Billie

Billie is the narrator of “Planet Blue,” “Post-3 War,” and “Wreck City.” In each section, she is a serious cultural critic, a government employee who is able to see outside the system while being part of the system, and a tortured soul who is often reluctant to seize upon her own agency. Her conversations with Spike serve not only to deepen her sense of self, but her ability to feel connected to the world she inhabits, in which she most often feels like a sad stranger.

Billie struggles to take responsibility and embrace the meaning of her own life, even as she feels it ending. “Much of what I have done is left unfinished—not because I left it too soon, not because I was lazy, but because it had a life of its own that continues without me” (87). Experienced here as tragedy, Billie is actually alluding to...