This has been my only chance to do it in fifteen years. My husband is a crook. He’s just as bad as his father, whether he believes it or not. Jesús thinks himself to be some righteous hero but defines that through his illegal missions and selfish risks. I refuse to subject my children to such a lifestyle. The six of them (plus his sister’s four) are simply resources for Jesús: stocks, chip investments. And aside from being his fix of functionality and convenience, that’s all I am too: an asset. We want freedom; free from his apathetic and unresponsive down times followed by his high-energy aggression and intermittent busy signals. He is not a father. He is not a husband. The Plateau has transformed him into a machine, and a machine I did not marry.

I’m leaving him. I am destroying our chips and beaming the family to our time-share on the moon. Jesús and the maelstrom of the Plateau are no longer our dictators but their own. I have high hopes that they will each self-destruct.