Final Solution

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Much thanks to my friends and family who have supported me as I’ve tackled new worlds, and to those who have critiqued my work, listened to me prattle on about esoteric topics, and slogged through my early drafts. Thanks to my wife for not murdering me when asking her to read something I just finished and was very excited about. A great debt of gratitude goes to Julie Hutchings who has edited many of my works and given me a fresh perspective on writing from the human angle. And of course, thanks to my parents for believing in me even when I didn’t. You’ve all stuck with me through my manic highs and lows and made a better person for it. I cannot thank you enough.

Suffocation has to be the worst way to die. One can survive for weeks without food, days without water, hours without sleep, and decades without sex, but only two minutes without air. Precious oxygen is life itself, the act of breathing, a God-given pleasure, a mechanical wonder, our bodies’ systems working in concert to keep consciousness alive. Though if you’re forced into a place without it, so empty it has no true temperature, and yet so dark that even the stars cannot penetrate its veil, you’ve arrived in the place of short-lived nightmares with which I’ve become all too familiar. I’d welcome you out of courtesy, but you’d be the next to go.

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