There ain't much time left for me. I'm dictating this so that somethin' will remain when they get here. I ain't got much time. I don't. I can hear the hounds and they're not far away, and I can hear the sirens, too. I've done some bad things. Did some things I shouldn'ta done. Saw some stuff. And that's stuff I shouldn'ta seen, either. I figure it's only a matter of time before they get here, and they burn this old warehouse I'm in to the ground, like they did to John Wilkes Booth. And I s'pose at this point, I'm gonna be remembered like him. If I'm remembered at all.

And I don't want that.

I've got a right to my side of it, haven't I? …right?

So I've got this, ah, this here recorder deal. It's a little old, but it'll do. 'Cause I'm a little old, too, but I always managed fine. Until a few months ago. And that's what you're really interested in, isn't it? I gotta tell you the things I've seen and the things I've done and I gotta tell you why I did them or else it'll be like I never existed, or like I was some sorta monster.

But that's not true. I'm not a monster at all. I'm just a guy. A good, regular guy. I'm like any guy you pass on the street. 'Cept for the ones in the nice clothes, 'cause I never really had enough money for anything like that. Those guys are different from regular guys. They're better than us. People say they're arrogant, but it's the truth. I know it. Those guys, with their nice clothes and their clean skin—well, they're just better than me, and that's fact. It's not arrogance if it's fact.

But, you don't want to know about that, right? No. No, no, no. I'm runnin' outta time, so here. I'll start at the beginning, so you'll understand. I'll start at the beginning and hope that you can judge me like a man and not like a monster.

The world was a blaze of colours and lights, and sounds—oh who could ignore the sounds? Traffic, and people talking, and that screeching electronically generated music that all the kids loved. How could they not love it? Did they ever even hear anything else? And the people smiled and they were happy. Of course they were happy. They were smilin', weren't they? Weren't they laughing, and holding hands, and kissing each other with so much passion?

Wasn't this happiness?

Could it be anything else? You don't laugh out of fear! You don't hold hands and kiss passionately out of uncertainty for the future! You don't smile, even while your heart is breaking.

Crash.

While your heart is breaking…

Something else was breaking. It was hard to tell just what it was. Maybe it was the sky fallin'—after all these years, finally breaking and falling down in big, oozy chunks. Maybe it was facades cracking, tumbling. Maybe it was just California breaking away from Nevada and tumbling down into the sea. Who could tell? People don't have wings; they can't get a bird's eye view on these situations. They can only guess.

And guess they would.

People love to guess. It's their favourite thing in the whole wide world. They love it even more than ice cream. Love it even more than sex. And that's sayin' somethin', because if there's one thing people really love, it's sex. And guessing. Which means for sure there are two things that people really love. Three, actually, because people certainly like seeing other people suffer. And that's their second favourite thing. So, in the order of things people love, it goes guessing, and then seeing other people suffer, and then sex. Then it's ice cream. And after that, it's breathing. Those are people's priorities.

And guessing is top priority. The truth, however, is the last priority. At the very bottom of the list.

Supposing there had ever been a god—and I'm not supposin' that for one second, I swear—but just, y'know, just supposing there ever had been a god, I'm sure he would have looked at the list of mankind's priorities and that would have been the moment he picked up his hat, slung it on to his head so that the shadows obscured his face and said, "Good night, folks—I'm out!"

God would have worn a hat. Maybe a fedora. I'm never certain about things, but I'm certain about this. If there had ever been a god—just supposin'—he would have worn a hat. Maybe a bowler. Something classy. Not a fez. God would never wear a fez. If he hadn't already checked out after the incident with mankind's priorities, I'm sure he would have started turnin' people into pillars of salt for wearing a fez. God hates the fez, and so do I.

Not to say I'm god, or anything resembling god. I'm just a guy, y'know. You know how that is, don't you? Sure you do. You're just a guy, too. You're not god, either. Supposin' there was a god, he'd be him, and we'd still be us, and maybe once or twice, one of us would buy him a drink at that little dive on Bishop Street. Not 'cause he was god, but just 'cause we're decent sort of people, ain't we?

Aren't we? I never know how that grammar thing goes. They kicked me outta school when I was fourteen. They said to me, 'Jimmy, you need to stop carving your name in the desks.' I told them no, I wouldn't. You wanna know why I told them that? It was 'cause Jimmy wasn't even my name. Maybe I should've carved my name into the desks. I should have.

But there you have it. Kicked out of school for carving some one else's name into the desk, and sent to live on the streets, with the rats and the trash, and the sounds—all that electric music, sounding like a synthesizer's death screams.

