Michael McFarland (president of the College of the Holy Cross) once wrote, “Privacy is important. Reverence for the human person as an end in itself and as an autonomous being requires respect for personal privacy. To lose control of one's personal information is in some measure to lose control of one's life and one's dignity. Therefore, even if privacy is not in itself a fundamental right, it is necessary to protect other fundamental rights.” Today, I stand resolved that privacy, which “is necessary to protect…fundamental rights,” is undervalued.

A girl named Jessa slips her hand through a coffee mug, with Monet on the outside and chai on the inside. A boy named Eli reads out a Psalm from his grandfather's cocoa leather Bible, pages taped into a cracking spine. This is Wednesday afternoon. She's a photographer; he works in the bookstore they're at a table in front of. She's from Mississippi; he's from London. He misses his home, she feels it in his words. They met the day he overheard her quoting Mrs. Browning's sixth Sonnet. Against her nature, she trusted him. He makes her laugh; she makes him smile.

Petty finished munching on an apple as he watched Johnson load the last crate of food. "Captain, how are we going to kill Kelman? I've heard that he's taken over an old battlestation and fitted it out as a fortress. How are we going to get in there without getting shot to pieces?"
"Petty, what's the first thing you learned in boot camp?"
"Uh, to keep out of Sargeant Heft's sight?"
"Exactly."
"But how can we get into the base without being seen?"

Chapter Two

I stumble out of the car and practically run to the undergrowth by the sheer rock face of the mountain. There was no way I could hold it anymore. I think my pee has frozen in my bladder for awhile. I shiver and try to keep my jeans from getting wet in the snow. It was hard to crouch down, it was awkward and I feel cold and wet. Finally I start to pee. But as soon as the urine hits the ground, a familiar red, rusting, truck appears on the top of the hill and starts to drive down to where we were.

It’s a thankless job.

The coffee pot usually wakes her every morning like clockwork—four-thirty a.m. Some days she’d like to sleep in until five but it’s a luxury that comes with a price. Because if she did get in that extra half-hour, she’d miss saying goodbye to her husband, and have to hurry over the paper and breakfast. So she would rather not.

Williams sighed as he leaned back in his chair. Finally, after years of working, fighting and dreaming, he was ready. He grinned, and muttered to himself, "Tomorrow, we leave tomorrow."
He jumped as his geo-cell buzzed. Flipping the top up, he glanced at the caller ID. It was an unknown number, apparently not in the Geo-centric Call Identifier network. Williams pressed the "Receive" button, and leaned back in his chair. "Carthagon."
"Carthagon, William A. Captain, Delmos Special Forces, 154th Division. Retired?" The voice sounded bored, as if reading from a script.

GPS
God Please Save
Me
(Gigantic Paralyzing Slopes)

Chapter one

“Recomputing, recomputing, recomputing.”

A summary taken from the internet:

O, Scotland, what hast thou done with thy noble sons?
And with thy daughters, for they, too, are gone from thee.
Thy gibbet has robbed thee of thy worthiest ones,
That loved ye, labored, aye, toiled for your good.
Ye have sent them to the grave with your wicked guns.

Her eyes were like almonds, so full and dark that he often got lost in them. He wondered—if she allowed him in, what would he find inside? He savored the succulent flesh inside of a nut; he imagined knowing her would taste sweeter.