ref: b9fbb17c04e4ccfb2021dac818e514351ca8f646
dir: /troff/0302.ms/
.LP \& .ce .sp |4.25i .PP .ps 12 .CW ░ They were like ants. .PP .ps 12 Tommy tried and tried again to communicate but it was like talking to ants. He'd alter the pitch, and even the content of his words, but these other humans would simply carry on with whatever below\-the\-noise\-floor nonsense they'd previously been occupied. In and out of their flats, up and down their hallways, even their most fevered activity seemed divorced from any obvious stratagem or design. From all appearances, his kinfolk comprised a group of semi\-autonomous \fI(semi\-\fR because he was privy to the fact they were all acting under orders from up the chain) drones whose personal points of view lacked both perspicacity and demonstrable taste. .PP .ps 12 He went outside. .PP .ps 12 His brother had already located the cache of local cash hidden just beyond sensor range of the silo. Peter peeled off a ridiculous wad of the green paper and handed it over to Tommy, who tucked it into his shirt pocket without altering his facial expression. .PP .ps 12 Pausing for effect, he finally smiled. .PP .ps 12 "Let's go get laid." .PP .ps 12 Bear ripped open an old fallen (paper) tree log and jammed his tongue into the waiting socket, sucking out a spiraling stream of black ants. He was ravenous, and this, it seemed, was what he had been reduced to. .PP .ps 12 In any previous era he would have enjoyed the surfeit of exposed profiles. But no, not here, not in this so\-called .I real world, .R this present, hopelessly interconnected, and depressingly degraded age. Bear sensed instinctively that it would be useless to complain. (And to whom would he complain, anyway?) .PP .ps 12 He finished up with the ants and wiped his chin. It was time to get back to what really mattered, both to himself and to his employer. .PP .ps 12 Holding their attention. .PP .ps 12 "Do you ever get that thing where your visor stops working in only one eye?" Tommy asked Peter, forgetting momentarily about Peter's disability, papered over by his ever\-present eyepatch. .PP .ps 12 "Oh, sorry," he corrected. .PP .ps 12 Peter remained stoically silent, was was his usual habit. Tommy was never quite sure where he stood with his brother, but the fact that Peter stuck around, at all, probably counted for something. Sometimes, his life was ambiguous in just this way. .PP .ps 12 "Actually, yes," Peter admitted. "The eyepatch sometimes stops working. I lose infrared." .PP .ps 12 Ah! .PP .ps 12 Tommy didn't understand what it .I was .R about Peter. Kids their own age seemed to love him. His brother cut an odd figure, to be sure, what with his brown slacks and waistcoat, his long hair and the proverbial pirate's eyepatch. His flat personality certainly wasn't doing him any favors, either. But the other children couldn't seem to get enough of him. Peter had but to enter a room and straight away he found himself swathed in admirers, like a wet finger dipped into a fat bowl of sugar. .PP .ps 12 Ants, you see. .PP .ps 12 Tommy had found his theme. .PP .ps 12 "I mean," Tommy complained, "What do they even want us to \fIdo,\fR when half the time our equipment is out of service? These assignments are all predicated upon the notion that everything we're issued is always in perfect working order, performing at \fIshill\-review\-level\fR optimums. There's no .I realpolitik .R behind our orders, only bullshit." .PP .ps 12 "And how long have you felt this way?" Peter asked blandly, sympathetic but non\-committal. His eyebrows scarcely moved as he spoke, yet his eyes seemed somehow kind. Inviting? .PP .ps 12 "All my damn life." .PP .ps 12 It was true. Tommy couldn't remember ever having been satisfied with \fIanything,\fR least of all the nonsensical directives issued by adults, most of whom he accurately assessed as being only semi\-literate, semi\-awake at any given time. .PP .ps 12 "It's like they want us to fail. Or something." .PP .ps 12 "Hm," Peter allowed, cast adrift upon his own rich interior, fording a hip\-deep cesspool of (Tommy imagined) sour recriminations and bitter fucking complaints. .PP .ps 12 Bear understood that these children would never be happy. What was more, he agreed with them. In his world there was precious little to be happy about. He had traveled this same well\-trod path all his life. There was no way home, no way out, no way to tamp down his feelings, no way to ever be sure. He paused, soaking in his own reminiscences. .PP .ps 12 Bear was hungry again. .PP .ps 12 He pressed at the thin membrane separating his world from that of his snacks and recoiled sharply, pulling back only a blackened, cauterized stump. The paper burnt. .PP .ps 12 It would take time to grow a new arm. .PP .ps 12 The result of interfering was always the same, but he kept on trying, anyway. A natural slow learner. .PP .ps 12 Bear rummaged around for something else to eat. .PP .ps 12 "I'm hungry," Tommy said. .PP .ps 12 And it was true.