“It’s just a rental, but we got such a good deal on it and it’s beautiful. You can see the lake from our living room.”“I’d love to get out...of the city,” Donna said with a sigh. “Can I ask how much you’re paying?”“Five hundred and twenty-five dollars. I’d never have gotten a deal like that in Cedar Rapids, not for a beautiful three-bedroom house like that.”“Five twenty-five? That’s incredible,” Donna said.“It would have been in the suburbs where I was originally looking, but then Jake had me. .."My name is Jim.I ordered my third bourbon of the night and listened to the singer on the stage belting out a Willie Nelson special.Whiskey River, don't dry up. You got that right. After what they did, I never want the river to run dry, I thought as the song continued.Who were the they I was referring to? They were what I had believed to be my lifetime best friend and my faithful wife of eleven years.My wife, Betty, had been my right hand and my strength as I worked hard to develop our. ”The other half of Marian’s morning bitch session stood there, shaking, eyeing the leader of the group of bandits. Valerie Teal was a tall, thin redhead, thirty-three, who lived just down the block from Marian and frequently swapped complaints about how wimpy and useless their husbands were with her over coffee, as she had this morning. Mike had almost quit looking for sex from her, causing her to wonder if he was getting it elsewhere; if she didn’t crawl into bed and spread herself or reach. Anti-radiation medication is foul to taste and it ruins your appetite and I had lost nearly a kilo off a frame that had qualified as spare at the starting line. But I was like the Junoesque model of a renaissance painter by comparison with the work-sluts whom I was charged to oversee. I was spending three two-hour shifts a day in the dome wearing full protective armour, my own private clean air supply and still standing as far away from the action as my implant’s signalling equipment would.