Scapecop

Fun and games
New holo at the plex: Run for the Money. Day off, fuck it, I saw it. Another Kill-Kop heist/chase/blowing-shit-up thing. Plot: Some crooks cook up a scheme to rob the government iBank. Inside Man changes the codes for the genetic subsidy checks and then transfers the money to a dummy account. The crooks make a withdrawal in gold. Yeah. They fucking steal it. But that's a good thing. Rob from the rich, give to the poor, get it? Yeah. These are nice crooks. Robinhood crooks. But. Just when you think they're getting away with this shit, the GA finds out and calls the cops, who start chasing the nice crooks like it's Mister Toad's Wild Ride. Cop skimmers smash into buildings; cop guts fly through the air; a cop face flies through a windshield and doesn’t quite make it. Nice crooks hit the country, almost make it to militia territory where the cops can't go. But the rotten cops have set up a barricade outside Alberta to try and stop them. Then some farmers come to the rescue. Yeah. The farmers send their big-boobed, gingham-wearing women with baskets of food for the cops as a neighborly gesture. But the food is poisoned, get it? Big joke. The cops start thrashing on the ground, dying like cockroaches when you spray 'em with Black Flag. Then the nice crooks blast through the barricades going yeee-haaaaaa. Poor people everywhere will get paid. Yay. This kind of thing plays. Audience loved it. Especially that one scene where a cop went ...

That sure hits the spot.

... in a dumb-cop voice before he turned white and puked blood. The guy next to me busts out laughing, pa-ha-ha-ha-ha. All around me, everybody's laughing, they all loved it, the audience, the citizens, the shitheads, the motherfucking bastards I am sworn to preserve and protect, since I am, as you fucking shitheads in the future have already figured out, a cop.

Morning News
At 13:57 yesterday afternoon, the NorAm Genetic Authority quietly cancelled procreation permits for all Class 7 citizens in Sector 9, which meant they pumped an effective, permanent, anti-fertility hormone into the Class 7 water supply in that sector, which meant that millions of working class slobs woke up sterile and mad as bloody hell in the Greater New Jersey Metrosprawl. Yeah. Another miracle of modern biotech. Which meant? Another pain in the ass for me. The shitstorm is coming. At the time, I hd no fucking clue. I'm asleep, then the fucking clock goes off. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's all I'm thinking about.

I got out of bed, pushed Sylvia's shit out of the way -- one of these days it's going in the dumpster, but not today, I'm a sentimental asshole. Long story short, I made a path through the debris of my dead relationship from the fucking bedroom to the fucking kitchen and ate my fucking breakfast. Captain Crunch, OK? I love that stuff.

Halfway through the bowl, I turn on the vid. First it gives me the bad news. Sector 9, the GA with its hormones and shit. Then it gives me even more bad news. Reaction of the public to this shocking blahblah. Wait a minute. Here comes the fucking self-appointed spokesman of the NorAm public.

Reverend Ike hit the vid, foaming at the mouth. I watched him while eating my morning cereal. I’ve got a strong stomach. You fuckheads from the future probably know who Reverand Ike is, right? How would I know? OK.

Ike is black. But he's from Baltimore, where everybody's black if they're born after 2117. So, to future generations reading this shit, to be honest, I had no idea if Ike's fucking black-black or some white guy with designer genes who learned to talk black. Anyway, the way Ike talks, "God" has two, maybe three vowels. Ga-hawwd. I think that's called a diphthong. Try to imagine it. This big, angry black face on my vidscreen who's screaming at me like he's doing me a favor.

God has said, "Be fruitful and multiply." God has commanded us in his Holy Word...yes! Our God is the God of life, of life, of life, of life, of LIFE ITSELF, our God, our God, He is the God of generation and procreation...but this act, this despicable act, is an act of death, destruction and devastation, this is a Satanic negation of life and I tell you if we don’t tear down these ministers of darkness...God will surely tear us down...do you know what I am saying? I’ve heard the reports of the earthquake in California...I have seen the starving children in the new dustbowl. God is bringing His mighty hand of...

Ike's a good performer, but his theology confuses me. The thinking behind it, I mean. The pattern's pretty fucking easy to understand. Some bad shit happens. Ike blames Satan which means the government, in other words me. Then there's hell to pay.

