Q looked into the void. He saw himself at eight years old, crying over a dead goldfish. He saw himself at twenty-two, drunk and screaming at a mirror. He saw himself tomorrow, making coffee, forgetting this entire conversation except as a vague, golden ache behind his eyes.
"Why now?" Q asked. His tongue felt like a warm potato.
"Look," the Hussie said. "You keep thinking the joke is on you. It's not. You are the joke. And the punchline is that you get to decide what's funny."
He typed back: "yeah. hussie came by."