El Portal, the eighty-year-old literary magazine of Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, just published Storey’s essay “The Ping Not Taken” as their May web feature. His first Uber narrative to be published in 2020 and thirteenth overall, this piece contemplates questions of fate and free will through the Uber app’s algorithm pairing drivers and riders and the drivers’ choice to decline some rides. With each new ride and each decline, a whole possible world of outcomes is opened or closed. What happens next? And what does this mean?

The essay can be read in full here.

This is Storey’s fourth publication of 2020 and his 19th since he entered his MFA program in Fall 2018.

Thanks to Editor Jennifer Baros and her team at ENMU for featuring this work!