Third Class Superhero Read Online Free PDF

want to define the boundaries of tomorrow. I want to live life one choice at a time. I want to map the possible. I want to test the untestable. I want to measure the profound. I want to fathom the unfathomable. I want what I want. A wholly owned subsidiary of Global Risk International. More than life insurance, less than a mutual fund.
    We check out the pool.
    The cabana boy asks me: Do I believe in an infinite power?
    The poolside bartender says: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. We consider a Day Trip. The Menu of Options is truly dizzying. At the top is:
HOW TO SPEND YOUR TIME HERE
The fine print reads:
    On a typical day, a man of your age, race, height, and moral fiber makes 4,817 distinct choices. When used in compliance with the instructions, the Basic Package guarantees a maximum of three Minor Errors and one Major Error per day. You also get three Take Backs and a midlife Do-Over.
    "When does the Authenticity start?" my wife says. "I want to have some Experiences."
    We make Excursions. We pay à la carte. We explore secret islands. We take detours off the Beaten Paths. We hide in caves. We cover ourselves with mud (extra charge). We eat more buffets.
    After a couple of weeks, ennui sets in. We are bored with paradise.
    "Let's go home," my wife says. "I want to go home."
    Home. I can picture it. We'll go back to our lives. We'll pull up the imported gravel driveway. I'll kick open the fancy imported door we bought for ourselves. It'll be Sunday Afternoon. It's always Sunday Afternoon there. Everything is perfect. Everything is fine. Ninetieth percentile. Golf is always on TV. A swirl of yearnings: a mixture of what I want, what I know I'll never have, what I am told to want, what I am afraid of, what doesn't exist. Every thirty, sixty, ninety seconds, the world completely changes. I will watch the golf, I will feel very Visit-Your-Lexus-Dealer-Today. A deep-down, in-your-gut feeling.
    Our vacation is ending, our vacation is over. We pack our bags. We wave good-bye to the resort.
    The captain comes on the PA. We buckle ourselves in.
    Just before takeoff, I lean over and whisper to my wife.
    "There's got to be more," I say.

    "What?" she says. The plane is roaring.
    "I said there has got to be more." I am screaming.
    Okay, buddy,
she mouths back at me,
lead the way.

The Man Who Became Himself
    HE WAS TURNING into something unspeakable.

    At the office, people avoided the issue.
    David, they would say, how are you? You
, they said. To be polite.
    Others noticed but pretended not to. As if they weren't always staring and whispering and wondering. Assuming it could never happen to them.
    David, for his part, played along, glad to make small talk. He asked about their children, looked at pictures of dogs and cats and trips to Tahoe. David moved his mouth, made the right sounds, gave people what they expected. The men talked about sports, mostly, and the women, if they could help it, didn't talk to him at all.
    ***
    IT HAD REALLY STARTED a month earlier. Or not.
    Whatever it was, if it was an it, it had started a month earlier.

    If it was more of a lack of an it, then it had stopped about a month earlier.
    Or started to stop. Or stopped starting. It had happened or not happened. Either way, something or nothing. Either way: about a month earlier.
    It or not-it was not any single change. It or not-it was a lot of changes, not all at once and not connected by any pattern or nonpattern.
    There was, for instance, the habit David had developed of referring to himself, daily and with increasing frequency, in the third person.
    "Everyone wants to know what David's going to do," he liked to say. Which was true. Everyone did, in fact, want to know what David was going to do. It wasn't arrogance. David was, without a doubt, arrogant, but it wasn't
just
arrogance. Still, this happened often enough that even David started to notice David referring to David as David.
    "I'm so sick of it," he said one night. This was