It began, as was typical even in those days, with a sheet of typewriter parchment swaddled in a manila envelope, deposited beneath a door. Once opened and unfolded––glasses retrieved from a drawer––the message read:

1. Attend Texas A&M.

2. Be happy about it.

Abraham’s whole life was in front of him, so he didn’t mind attending Texas A&M, even though it wouldn’t have been his first choice. Rice was where his mother went to school, and where his aunt went to school, and where his uncle went to school. They’d all resided in Baker College, all thrown friends into the Warwick fountain on birthdays, all sprinted through the designated university library during the designated day of finals adorned––as dictated by ritual––only in whipped cream.

Abraham knew this disappointment would build character, would prepare him for the dashed hopes inevitable to the human experience. Even so, if limited to large public schools in the state, it would have been nice to go to the University of Texas. Abraham had grown up, it just so happens, rooting for Mac Brown and the Horns. Vince Young’s 4th & 5 sauntering scramble into the Rose Bowl end zone with nineteen seconds left––shocking Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush and the world––had meant, well, the world to him as a kid. But, as his father always said, “you play the hand you’re dealt,” and as the instructions always said:

There exists a single path along which no one can go except you.

Abraham had planned on majoring in psychology, imagined becoming a school counselor who prepared kids for the suffering endemic to the human experience and who helped guide them towards the sorts of compromise in which individual desire is acknowledged if not prioritized and sacrifices are compelled by employers though not intrinsically incompatible with personal systems of value. The American dream and all that. So, when a manila envelope deposited beneath Abraham’s dorm room door let him know that he was now a business major, Abraham didn’t respond in the most appropriate of ways.

He didn’t mean––per se––to send that hastily composed email to the department listserv, or to arrange for that packaged cricket delivery to the relevant dean, or to burn down the 107-year-old building housing the Classics Department. Abraham had been angry, been angry, fallen asleep smoking a cigarette, respectively. Despite what this youthful exuberance might suggest, however, he needed to believe that he had been set on this path only after deep contemplation and consideration of all factors. Our protagonist expected that he or she or they responsible for supplying the documentation which served as an air-tight alibi clearing Abraham of the arson had his best interests at heart with every command, every commandment, every 25¢ straight-cut legal-sized manila envelope. He hoped that, well, there was hope for self-actualization yet, in spite of it all.

A tenacious anxiety gnawed on his psyche whenever weeks elapsed without new manila envelopes, new instructions, new directives from above. Why me of all people? Abraham wanted to ask. Why now of all times? And why this of all tasks, this of all fates, this of all universes? Then, as if on cue, he’d be ordered to visit a certain café or movie theater or bowling alley at a certain time; ordered to study a certain couple or projectionist or custodian for contextual clues regarding their allegiances and loyalties; ordered to record notes in a phone while appearing to text or to plant a listening device in an unseen location or to snap photos using a device which only superficially appeared to be a set of car keys; ordered to do so many things in order to protect the national interests of the most powerful country in all the world, whatever the cost.

As an extraordinary college student performing the role of a typical college student, Abraham needed to fit in. He shotgunned cheap beers stored in automobile trunks and asked boring girls to school dances and complained about the quality of dining hall food anytime peers were within earshot. He trusted that his supervisor––whoever he or she or they might be––recognized the myriad ways in which the development of this persona could solidify his value as an asset. Abraham would complete academic assignments and homeland security assignments and retreat to Kyle Field on Saturday nights to cheer on the football team, dark circles under his eyes and whiskey on his breath.

The compulsion to comply was greater than himself, external to instinct. A result of reconciling individual fate with our collective inheritance. In exchange for his services, Abraham was provided shelter and sustenance and the chance to opt out of the paradoxes of choice. Years down the road, provided the career arc turned out as planned, he knew there was a four-bedroom single-family home in the suburbs to look forward to, a time-share in the Caribbean, a company car. He learned to build a life on the hope of tomorrow, trying his best to ignore any awareness of the fact that tomorrow is always one day closer to the end of the story.

Deloitte wasn’t exactly where Abraham would have envisioned himself a few years after college graduation were we living according to different sorts of rules in a different sort of society, but then again, student loans don’t pay for themselves! Neither, as it turns out, do car loans pay for themselves, nor mortgages, nor destination weddings in the Tuscan countryside. There were weeks spent trying to track down a villa without a winery or a winery without a villa. His fiancé Claudia’s instructions were very specific on this front, and the instructions contained within the latest manila envelope left no room for interpretative latitude either.

