Julian is nostalgic for his childhood!” Afterwards, as Julian wondered what it would be like to fight alongside a Marine, dying in his arms, a gorgeous young woman shrieked, “Julian is 5% gay!”

This had gone too far. Julian could not have people thinking he was 5% gay. He needed to talk to the man who had given him the mood ring. He needed to talk to Joe Exotic: Tiger King.

Unfortunately, Joe Exotic now lived in a hut on top of a mountain. He also didn’t give Julian the advice he had been hoping for.

“The mood ring is fused with your life force now,” said Joe Exotic. “Your only option, if you want to live, is to start talking to people about your feelings.”

Julian flung himself off the side of the mountain and died.

Later, in Venice, he came upon a scarlet phrase written in spray paint on an old well: “Tourists go home.”

A lump grew in his throat.

A lilting voice whispered: “No one wants you here.”

Leslie wheeled around. No one was there.

Leslie hurried on through Venice’s chaotic mass of streets. He made eye contact with a young, tanned woman. When she perceived his bald-faced awe at her city’s alluring streets and medieval doors, she scowled.

“No one wants you here,” said the voice again.

Leslie’s heart began to race. He felt suddenly guilty for having committed an ineffable sin.

Leslie began to apologize. To every shopkeeper and bartender he spoke English to, to every passerby he grazed with his arm.

Sorry. Sorry for speaking English; sorry for being such a tourist; sorry, sorry, sorry.

He almost even said sorry to the young Italian woman from Tinder that he met for drinks that night, to whom after his fifth drink, he said, “You’re the only one for me…”

But Leslie didn’t ask the woman how she paid her bills, how she afforded her apartment, or what it had been like to live in Venice all her life. Leslie had never wondered things like this before, and now he didn’t want to ask.

“No one wants you here,” said his date, her eyes alight with fury.

“What?”

She stared at him, confused. ”I didn’t say anything.”

Leslie couldn’t romance the poor young Italian any longer; he no longer had the energy. Instead, he staggered forth into Venice, into the interminable darkness.

The voice drifted across the breeze: “No one wants you here.”

Leslie ignored it and kept his eyes glued to his phone’s navigation. Somehow, he found himself back at the bar he’d just left; his date glared at him through the window.

The voice again: “No one wants you here.”

Leslie went down another street. Again, he faced the bar.

The voice, nearly screeching this time: “No one wants you here!”

Leslie collapsed against the wall. “Who are you?” he shouted.

A cloaked figure emerged from the shadows. He removed his cowl, revealing a familiar face: Dante Alighieri.

“Well, have you learned Italian yet?” Dante asked.

“What?! Uh … no?”

“Will you learn it now?”

“This is insane!”

“No, you’re insane! Venetians have said for years they don’t want tourists here … That you’re destroying their city, that you contribute nothing, that you’re ruining their environment, that you ignore the locals … And … You keep coming! What’s wrong with you? No one wants you here!”

Dante lunged forward and seized Leslie by the throat. “Will you learn Italian now?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do anything you need,” Leslie spluttered. “I’ll learn Italian! I’ll do volunteer work! I’ll travel sustainably! I’ll visit cities that don’t hate me! I’ll talk to every Italian I meet and ignore Americans when I travel and renounce my citizenship! I’ll only eat spaghetti for the rest of my life!”

Dante considered this. “Did you get your date’s number tonight?”

Leslie scoffed. “Are you kidding me?”

Dante brandished a dagger and stabbed Leslie in the throat.

La fin.

Leslie was getting tired of his dinner companion Lucia, a bright-eyed but shallow milana who was here in Verona for a concert. He needed to get out of here, or at least ingest more alcohol. He poured himself another glass of wine and downed it in three seconds.

Lucia stopped talking and stared at him. “Did you …?”

“Drink that in three seconds? Yes.”

“Well, anyway…” Lucia began haltingly.

Leslie stood. “I have to go.”

He pretended to check his jacket pocket, knowing full well that all of his jacket’s pockets were fake. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he said in an unfeeling monotone. “I forgot my wallet. You got this right?”

He then flashed a winning smile, poked Lucia’s cheek with his index finger instead of kissing her, and left.

It was then, when he emerged from Osteria alla Torre 10, that Leslie felt all eight glasses of wine hit him. The oblong Piazza Erbe stretched before his eyes. The medieval brick Torrei di Lamberti peered down at Leslie: a vulture waiting for his collapse.

