Less than six months before a mob of the sitting president’s supporters would descend upon the United States Capitol, a more solemn crowd gathered at its steps. Among those who arrived to pay their final respects to the late Representative John Lewis were Washington, D.C., residents who appreciated his unwavering support of statehood for the district.

On the West Lawn of the Capitol Wednesday, a man in a pom-pom beanie clamored for blood. “Execute the traitors!” he shouted into a megaphone. “I wanna see executions!”The man got the deaths he wanted, if not the executions. Four rioters died as a result of Wednesday’s insurrection at the Capitol. The mob beat a police officer with a fire extinguisher, law-enforcement sources reports.

Editor’s Note: Read an interview with Lauren Oyler about her writing process. Consensus was the world was ending, or would begin to end soon, if not by exponential environmental catastrophe then by some combination of nuclear war, the American two-party system, patriarchy, white supremacy, gentrification, globalization, data breaches, and social media. People looked sad on the subway, in the bars; decisions were questioned, opinions rearranged.

Editor’s Note: Read Lauren Oyler’s new fiction, “Discovery.” “Discovery” is taken from Lauren Oyler’s forthcoming novel, Fake Accounts (available on February 2). To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Oyler and Oliver Munday, a senior art director of the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.Oliver Munday: “Discovery” is an excerpt from your debut novel, Fake Accounts.