I

Many things don’t exist. George Bronde anticipated joining them within a minute, and hurriedly registered indignance. His life was not designed for anticlimax, and he felt death would be that if nothing else. He pouted at the silver barrier shuddering under bullet fire near his face. The bullet fire was  tacky. It threw the falsity of his time over him like a putrid fluorescent globe. A pretense of genuineness was only decent, and would have cost no more. But someone had bothered to prefer it this way. He winced at such bad taste surviving him and tried to think of a good last thought.