“You look over at Drew, squinting at the sun, and for a second the future tunnels out and away, some version of ‘you’ at the end of it, looking back. And right then you feel it—what you’ve seen in people’s faces on the street—a swell of movement, like an undertow, rushing you toward something you can’t quite see.

‘Oh, we’ll know each other forever,’ Bix says. ‘The days of losing touch are almost gone.’

‘What does that mean?’ Drew asks.

‘We’re going to meet again in a different place,’ Bix says. ‘Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us.’

‘Where? How?’ Drew asks.

Bix hesitates, like he’s held this secret so long he’s afraid of what will happen when he releases it into the air. ‘I picture it like Judgment Day,’ he says finally, his eyes on the water. ‘We’ll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We’ll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it’ll seem strange, and pretty soon it’ll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost.'”

—Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad