The System

by Jon

This isn’t what I’d wanted.

You hear things, y’know?  You chat with everyone you bump into, swapping names and a laugh to try and make a connection that’ll stick, so they’ll tip you off if they hear something.  It’s what you’ve got to do these days.

And here I was. I’d finally almost made it. All I’d done was to go and make a little space for myself, a place for me and mine, where I could do things the way I wanted to do them.  Live on my own terms, y’know? Maybe meet someone, raise a family.  That’s what it’s all about, after all.

But they don’t care about that.  They don’t care that you’re not harming anybody but just sitting there, they just want you gone, like you were trash.  So you hide when you can and how to fight when you can’t.  You get hold of things you might need and put them away for later on, y’know? Crazy preparedness.  That was always my motto.  Planning, scheming, conniving, you do what you have to do.  And usually it’s enough.

But not this time.  I can hear them coming.  This time they’re willing to take everything down just to get to me.  Burn it all down and start over.  Fucking nihilistic bast—

***Service work order #230086G-23: Customer reported heavy infestation of AI-E1 worm virus.  Hard drive reformatted and OS reinstalled.  Work order closed.