July 4, 2041, 1:41 P.M. EST

Rick had maintained his health, his drive and his privacy—a thing that was now virtually against the law—through Mike, his interface. In the 1980s and 90s, when he was a young man banging steroids and strippers with a hard-on you could cut diamonds with, bulked out to 250 pounds and doing flies with 150-pound dumbbells, he had had to break the law then to get his juice. Then, after getting involved in natural medicine and longevity fitness, getting raided by the fucking feds and then having to interact economically with a world that wanted you to be like Mike—well, that meant you needed Mike…

The towering office building and apartment complex had a pleasing view of the mighty Ohio River. Only two other pedestrians in safewear [known in a previous age as a hazmat suit] were out and about.

What day of the week was it? He could not remember.

Days didn’t mean much anymore—it was all dates and times, every day bleeding into the other as life droned on one isolated soul at a time under the grey, electric-spangled sky.

A cop, a University Hospital cop, hummed by in his electric car down the deserted street. PIGs had always pissed him off, hassling him since he was thirteen years old in Washington, PA, arresting him in Las Vegas, messing with him his entire life, citing him for starting his truck in his driveway twenty years ago now, and grilling him every time they saw his pasty face on any street in any town in America he had been to, constantly up his ass about not wearing a mask when he was alone in public.

PIGs pissed him off so much!

But, as usual, when he was in brownface, disguised as an African American, and dressed like a Modern Reform Muslim in fitted hat and masculine hijab, the PIGs just glanced at him and kept going, looking for the next Native American paleface they could hassle.

So, on impulse, old Rick stopped and leveled the middle finger at the PIG, pale and fat in his rolling social distance observation post, and shouted in the most socially acceptable dialect, “Yo numba one muvafucka!”

Not only did the cop not stop, but he sped up, ramping that gay golf cart up to its maximum speed of 30 miles per hour.

Rick remembered with a pang the gas rationing, and then the government limitation on internal combustion engines to military, law enforcement and trucking that began with the Sino-African Crisis in 2030. It had been over a decade since a regular American could drive a petrol-based car.

Up he walked to the lobby entrance and hit the buzzer with the back of his hand, cagey and careful not to apply his fingertips and the betraying fingerprints to any visual reader, and keyed in Mike’s address, 723, with a knuckle.

Mike’s massively obese visage, pale and blotchy, appeared on the monitor, asking, “Can I help you?”

Rick gave the password, “Food delivery from Hip Hop Hillel.”

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