To me, as an illuminator of the dark logic of power, Mark Doten is peerless. This story from their new collection, Whites, is told from the perspective of Elon marching through his insulated world with all the sensitivity of an astronaut in a spacesuit. Yet Elon walks through our world, increasingly of his making. Less an act of mimesis or even parody than an earnest attempt to sort through the jumbled wires of another mind, Doten’s story manages to be both rigorous and perversely playful—a hard balance to find. With words like “interface,” “innovation,” “sector,” “flow.” and “hosed,” Doten succeeds in grokking the grokker.