Redsand Canyon days of creation

Mechnical, his words were repeated back to him— looking for a spar?

Renard was exceedingly skilled at wiping all words of their meaning. Like non-citizens wiped from all public databases, fingerprint-less, this was a non-conversation, where the exchange of information was reversed and the conversants found themselves eating their own small talk and recycled air. Inhales became exhales, exhales became inhales, and so on. Your typical postmodern party.

During his time as a military chaplain, Colin had never seen real war. But here and now, it wasn't so difficult to imagine that someone had their finger poised over the button. All over the world, engineers designed underground bunkers and football-sized nuclear weapons that could wipe away entire cities.

Finley and Renard, in front of him like the most cynical rendition of American Gothic.

Who are you asking? As if it mattered. 

He struggled to grasp onto purpose. It evaded him in a twist of tulle, a flash of pale bare skin, an ankle that pulls him further into a heady backstage dark. A single vein in his temple pulses harder than the rest.