I keep up appearances at the club, you know? (The Oakwood, not that it matters.) My wife died a few years back, and it’s always just been… me, really, after the kids grew up. I spent thirty years teaching history, believing in the system, and then some slick-talking twenty-something on a Zoom call convinced me to put everything into something called ‘disruptive tech.’ Now my pension is practically gone, and I’m still ordering the single malt and making small talk about the new wing, because what else is there? We humans, we cling to these little fictions about ourselves, don’t we? (Like barnacles on a sinking ship, perhaps.) It’s absurd, really, this elaborate charade. And yet... I can’t stop.