I cut the audio, and spooned another load of cereal into my mouth. On the vid, the silent Ike-man kept on gesturing, a real smooth operator. He's chopping the air with his hands, pacing back and forth in his vid-set church, that routine of his is choreographed up the ass, like watching ballet or something. But give the man credit. Ike has moves. I could almost admire him, with the sound off like that, almost forget what the hell he was doing. Namely: convince the mob to tear people like me into extremely small, extremely bloody pieces. And then stomp on the pieces.

People like me. OK, OK. I should define my terms. People like me. As in cops, firemen, teachers, doctors, politicians, bureaucrats, all the slowjoes trapped in the bullshit job program they call the United States military. Fucking bankers, after they nationalized that shit. Schmucks working for what's left of the central government on account of misguided loyalty or a lack of career options. The fucking public sector.

See, we may look like dickwads. We may look like mouthbreathing fucks. But that just shows how clever we are. Yeah. All the apparently incompetent shitheads in the government? Don't be fooled. We're fucking masterminds. Seriously. See, we're Satan's army. The Illuminati. We're seeding the sky with chemtrails. We're building a highway to Mexico. Area 41? That's us, baby. We're controlling the population. Controlling everything. We're fucking with genetics. OK, that's true. But the alternative is the plague comes back, so what choice does the government have? Stupid question. Everybody knows the government created the plague in the first place, come on. It's a fucking police state. Cops like me have an iron fucking hand on shitheads like you. We deserve to fucking die.

The sound is off. But I know that's what Ike's saying.

Ike was persuasive. He opened his mouth. Words came out. A mob formed. Like a fucking thundercloud, congealing around particles of dust. Hey. We're a mob. Who do we kill? Surprisingly, not cops. Some other government shitheads. Without guns.

Genetic clinic. Government outfit up in Trenton.

So, ten minutes after Ike's speech, the mob torched the genetic clinic. I saw the vid later, the same feed coming down the wire to everybody’s home in NorAm...a screaming doctor in a white smock running out into the street, screaming, running and burning alive in front of the laughing crowd. After gleefully burning the doctors and nurses, the mob went looking for more amusement. The obvious target was the MetroMed hospital complex in Trenton, rising up over the old city like a gleaming white cube. This time, it ain't a limpdick government outfit. Private. Not so easy to torch. But mobs are stupid. They hit it. And then it hit the news. And I saw it.

The vid gave me live, up-to-the-minute images while I finished cleaning my breakfast dishes. Screaming, laughing, delirious faces: the mob surging through the streets of Trenton like water, like happy chickens marching into Colonel Sanders' grill. Smiling, these assholes. No fucking idea what's going to happen to them. None.

This is great, I thought, really wonderful. Civilization is going to hell but we get instantaneous coverage every step of the way.

And then you don't.

Distant explosion. White noise and snow on the vid. No more Ike. Nothing

The wire went down. The one in the sky, OK? All the ones and zeroes bouncing around in the ionosphere. Stop busting my balls, you fucking future generations. I have no idea why they call it a "wire." Maybe telephones or telegraphs or something. Anyway, it's down, whatever you call it.

Dead vid, dead fone. No communication.

But I knew the riot was happening.

Riot Detail
I suited up, didn't wait for an invitation. Went downtown, like they used to say. Unmarked copcar, the kind they don't blow up. I got to the station at 9p, through the underground entrance. Inside, cops are hyperorganized, ready to roll, like one of those army vids, D-Day, whatever. In case you're wondering, the riot I imagined was not imaginary. I could see it on the vids. Yeah. All the shit was back up at this point, backup systems, blahblah.

We all herded into the briefing room, like this eight-by-ten cinderblock room with metal folding chairs facing a wall-to-wall vid. The Captain rushed through the briefing because the situation was pure shit at this point. The vid flashed an aerial view of the city -- low-rent sim, not the high-res good stuff. Crappy to look at, but useful information. All us cops in that fucking tiny room got a good look at the streets closed off by the riot, where the mob was, probable mob action based on chaos theory. Then the computer gave us an analysis of probable property damage and an estimate of our probable salary cut once the tax base was destroyed. The motivational element, OK? We rolled.

We got to MetroMed before they did too much damage. I'm not talking about the mob. To be clear about what I'm fucking saying, I'm referring to the damage MM might do to the mob if MM got the slightest bit worried for more than a second.

