It reminds me of this short story. “All Summer in a Day.” There was this little girl—wait, I should say first that the story takes place on a human colony on Venus, I think. It rains there all the time; the sun only comes out for an hour every seven years. But the kids who were born there are all used to it; they haven’t ever seen the sun, so they don’t miss it. Except there’s this one girl who’s new. Her parents have just moved the family to Jupiter or Venus or wherever and she remembers sunny days from her earthling childhood. But when she goes on and on about how nice life was on Earth, none of the Venus kids understand. She writes all this lovely sunshine poetry and gets all put out because no one gives a shit. Finally the sunny day comes, and she’s kind of psychotic looking forward to it, but the asshole other kids lock her in a closet for the whole hour the sun’s out and she misses it, which is pretty brutal, and you’re obviously supposed to feel sorry for her. And I do, kind of. Someone should have told her not to be such a pain in the ass, though.

The kids that come after my generation will probably get so fed up they’ll revolt. They’ll be much tougher than we are. I bet by the time they’re eleven or so, they’ll just slash the shit out of us. Kids’ll eat their folks, and with their mouths full they’ll parrot their parents talking about real meat. I’m not saying it serves them right, just that if you’re honest about what people are like, it’s understandable. People who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut always get fucked with.

Skulking west down all the roads from Portsmouth Harbor, up to the town limit, back down around the green, single-click stubby dead-end streets and halting culs-de-sac. My eyes are sore. I look away from the screen for a few minutes, hold up my finger and alternate my gaze between it and the wall beyond, roll my eyeballs under the lids ten times in each direction. Blink hard. I can’t believe I’m still here.

This is no good. Google Earth’s imagery runs on a delay, so there’s every chance I’m looking too far back in time and they’re not there yet. I need to look in real time. Change tack, browser window, search the networked cameras nearby. Hardly anyone bothers to change from the factory default passwords, and they’re all online. You don’t even need to go through the dark web. A few clicks and you’re in. I start at the top of the list and work my way down.