The only thing you should believe in is your­self, the sci­en­tists told them. The chil­dren need­ed the sci­en­tists for yum­mies and boo-boo kiss­ing, but the sci­en­tists were loath to admit they need­ed the chil­dren even more. 34, one of the sci­en­tists yelled, and from that point on it became a kind of exper­i­ment. ~Adam Peterson is the author of the flash fic­tion col­lec­tions My Untimely Death, The Flasher, and [SPOILER ALERT] (with Laura Eve Engel). His short fic­tion has appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, and else­where.