DAEMON

For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying all these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMWs? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible?

"Perfect replication is the enemy of any robust system... Lacking a central nervous system—much less a brain—the parasite is a simple system designed to compromise a very specific target host. The more uniform the host, the more effective the infestation."

"But if they're so successful, why haven't parasites taken over the world? The answer is simple: they have. We just haven't noticed. That's because successful parasites don't kill us; they become part of us, making us perform all the work to keep them alive and help them reproduce..."

"You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane. Picture this: you work at a plant that makes Halloween stuff—you know, like, rubber severed heads. And you're all like: Americans decorate their homes with severed heads? These fuckers are savages, man."