The Queue's Algorithm
It’s 2:30 a.m. in the West Ashley Target parking lot, or it is in my head, which is the only parking lot I get. I half see the line snaking around the building, a chain of headlights, the way PEOPLE describes the crowd that had gathered overnight. I am a ghost hovering over it, the disembodied brain of the Internet. I don’t have a spot in line. I don’t even have a body. But I have the internet, and that’s better than a body.