The mob had done some shit. The parking garage was in flames...or two fucking parking spaces maybe. OK, they torched one Beemer -- lucky, high-velocity round to the fuel cell. Fuck it. I wasn’t worried about the doctors’ BMWs or their hospital. MetroMed was a private corporation, so private security. Different kind of cop. Those guys didn’t worry about reading rights, or responding to clear and present danger. If they feel like it, they shoot to kill. They didn’t even have to ask questions later.

So that's why we're here.

Bottom line, we were here to protect the mob. There was already a row of humped bodies around the hospital perimeter. Like this invisible line, you cross it, the sniper sends you to heaven.

Morons, I thought. You burned out the clinic...a goddamn wimpy little public clinic. That got you high, right? You felt like a fucking badass, right? You thought you could tackle MetroMed. Slowboys. Think before you pick your targets. Think now, or pay later.

No warning. A loud, squawking bullhorn voice boomed out behind me:

PLEASE LEAVE THIS AREA AT ONCE.

I shouted, slapped my hands over my ears.

Jesus, Jay. Give me some goddamn warning, OK?

Jay’s voice. I recognize it. He was working the police soundtruck. Fucking loudmouth; it's a perfect assignment. Jay ignores me. Some shithead lobs a molotov cocktail. (Stop busting my balls. Different recipe, OK? Isopropyl alcohol, not gasoline. No shit.) It lands on the blacktop maybe fifteen feet from us. The cop next to me laughed.

Wouldn’t want him on my goddamn softball team...

Yeah. That's real fucking funny. Can we get these shitheads away from here?

He gives me a dirty look. There's math involved. X number of them, Y number of us. To herd the fucking crowd, you need a certain ratio of cops to crowd. We fell short. Budget cutbacks.

The puddle of accelerant burned off. Jay boomed out again:

YOU ARE HERE ILLEGALLY ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF THE METROMED CORPORATION.

Translation. Back off, you fucking idiots. They're going to kill you.

Behind me. The RPG hit like ...

Like I dunno. Like something big and heavy coming down. God flushing his toilet. Whatever. It was loud.

The RPG hit the soundtruck. What I heard was the fucking thing exploding. I didn’t see it because I had my nose pressed down in the concrete, but I could hear it. Some burning shit fell down on my arm and I brushed it off. I got up and looked. Truck was a black burning shell. Jay's inside that. Strictly speaking, organic material that used to be Jay.

OK, future jackoffs, at this point in my life, shit like that still bothered me. No kidding. This mob here? I'm not thinking about socioeconomic conditions, their lousy childhoods, why these people are so upset. I just wanted to kill 'em. Seriously. I wanted to take my automatic and start firing into the mob. I wanted to move my arm left, then right, in a pattern, spraying death, but we weren’t allowed to do that. I was allowed to shoot the specific person who had fired the specific rocket granted that I was reasonably certain I knew who that person was and reasonably certain he would not respond to a verbal warning and was in imminent danger of inflicting bodily harm if action was not taken.

Another RPG exploded behind us, cleared all that shit from my mind. Just thinking about survival. My mind starts making calculations a mile a minute. The thin blue line was between the goddamn hospital and the crowd. If things got bad...or more bad...no way we could retreat, no way MetroMed would let us in. So? MetroMed would start firing on us if we got too close... So? We had to take out the fucker with the rocket launcher. How? OK. This shithead. Dug in somewhere. Where? We had a police sharpshooter but he obviously didn’t have a fix. OK. Wherever he is? If he hits us again...but he didn't. Why not? It's been like a minute. The crowd was holding the same position. They don't want to get closer to us, because we're targets for that RPG. They kept throwing rocks, bottles and shit. But no more rockets. So? (A) It's either tactical. (B) Or a fucking malfunction.

The answer was (B).

I saw an explosion in the back of the crowd, bits of legs and arms flying. Defective rocket launcher, not doubt. My partner and I exchange smiles. Then one guy runs at us, screaming.

Fucking bastards, fucking bastards...

He's got a 45 automatic from the era of flat movies. Fucking museum piece, but it'll kill you. He's firing wildly. I lifted up my automatic and aimed it at his head but the sharpshooter dropped him first. My partner laughed again.

Now he really doesn’t have any brains...

I don't laugh. It's not that funny.

Then?

