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barely escapes and to be honest? he is feeling right now like running back to his tiny apartment and taking that Smith & Wesson .38 out of the top night table drawer and once and for all putting himself out of his frigging misery.
    At eye level, the scurrying insects now assume human faces, and not too many are smiling. The air is brisk, freezing actually, on this twenty-third day of October, 2043, and most of the 566,943 pedestrians in the megalopolis are in a separate world and oblivious to coinhabitants, but they all share one thing in common, one urge, one desire, one goal.
    Survival.
    The stakes are high in this restless ant farm, and it is no place for the meek or the mild.
    It is 5 P.M . on this Friday eve, and the milling masses have just bolted from the office to begin their weekends as early as possible. The most frantic activity is occurring in the epicenter, the Times Square area, where the bustling multitudes are rushing to subways, fighting for cabs, bumping into one another as they jockey for position in the frenzied race to just get out of there. Each denizen, breath cruelly visible and rising in great gray billows in the frigid autumn air, is a miniature steam engine employing survival rather than coal as a means of locomotion.
    Above and looking down at them all with an unrequited stare is a huge Nike billboard that reads WIN OR GO HOME . The irony is lost on the oblivious throngs: Is their choice to return now to their abodes the equivalent of waving a white flag? And are the ambitious ones still holed up in their workplaces and burning the five o’clock oil the ones who have opted for victory?
    On the corner of Forty-first and Seventh, a chestnut vendor, his face wizened by decades of wind and heartache, warms his gloveless hands above the sizzling merchandise. Aside from the single bag he sold about an hour ago, he has spent his entire afternoon—and much of his adult life—watching countless numbers of his fellow humans pass him by, looks of pity or disdain frozen on their faces.
    Far from and high above the madding crowd, in the luxurious penthouse at 200 East 57 th Street, the Spade family is about to sit down to an early dinner.
    “Sonuvabitch!” Ira Spade bellows, holding a copy of the New York Chronicle in front of his face.
    “Did you see this , Avis?” Ira yelps at his wife, who is in the kitchen putting up the water for the lobsters. “Says here that President Obama is planning to pull our troops out of Mongolia! What the hell is that , huh? Goddamn Democrats have been wanting to cut and run from there ever since we tried to establish freedom and justice for all eight years ago.”
    Avis, preparing a tossed salad, yes, dear s her husband of nearly twenty years.
    “Cut and run!” Ira goes on. “That’s just like Malia Ann! And just like daddy Barack did over thirty years ago, when he waved the goddam white flag and pulled us out of Afghanistan! Too bad W. didn’t have any sons, or one of them’d be prez right now, and for damn sure we wouldn’t have this goddam aggravation!”
    In his room, at the far end of the sprawling compound, Jack Spade lies, supine, on his bed. He is reading Brad Gilbert’s tennis classic Winning Ugly , the chapter titled “Destroying Your Opponent’s Game Plan.” Snapping his fingers rhythmically, he is listening to 97-year-old Mick Jagger’s new SCD, I Ain’t Old I’m Your Brother, courtesy of the iSuperMiniPod chip that has been surgically implanted in his left ear.
    Jack’s room is the tornado typical of a normal thirteen-year-old. So much detritus covers the floor—tennis stuff, video games, half-emptied bottles of Gatorade, a red-and-white electric guitar (a Fender Vintage Hot Rod ’57 Stratocaster)—that the gorgeous tan Berber carpet buried beneath is only visible here and there, sporadic bald spots on the bushy mane of gear, paraphernalia, and accessories.
    On the back of the door is a collage of head shots cut out and fashioned together by