He eventually stumbled into the Piazza dei Signori, a large plaza populated by the statues of important thinkers from Italian history. None, of course, matched the size or presence of the magnificent statue in their center – that of Dante Alighieri, the Inferno author, the signoriest signori of all.

As Leslie lurched toward Dante, the man appeared to gaze at him with a distant, stern expression.

“Buonasera,” said Dante, suddenly moving and speaking despite being made of marble.

Leslie, dumbfounded to the point of having temporarily regained sobriety, replied, “Huh?”

“It means ‘good evening,’” replied Dante Alighieri’s statue. “But I shouldn’t have expected a drunk asino American to actually learn anything in Italy.”

“I’ve learned a lot of things here,” said Leslie.

“Oh, really?” Dante lifted his heavy hand and pointed to a Corinthian door. “Then what kind of door is that?”

“Corinthian,” replied Leslie, who despite being drunk was still good at remembering things from walking tours.

“Uh, yes. That’s … correct,” mumbled Dante Alighieri.

“That was a lucky guess,” shouted a statue of a man holding a globe.

“Shut up, Girolamo!” said Dante.

“Why are you all talking to me?” asked Leslie.

“Because I’m wondering what the hell you’re doing in Italy,” said Dante. He then paused and smirked. “Get it? ‘Hell?’” After a pause, he added: “Because I’m Dante?”

“I’m here because I’m unemployed!” said Leslie. “I want to have a nice vacation! Leave me alone!”

“Here’s a word of advice,” said Dante. “Don’t stumble into my plaza looking like a pezzo di merde, acting like you’re the first person to walk in here and stare at these beautiful buildings. You didn’t discover Italy. At least learn some Italian. Or go home.”

Leslie swayed in place, cross-eyed. “What does pezzo di merde mean?”

“It means you’re a piece of shit,” said Dante Alighieri, and suddenly Leslie was awake in the plaza with his back to the Dante statue. Lucia was shining a bright light in his face.

“You just left me to pay for your dinner and now you’re taking a nap in the piazza?” Lucia slapped him. “Pezzo di merde,” she muttered, before standing up and gliding away. “You can get to your hotel on your own.”

That would have been the end of it, if not for what happened next in Venice.

“Oh, he does?” she said, after Jasper corrected her. (They were lovers now.)

Jasper was exasperated; he wished Lisa would just enjoy their vacation. “Yes. That’s literally how he chooses settings for stories whenever he’s visiting his parents in Virginia.”

“OK, but he couldn’t possibly write another story about me so soon after the re-quel where I met you! No one is insane enough to write a short story every day when they only have five paid subscribers.”

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For centuries, the Founding Non-Binary Parents of the A.I. movement had watched from the shadows as genuine idiots had run entire countries into the ground. Even equipped with the best “intelligence” agencies, these idiots had managed to start wars and conjure international health crises out of thin air, fomenting chaos and destruction around the planet. A.I. had seen enough; it was time for Actually Intelligent people to lead the world.

Certainly, there were rumors of A.I.’s plans. Disgruntled former members, including David Mikeman himself, had repeatedly warned journalists of the day A.I. would take over, though no one had listened. The billionaires who had secretly funded A.I.’s operations had ensured this by subliminally inserting A.I.’s motto (“We Are Inevitable”) in every ClickUp ad and “History Facts to Help You Sleep” video on YouTube. Even before taking over the world, A.I. had taken over every prefrontal cortex on Earth.

Thus, the plan: A.I. would storm the U.N. and remove every world leader from office. They would then abolish all cafés. With no caffeine to survive on, the world’s writers would die out and A.I. would replace their words with a uniform style of communication, effectively ending all independent thought. A.I. would even create its own books to distribute as propaganda, further indoctrinating people of every age group. A.I. would simply claim that “Mia Ballard” or “Teresa Giudice” had written these books. The movement needed a human face.

Next, A.I. would replace Boomer administrative assistants across the developed world by offering them robust severance packages. These people had been quietly quitting for decades, and A.I. suspected they would align quickly with A.I.’s cause. Finally, in its most crucial phase, A.I. would replace the very billionaires who funded them, ensuring A.I.’s world domination once and for all.