This is one of those fucking moments when things turn. Like, you tell a joke and nobody laughs. Like it's a party and everybody knows it's time to go home. Like these slowboys all ask themselves. What the fuck are we doing here? Do we really want to storm the hospital? Do we want to die? They thought about it. The answer was no. The mob didn’t really want to storm the hospital because they didn’t really want to die. They figured this out. All at once. They turned their backs. Started to disperse. Then they started to fall.

Line by line, row by row. Silently. MetroMed security took them out.

The mob didn't even have time to panic.

I got back to my skimmer to call in but the wire was down again. I thought it was a defect with my com-unit, but everybody had the same problem. I found out later that we couldn’t reach the station because there was no station. Because the station had been gutted.

Yeah. Funny thing. My earlier line of speculation turned out to be bullshit. Hey, I know when I'm right, even when I'm wrong. This time I was wrong, OK? But nobody saw this shit coming.

The MetroMed riot wasn't a dumbass impulsive move. It was a sacrifice play. A diversionary tactic, a clever way to draw enough of us out on the field, away from HG. With the station understaffed, it was easy for them to send a U-Haul truck loaded with C-4 and a suicidal Believer driving straight through the glass doors into the lobby. Like one of those fucking vids.

We saw what was left when we got out of our skimmers, not believing what we were seeing. A few ragged cops could still stand and shoot. They were standing in front of the station, cordoning it off from the mob. Yeah another one. Already. Rows of wounded cops and dead cops were laid out on the sidewalk. Station burning behind them. No way to go into it now, no way to get anybody out. Not that anybody in there could possibly be alive.

My partner was on the fone to MetroMed.

Could you please get somebody out here...

I’m sorry sir...

My partner's screaming, hysterical. The voice on the other end of the fone was calm, dead, metallic. Like a computer, except it wasn’t a computer, just a person trained to sound like one.

There are people fucking bleeding to death...

I'm sorry, sir. We are not authorized to respond in a riot situation.

Fucking asshole!

Insurance regulations do not allow response in excessively dangerous conditions.

Go to hell!

He threw the fone down on the pavement and stomped on it. Not too bright, I thought. That comes out of your pay.

We did our best with the wounded, held off the new mob, changed bandages, got covered with blood. Since MetroMed wasn’t helping, we foned the National Guard, but they were spread too thin. Two hour wait for medvac copters, real fucking sorry. Whatever. After a vote, we foned HealthNet, MetroMed's bitter competitors. They touched down in three minutes, for a price, and got the wounded out. Pension fund shot to hell. But casualty count not so bad. Considering.

OK, you future assholes. Did I mention cops are underpaid? Yeah. You probably think we’re rolling in bribe money since those Kill-Kop vids do their best to give you that impression. How does that make sense? Why pay off the cops when the cops are a joke? Some 'hoods we pay the gangs off just to drive our skimmers through. Not too many people know or we’d probably pay more.

Depressing train of thought. Drop it. Bullshit aside, you have to live. Even cops, OK? You eat, you shit, you need a fucking roof over your head. You need money. So you wait tables, or hire yourself out as private muscle. Like, you know, for example, me. Tonight I had a private security job in a residence on the Class-1 level. No threat, real money.

Let the wild fucking rumpus begin.

Party time
A house of glass and steel on one of the cantilevered overhangs. 110 stories up in the sky. Below: the roofs of old Trenton, the dirty streets and burned out places. Above: stars. Oh how fucking pretty. But, seriously, it's true that you can actually see them when you’re up this high...the air is clean, cold. So what's my job?

Stand in one place and be ready to do something if shit happens. That's it.

They’ve got a bunch of us cops standing like statues every twenty yards or so. I’m free to look, free to think about stars and shit, free to study these people and this shining clean world they live in. So I stand still while everyone moves past me. Colored pieces of cloth are draped over every thing like banners, tables of food and booze stretching away like gleaming white aircraft carriers. PartyGirlsTM in their tight pretty dresses, giggling, joking, teasing. I’m not supposed to touch the food or the women but a group of them spotted me. They came up to me and teased me for being a cop, teased me for my grim face, for looking square, for being sour. Yeah, tease the fucking bear in the cage. Poke him, throw rocks. Try to make him growl.

You should be happy.

Chick in a red dress.

You’ll live longer if you’re happy. I read that somewhere.

I smiled grimly, a self-parody of a grim humorless cop. They laughed.

I could make you happy.

