War Porn Read Free

tanned cheeks and fine-boned wrists and shoulders. She wore Matt’s favorite dark green t-shirt that said:
    Â 
    CUBIC* cube
    i think that square
    is top of cool shape
    in the world
    Â 
    Dahlia shook the man’s hand and pointed over to Matt, who grinned stupidly and waved his grass-covered brush, remembering this must be Aaron, right, standing staring. The one who just came home.
    â€œHow you two want your steaks?” he forced himself to shout.
    â€œMedium rare,” Wendy said.
    â€œStill mooing,” the man said. “Thanks.”
    â€œComing right up!” Matt said, his voice going high and brittle, hoping a fat smile would numb his unease. He cracked another beer and drank deep. He pulled the vegetables and tofu off the heat and wrapped them in foil, then laid on the salmon and Wendy’s steak.
    The man walked up and offered Matt his hand. His grip was gentle but strong. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Aaron.”
    â€œMatt. Nice shirt.”
    â€œThanks. Wendy got it for me on the internet.”
    â€œShe’s good at t-shirts.”
    â€œYeah. She thought it’d be funny. She said you work with computers.”
    â€œYeah, I code. I’m sort of . . .  well, what I do now is part-time tech support for the county, but really I’m working on a freelance project, data-processing. Sort of global forecasting.”
    â€œLike stock markets and stuff?”
    Matt chuckled, hating the self-deprecating note he struck. “Well, sort of. What I’m trying to do is use turbulence in complex systems to predict unforeseen events,” he said, waving the barbecue tongs. “The problem with ‘unknown unknowns’ is that you don’t know what you’re looking for. Take 9/11 for instance, or the fall of the Soviet Union. The patterns were there but we weren’t looking for them, and there was no way to know in advance which data points were the important ones. What we needed was a tool for monitoring data systemically, for helping us watch events not as points or lines but as flows and breaks. The program I’m developing uses chaos theory to visualize predictive data as a field. Then we can use those visualizations to shift our frame of reference so that something that would have been an outlier becomes something we’re looking for: from an unknown unknown into a known unknown. It’s about letting chaos show its underlying order. I mean . . .  Whoa, I gotta flip this shit.” He turned over the salmon and Wendy’s steak, then reached for the last two steaks and threw them on. “Hey D,” he shouted. “Just a few more minutes here. You wanna get the stuff?”
    â€œGot it,” she said, handing the weed to Rachel and going back inside. Aaron nodded after her, his look lingering for Matt’s taste a second longer than was really necessary.
    Rachel lit the pipe and passed it. They smoked. Chatted. Dahlia came back out with a pitcher and glasses. Time slowed.
    When did the porch light come on? Who turned the light on?
    â€œFuck,” Matt said, turning back to the grill and sliding the salmon on a plate, forking the steaks and serving them up, while Dahlia portioned out tofu for Rachel and Mel and divvied up veggies and spooned out the vegan potato salad Mel had brought. Everyone moved to the picnic table. Matt lit the tiki torches and citronella candles and Dahlia passed the tabbouleh. They tore into their food, washing it down with beer, ripping into animal and vegetable flesh, throats bulging. Their steak knives flashed in the light, flecked with fat and blood.
    They discussed: the virtues of cats v. dogs, as pets and generally, how best to marinate tofu, the election, how sick they all were of the election, the curious nature of modern life where it feels like part of you is connected via mass media to this hyperlife that doesn’t objectively exist but functions entirely as