The car had pretty good acceleration, if you were going to be awoken by Sigourney Weaver upon arrival at Alpha Centauri in 2370, but it would have to do. I had other things on my mind.
"O.K. , Baby, now that it's just you and me again, you have some explaining to do."
She drew her fingers over the knob at the top of the stick shift, tracing patterns. "What do you want to know?"
"I want to know why there is suffering in the world. But in the meantime, I'd like some more specific answers from you. What went down at the Tallahatchee Bridge? Who asked for Godfather III? What happened to the peace dividend?"
Her eyes welled up, and then welled back down again. "Oh, Blake, I wish I knew. It was so long ago, before, before, before this --" She rolled up her sleeves, and then I knew.
She was an addict. She had a carpal tunnel you could drive rush hour traffic through, and still make it home in under half and hour. I had seen it before, god knows. It starts with a simple click, maybe a small request for a tune, you know, something grandma loved, and then gradually the threads begin to take charge. You start following celtic threads you don't even understand, just to keep the blue in your veins. You start asking for songs you already know, just to get a high. It gets so bad you click on to "Ignore this" and "LYR request: California Dreamin", and then even that isn't enough. Then -- but that was too much even for me. I turned away so as not to shame her with what she might see in my eyes. It was horrible: it was disgusting: it was my town, and I loved it.