1. Make Claudia happy.

2. Happy wife = happy life (for now, at least).

3. Years from now, you will be bequeathed a son. Name him Isaac. He will learn to resent you, and this resentment will provide a necessary incentive.

Claudia was a great partner, let there be no confusion. She listened attentively when others were talking, enjoyed folding laundry, never lost her temper, and blew away dinner party guests with her famous spaghetti Bolognese. Abraham boiled the pasta with precision, Claudia mocked the pains Abraham took to follow the directions on the packaging exactly as written, and Abraham mocked her mockery of this––his sole role in the kitchen––by asking how she could love such a hopeless pasta boiler. From the outside looking in, they were the perfect couple. Meanwhile, Abraham was too afraid to ask if she too had been instructed to date him, to fuck him, to marry him. We all have our questions. We all have our suspicions.

Wedding preparations went according to plan until a new plan was slipped beneath the bridal suite’s doors shortly after their arrival in Cortona:

1. It is time, after all these years, to reintegrate your sister into the family.

Claudia couldn’t understand Abraham’s change of heart, couldn’t understand his refusal to explain his change of heart, couldn’t understand why he’d insisted on packing a shredding machine to begin with, let alone why he’d needed to use it at three in the morning. Still, she loved him––or had been instructed to love him––and did not argue.

An ocean away from her support system, on the same continent as their mother and father, Erica never saw it coming. Erica never saw it coming because these same instructions––so quickly destroyed by Abraham––insisted:

2. She isn’t to be warned.

3. Your parents aren’t to be warned.

4. The three of them are to be seated not only together, but at the very same table as Nana.

Oh, gosh. It’s all too much. Erica never had a chance.

After Erica and Nana were wheeled away in separate ambulances, hushed whispers and raised eyebrows characterized the rest of the wedding festivities.

At the very least––Abraham tried and failed to convince Claudia during their nine-hour-and-twenty-three-minute flight across Atlantic––no one would ever remember that the love of his life jeopardized the cybersecurity of the European Union in her vows. No one would ever remember that Dale walked through that glass door on coke, or that Dale claimed Abraham had given him the coke, forced him to take it, even, because “some instructions” from “some manila envelope” told Abraham that Dale “had no choice.” Abraham didn’t think their guests even needed manila envelopes slipped beneath hotel room doors to guide them in this forgetting. Erica’s episodes had always left quite the impression. But as Nana would always say before adding that mysterious powder to their food while young, and as Nana once again said while sprinkling who knows what into Erica’s appetizer mere minutes before the fated toast, and as Abraham’s handler would always type onto the untanned skin of dead animals which conveyed his orders,

In this disordered existence, leave nothing to chance.

Unpacking clothes and toiletries from suitcases that night, Abraham continued to cope, continued to look on the bright side of things. Abraham is a hero to billions, after all, not because he is better than us, but because he is us and we are him. While his worldview had grown increasingly complex as the circumstances of life supplied pain and pleasure in unequal measure, any such development was incidental to the necessity of the belief that he was on this planet for a reason, that this reason was a good one, that his creator was as good as their reasoning in ushering him into a universe mostly characterized by chaos and death.

Married life was everything Abraham had been led to believe. Nothing more, nothing less. For a while, he did the same things he’d always done. Abraham received instructions and read instructions and followed instructions. Abraham ate his morning toast in bed, watched Good Morning America in bed, told Claudia she looked beautiful from bed as she put on her clothes and face. Tie tied, armpit moistness mopped with tissues on the way to the minivan, to all appearances but the one which mattered most, Abraham was a creature of routine, a creature of habit. But rather than head into the office, he’d gladly give or receive some after driving to the latest location of the latest individual Abraham was required to seduce or murder in order to save the nation from the latest threat to its supremacy.

Things were not beyond salvation at this point. Overwhelmed by excessive foreshadowing, Abraham briefly began to wonder what it would be like to do other things. Abraham began to imagine searching for the unknown recesses of desire: to crochet, perhaps, or volunteer at animal shelters, or perform karaoke renditions of one-hit wonders with perfect strangers. In other words, he considered revolt.

