Sporemageddon

Psilocybin Twenty-Six

It was surprisingly easy to get back to the slums. Not that I just strolled in.

I was far too paranoid... no, in this case it wasn’t paranoia, it was caution. I was far too cautious to simply walk in. Instead, I took a circuitous route back towards the slums, stopping along the way to steal the jacket of a man I found sleeping in an alleyway. It changed my profile and would make it that much harder to tell me apart.

I couldn’t do anything about my height, but I had covered my head a little. Hopefully enough that anyone searching was looking for the wrong person.

There was a chance, still, that I’d be tracked. I didn’t like it, but... well, whatever. I was out.

Nearer to the centre of the city, I discovered the first major signs that things weren’t all well and good. There was a crowd. They were chanting, holding up signs, shouting obscenities.

After spending a lifetime here, I could pick out people based on their class and position in the complex hierarchy at a glance. It was a lot of little things. How clean they were, the clothes they wore, the way someone stood, talked, looked at others. In this case, I could tell that the majority of the crowd here were factory folk. A step or two above the people that lived in my slums.

These were people that had... well, maybe not decent jobs, but at least they had work.

Had. I was sure that if they could, they’d all rather be doing their menial labour right about now.