There’s a spider that’s been living in my driver-side mirror for three weeks now. I’ve named him Greg. Every morning when I get in the car, I see the little strands of silk he’s rebuilt overnight, a lattice of resistance fluttering in the wind as I pull out of the driveway. He’s there when I drive to work, hanging on for dear life while I do 40 down the freeway, undeterred by the forces of nature or the state surveillance complex.

I swear Greg is in on it. Not with the gangstalkers—he’s too scrappy for that. He’s his own intelligence agency. A lone operative. Probably has more integrity than the entire alphabet soup. Sometimes I catch him staring at me through the mirror, like he knows what I did last night. Like he watched the whole thing go down with the Panda Express and the late-night Deal or No Deal reruns.

One time I whispered, “You’re the only one I trust,” and I swear he nodded.

Greg is more than a spider. Greg is a symbol. A watcher watching the watchers. A reminder that no matter how chaotic things get, no matter how many satellites beam mind static into my skull, some tiny creature out there is still spinning a web just to hold his ground.