I know what you're thinkin'. You're wondering who Jimmy was and why I'd carve his name into my desk, aren't you? Well, the reason is…

I dunno. I guess there was no reason. Is there ever a reason? Psh. I thought reasons were always an after thought, weren't they? …or is it 'aren't they'? I can never tell.

Anyway, Jimmy was just a boy in my class. We didn't talk much, but I liked him a whole lot. He wasn't a smart guy. He was about average intelligence, I guess. But he was neat to look at. He was one of those ModGen kids—y'know the ones, the modified genetics people. He had his DNA spliced with some tigers or somethin' when he was just a little cell in a Petri dish. His parents had that kinda dough. Me, I was a foster kid. My parents didn't even want me, much less want to fuse me with lions and pumas and stuff.

But, yeah, so far as I know, they let Jimmy stay in school. Even though it was his name all over that desk instead of mine.

Guess they figured it was who did it what mattered, and not the end result of the deed. Never got that. Never understood.

I think Jimmy's called Jim now. He's a grown man—has to be. I'm a grown man. We were the same age. I mean, unless he's dead, there's not a whole lot he could've done to not be a grown man. I think about him sometimes, Jimmy. I wonder if he's still neat to look at. Those ModGen kids, I see them all the time now. I didn't back then. Back then, it was just Jimmy. There were a few others, but they weren't so neat to look at as Jimmy was. He was somethin' else. If you'd have seen him, you'd understand my fascination.

Those straight white teeth of his—so sharp. And his skin had these swatches of colour runnin' across it—stripes, y'know? And he had this weird facial structure. Like a big cat that was morphing into a human, but sort of froze in-between. Christ, he was fascinating to look at. I'd spend hours staring at him in class. And he'd look up and catch my eye—and he had these crazy yellow eyes, like a devil or somethin'—and I'd have to make pretend that I hadn't been starin'.

But I did. He was so neat to look at, Jimmy. I couldn't help it. But, it wasn't just the way he looked that made me stare.

It was the why.

Why would someone want their kid to look like that? I'd seen Jimmy's parents before. They were normal people. They weren't freaks or nothin'. They didn't have an especial love for tigers, or whatever it was Jimmy was.

They just spliced their baby up with a panther or somethin', just 'cause they had the money and the technology was new.

I think about that a lot, y'know. I have a lotta time to think. Graveyard shifts as a security guard don't do much to occupy the mind. I work for an advertising company, y'know. Who would break in there? What are they gonna do, use the copy machines? Switch out one of our ads with their own?

Nah, I don't do a lot of guarding. Mostly I just sit behind the desk with my music set on, listening to that music what they can put directly in your head. I used to have one of those music players, a few year back, and I swore I'd never trade my headphones in for a music set. But, the technology got cheaper, and when I could afford it, I did. I don't get much of a choice in what they play, now. It's mostly that electronic junk. I kinda miss my old player. But, hey, it was new technology, and y'can't just hang behind somethin' like that.

And that's my answer, I think. To the question about Jimmy's parents. They're well off, and they go to the doc, and they say, 'Hey, Doc—can't you mix us up a baby? Fred here's shootin' blanks, and Betty's as barren as Russia after the big Nuclear showdown!'

So the doc says, 'Sure, Fred. Sure, Betty. I can give you a son. Or, I can give you a little tiny god.'

Because, supposin' god exists—and I'm just supposin'—why wouldn't he be part cat? Cats know somethin'. Somethin' we don't. That's whycome when you push them off a building they don't get hurt. They learned it a long time back that gravity's not quite right, and if they choose not to let it hurt them, well, they're not quite wrong.

So, then, Jimmy's parents, who aren't yet his parents, well, they say, 'Sure, that sounds peachy. It sounds swell. But would you mind tellin' us just what you mean?'

And the doc, he'd look at them and—oh, it's just so ridiculous, y'know, that he can give your kid a tail and whiskers—but, he'd look at them all serious and junk, and he'd tell them, 'Your baby can be a cat. Not all the way a cat. That's stupid. But he could be a cat boy. And he'd be stronger and faster and jump higher and have sharper senses.'

Who wouldn't want that?

I bet you want that. You wish your parents had enough dough to make you a cat boy, don't you?

I want that…

So, Jimmy's parents say, 'Yeah, sure, Doc! That's keen. I'd like that. We'll call him Jimmy, 'cause it's a normal name and he's just like everyone else.'

Except he wasn't.

But that was peachy, about the strength and speed and jumping and senses, and how he could be the best athlete in the world with his cat-man body.

Except he wasn't.

Jimmy wore glasses. He was horrible at sports. He was uncoordinated, and that weird tail of his always got in his way. And I'd watch him. I'd watch him sit around reading at lunch-time break. Alone. Outcast.

