I guess I should start at the beginning. But I don’t even know who I’m speaking to. Let’s assume you’re a creature of the future since the present is already past. I’m going to call you a creature; why not, since woman and man are two categories on their way to joining the theory of humours in the dustbin of history. Perhaps you’re nothing more than a puddle of lipids. Or a brain in a jar. Maybe my text has been converted into electrical impulses, predigested by an intelligence unconnected to any other organ, floating in a nutrient-rich, conductive liquid medium. Are you a child? A citizen of the People’s Republic of China, our world’s reigning superpower? An intergalactic refugee?

Or maybe nothing has changed — yet. In that case you may be a reader in the near future. You could be my neighbour, my employer, my friend. I’d still prefer to imagine a reader from another era. I don’t want to hurt anyone I know. No one chooses to dump bodies where they might poison their wells.

I choose to live dangerously, and one day I’ll push it just a little too far. Statistically speaking, my life will be a short one. But then, it’s all relative: if we lived in the time of the Black Death, I’d already be in the twilight of my life. Or dead from childbirth, or from the pneumonia I had when I was five. Without modern medicine we’d all be dead, with our flabby bodies, giant heads, and feeble eyesight. Not to mention our rampant anxiety.

At any rate we’ve got no more than ten or fifteen years until every one of us is monitored, from egg to cremation urn — and even before, even after. Unless you take precautions, that future is here. I take precautions. My goal is to have fun while meting out a little justice here and there before we get to the ending where we all get swallowed up by the all-seeing omnipotent System.

So let’s begin our story on that particular afternoon — an afternoon that also marks, I now realize, the end of my childhood. The sun is still high in the sky, but it’s not too hot. Maybe twenty-four degrees. There’s a cool, gentle breeze blowing in from the north. I can feel the sun through my clothes and on the back of my neck, where it’s filtering through the leaves of the trees all around me. It’s all so pretty. And everything smells so good: the wind, the old fir tree, me.