Humans and dogs have lived in symbiosis for tens of thousands of years, each adapting to the other’s psychology. But what if that balance tipped fully toward the canine side? What if dogs, with their pack logic and clear hierarchies, became the ruling species — and humans, willingly or not, became their loyal companions?

"If you fail, it's because you weren't hungry enough, or smart, or willing to work. The formula is simple enough - sacrifice sleep, joy, time, and doubt. Replace these with measurable outcomes. Why are so many unwilling to do what is required?

In the center, on an altar, lay the sacrifice: Bad Bunny, skin mottled by the fickle light, chest rising and falling slowly. He was drugged and bound in ritual knots, hair spread like ink, moustache and goatee untamed. He smiled faintly in confusion, whispering sounds none of the other Bad Bunnys could hear.

The next thing Blue realized was that the colors had changed, and it had become very cold. He found himself gliding high above a craggy landscape, with his flippers pushing gently against a thick ether. Looking down, he saw that shadowy puddles of a dark and oily substance spotted the landscape, mirroring an orange sky.

Knock at the door. What the hell? I hate this shit. Nobody knocks on your door when you own your house because they know they get the business end of a Glock in their face. What time is it? 11 am. Who is it? I am not to be fucked with.

And up high, there’s a sweatshirt tangled in the branches, flapping rhythmically. Makes a little jam with the traffic, something to rock to, back and forth. Perfectly good sweatshirt. When I get woke up, I’m going to go over and get it.

Everyone thinks in their past lives they were very important, when it's more likely you were a serf in the fields, and lived horribly, and died horribly with a tooth infection, and all your family starved or were murdered by Mongols, and rats picked on their bones, and there were lots of mosquitos, and you had scabs. Which is why I'm glad I was a princess and had citronella candles and soft things.

Around a goldfish pond, unwashed kids tormenting love bugs, lips powder-yellow with pollen, slathered in Bahiagrass seed. The bed of an umber Ford rusts through and green is bursting bright.

Across the gray glass stain of the sky, water droplets collect and run as if chased by the wind.  They merge into rivulets.  I reach out, I strain for them with my hair, and (now we’re getting somewhere) I feel the waters of the sky run up individual strands of hair to my scalp and into the veins in my temple, into the sea, and (breathe) I open myself and start to think in a language not my own.

As the game began, the black-suited and infrared-enabled foreign agents convened deep in the dank catacombs beneath the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Opening a titanium case, they released their living weapons, a squad of four remotely mind-controlled squirrels, developed by and purchased from a Russian psychobiology team in Saransk, Mordovia. These agile drones were armed with diamond-plated teeth and nanotech ocular scanners, allowing their controllers to see through the mutat