I was an outcast, too.

I never really spoke to Jimmy. I watched him all the time, though. I don't know why I never spoke to him.

Chalk it up to a visceral fear. Man evolved in the jungles of Africa, y'know. That's what they say, but I don't know nothin' about it. But, I do know there are tigers in Africa, and those suckers'll eat you.

Well, there were tigers in Jimmy, too. So how did I know that they wouldn't eat me? Because he was human?

Like that ever stopped it from happening ever before?

I dunno, I dunno.

I used to want to be a poet, when I was a kid. That was a long time, ago, though. Before they threw me out of school for carving Jimmy's name into my desk. My hopes to become a poet had already died before then, but that really sealed the deal. I mean, after all, you can't be a poet when you haven't even graduated school. You can't be much of anything, really. Believe me, I'm in the position to know.

Except for a security guard. You don't need school for that one. If you can find the work, of course. Robots can do my job. I get reminded of that every day by some guy or another. "Hey, buddy—robots can do your job."

They say it to me. Just like that.

"Yeah, I know," I say.

Just like that.

They don't know what to say. They let me be. That's how people are.

But, honestly, robots can do most people's jobs. And, you know—they do. That's why it's so hard to find any jobs. If a robot can't do it, then you need a whole bunch of schooling to do it. That's how it goes, I guess.

But I don't need any schooling to be a security guard, and the advertising company I work for is too small to have a robot guarding it. All they needed was someone who could point a StopShooter, and then fire it. That's exactly what they told me my first day. My boss handed me the StopShooter and he said, "Okay, Avery, you take this SS and you point it. Then you fire it. But only if you have to. Can you do that, Avery?" That's what he said. He said it real slow, like he didn't think I'd understand.

"Yeah," I said, real slow back to him. "I got it, Boss. Just like a gun—just like they used to have in those old Captain America cartoons."

He looked mortified. "Jeez, Avery, don't you watch the news?" he said.

"Nah," I said, all abashed. "I don't really follow the news, Boss."

"Well, egads, Avery, they just pushed through another word ban law," he said. "You can't say that word any more. So don't say it, okay?"

"Okay," I said. I didn't know which word he meant. I didn't until a very long time after that, when they pushed through bans on 'cartoons' and 'Captain America'. Then I knew it was guns I wasn't supposed to say. But—y'know—at that point it didn't really matter.

So, there it was. Point, then shoot. That's all I had to be able to do. But only shoot if I have to. That was a long time ago. I've never had any reason to point. Much less t'shoot. My SS sits in my belt, practically untouched. Unfired, definitely. The only times it ever leaves its holster is to be polished. I like to polish it. It makes me—and this is kinda stupid, I know, and childish, too—but, it makes me feel like I'm one of those gritty policemen in one of those old films, from back in the days when films were only in colour. I know it's stupid, but I always liked those guys. I liked how the whole world was against them, but they knew—they always knew—what was right.

Yeah. Yeah…

But, hell, I know the truth. I know a StopShooter's nothin' like a gun, and a security guard's nothin' like a cop. Despite appearances. Cops don't go home to a little tiny apartment in the slums, with rats beneath the floorboards and holes in the walls, and one little window that doesn't even open, because someone smashed it and—instead of fixing the break—they just taped it back up and taped the jam shut.

Instead of fixing it, they just taped it back up.

Well, they've been doin' that for years, I guess.

I guess. I don't know when they didn't. I don't remember any time when people didn't just tape up the things that didn't work and made pretend that they did.

Y'know, I remember when I was still in school, and we had a history class. That was always so boring, history class. The cotton gin was built in yadda yadda year, and in year blah blah blah the postal service was invented. No one uses cotton anymore, and the postal service has been dead for years and years and years. Why'd they bother to teach it?

There was one thing that interested me, though. It was a picture. It was from the nineteen forties, y'know. Just a picture, an old picture. A picture of a man—a sailor—kissing a woman. They were so happy they were kissing. And all around them, everyone else was happy, too. Smiling.

You don't smile while your heart is breaking.

The teacher said that everyone was happy, because it was the start of a time of peace. I asked, "Why? What happened before that?"

"Come again?" said the teacher. He always did that. Acted like he was better than everyone else. Using more words to say the same thing doesn't make you better than me.

"I mean," I told him. "I mean, if there was the start of somethin'—start of peace—that means that something had to have ended. What was it?"

And he looked at me with those beady little eyes of his, and he told me, "Jimmy, stop carving your name into that desk."

And I told him, "No." Because my name's not Jimmy. Jimmy sat two rows to my left. I didn't look at him during this conversation, but in my mind I can only imagine that Jimmy looked very confused.