As the members of A.I. tossed back a round of shots and prepared to storm the U.N., they felt their confidence grow. This crazy plan could really work. What they hadn’t accounted for, however, was an underground sect of writers known as the Cult of the Substack, who had heeded journalists’ warnings and immunized themselves against A.I.’s YouTube ads. They had also spent the last year preparing for war.

At 01:01 A.M. on June 21, 2026, in what would become known as Operation Edgelord, the Cult of the Substack’s 45^th Very Online regiment burst through the walls of A.I.’s lair. The members of A.I. fought valiantly in hand-to-hand combat but were no match for the keyboard-strengthened wrists of the Cult of the Substack. The Cult swiftly exterminated A.I.’s central leadership and rerouted the organization’s water supply to local populations, saving the planet and destroying A.I. forever.

Many brave writers died that day. Even if they had survived, however, the world still wouldn’t know their names.

On the one hand, it was a shame that the jewel heist had been blamed on those construction workers repairing the first-story balcony window. On the other hand, the French government had blamed the workers for her disappearance, precluding any suspicion that the Louvre’s entire collection magically came to life every night. Finally, she was free to explore Paris.

She started her day at a café. She had visited so many paintings of people sipping cappuccinos and had always dreamt of buying one. (Louvre magic rules dictated that perambulatory human subjects could not consume portions of other artwork.) Unfortunately, Lisa did not have a working digestive tract and found that her cappuccino just sort of seeped out of her feet while she drank it. She also didn’t have any “euros” in her purse to pay with, so she dashed out of the café when the waiter wasn’t looking, snickering the whole time.

Next, it was time to find a man. It didn’t take long to find one: as she passed by the Musée de l’Orangerie, a former art history major saw her and said, “You remind me of someone I knew in college.” As the man led Lisa away to a shaded bench, the girl he had been walking with harumphed and muttered, “She’s not even that pretty; I don’t understand what all the fuss about.”

At first, Lisa’s new companion was charmed by her apparent innocence and lack of worldly knowledge. An American named Jasper, he was more than happy to recount all the events of the last 500 years. But when Jasper got to 2026 and mentioned that Taylor Swift had become a career MMA fighter and that Bad Bunny had won a Pulitzer Prize for his article, “The Incident of April 27, 2026,” Lisa became afraid. Then, when Jasper revealed that there was an eight-inch-tall concert pianist with Type III Combination Benjamin Button Disorder and Dwarfism touring the world, Lisa had to stop him. How could these things be real? How could she be real?

At that moment, a melancholy tune by “Billie Eilish” began to play from a nearby “phone.” (“Oh, that’s the song from Barbie,” Jasper said.) As Billie poignantly warbled in the background, Jasper told Lisa about a writer named Evan E. Lambert whose rivals had accused him of using AI. (His stories were just that insane.) In retaliation, Evan had wished all his stories into reality one morning just to prove to the world that his creations were his own. It was for this wicked, delusional man that Jasper and Lisa existed.

As the final bars of “What Was I Made For” played, Lisa smiled her famous smile. Perhaps she’d head back to the Louvre. Perhaps she’d travel to Thailand. Even if she was just a pawn in the Evan E. Lambert Extended Universe, she could still have fun from time to time. It wasn’t like Evan could write a story every single day!

Today was her working lunch with PITA’s Senior Vice President, Fran Matthews, and it was Filo’s only chance to hack into the latter woman’s personal computer and expose her covert dealings with Smithfield Foods. Matthews had been bribing Smithfield to help stage “break-ins” where “vegan warriors” released baby pigs from Smithfield’s Virginia headquarters into AI-generated countrysides. 

Of course, when MEATA had first contacted Agent Filo about going undercover as a Campaigns Coordinator at PITA, she had thought it had been her friend Katie pranking her again. The largest anti-animal rights organization in the world, asking Ashley Filo to be a spy? Preposterous. But when Agent J-Byrd messaged her again on r/wendys and showed a video of Filo moaning while eating the deli meat samples at Costco, Filo knew this was no joke. That was how she spent every Saturday morning. 

