I haven’t told you about Scratch, my best friend from highschool. She overdosed and died next to me in our apartment about two months before I went to jail. I don’t have anything funny or stupid to say about that. I think about it a lot, actually.
   Her grave is in Salem Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn, so I was making a very slow walk there and soaking in the atmosphere when I ran into 3-D glasses guy. He was carrying some groceries and wearing a big graphic tee. I nodded to him, and he gave a polite but noncommittal hand raise.
   At first I was gonna walk past him, but as soon as I thought about doing that, it seemed insane. I walked up to him and we both stopped at the curb.
   I was like: “Hey.”
   He was like: “Yo.”
   “I have a question.” I say.
   “About the job?”
   “Yeah.”
   “We’re not supposed to…” he looks around at the nearly empty street, then sits down on the curb. I do too. “What do you wanna know?”
   “What was the job about? Like, what were we doing?"
   “Well, I think it’s important to keep your perspective. You didn’t seem to do anything at all. I don’t see any connection between what you were doing and what we did.”
   He thinks for a little while longer. I just listen.
   “It seemed to me like we were robbing a hotel. I was just supposed to pick up a duffel bag from there and bring it to the car, but on my way, some random hotel guest threw herself at us. Trying to stop us. Just one of those stupid, unlucky, freaky things that happen. One of our coworkers shot her. I took the body and put it in the car with us, I- I didn’t really have any other ideas about what to do. We dropped her off at the foot of a hospital just in case. That’s all.”
   I nod along.
   He looks at me with some real sadness, says “You didn’t do anything.”
   “Max thought I had to be there.”
   The guy considers that for a while. He shrugs.
   "How do you deal with doing work like this? The kinda thing that fucks up people's lives sometimes." I ask.
   He leans back and turns it over in his head. "I don't. I usually work lots of temp jobs. I was in and out of that one. When I got the next letter, I never opened it. Not for me."
   So this guy seems like a real class act. I mean in and out. Masterful form, clean break. I'm listening and learning.
   "Don't get me wrong," he continues, "I have daemons to deal with in ways I bet would sound insane to you. We're each fighting our own shit out here. You can't have a clean and tidy life. It never ever works out like that. Shit gets ugly and that's how it is."
   "That's how it is…" I echo.
   “If you want to do something else, I recommend looking into trash disposal jobs.”
   “Why?”
   “It sucks and they’re all on strike. Aside from picket line shit, if you need a job, they need bodies.”
   “I think want to be an architect.”
   He scoffs, then earnestly apologizes for laughing. “It’s good to want something great eventually. It’s best to have something slightly better tomorrow.”
   Shit, man.
   After a while, he stands and extends a hand to help me up too.
   I thank him, and we split ways.
   Just before we're too far, I remember something. I turn around. "Hey. I saw you looking at the disk before you used it that first time. What did you see?"
   He adjusts his glasses and sighs. "I was checking if Maximum Thought was the real deal. If maybe it had left some remnant of computer sentience in what it wrote."
   "And?"
   "It's real AI, I think. But shockingly human."
   I wasn't sure what that meant at the time, nor how he would know that at all. I nod and let him be on his way.
   Visiting the grave is as it usually is. I sit on the grass in front of her unmarked plot, outlined with white string. I eat a sandwich and watch as across the graveyard, another lady is being lowered into the ground, surrounded by family. I wonder if it’s the hotel lady. I wonder.
   Across the graveyard the other way- I see this as I’m stretching- are two figures in long black coats and sunglasses. Watching me from behind the columns of gravestones. One of them stomps out a cigarette, and they leave.
   Jawbreakers?