Fortune Smiles

Contents

"Nirvana"

An unnamed narrator in the near future lives with his paraplegic wife Charlotte in Palo Alto. After the recent assassination of the President of the United States, the narrator creates a digital simulacrum of him and releases it on the internet, which mitigates the national mourning. Additionally, an iProjector reanimates his body and voice, which the narrator uses to discuss his life complications. Among them is how to cope with his wife's condition; while it is possible to make a full recovery, his wife seems like a lost cause as she has not shown signs of improvement. He tries his best to console her, but most of her days are spent listening to Nirvana and smoking pot.

After work one day, his boss SJ, short for Sanjay, visits him at his house. SJ wants to privatize the digital simulacrum of the president. The narrator refuses, but repairs a small drone while they talk. They learn that Google sent a drone after him in an effort to learn more about him. That night, he learns that Charlotte wants to have a baby. That night, alone, he consults the reanimated president for advice, but to not much avail. After a clumsy act of intercourse where he is unsure of what he is doing and Charlotte cries halfway through, he stops, puts on headphones playing Nirvana on Charlotte's ears, and retreats to his garage. He works through the night and creates a simulacrum of Kurt Cobain and presents it to Charlotte. Convinces that he is real, Charlotte urges Cobain to "don't do what your thinking about" as the narrator looks on and realize that she would embrace Cobain at a moments notice if she could.

"Dark Meadow"

A man, referred to as Mr. Roses, lives in a bungalow North Hollywood publishes a paper titled "Is Your Pornography Watching You?" online under a the pseudonym Dark Meadow. Across the street he notices two young girls whose parents are often absent from their household, which he nicknames the Tiger and the Cub. He also admits that of the two, Cub "activates" him.

One day he is called for a IT repair job in Van Nuys. Mr. Roses notices that this man possesses child pornography on his computer. He sympathetically completes the job and refers the paper that Dark Meadow wrote to the man as a warning. A few days later, Officer Jaime Hernandez from the Crimes Against Minor task force visits him, requesting his assistance as Hernandez settles into his new position. Hernandez asks if he thinks Dark Meadow is trying to warn pornographers and Mr. Roses responds nonchalantly. Hernandez also asks him about his time as a Sea Scout when he was young, to which he responds that it was a short-lived time in his early life.

The following day, the Tiger and the Cub have a yard sale, to which Mr. Roses buys a painting from them. Later that day, they visit him and report to him that someone is peeping at them. After some investigation, he finds semen by one of the house's window. He instructs them to lock the doors to their house that night. The next day, he travels to Sun Valley to clean the computers of pornographers who saw the recent article by Dark Meadow. While he is cleaning the servers, he catches a glimpse of one of their screens. When the leader of the group asks him if he wants "some," the girl from the video walks out in a bathrobe. Mr. Roses flees from the scene, heads home, destroys his computer's RAM, and drives around for the rest of the day, revisiting a few places he went as a Sea Scout.

When he arrives home that night, the Tiger and the Cub are waiting for him and says that the peeper still lurks. He tells them to stay at his place. Later that night, they lie together on the same sofa-bed. He reveals to them that "Something bad happened to me" when he was young, referring to his time as a Sea Scout when he was abused. After they start lulling, he sees the opportunity to slip away into his backyard and masturbate.

"Interesting Facts"

A terminally ill wife, the narrator of the story, and her husband return to their Haight home after a bookstore reading. Because the reading regarded a male widow who waits more than a year before dating again, the narrator asks her husband how long he would wait. He responds by avoiding the question. They also have three children; the youngest reiterates interesting facts, a habit the narrator picks up.

Before the narrator dies, she introduced her husband to Megumi, a single mother whose child goes to the same school as he children. When the narrator dies, she becomes a ghost and oversees her husband's transition. She grows jealous of him because he is a successful writer who borrowed some of her ideas as well as how close he is with Megumi so soon after her death. Ultimately, he lies by their children as she looks on, taking keen notice of their youngest child.

"Fortune Smiles"

DJ, short for Dongjoo, and Sun-ho are recent North Korean defectors living in Seoul and they meet often at fast food restaurants to discuss their transition into South Korean life. Both are nostalgia for their old homes; DJ admits that his life was not as miserable as the media makes it out to be because he had an education while Sun-ho is unable to stop thinking about his muse in Pyongyang named Willow. To ease his lovelorn heart, they take a trip to the DMZ and Sun-ho release balloons with a Whopper meal attached, hoping it will reach her. They also often examine and discuss lottery tickets, especially the high-quality Fortune Smiles tickets.

Both have to attend mandatory meetings so that the government can access their assimilation. For DJ, he encounters Mina, a defector who plays North Korean songs with her accordion in public, at a Christian-sponsored meeting in Gwanak. She says she does this because she is looking for her husband. When DJ introduces her to Sun-ho, they talk and eventually reveal why they had to leave: a friend warned them that they may be blamed for a sickness spreading in Pyongyang due to their background in production. Subsequently, they drive to the Chinese border and defect without much hardship as they often have to deliver monthly goods into China anyway.

When they decide to float more objects past the DMZ, they run into Seo, a similarly-minded defector; he wants to drop pamphlets titled "Kim Jong-un Is a War Criminal." Sun-ho argues that such propaganda is useless and he would rather float a jacket and other provisions. When it seems as if Sun-ho has won the argument, Seo points out that his balloons have "Happy Birthday" written on them and that he is honoring Kim Jong-il as his birthday is in three days.

Sun-ho finally invites DJ and Mina to come to his defector meeting in Gangnam. However, it turns out that Sun-ho does not attend such meetings and instead takes them to the top of tallest building in the district. He reveals his hopeful plan to float back into North Korea and reunite with Willow with the help of a belt attached to hundreds of balloons. When he is out of sight, DJ and Mina muse together at the Seoul skyline.