Eli William - Cash Crash Jubilee

He clicked execute.

The faces of passersby, the lips in the sky, the extravagant skyscraper façades began to jitter, slitting apart into mismatched doubles of themselves, quivering violently like singing crystals and then bursting into shards of abstract outline and chaos. A choir of footsteps, promo-musak, car engines were dissected too, syncopating and reverberating against each other until sound gave way to wailing static and soon cascaded into silence. Experience itself ruptured—the smell of exhaust fumes in his nose feeling like the hard ground beneath his feet, memories of lying snug in a warm bed tasting like cold metal on his tongue.

One world fizzled out, leaving Amon in darkness, lost and alone.

Many thanks to Maiko Takemoto, Chris Molloy, Ashley Davies, Robert Priest, Marsha Kirzner, Eleanor Cruise, and Bec Miller for reading to the end of the early drafts and providing useful feedback.

Daniel E. K. Priest, whose lengthy online discussions and incisive yet delicately phrased critique saved me from producing a much shallower story.

Logan Fulcher for making it through two different drafts, giving great comments on both of them, and being my first ever fan.

Corey and Rowan McNamara, and Ginny Tapley-Takemori for their comments on part one.

Takafumi Kajihara for insisting on introducing me to everyone we met as “a novelist,” even back when the manuscript was in a very rough state with no obvious hopes of being published, and for reading as much of it as he could.

Aaron Schwartz for his legal advice. Joe Grealy for his critique of my submission materials. Peter Tasker for scouring the manuscript with a financial eye. Amelia Beamer for her encouraging comments on chapter one and her advice. Dr. Kenichi Furihata for keeping me stably employed.

Finally, a special thanks to Meg Taylor and Wayne Arthurson, without whose support this story might still be languishing unpublished on my hard-drive, and to my agent Monica Pacheco and my editor Jason Katzman for taking a chance on a debut novelist with a long manuscript.

Copyright © 2015 by Eli K. P. William

The quote “In the beginning all the world was America” was taken from Second Treatise on Government , by John Locke

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014960099

Jacket illustration and design by Sean Jun

Print ISBN: 978-1-940456-27-0

Ebook ISBN 978-1-940456-31-7

Printed in the United States of America

This is a work of fiction. Any names, locations, or references to the outside world are purely coincidental.

We’ll both lose our jobs.