they mark the true humans for assassination

[click image]

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...to discourage others from emulating them.

Works too well.

No one would want to continue living once they realized they were too afraid to be a true human. So people find little mental escape hatches, make up excuses, build little misdirection synapses for whenever the subject, of thought or of conversation, veers too near that place where reality must be deflected at all costs.

I'd rather die.

I think you would too if you ever let yourself sit down and LOOK at it, but those misdirection synapses work pretty damn well, don't they? They work you to a deathbed teeming with the lethality of regret this size.

I'm packing up Goldie, going to drive home after I go see Poppa today. So hope to see you late tonight.
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