I never did find out what ended. Maybe it's on the list of banned words. I… I know some words on that list. I guess I could tell you. I mean, at this point, does it matter if they find out I told? The word 'gun' is on the list, even though guns themselves have been illegal for decades and what can you do with a word that you can't do with the actual thing it represents? 'Captain America' and 'cartoons' are on the list, and so is 'comics' and 'superheroes' and 'dodgeball' and 'nostalgia'—not like most people could use that word right, anyhow. And 'a-bomb' is on the list, which makes it hard to talk about what happened to Russia and to the east coast. And 'war' is on that list.

War. They banned the word, but they couldn't ban the concept. Can you ever? Nah. It keeps going on, and they just use different words for it and—y'know—everyone seems fine with that. I remember before they banned it. They never used it even then. Except when people would say, they would say, "Well, it's a pretty nasty conflict", or "well, that's one hell of an incident", or "look at that skirmish". And then they'd laugh and say, "But at least it's not a war."

Nope. At least it's not a war. At least it's not that.

Don't get me wrong, I said it all the same as the rest of them. That makes me a hypocrite, don't it? …doesn't it? How does that go?

Anyway. I think that must've been it. It must've been a war. And when the war was over, all the sailors grabbed a pretty gal and they kissed, and all the photographers took pictures, and all the ticker tape came pouring down all around them. And for a moment, the whole world was frozen, like one of those vegetable slices gets frozen in aspic—just floatin' there, y'know, all suspended in its thick, red world.

It must've been some sorta war, though. Man, the only things I ever saw when wars ended were people shrugging. Who cares? Wars end all the time.

They start all the time, too. We just don't say anything about that.

But, honestly, what sort of war it must've been. I'm not one to glorify war—as a matter of fact, I think there's a law against glorifying war. I don't know about that. There are so many laws, no one can keep up with them. I can't, at least. I s'pose I shouldn't speak for every one, though. But, laws aside, that war must've been… I mean, are there even words for somethin' like that?

Supposin' god exists—and I'm just supposin', here—I think he must've fought in that war. Clouds blowin' at his feet, and mortars goin' off every which way. …they still fought with mortars then, right?

I'm gettin' side tracked. Sorry. It's kinda hard for me, y'know? I just… I got hit in the head when I was a little kid and I ain't never been right since. That's what they used to tell me. No one's said it to me in years, though, 'cause I haven't seen any one who knew me when I was a little kid in years. It's a good way to avoid not hearing about when I got hit in the head when I was a little kid.

But, right. Things were breaking up. That's what I was talkin' about, wasn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Things were breakin' up, y'know. It started out real subtle at first. People argued a little more. Felt a little more tense. Ill at ease.

I didn't notice it at first, y'know. I lived by myself in a little bitty apartment in the Olfman district, with holes in the walls and rats in the floors, and I never really talked to anyone. I slept all day in my little apartment, with its broken window what faced a grimy brick wall and at night, I went to the advertising company to guard their copy machines and their computers and stuff. No one ever talked to me, really, and I never talked to any one, either.

It's not that I don't like people. Nah, I love people. People are beautiful.

Nah. I'm just shy.

People are beautiful… except for me, y'know? I ain't got a shower at my place, so my hair is greasy, and I ain't been in to see the dentist in years, because I don't like the dentist, so my teeth are kinda crooked. And I'm missing one of them. One of those sharp teeth on the top. I got it knocked out in an alley one time when I got mugged. It's okay. I don't have trouble eatin' or nothin'. I just feel kinda embarrassed to smile or to laugh.

Not like I do either too much anyway, so it's all fine.

I could never understand how everyone else could be so beautiful and I could be so hideous. Was I always so awful? I don't remember. All I know is that I pass through crowds of people in good clothes with perfect hair and skin and teeth, and their eyes are bright, and they look at me like I'm something what crawled up outta the sewer. And they smell like flowers…

I mean, I guess they do. I wouldn't know nothin' about flowers. I know what flower-scented candles smell like. But, y'know, as for actual flowers, those have been banned for years and years and years. Most people don't know why, but I do.

See, plants were banned 'cause you can made stuff out of them. They're full of chemicals. All it takes is a little bit of boredom, and you could log on to your connection chip and find out what you can do with the flowers around you. Get high, or off yourself with them…

That's why they were banned. Your own protections, y'know. After all, what if you were aiming to do one and ended up doing the other?

The government has to protect you from your own stupidity. 'Cause government people are better than the rest of us.

Ah. And that's what it was all about. My original point. There was an election coming up. That's what started it.

The war that we weren't allowed to call a war.