Mini sublet east, on Campell Rd (address below)

Conducts survival training in various parks without surveillance

cameras.

PETER

Checks the address. This is the right spot. This is where his mother, according to her log-ins, comes to the gym four days a week. Today is one of those four. But his mother is nowhere to be seen.

Chants can be heard in the distance. A demonstration? What about? They have everything, the people. The weather is, well, yeah, weather. They are getting money, don’t have any serious diseases, don’t die shortly after birth, their land isn’t decimated by locusts, since there are no locusts. Scientists have modified a bacteria to eat plastic. So the world’s oceans might be saved. Okay, so they’ll be polluted with bacteria. But does that make sense? To demonstrate against bacteria? Speaking of which—where is your goddamn mother, and how are you supposed to react to her? Peter starts to rock back and forth. Whenever Peter works himself into a state, it’s up to Don to calm him down. “We’re sitting here planning and thinking about our lives, because we think it’s totally important, because every human thinks he, specifically, will enrich the world or even allow it to survive at all. And then comes a meteorite and the world is gone in a flash. Or a volcano that darkens the sky and lowers the earth’s temperature to minus ten, and so on. I’m just saying,” says Don. And Peter calms down. “We don’t have the power,” says Don.