Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

"Would you just look at the two-tone paint job on that beauty?"

"Treat yourself. Just feel that leather upholstery."

"Wow, would you listen to that stereo!"

If you pay attention to Echo Lawrence, half of what comes out of her mouth is embedded commands.

Control questions, tie-down questions, and embedded commands—that's how a good salesman coaxes you to open up. You pace Shot Dunyun by wiping your lips with the back of your hand while you talk. Cross your arms over your chest and flop your head from one shoulder to the other. Say "What I heard is…" and "Word on the street says…" Convince Shot you're an auditory learner. Listen for him to introduce «doors»: those little glimpses into his personal life. His dog, for example. His pug dog. And remember, he'll look side to side as he thinks about how his dog died.

But if Shot Dunyun looks at his right ear—he's lying.

For now, remember: Echo Lawrence is visual. Shot Dunyun is auditory. Neddy Nelson is kinetic.

In that last sentence, the word «remember» is an embedded command.

To repeat, the way you get to the huge, impossible yes is, you start collecting a lot of easy, small yeses.

29–Werewolves III

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher

): Did I ever tell you about the longest day of my life? The day I almost died?

Jayne Merris (Musician): If you ask me, at first it was hilarious. Droolers, my friends called them; anybody with end-stage rabies couldn't give a damn about curfew. Droolers weren't even aware they had rabies. Most infected people just felt a little more pissed off every day. Always edgy or grouchy. They'd take anger-management courses and serotonin reuptake inhibitors. They did meditation at Zen retreats, or cognitive talk therapy, to deal with their growing anger. Junk like deep breathing and creative visualization. All this junk, until, one day, they woke up not just on the wrong side of the bed but actually twitching, their throat spasming, maybe their legs partially paralyzed—a Drooler. Next thing, you'd see them staggering down the street, on the traffic cameras, violating the eight o'clock morning curfew.

Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D. (Epidemiologist): A historical precedent had existed. In 1763, during the British war against the French for territory in North America, the vast population of Native Americans sided largely with the French. In a gesture of seeming good will, the British provided the aboriginals with blankets that had been used in hospitals treating smallpox victims. With no natural resistance to the Variola major virus, countless Native Americans died.

Galton Nye (City Councilman): The rabies epidemic was tragic. It continues to be a human tragedy of staggering proportions. My heart really does go out, but you have to understand the need to contain the disease to the night segment of the population. The so-called Nighttimers. Making a limited tragedy into everybody's problem wasn't the answer.

But, please, intentional genocide this was not.

Neddy Nelson:

Are you sure I didn't tell you already? How one game window, right at the tail end of the window, not more than an hour before the morning curfew, some Shark slammed my right rear wheel? You ever been slammed so hard your axle spindle is toast? You know how many hundred foot-pounds of torque it takes just to strip the threads on a hardened-steel spindle? Are you surprised that kind of slam would bounce my head off the steering wheel and black me out for a couple hours?

Galton Nye: We used to hear stories, how radical Nighttimers were plotting to spread the infection across the time-line. Out of frustration, these same political radicals accused Daytimers of engineering the epidemic in order to cripple the Nighttimer birthrate and their so-called inevitable rise to a voting majority.

Jayne Merris: On the traffic cameras, the Droolers used to limp around, dragging one leg, slack-jawed, snarling. People who used to be wives, fathers, and even little kids, now—completely gone berserk, lurking in public toilets and department-store fitting rooms with one goal: to sink their spitty teeth into somebody.

Neddy Nelson: You know the only Sharks who tagged that hard? The only players that brand of stupid? You know what a Drooler is? Can you picture somebody with end-stage rabies, all that bottomless rage, can you believe they'd still be driving and Party Crashing? Now can you get the mess that Party Crashing was turning into?