92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

this were a film noir, he'd be the amiable shoeshine boy or the trusted informant. In this scene, for example, we set the tone of the book right away with their conversation. After greeting Happy Panda formally, Estaban presents the coffee and they agree to blame the Digital Age for their woes. Estaban asks Happy Panda about his former girlfriend Zoe. Zoe knows Hap through Estaban, and still visits him and delivers him pizza. She also keeps up with him through Hap. Happy Panda replies with the koan-like question, "If food had voices, what would those voices be?" Wilson demurs, and says he's got a package of opticals for There There, Inc., and briefly describes the company. He leaves the kiosk, and Happy Panda, but thinks that chocolate would have to be James Earl Jones, and a Polish Hot Dog would be voiced by Ed Asner. He ponders this on the way to There There. The second "act" (roughly pages 8-16) begins with Estaban entering the There There warehouse. He meets Girlboy, the mailperson, in the agoniz ingly slow elevator, where Wilson is forced to endure stories of the previous night's revelry. Girlboy is unpleasantly hung-over. They discuss the nature of identity ("What makes you you at There There?") ; is it a gender thing, or an environment thing? How does one define oneself? There are no answers in the elevator. Estaban enters the There There offices. He (and the reader) meets coder Jimmy JPEG, PR gal Les, security coder Ebola Jones, and Internet generalist URL in succession. Flip comments delineate the characters in turn (again, a self-reflexive etude on identity, as each character defines himself expositorially...), until Estaban encounters Jon Fox and gives him the disks he was delivering; Fox tells him to go to lunch and return for a package. On his way out, Estaban flirts with Ebola about the food/voice thing, and asks Happy Panda's question about the Digital Age. She comes back with a question of her own: what's with the Command D tattoo? He asks her out to lunch, offering to tell her there. She has to work and tells him no; but when she sees Estaban's obvious disap pointment, she cheers him up by offering another question to ponder: If we've had "the Gay Nineties" and "the Roaring Twenties," what will the "identity" of the new decade be? He splits, thinking, outclassed but hope ful. But what’s with that shadowy-man-sized bug-thing in the corner, spy ing on Estaban? "Act " three has Estaban and Happy Panda eating lunch. Estaban has just missed Zoe as she's dropped off a pizza for Happy Panda. Estaban and Hap return to their discussion, which Estaban amplifies by adding to the mix the new input from Ebola. "What should the new decade be called?" By exploring all of the different names for "Zero," Estaban and Happy Panda finally agree on calling it "The Naughties." Pleased with himself and full from the pizza, Estaban pedals back to There, There. When he returns to the warehouse to pick up the packages from Jon Fox, he is sidetracked by

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