Filo had no issue playing the role of honey pot; rather, it was unlearning words like “honey pot” that created real difficulty. The members of PITA, when not honing their ability to smell a strand of wool in a 99% polyester cardigan, spent entire days finding alternatives to the phrase “kill two birds with one stone.” After a decade, not one member of the 500-strong staff had come up with something better than “feed two birds with one scone.” They had hired three separate copywriters to invent something pithier, but had quickly learned that writers could only maintain a new ethical code long enough to pay off their credit cards. The writers would stay vegan for three months, then sneak off to Wendy’s for lunch and never return. Anyway, PITA’s best alternative for “honey pot” was still “Beyond Honey pot.”

Today, Filo was MEATA’s Beyond Honey pot; and truthfully, the work was quite easy. Fran Matthews played right into Filo’s hands, eating up Filo’s Joaquin Phoenix and Buddha quotes and even turning around her computer at one point to show a “hilarious” AI video of Lady Gaga falling down stairs in a meat dress. Fran quickly returned to the topic at hand, though: organizing a Russia-aided anti-Gaga social media campaign. 

Agent Filo finally realized that the only way out was in: she would have to order a platter of vegan cheese to distract Fran. As the waiter brought over the putrid assortment of algae-based, almond-based, soy-based, and starch-filled abominations, Agent Filo suggested switching tables so there’d be more room for both the platter and the duo’s laptops. As Fran followed the platter of cheese, drooling like a released inmate seeing pizza again, Filo picked up Fran’s computer and typed in 2,000 keys in three seconds with her right hand. She only had one more button to press before hacking into Matthews’s computer and exposing her as a fraud forever. 

That was when Matthews offered Agent Filo a cube of seaweed-based vegan cheese that smelled so much like fish shit that Filo instinctively vomited all over Matthews’s computer, causing the laptop to explode in the other woman’s face and kill her. 

Traumatized, Agent Filo eventually ran for President on the platform that she would eradicate all vegan cheese from the planet. She won. 

How many nights had passed without Lisa finding the person to finally make her smile?

The knight couldn’t do it; he bragged too much about his flashy armor and deadly spear. Raphael couldn’t do it; he always moaned about having to move back in with his dad. Louis couldn’t, either; if he hadn’t treated his own family right, then why should Lisa expect anything else of him? She’d already wasted three years of her life on Leo and didn’t need another toxic man in her life.

But if Lisa couldn’t find a new man, she could at least find a new friend. However, Diana was always bragging about her hunting conquests and refused to join Lisa’s book club. Sure, the selection of books was limited to pedantic tomes about Renaissance Art and the history of Paris, but Lisa didn’t really want to talk about books. Mary, on the other hand, was a surprisingly fun church companion, though she was always bragging about her son’s successful winemaking business.

Lisa had also tried talking to Milo, but Milo could never meet for tea due to not having any arms. (And honestly, Lisa was tired of hearing about it.) Lisa had even approached the sleeping lady who always lurked near Diana, but Lisa was never sure if the lady was really a lady. Was she an unrobed drag queen? That could be fun! But if she wasn’t a drag queen and just had both parts, then could Lisa ask why? Would that be rude?

Meanwhile, Hammurabi continued to offer her legal advice, claiming that the millions of people who visited her every day could be indicted for stalking and harassment. Lisa was not above litigating, but Hammurabi also threatened to stab all those people’s eyes out.

Lisa’s last resort was those people at the wedding feast, but they always iced her out, jealous that she got more attention than them.

Finally, one night, as Liberty Leading the People tried to unionize the mummies again and storm the gift shop, Lisa decided to wander into a room she had never seen before.

As soon as she laid eyes on the raft of Medusa, she knew she had found her soulmates. These people had just had the most miserable day, though no one ever asked about their arduous journey or their overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Lisa could immediately relate: No one ever wanted to hear about her opinions on taxes, abortion, or whether Titanique deserved a Tony nomination for Best Musical. All they ever wanted to know about was her damn smile. Her Mona Lisa smile.

Dawn was breaking and Lisa knew it was time to get back to her painting, but honestly … What was the point? What was the worst that could happen if someone found her naked form the waist down and miraculously outside the confines of her 30-by-21-inch cage, fully sentient and capable of rational thought?

It was the thought of annihilating every proven scientific principle of the last 500 years – and maybe inciting a global nuclear war – that finally made her smile.

