Chapter 8

Lunch time.

Before 2020, lunch time had been his favorite time. The lounge would fill up with all sorts of people who worked for the county. He would get to visit with interesting people. But it was the winter of 2022, and the threat of the plague hung around all their necks. There had been an attempt by the politicos and other departments in at the County Hall to loosen up things but he and the members of his department raised such a ruckus, threatening to go to the media, even, that lunchtime was strictly regulated. Everyone had to eat at their offices; if a particular department had a large enough work room, a department could eat together. Otherwise, the lounge was reserved only for the public health department—the only people who were informed enough on how to eat safely in groups and could be trusted to actually do so. Well, and the County Supervisor and his staff, who could not be denied. But these, at least, either ate before or after the public health department ate.

“What are you putting on that burger, Mike?” laughed Chris, a solid (and safe) eight feet away.

“Hellfire Seasoning,” Mike replied.

“Good grief, don’t you know that’s all just MSG and worse?” Suzie chortled from eight feet away in the other direction.

“It tastes great, though!” Mike smiled back.

“Is there any chemical you won’t put in or on your body?” Chris asked.

“You know as well as I do that the FDA, the EPA, and the CDC would not allow any compound that was unsafe for consumption or use into the marketplace. I’ll grant its not the healthiest, but it probably won’t hurt me!”

“That stuff will irradiate your boys and make you sterile,” Chris joked. Suzie scowled. She did not like Chris’s phraseology.

“Then it’s a win-win,” Mike said. However, he was not being truthful. It had been his hope to someday have children. Unfortunately, all he had been able to have are women. Women he could not get to stick around. It brought him down to think about it. Even though he and his peers would make remarks about how stupid the general public was, and even though he didn’t like to conclude there was something wrong with the way women think, it made him sad to think such things about fellow humans. However, the alternative was that there was something about his own lifestyle and mode of operation that stood in the way of his ability to ‘settle down’ and have children. This would call into question his whole ideology, but he knew his own ideology was rock solid (evidence-based), so that left him somewhat bitter, and very much alone. Alone in the more existential sense. After all, even if he couldn’t find a woman selling the truck, there were still plenty that were giving the ice cream away for free.

The conversation continued jovially until they all decided they should get back to work.

Mike’s job these days was to work with the community to end bullying once and for all. Primarily, this meant working in the schools. However, he would liaise with law enforcement periodically, too. Businesses, especially the very large ones—and certainly all of the multi-nationals which happened to be located in his jurisdiction—also availed themselves of his expertise. He spent a lot of time monitoring social media, having surreptitiously ‘friended’ or ‘followed’ students at the schools, or employees at the companies, in order to be familiar with what people were thinking and saying in his area.

This wasn’t spying, of course. His intentions were pure. He used what he learned to advise the schools or businesses on interventions that could mitigate some of the anti-social behaviors he witnessed online. True, when he saw something that was really off, he could not let it slide. He dutifully reported the comments or media to the authorities at the social media companies. Would this make him an informant? By all means, no! Any conscientious citizen would do the same thing.

Granted, most conscientious citizens did not have direct access to the police, who could immediately follow up on anything Mike felt required immediate action. And did Mike ever over-react? Granted, 99% of all of his calls to his contacts with cops turned out to be ‘nothing,’ but the truth is that there were few people in the community who knew better about detecting toxic behavior. The biggest high school in the county recently hired a newly-minted psychologist from California, who would be one of the few exceptions. And anyway, “better safe than sorry.” The precautionary principle applied.

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