and
melt the thing, but by the time they arrived, an errant breeze had lofted it
again, and it flew another seventy kay, until it crossed the antidebris field at
Jean Paul Aristide International in Barrie.

I'm hungry. I'm cold. My teeth are beshitted with scum. Linus comes tripping
Noel Coward out of his front door and I feel like kicking his ass. He sees me
staring at him.

"Did you have a good night, Maxes?"

"Spiff, strictly nift. Eat shit and die."

He tsks and shakes his head and gets on his bicycle. He works down at Yonge and
Bloor, in the big Process HQ. His dad was my dad's lieutenant, and since they
both went to the confab on the mothaship (along with all the other grownups on
my Chestnut Ave), he's sort of in charge. Shit-eating prick. He lisps a little
when he talks, and he's soft and pudgy, not like Dad, who could orate like a
Roman tyrant and had a washboard for a gut.

I hope he gets hit by a semi.

#

I pass the morning with my comm, till I come to the pict of Mum and Dad and
their Process buds on the jetway to the shuttle at Aristide, ascending to the
heavens as humanity's reps. They're both naked and arm-in-arm and as chaste as
John and Yoko, and my eyes fill up with tears. I crawl back into my fort and
sleep and dream about buzzing Chestnut Ave in a shuttle with a payload of
solvent, melting down all the houses into trickles that disappear into the
sewers.

#

I wake for the second time that day to the sound of a gas engine, a rarity on
Chestnut Ave and the surrounding North Toronto environs. It's a truck, from the
city, the kind they used to use to take away the trash before the pneuma was
finished -- Dad pointed out how it was a Point of Excellence, the plans for the
subterranean pneuma, and his acolytes quietly saw to it. Three men in coveralls
and reflective vests ride on the back. It pulls up into my drive, and my comm
chimes.

It's a text-only message, signed and key-crypted from Linus, on Process
letterhead. The first thing it does is flash a big message about how by reading
it, I have logged my understanding of its contents and it is now officially
served to me, as per blah blah blah. Legal doc.

I scroll down, just skimming. "-- non compis mentis -- anti-social destruction
of property -- reckless endangerment of innocent life -- violation of terms --
sad duty of the Trustees --" and by the time I'm finished the message, I'm
disinherited. Cut off from the Process trust fund. Prope