But as this or that manila envelope reminded Abraham again and again and again,

Without these instructions, you are a meager man filled with doubt and fear, too confused to even know who or how you love, too terrified to choose paper or plastic when asked by an overworked and underpaid grocery store clerk. Over the days and years and decades of your meaningless life, these instructions have erased absence, provided purpose while drawing the very outlines of who you are. Most importantly, these instructions have never made an unkept promise.

And it was true. The instructions were often brutal, but for as long as could be remembered, the instructions had always been there, resting under the door of the room in which Abraham happened to exist. For as long as could be remembered, instructions had been there for Abraham, providing life with a sense of direction, a sense of certainty divorced from the terror of self-discovery, the terror of the thought of impermanence once the lights turn off and he was not so much shrouded by darkness as subsumed by an indivisible poverty. His mother was always at the hairdresser, or Jimmy’s. His father was always at the skating rink, or Tiffany’s. Abraham’s instructions were always folded thrice over within a manila envelope with his name on it. This was the order of things.

He’d never had any illusions about what the responsibility entailed. Fuck this or that person, threaten this or that person with this or that weapon or weaponized information, commit industrial espionage for this or that agent with this or that agenda serving this or that domestic or foreign interest. The disguises made everything much easier, though mustaches never stuck the way they should. It was a problem with the adhesive. It was Abraham’s most substantive critique of the entire operation.

When he hit the labradoodle in the dead of night, Abraham knew it was dead and knew he’d be dead too and soon, if Claudia ever got wind of the slip-up. He was nowhere near the route he was ostensibly taking to and from work every day. Covers would be blown; alarm bells would ring. Thankfully, the only cause for alarm was, in fact, the alarm waking Claudia each and every day at 5:30 a.m. Abraham had five hours. Abraham hurried.

Abraham buried the dead dog and buried his feelings about the dead dog and tried (and failed) to bury the knowledge that when considered from the perspective of the planet, he and the dog were more alike than not, were but a single wave of sound born from the strumming of a single guitar string which deteriorates even as it grows inside an emptiness more claustrophobic than the coffin in the back of his van, conspicuously parked on the side of the country road twenty yards away.

Thinking of his childhood dog, Sawyer, Abraham tried (and failed) not to picture himself and Sawyer and the nameless dog in his arms as a single wave from a father’s outstretched arm offered in lieu of love or acknowledgment that neither Abraham nor his father nor these two dogs amounted to more than a muffled laugh escaping from the lips of a vast nothingness expanding in space only because the only entity fortunate enough to father itself has invented the first barely remembered joke, and because the diaphragm must expand to laugh and cry and breathe because the diaphragm must draw air to fill the void because there’s nothing we can do but go on.

After all, Abraham had no choice. After all these years, he still remembered that the very first set of instructions––stuffed between the bars of his crib––had said, once infant Abraham managed to bite through the manila envelope:

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. You are an instrument devoid of inherent purpose and have been granted the dignity of proximity to objects on which you may exercise. Build an acceptance around this single fact. Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Dirt seeping into socks, callouses developing on hands cradling a shovel as tightly as he had cradled Isaac when his son was but a baby, Abraham thought of his father. As his father always said––either because his father tried to make the best of things even in the worst of times or because his father purposefully facilitated the worst of times so that he might simulate an attempt to make the best of things––“you play the hand you’re dealt.”

It was easy for his father to say this. His father, as far as Abraham knew, never received manila envelopes containing instructions, whether beneath doors or within mailboxes or on top of vehicles, held down by windshield wipers. When he was dealt a hand, he could play it however he liked. He never had national security to worry about, Abraham’s father. When he went to Texas A&M, majored in Business, worked at Deloitte, got married, had affairs, lost jobs, killed things, Abraham’s father was answering only to desire, as unspeakable as it invariably is. He acted, however unnaturally, only in accordance with the firing synapses of his own brain.

This was Abraham’s assumption until having a son of his own. Before that day, he had never stopped to consider whether the manila envelopes would have mentioned if his father too was in the practice of receiving manila envelopes. Abraham never saw his father studiously monitoring the gaps beneath doors the way Abraham studiously monitored the gaps beneath doors. Abraham always assumed the manila envelopes would have mentioned if his father too was in the practice of making assumptions about who received manila envelopes and how they received them.

