39: North Dakota

You hear the Indian Chief thundering down the enchanted highway, heading south, long before you see it at the edge of town.

She tears down Main Street, deep red and gleaming chrome, dragging a giant metal head. White sparks weep from its painted face where it strikes the ground.

A red light catches her by 2nd. She turns to look at you, revs her engine, and then she’s off again.

38: Colorado

Another morning at the campus in the mountains. I push a button for another cup of coffee. A light turns on, a cup drops, a stream of tepid brown liquid trickles down.

I open the manila folder again and look at the blurry photo paper-clipped to the front flap, a short, skinny, dark-haired man in a blue tracksuit, leaning over a table, caught in action.

Age: 38

Birthplace: Shanghai, China

Grip: Shake Hand

I’ve only been working as a tech here for a couple months, so I got stuck in the final group, picked last like in grade school gym class, working on this middle-aged guy who probably wouldn’t even have a shot at the games again.

The idea of one country against another doesn’t seem to apply anymore, since Team U.S.A. is mostly Asian at this point, half-Chinese. The lobby is empty again. I shake his hand, thinking: You’ll show me, will you?


The equipment manager takes him off to get suited up. I tinker with the sensors, run the system test another time.

“Man, I’d totally bone that Natalie chick,” one of them says, a trainer, says.

“Dude,” the physician replies, “she’s like, fourteen.”

“Nah, bro, she’s just Asian.”

The Chinese guy starts to stretch his arms, does a quick Tai Chi like warm-up, followed by a couple of test swings while I calibrate the sensors. I turn the difficulty up, increase the speed, and watch his arms move even faster, a blur. The balls were smaller back then, faster.


We break for lunch. The Chinese guy hits the showers while I shut down the robot and run the data-processing algorithms. “Bro,” says the physician. “Mr. Miyake. This is, like, some total Karate Kid shit.”

The equipment manager brings the Chinese guy back, dressed in his tracksuit again, then they all head out the door together. I’ve got a salad in the fridge, so I don’t mind staying behind to analyze this morning’s data, recalibrating TOPR, preparing the table for this afternoon’s training, starting to draft our group’s report.


The athletes all come in to the OTC in the morning, then go out and party at night. Team U.S.A. may not have taken home any medals in 2008, but they totally owned the competition during the after-parties, playing champagne-pong. There’s always another game, another season.

The Chinese guy has been nice enough, and I can see why they keep him on the team. The data is pretty interesting, actually. The changes in speed and spin, the variance with different coefficients of friction, the effect of hardness and softness of rubber and sponge.

Word has a special AutoSummarize feature. No one is going to read the short version either.

37: Nebraska

I was standing in a field with Dusty when Anne called to wish us a happy belated something. “Was it a holiday yesterday?” I asked. “I must’ve forgot.”

Dusty wandered off to relieve himself. Anne said something about an international day of morning. “Yep, I had one of them once,” I said, “over in Ogallala, at IHOP.”

I zoned out for a bit after that. Anne tends to ramble; always has. Anyway, I must’ve been thinking of Denny’s.

Next I knew, she was talking about this mosque, how it was a slap in the face; that there ought to be a law.

“Shucks, sis, do you even know how big a block in New York City is?” I asked. “You probably can’t even see one from the other. And I know you can’t from Kenesaw.”

Anne cussed and hung up, and I walked back to my truck with Dusty, looking at my phone, waiting to get that wasted hour back. “You agree with me, don’t you, Dusty?” I asked. He just shook his head.

“Ah, what do you know?” I said, and spat in the grass. “You’re a cow.”

36: Nevada

“Get your claws off me, you fruit-faced iguanodont! Not in a million years!” You try to upend the table but it’s too heavy. Plan B: grab the rake and send the chips skittering like beetles around the wheel. “And that’s Dr. RD to you!”

The croupier takes your card. “Typographer, Lexicographer, Lotus-Eater, Astrologer, Numerologist, Freelance Writer,” she reads. “Well, aren’t you just a jerk-of-all-trades.”


Out at Red Rock Canyon, gray burros watch you through oversized black eyes. The prostitute mutters something from the trunk. She was more comfortable back there, she said, with the drugs.

You take a swig of Jack. Machineguns fire across the ridge. The road signs are shot to hell. You know how the people of Nevada feel. Las Vegas is Area 52. The aliens are among us.


Nearing Black Rock City, you see it. A figure with arms outstretched, burning up like Touchdown Jesus, red on black.

First the satellite images and now this: A crescent moon inside a pentagon. A beastly number somebody miscounted. A warning sign everybody missed.

One of the guards looks uncomfortably familiar. Black bug-eye shades block half of her red duck-billed face. She smiles, says: “What are the odds?”


You drive like you’re trying to set the land speed record, salt and dirt and dust kicking up to the big black empty TV-screen sky, gone.