Clank.
    Justin Carey looked down at his feet. His right steel-toed boot had made contact with a rectangular piece of metal lying on the road. While the road in itself wasn’t the greatest piece of artwork-- what with the large (confusable with artwork) series of cracks running from Halber all the way down to Elb and such-- it hardly seemed the right place to leave a piece of metal. Someone’s liable to trip on this and break their neck, Justin mumbled as he picked it up. Its coldness shot straight into the areas of flesh it met on his fingers and thumb. Scanning the dark street, he located a waste receptacle under a streetlight and marched towards it. Lifting the heavy black lid, he tossed it in; the debris hit the bottom with a bang, which reverberated up the steel structure. Justin took a quick glance up and down the road, seeing if he could spot another piece of waste material lying
around. A short jog away, near the intersection with Halber, he noticed a smallish object glinting in the glow of an abnormally bright streetlight.
    ‘Glass!’ he gave as a stifled shout. He looked around, hoping no one had heard and thought him queer for speaking to himself. With a sort of gallop, the echoing of his boots reflecting off of the trailers lining the road: tap-tap, tap-tap, he made his way down to the object. With his character confused face-- lower lip sucked in, left eyebrow dropped-- he leaned nearer the thing in question. Squinting, trying hard to make out what the object could possibly be, he picked it up for closer examination. Off in the distance, the hum-and-hiss of the local garbage truck could be heard, slowly getting nearer.
    The thing was most certainly made of bronze. There was a large, triangular design on one end, and teeth (or at least what looked to be teeth) carved out of the other. The only conclusion Justin could come to was that this was some form of family ornament someone had dropped while walking this road. This could be valuable to someone, I shouldn’t just throw it out... he thought; slipping it into his pocket, he inferred that there was indeed no garbage to pick up, and turned to walk down Halber, homewards.
    The garbage truck was passing now, a bit faster than usual, as it was the middle of the night-- or middle of the morning, however you may look at it. The front left wheel hit the famous Centrehole, so called for the missing section of pavement’s convenient location in the middle of the road. Bouncing like a carriage traveling down a cliff face, the truck lost a portion of its contents, which thus scattered quite messily across the road. A man in the passenger’s side stuck his head out of the window, staring back at Justin with a face that seemed to intimate a childish ‘It wasn’t me!’ Justin looked at the litter. I’m not cleaning that up he grumbled, and continued walking home.
    Justin thought about the object in his pocket for the rest of his walk. Indeed several times he slipped his hand in, checking that it was still there. He had no fear that someone would steal it from him-- crime didn’t exist within the Zone. It was a mutual understanding that if you were out stealing from Sally down the road, you could be stolen from simultaneously. No doors or windows had any form of ‘locks’, as we know them. Even the Governor’s house was lockless, and he had never suffered any shape or form of criminal activity against his self or home. The mention of crime was humorous; while this seems tasteless to us, through some means, it had become a hot topic of jokes all around the Circle.
    You may be asking at this point, What is this Justin fellow doing walking around a city in the middle of the Morning? The answer is quite simple. Justin’s workday began at 5 o’clock standard time. Recently, he had been assigned to Production Overseer at the Lightshop, the office in charge of lighting the Zone. He spent all of his time behind a desk meticulously checking records and statistics, and writing summaries of the amount of light energy output for the day. It was part of his job to deliver his summary to the Zone Efficiency Overseer, who lived on the other side of Sector 6. Justin enjoyed the leisure of visiting the library after work, and delivered the summary to the ZEO’s (which he pronounced "zed-ee-oh", much to the amusement of his comrades) mailbox before his next shift began. This also gave him the ability to stretch his legs and maintain a bit of fitness.
    Far above, Justin heard a screeching like that of metal against metal. Glancing up to the Sky, he saw small sparkles of light shooting out of the slender, rectangular body of a god.


    I can only imagine that you are thinking: How much LSD was in this guy’s Frosted Flakes? However, now is not the time to discuss the matter. As it stands, just accept that the gods are sparkly, and that a sufficient amount of LSD was present. Let me continue with the story.


    Justin thought nothing of this. It was a very common sight throughout the Zone. He continued walking without so much as a second glance.
    A split second later, another loud-- but much nearer-- noise caused Justin to jump. Some waste cans toppled over, and the sound of quick footsteps stopped so quickly as they had begun. Immediately, a quiver ran straight through his innards.
    Trembling mildly, at least below the wrist, Justin picked up and clamped the lids down on the overturned wastebins. His thoughts never left the thing in his pocket, though; Does this person perhaps think I stole it from them? Are they planning to lead me to some populated place and accuse me publicly? He knew, without doubt, that his imagination was simply running away with him, probably as a result of reading too many books at the library after work. He took a step forward; an empty foodbag crumpled under his boot-- Justin stiffened to the extent his spine almost snapped. The pure silence was more frightening than any beast a book could conjure. Nervously he stuttered: ‘H-h-hel-l-o-o?’ Chimes rang in the distance, probably from someone leaving their home for work. After what seemed like an hour of semi-stillness, Justin mustered up the courage to breathe. A long sigh, followed by several shallow breaths, and he was ready to face any challenge the World could offer him.
    Clang!
    In stepping forward, Justin had managed to kick a wastebin over, again spilling its contents. Before he had the time to curse himself, the sound of swift stepping heading to the right made him break out into a sweat. My trailer.
    He tore to the other side of the building, tripping over nearly everything along the way, even a hedge at one point; he was now on Minkirk. Three trailers in, with a streetlight directly across the road, was his humble and yellow abode. A figure, positioned so, with the light behind it, that the visible side was cast in darkness, was delineated against the faintly lit pavement.