This one's in a black dress. I smile at her. She smiles back. Nothing's going to happen. After a minute, they figure it out. They leave, giggling, joking, tired of playing with me. I keep standing there. Nothing to do but listen to that fucking synthswing music these people like so much.

Glenn Miller.

Somebody shouted this over the happy, mindless noises. I looked, and saw a Drunk lurching in my direction. Well-dressed, but coming apart, a button here, a zipper there. A bottle of cognac dangled from one limp hand ready to smash at any time. He lurched past me. Saying ...

Reconstituted, freeze-dried, regurgitated Glenn Miller. Stomping at the Savoy. Decca label, 1944. Recorded at the Avalon Ball room...

Gee, thanks. Tell me more shit I don't care about.

The drunk was talking to himself, of course. A trivia nut, applauding himself on his own cleverness, awarding himself a little gold star... But I had to open my mouth.

Ah. A music expert.

What a kiss-ass thing to say. Where does that come from? Why did I say that shit? God, I fucking hate myself.

Do I care what these bastards think about me? No. Do I give a shit? At any level? No. It's a got to be a fucking reflex or something. I'm not a pussy.

But I said that shit. That was enough to make the Drunk really notice me to let him know he had a captive audience here, a stupid cop, a man being paid to be a human statue, a helpless ear he could pour his drunken babblings into. The Drunk came staggering back up to me laughing to himself holding up the bottle of cognac like he was offering me some.

You’re doing a good job. Great job.

He saluted with the hand holding the cognac, lurched off balance, caught himself, laughed. Then started walking around me in dizzy loops. Eyes squinting, studying me. He stuck his face into my face. And said ...

You’re a cop, right?

Yes sir.

He laughed some more. A fucking jolly guy here.

I can always tell a cop. I got a nose for cops. Yeah.

Wheels turning.

You don’t look like private security. This is just something you do part time, right?

Yes sir.

Doing it for the money, right? Money, money, money?

Drunk scratched thumb and fingers together in a pinchpenny gesture. I thought of a few things to say and a few things I wanted to do to this guy but I kept my mouth shut and did nothing. I had no idea who he was. I had to humor him.

I am supplementing my income. Yes sir.

Nothing wrong with that,

Slurred. I hate this fucking asshole.

Nothing wrong with that?

Fuck you, OK? I'm not asking your fucking permission. I know there's nothing wrong with it. I'm doing this shit for the money. Why else would I do it? You seriously think I fucking like it?

Gottado. I know. Gottadowhatyougottado. That’s why I couldn’t stay in the...

The Drunk broke off suddenly. He looked sad, thoughtful.

Damn shame about that riot, Damn shame.

Damn shame? Seriously? What are you fucking English or something? These shitheads. Why do they all fucking talk that way? That fucking phony British accent, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I can't stand it. This BBC shit. They think that's classy or something.

Yes sir.

Then the Drunk started laughing to himself again.

You’re not going to believe this, you’re not going to believe this, this is just too, too...

Then he lost it again. Just stood there laughing.

You know what you are?

Yes sir.

Well. Who are you?

I’m a peace officer...

That set him off again. He shook his head rapidly from side to side, snickering.

No,no, no, you’re no peace officer, no no, you wanna know what you are? You wanna know what you are?

I know what I am.

You’re a ssscapecop,

Grinning.

Thas what you are. Scapecop....they probably don’t teach that at the academy, that’s too bad...but I’ll educate you...you know what a scapegoat is? Hmm?

Yeah.

Yes, of course you do.

Smirks. I'm a cop, so he assumes I'm stupid.

Scapegoat takes the punishment.. scapegoat takes the blame. That’s outta the frigging Bible...somethingsomething chapter something ...

Leviticus 16:8, assclown.

...but what you are is a Scapecop.

The Drunk bent over laughing some more. Fuck is he getting at? What's the fucking joke?

Drunk stopped laughing. He turned around and walked up to me trying not to stagger, trying, like drunks always think they can do, to walk straight. Do me a favor and walk off the fucking roof, OK?

Drunk stuck his face in mine again and this time his face wasn’t laughing, his mouth wasn’t smiling. He looked, I don't know. Guilty?

