Over the next few weeks, Marie, Jones, and Mr. Ellison were tasked with packing up all of their belongings for the big switcheroo that Mr. Ellison had proposed. Mr. Ellison had a lot more possessions to pack up than Marie, and Jones had only arrived in Greater Columbia with a backpack. There were a lot of possessions that Mr. Ellison suggested that the pair of youngsters keep, as he would have no use for them anymore. Chief among these items was the upright piano that Mr. Ellison had specifically ordered for Marie, turns out. He also gifted the two a vast collection of his paintings, surreal, colorful things that, in the end, covered every single square inch of wall within the apartment. Marie, in the process of moving in, took down one of these paintings, hung it up in the bathroom, and replaced it with the poster from the book of Debussy concertos that Jones had gifted her years ago.

During these last few weeks, Marie kept up a very rigorous phone relationship with Stephen Lawrence Jr., whose letter to her dead father she kept so that she wouldn’t forget the number written next to the return address. She told Stephen that she gave Jones the typewriter that he had gifted Carl Joyce years ago and congratulated the pair on making a little domestic hole for themselves.

“That’s what it’s all about.” Stephen said. “Making a little domestic hole full of art that you can comfortably and contently die in.” It was at this point, during their first phone conversation, that Jones asked Marie who she was talking to. Marie politely let Stephen go and then explained:

“Stephen Lawrence Jr.” She said.

“The memoirist?” Jones asked, baffled.

“The what?”

“Stephen Lawrence Jr. was a soldier who went AWOL from the United States and fled to Canada. After the war he wrote a memoir about it.” Jones pulled out their electronic reader and brought up a copy of Stephen Lawrence Jr.’s memoir, Disposable Firearm. The book itself was part memoir, part political commentary. The political commentary part was a scathing condemnation of the Pan-American Alliance and their promise that the world would be free from conflict from now until the end of the time, thanks to the consolidation of the world.

Stephen Lawrence Jr. described this as:

“...bullshit. Absolute bullshit. The world will never be free from conflict as long as there are people who have and people who don’t have. All this consolidation does is paint a broad brush of the human race, something that has never and will never work in attempting to rid the world of conflict. Trust me, within the next century, there will be a new war. Not of nation versus nation, but of people who don’t have versus people who have.”

The book itself was published by the much more successful company, stating in their editor’s note at the beginning of the book that “Mr. Lawrence’s opinions do not reflect the opinions of [the much more successful company] or [the much more successful company’s CEO]. … We do, however, find it important, according to the Pan-American Alliance’s official stance on free speech, that Mr. Lawrence is able to express said opinions.”

When questioned about it by Marie, Stephen simply said that the book was “nothing important. They’re the ramblings of an old fart shaking a boney finger at the world around him rather than doing any damn thing about it.” Marie, reading his memoir, tended to disagree, asking him questions about the contents of such on her regular phone calls.

And so that became the routine among the little drab apartment that contained Marie’s life; Jones would work on their book and Marie would work, reading Stephen’s memoir on breaks. At night, she decided that it would be her set time to practice the piano. Slowly, the thing began to become second nature to her again. When she sat down, playing on the cheap plastic keyboard in her lap, she felt as though that the instrument was an extension of herself, feeling as natural as if she was born with a piano attached to her fingers.

Eventually, after a few weeks of this splendid routine, Marie, Jones, and Mr. Ellison made the designated switcheroo between apartments. At this point, Jones was about halfway done with their novel about superheroes.