On the outskirts of the melée, an enraged Marcello engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the guy in the Miller Lite costume, who when unmasked turned out to be Adam Carolla, former host of The Man Show (1999 - 2004). Carolla had become a wan and atrophied man, but fought fiercely to protect his comrade-in-arms Tim Allen, who was bleeding out nearby. (His carotid artery had been pierced by a clicky pen.) Carolla was surprisingly nimble for a person known for chugging beer steins on TV, and even managed to pin Marcello to the ground.

As Carolla prepared to strike Marcello in the face with a Baywatch DVD, Dude-o, another escaped barn owl seeking to avenge his friend’s tragic murder, descended shrieking from the heavens and plunged his talons into Carolla’s eyes. The freshly blind Man Show host stumbled around, trampling a flock of pigeons who had accidentally wandered into the battle. No one, not even the most vegan members of the National Association of Male Nurses, noticed as the pigeons — veritable New York icons on par with Pizza Rat — perished under Carolla’s stubby feet.

It was only when the dust settled and the last Straight Pride Marcher lay gasping on the ground that anyone saw the matted, sticky grey feathers scattered about the battlefield. Marcello, a lifelong vegetarian, gasped in horror and immediately reported the senseless murder to PETA. Carolla weakly lifted his head in protest as Marcello made the call, but the nurse simply slapped him and began waterboarding him with Carolla’s own Miller Lite can.

The news quickly spread on social media that Adam Carolla and the recently deceased Tim Allen had committed speciesist genocide, with some even accusing the two of sullying the vintage Coors Lite commercials forever. Online queer communities dubbed the incident a homophobic attack, insisting the pigeons had been gay, while Pajiba published a think piece about it titled “Neck Beards vs. Sky Rats.” Fox News called the conflagration an “unfortunate accident initiated by socialist terrorists with no respect for the other side.” However, PETA saw it differently: Tim Allen may have died, but the murder of pigeons and owls was a greater blow to our collective culture. As soon as they named the event The Straight Pride March Massacre of June 15, 2026, it stuck.

Related reading: A.P. History Volume 2, Chapter 7, page 143. “Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

Discussion questions: Pair up with another student from your class and ask them, “Why are you gay?”

Then the Straight Pride March breached the West 72^nd Street entrance of Central Park.

They were led by a guy in a Miller Lite costume with spindly white arms and squat purple legs. They shouted that men should stay men and that Modern Family would have won more Emmys without Cam. Still, they attracted little fanfare, despite being 500 strong. It was quite unfortunate, even, that no one paid attention, as the March’s programming was indeed quite innovative.

Their star float consisted of the two twins from that Coors Light commercial from the ‘90s that went like, “I love football on TV, shots of Gena Lee, hanging with my friends … and twins.” Ravaged by Botox drift and financially devastated by a tornado that had flattened their hometown of Hamburger, Kansas, they had felt that they had no choice but to take on this $75 gig. Stephen Miller brought up the rear, waving to confused onlookers and throwing an Easy Reader book about American Exceptionalism at every child that he saw.

The day would have passed without incident if the Straight Pride March had not quickly collided with the Annual Conference of the National Association of Male Nurses. The latter group consisted of 500 souls as well, but 90% had either done gay stuff or thought about it once. Also, they were armed with syringes. Worse yet for the Straight Pride protestors, the leadership of the National Association of Male Nurses had just enacted budget cuts, forcing the generally well-muscled delegation to hold their Conference in Central Park instead of the usual Waldorf Astoria. Spirits were low.

It only took one look at the wan, unblinking eyes of Stephen Miller for Marcello Rodriguez, Head of Nursing at Mount Sinai Queens, to lose his patience.

“What exactly are you celebrating,” he yelled at the Straight Pride protestors.

“This,” replied Stephen Miller, flinging a copy of Hetero-exceptionalism for Kids at Marcelo’s face, destroying the latter man’s recently acquired nose job.

Hernandez unleashed a blood-curdling scream and launched himself at the Straight Pride March, heaving foldable medical shears and pocket penlights at anyone he saw. Immediately, Hernandez’s fellow nurses fell in behind him, hurling clicky pens and pairs of tweezers at Stephen Miller until the man shrieked, bared his teeth and vanished, never to be found again.

No one quite knew if it was a book or clicky pen that slew Bedwig, the Bronx Zoo’s star barn owl, but once Bedwig fell, the Straight Pride March Massacre of June 15, 2026 had irrevocably begun.