You? You’re a frigging fifth wheel...that ever occur to you? People like us have security...we’ve got our own cops. We pay for our protection get the best protection money can buy...and don’t have to worry about this constitutional rights ssshit. We don’t need you...and everybody else hates you, you ever thought of that? 2 plus 2, hmmm? Everybody else blames you for not having food, for not having a permit to have kids, for losing their job and getting thrown out in the street...they blame you...because you keep them in line...you keep em from tearing what’s left of the world apart...we don’t care what they do to you...we’re above it all...they’re not going to touch us...but they can touch you...

Drunk looked away from me then, staring down at his shoes and kind of mumbling.

They need that. Gotta have that. Gotta have somebody to take it out on...somebody they can see...somebody they can hit.

Then mumbling so soft I could hardly hear him:

Somebody that’s not us.

Drunk turned from me and started walking away. Ten feet from me he stopped, whirled around.

That’s what you’re for. Job description. You. You’re somebody they can hate. You’re somebody they can kill. You’re a frigging Scapecop..

He walked away, muttering.

Not my idea, of course...I never thought it was...I mean I tried to tell them, I mean I really said it wasn’t....wasn’t right.

Stopped.

Well, actually it was my idea. But I changed my mind.

Weak, sad smile. Eye contact.

Drunk looked at me, his face pleading, begging. I know what he wanted. He wanted me to say, it’s not your fault, I don’t blame you. I don't say that shit. Hard face, cop mask. No forgiveness, pal. Not from me. He got the fucking message, OK?

Drunk shuffled back into the party. I stood there holding my post. I heard their lousy synthswing and the laughter and stood there thinking. I wished I’d never seen that guy before, whoever he was, he never told me his name. Voice in my head won't shut up. Scapecop, you’re a Scapecop. I wished the guy was dead.

Then one of the chicks starts screaming.

He's dead, he's dead.

Stating the obvious, OK?

He walked off the fucking roof.

Go figure.

Yeah, seriously. The Drunk had jumped off the balcony, quietly, soundlessly falling a hundred stories from the elevated level to the surface of the old city. Jumped, pushed, whatever. I had a strange feeling that I’d killed him, like my wish had made him do it. Irrational, but I couldn’t shake it off. A crowd of the party people looking down at him, some with binoculars, some just leaning over the balcony and pointing. Talking about the way the Drunk had splattered. Laughing, giggling and pointing like he was fireworks or a circus act or something.


EatPatty
I got back home at 3p and had dinner. Dinner? Yeah, you know. You gotta eat. I opened the fridge to get an EatPatty and zapped it in the micro. Chewed the fucking thing. Then I turned on the vid. And got a direct feed from the late-breaking crisis of the hour. This time? Our friends, The Urban Warfare League, had lured a cop into one of their houses on a pretext. Now they had him tied up to a chair. Some bastards with a portable vidcam sent footage to the wire of another bastard rearranging the cop's bones with an iron pipe.

This is the hand of people’s justice!

Some guy with a big head, a beard and a camouflage uniform.

First the kneecap...

I cut the feed, kept chewing my EatPatty. Thinking.

A few years ago...I would’ve been sick, but I had changed. The difference between cops getting killed in the Kill-Kop holos and cops getting killed in real life was starting to blur. Images on a screen. Yesterday, I watched Jay get killed. Today, I'm chewing my fucking EatPatty before my three hours of sleep. Tomorrow, maybe I'm the one they kill. Fuck it. It's just a vid.

That’s what happens to cops, right?

I say this outloud. Spitting out pieces of EatPatty.

Running through the library of vid files in my skull.

Jay burning alive. My last partner, the way he was running, and the way he looked when the mob caught him and when they. It's all so fucking clear. I never thinking about it. Now I can't stop thinking about it.

Thinking, finally, about what that Drunk had said. Scapecop.

Makes sense.

Cops like me? We get sent, day by day, week by week, into our shithole cities to be killed, sometimes one at a time, sometimes many of us. We never get anything done, never change anything. We’re targets. I’m a target. That's our job.

The Drunk was right.

I’m a target, a scapegoat...a Scapecop. Somebody the mob can conveniently hate when the food rations are late or they can’t have kids anymore. A visible enemy, a face they can point to, a target to kill. They think I’m their enemy, like I used to think the mob was my enemy. But that was yesterday. A thousand years ago. Whatever. Hey. You fucking assholes in the future. If you're listening, I want to tell you. I'm sick of this shit. The bullshit ends. Now. Because I fucking say so. I've changed my way of thinking, OK?

I know who my enemy is now.