A man in an unwrinkled Oxford shirt stopped me on the way out of the gas station. “You ever seen one of these?” He held a tiny statue between his thumb and index finger. “It’s called the green man.” He shoved his hand in front of my face, so the green man was directly in my line of vision. I couldn’t tell if he was supposed to be some kind of military guy or what, but he was saluting and had a frown on his face. “You ever seen anything like this?” “I don’t think so.” He started laughing and threw the green man up into the air. I couldn’t see it at its apex, but the guy in the Oxford tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and let the green man fall down his throat. “You don’t know shit, kid. I’ll tell you one thing, and trust me, I know trends: the green man is about to go crazy. Buy now.” He got into a spotless BMW E36 and pulled onto Thresher Street. I didn’t know how to buy a green man, and I also didn’t have any money. My car was filled with wrappers and had that sort of sickly-sweet smell of trash. I rolled down the windows on the way home. The city smelled like trash, too. My neighbor Phil had pica and would stand outside his apartment and scrape paint chips off the wall. He was chewing when I approached. He held up a green man. “A guy dropped a bunch of these guys off. Said you can eat them if you want.” Phil spit the half-masticated paint chips into a trash bag and popped the green man into his mouth. “Not even joking man these things are the future.” He pulled a fistful of green men from his pocket and dropped them into my hand. “What’d the guy look like?” “Clean cut. Sort of athletic. He juggled the green men around before popping all three into his mouth.” All I had in my apartment was a card table and a chair. I sat down and put the green men in a row. Somehow, the Oxford guy had known where I lived, but I didn’t care about that. I didn’t have any food. I never had any food. I wanted to eat the green men. They didn’t have a smell, but the texture was sort of rubbery. Like, I could squeeze them, and they had some give. I stuck a head in my mouth and bit down. It broke off cleanly at the neck. The lack of taste made it seem like they shouldn’t be eaten. They sort of slid down the throat. You didn’t have to chew, so I quickly swallowed the remaining six, and I’ll admit—I was full. Phil called my phone ten minutes later. “Hey man, just wanted to check in and ask if you’d eaten any of the green men yet, because I’m not so sure about them. I think they’re the future and all that, but I think if guys like you and I want to take advantage of that sort of thing maybe we shouldn’t eat them. I’ve eaten a lot already but I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t is all.” “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to make money off this shit, and I also already ate them all.” “Oh, that’s alright, then. Just forget I called.” Phil hung up and I was left alone to stare at a beige wall with a Rorschach Test of a stain in its center. Five minutes later my phone rang, but I didn’t know the number. “So, you ate the fucking green men, huh?” “Yeah.” “You just eat any shit some guy outside the gas station hands you?” “Nobody’s ever handed me anything outside the gas station before tonight.” “Check any website right now and you’re gonna see green men ads everyfuckingwhere you look. Banner ads. Video ads. Ads with hot chicks with fucking green man tattoos. I handed you some shit and you slammed it down your gullet without even thinking. I gave that freak next door some and he ate it too. I’m gonna stuff this phone down my mouth and shriek until your ears burst and little green men ride out on a wave of blood from your burst eardrum.” “So, what do the green men do?” “They do a lot, a whole fucking lot. You, and every other webslave screengoon is about to find out. I took a chance on you, and it’s all about to pay off. You feeling it yet?” “What am I supposed to be feeling?” I felt hungry again. The phone line went silent, and the carbon monoxide detector went off for a few seconds like usual. The amorphous stain didn’t look like a green man no matter how hard I tried to visualize it. I couldn’t remember what they looked like anymore except that the man was saluting. “Listen, kid. It’s all about to come down hard. If I even told you how bad things are about to get you wouldn’t believe me. I’ve spent my whole life waiting, developing, researching, planning, only to come out with these tiny little men. I promise you they’re perfect.” I liked using the overhead light because it was dim, and the carpet stains blended in with the rest of the detritus. The green men could have killed me right then for all I cared. I was hungry, and ever since the WiFi got cut off, I couldn’t play online poker anymore, so I was bored too. “You think I’m joking? Look out the window right now.” I’d never changed the lacy, yellowed blinds that were in the apartment when I’d first moved. The view was of the apartment across the street, so I never opened them. The man was in the middle of the street, pointing up at me. “You see what I’m holding?” He had something pinched between his fingers. “No.” “You ever seen anything like this?” “I don’t think so.” “It’s called a green man.” He threw the green man into the air and let it fall down his throat. I shut the blinds because Phil was banging on the wall. He was yelling, but his voice was muffled, and his words seemed to run together. I stood in the hall and waited for Phil. He came out of his apartment, phone in hand. He held the screen to my face. “You ever seen anything like this before?” On the screen was an advertisement of a small, green man giving a salute. The text said “EAT GREEN. GET LEAN.” “The days of paint chips are over, man. This shit is the future.” He reached into his pocket and gave me a fistful of green men.