CHAPTER TWELVEThe birds began returning to the aviary flight deck just as Beep arrived at the kennel gate. There was excitement in the rafters when he opened the coop door. A few pinfeathers floated down like snow. He reached over the door and switched on the radio. Paul Spriole was back on the airwaves after wandering for forty days and nights in a jobless wasteland. He’d been credited, after all, with collapsing the station’s happiness index or some such gauging mechanism. Beep’s foul mood some mornings was proof of that.
The producers brought aboard the bubbly Amanda Nufeldt. In Amanda’s world it was warm and sunny. Traffic moved at a comfortable pace, and very few bad things happened in the world without generous compromise. “An exchange of rocket-fire near the Syrian border ended wit
