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I’m afraid.”
                  “She’s pregnant.”
                  “I know."  Her eyes told the tale.  "We weren’t able to save the baby.”
                  The void closed in over him once again. 
                  “We’ll know more in the next few hours.”
                  He nodded.
     

Chapter Five
    Insipid
     
     
                  Hack dropped his pencil. 
    He didn’t write with it, he chewed on it, and when he was working there were usually tiny bits of yellow #2 imbedded between his teeth.  He chased the growing irritation away with a swig of cold coffee and glanced at his cigarette, untouched since the first drag.  It teetered on the edge of his desk, the fragile curve of ash its only anchor.
                  He knew how the butt felt.
                  He had cut his teeth on the closing of the Viet Nam war.  Journalism then had been like eating in Vegas, cheap and in bulk – it was a whole new world of reality where soldiers and politicians couldn’t hide from their actions.  The world couldn’t get enough of the first hand reports, and this was doubly true of the second hand spin offs that seemed to fuel the endless debate and speculation that were the 60’s. 
    College had always been in his plans; his family had seen to that, but the threat of "service" in the jungles had focused his desire to ensconce himself in a profession that, were he to be called, would keep him as far away from the Viet Cong as possible. 
    He wasn’t a coward like his friends who moved to Canada – and he wasn’t stupid, either.  His family was here, and they had the money.  He was just pragmatic.  Why get killed for nothing when there was so much to live for?
    So journalism seemed a safe route.  And it had been.  Safe and profitable.
    There were no jungle patrols for Irving Hack, then just nineteen years old, and the easy fame and high–end paychecks for a no holds barred reporter was a narcotic without equal.  Unfortunately, the war had ended.  Still, in those blissful years of playing without a net, Irving had learned that he needed neither caution nor restraint.  He was untouchable.  He gambled with his money, his career, and his friends as if they were all easily replaced, because they were.  He blundered along, shielded by old connections, fueled by a vast stockpile of hundred dollar bills, expensive vodka, and the ever present knowledge that he was able to create the news that people wanted to read.  There was no fear.
    He swung his focus to civil rights and civil unrest after foreign jungles had become lackluster in the public eye, but such editorials were increasingly lost in the miles of film on the cutting room floor: journalistic television had come into its own after its powerful debut in South East Asia, become emboldened throughout Cold War, and as of the 1st of June, 1980, it had instantly evolved from thrice daily to all day, every day.  Television news was a juggernaut the likes of which the world of print had never imagined, but even television had to yield to seeds planted during its own infancy.  Packet switching technology had come on the scene with unintended stealth.  Quite simply, no one cared that two computer geeks could make their computers talk between UCLA and Menlo Park.  That was in 1970.  By 2010, there were more than two billion people doing exactly the same thing but at vastly exaggerated rates, and with greatly exaggerated expectations.  Hack had lived through it all, teetering back and forth from one sensation to another before finally finding his niche.
                  Now he stared at his computer screen and rolled the mauled pencil between his palms.  “Fuck," he breathed.  He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and gave himself a spin with his foot to survey his little kingdom.  As the chair reluctantly rotated his girth, he smiled at