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03:32 pm - Hand Out

Jake wanted to eat lunch on the West Highway Promenade again - because, he said, it was such a nice day. But I knew he just likes being a dick to the lifeless that are always milling around the brain-counter on 3rd. It was lunchtime for them, too.



"Look at 'em," he said, one arm resting on the rail. There was a big sack on the bridge next to him. "Good for nothing pieces of shit ruined it for the rest of us."



Down below, on the Ground, there they were: hundreds and hundreds of them stumbling about, most of them more or less queued into a line that progressed into a building, one of the few open buildings on the Ground here. It had taken a few years to instill the training, but they were simple things and eventually - without even understanding what they were doing, I'm sure - the walking dead had begun to realize that certain places could and would feed them on a schedule, if they'd just be orderly about it. Three times a day, the brain-counter would open up and the robots would begin serving. If the lifeless tried to be greedy, the fire would burn them to near incapacitation. Too tough to actually destroy, but they didn't like being all messed up. Gradually, they began to learn. Hell, you can train a planarian worm to run a maze; the walking dead were at least that capable.



Maybe someday, we'd finally be in a position to exterminate them, we'd find something that worked, but until then their teeming millions simply had to be appeased, while life - real life, our lives - went right along as always on the Second and higher Floors. No more stairs or ramps or elevators - only ladders. They couldn't climb, they were too slow and clumsy to be a real threat under any reasonable circumstances or in small numbers. If one ever got loose on the Second Floor, everyone would just scale up to the Third until security could knock the troublemakers back down to the Ground.



They were just an embarrassing obstacle at this point… as long as you didn't go to the Ground. Down there, it was a different story. Down there, they still ruled.



"They can't help what they are," I sighed. We always went round and round like this. I don't know why I even humor him about it. "Nobody *asks* to become lifeless, you know."



"Ground-floor shopping staffed by expensive robots," he muttered, then shouted: "Fuck you rot-baggers for making my tax dollars pay so you can have free meals!"



"Jake, you know I hate it when you bring this angry shit to lunch-break."



But he wasn't listening to me. He never really was, when he was in these moods. He reached down into the bag and pulled out a big clump of raw meat. Chicken, I think. "You want a handout, you deadbeats?" he shouted again. "Here, come get some!"



He hucked the raw meat down onto the Ground, onto the road next to the slow-shuffling line. Immediately, a few heads turned. He hurled another half pound down: SPLAT. More heads. Then, some hands began reaching. The groaning started. Suddenly, the orderly line broke apart into a riot of chaos as the poor dead people began rushing, rushing desperately to the scraps of edible that were scattering on the road.



Jake began cackling at the sight of them, pathetically scrabbling on the old asphalt for little shreds of meat.



I looked down at the deli sandwich I'd brought with me. "Thanks for ruining lunch, you dick," I said to Jake, but he was still enraptured at the ruinous mob he'd incensed below. I carefully put the sandwich into the nearest composting bin and made my way back across the walkway to my own building.



But no matter how many doors I closed behind me, I could still hear the hungry groaning of the lifeless. They would never stop wanting.



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For consideration: the venn diagram intersection of social welfare and national security and public health