"Hi, everybody. This is Mickey Cantor reminding all the fans in the upper deck to check their ticket stub against the results of our population control lottery after the game tonight. Hey, good luck, everybody. We hope we see you tomorrow."
— Mickey Cantor, Monday Night Combat
Susannah had ceased listening; her mind had fixed with horrified fascination on something the woman had said earlier. It was Spanker’s stone what come out of the hat and we set him to dance. She remembered reading Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” in college and understood that these people, the degenerate descendents of the original Pubes, were living Jackson’s nightmare. No wonder they weren’t capable of any strong emotion when they knew they would have to participate in such a grisly drawing not once a year, as in the story, but two or three times each day.
