CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

In this story, an unnamed, male protagonist, presumably white, runs a “personal interactive holography” franchise and has lost his wife, Elizabeth, to a drunk driver prior to the story’s narrative present. Consumed by guilt because the protagonist and Elizabeth fought bitterly on the day she died, the protagonist calls GuiltMasters, a “brother/sister psychiatric team” that “wear cowls and capes and stand on either side of a sobbing neurotic woman [in their TV ads]” (65). When the protagonist calls and tells the sister, Jean Fleen, his story, there’s no sound on the other end of the line. The brother, Bob, gets on the line and asks if it’s alright if the service calls him back, but then never does. We learn that it’s been three years since Elizabeth died.

The protagonist goes to work, but the business isn’t doing well because it’s outdated. He chooses a module called “Bowling with the Pros” but then gets mad at the holograph of a man who asks him to bowl: “He asks isn’t bowling a lovely recreation? I tell him I’m in mourning. He says the hours spent in a bowling alley with friends certainly make for some fantastic memories years down the line.