Down the War-Hole
Alice’s Very Bad, No Good, Totally Unsurprising Adventure Alice was tired. Really, really tired. Not the "I stayed up too late watching cat videos" tired, but the profound, bone-deep exhaustion that comes from listening to smart people with serious faces debate the same three problems over and over again. She was sitting, quite inappropriately, by a river. Not a nice, water-filled river, but a rushing current made entirely of laminated maps and discarded newspapers. It was a river of endless analysis, and frankly, it was a bit damp and smelled faintly of printer ink and desperation. The main topic, as always, was the Middle East. Alice had come to believe that this vast, complex region was less a geographical place and more a conceptual Rubik's Cube that every global power felt compelled to try and solve, only to get frustrated, mix the colors back up, and throw it at someone else. She was just about to fall asleep and possibly drown in editorial opinion when a noise made...