Come to think of it, his father’s complicity in forsaking the search in exchange for assured direction would certainly explain why, during the divorce, he called Abraham a bitch, called his mother a cunt, told Abraham his mother had called him a cunt, and told his mother Abraham had called her a bitch. He was quite the character, though due to genetics or an inability to rebel and pursue the freedoms of passion which follow embracing the absurd collision of human need and the unreasonable silence of the world, Abraham supposed he'd never know.

Then again, a million other explanations could address the discrepancies between who Abraham’s father professed himself to be and who his actions revealed he truly was. The one thing Abraham always understood about his father was his father’s relationship to hands of cards, even if Abraham could never know if human hands were responsible for designing his own hand or if meaningless randomness was to blame for his dwindling chips, his scars.

Whether a father, a state, or a celestial being, Abraham would have liked to blame something for his pain from time to time. As he carefully maneuvered the company van into the garage of his suburban home, Abraham wished he knew who to shake his fist at during moments like this, when he thought about the dog he killed and the dog he loved and the man he loved and wished to kill and the diaphragm’s need to repeat itself into oblivion.

In any case, just like his father before him, Abraham made sure to play every single hand he was dealt. The instructions slipped under the bathroom door while he washed away the dirt and hurt were as explicit as ever.

1. It is time to escalate marital friction through the revelation of a gambling addiction.

Abraham did as he does to this day: comply. He follows orders, same as anyone. Same as everyone.

The divorce went about as well as could be expected...which is to say extraordinarily poorly. For the sake of lowering the child support, Abraham secured and immediately lost another job. He hid assets in the Cayman Islands and the field behind the abandoned munitions depot where he gave his operational targets the business. The instructions instructed him to mention the instructions to the presiding mediators, and the information had the desired effect. The custodians of the court took pity on Abraham. They suggested he seek help. Seek guidance from qualified professionals. All Abraham could do was laugh. The instructions had everything covered.

2. Laugh early and often regardless of context.

The effect was perfectly unsettling, perfect for conveying the effects of a coherent damage beyond comprehension. All Abraham could do was call Isaac a bitch, call his mother a cunt, tell Isaac his mother had called Isaac a cunt, and tell his mother Isaac had called her a bitch. For their collective sake, Abraham made sure to take no pleasure in the labor. Everything went according to plan.

Isaac grew up, graduated from Texas A&M, went into the same business with the same sort of people. Isaac had not contacted Abraham in months. Then, orders were delivered in the usual way, and Abraham scheduled brunch.

1. It’s time.

2. The consequences are not yours to bear.

3. You’ve done everything the instructions have ever asked you to do.

4. After one last sacrifice, it will all be over, finally. An early retirement (in a sense).

The decision was out of Abraham’s hands. The decision was out of the hands attached to his son, which caught footballs when Abraham had been instructed to throw footballs into those hands years before, hands which once cradled the convulsing pet hamster poisoned by a rare chemical cocktail the CIA was testing before manufacturing on an industrial scale, hands which now cradled Abraham’s convulsing face as snot and tears dribbled onto Isaac’s face. Scared and confused, Isaac assured his apologizing father that Abraham had been a perfectly stereotypical dad. That he loved him in spite of everything, but that it was perhaps time to call a paramedic. Abraham relayed his orders, explained that the bottomless sangria had been dosed with tranquilizers, begged for forgiveness.

Why me of all people, father? Isaac asked, tears in his eyes. Why now of all times, this of all tasks and fates and universes, Abraham?

Every father wants a better life for their child than they themselves lived, Abraham said, diaphragm expanding and expanding and expanding while carrying his son’s temporarily paralyzed body up and up and up the steep mountain. Asked by my personal God to sacrifice what I love most, again and again and again I have kept faith and not doubted. Again and again and again I have believed the absurd. Abraham deposited his son on a flat rock, gulping water from a canteen before continuing.

The instructions must exist because the creator of the instructions must exist because without a God there is no you or I or after, Abraham said. Keep the faith, son. If you keep the faith, I’m sure that a manila folder will arrive just in time with instructions to withdraw the demand of your sacrifice, just as I’m sure that I’ll do what needs to be done if the manila folder I’m sure will arrive never does.

Eyes scanning the sky, knife glinting in the sunlight, Isaac tried to laugh or tried to cry or tried to breathe. It was hard to tell the difference. The diaphragm must expand. For better and for worse, there are billions of people in the world, Isaac, and for better and for worse, we’ll believe anything if it helps us survive.