The Mercy Journals Read Online Free PDF Page B

penalty is loss of driving privileges for three years.
    My job also includes ensuring the vehicles parked in my territory adhere to the latest regulations. When OneWorld came into being, most vehicles were Phevs, Bevs, or hybrids that used various combinations of hydrogen, solar, and electric batteries or fuel cells, with some gasoline or bio-diesel fuel, although some drivers still had luxury models with powerful engines run solely on fossil fuels. These models were banned immediately, but people got fuel on the black market and continued to drive them, either to circumvent charges to their ration cards or to avoid the limits to the speed or distance they could drive. A big part of parking enforcement in those days involved tagging and impounding these vehicles and disenfranchising the transgressors. That particular excitement has diminished over the years since most of the illegal vehicles have been impounded and OneWorld is transitioning to government-owned Shuvs. We still catch the occasional transgressor, though, someone who has installed an illegal engine in an approved body or attached a counterfeit licence plate to an illegal model.
    I like to keep my territory clean and orderly. I enjoy catching cheaters. I think of them as people who would stealfood from a baby, people who would take my last breath of air without blinking.
    Between eight and nine a.m., the streets are full of people going to work, running errands, taking their kids to school. No one is in a hurry, and the city unfolds the way I imagine a medieval town would have—people greeting each other, picking up food, flirting, yawning, waking up as they go—colours faded, buildings ramshackle. Vehicle traffic is less with each passing year. Fewer people, more bicycles. The Canton laid off twenty percent of us in the last two years. I’m lucky to still have my job.
    I was making a final round before lunch when an unusual matte sheen on a vehicle caught my eye. I took my key out, got down on my good knee, stuck my prosthesis out to the side, and scratched the solar paint under the bumper. Sure enough, old paint showed through—robin’s egg blue. I went and rubbed the tailpipe with my thumb. The soot smelled acrid and metallic. I popped the hood. I don’t know how the guy that drove this thing got here without being swarmed because that engine would have sounded louder than any other vehicle around today. I quickly closed the hood and examined the edges of the licence plate. Counterfeit.
    I went to the stash box at the end of the block, unlocked it, got out a boot, came back, and clamped it on. Scanned the plate. The parking was paid. I sent in a tow request and moved down the street. I was about four or five cars down the road when I heard the boot being shaken and someone yell, What the fuck!
    I scanned the next plate without turning around.
    Hey! You! Did you put the boot on me?
    I didn’t respond.
    You. Asshole. Did you boot me? Am I a ghost? Did I fucking up and die and no one told me? This piece of shit life.
    The voice was getting closer.
    It struck me as familiar in a déjà vu kind of way. I turned and faced him. In these kinds of situations, the Krav Maga comes in handy. When I turned, he stopped. The guy was covered in hair—beard down to his armpits, greying hair down to his elbows. He had a dirty face, blue eyes burning at me. His clothes were dark and dusty, maybe black, maybe charcoal grey, maybe brown, but his shoes were polished and expensive. He must’ve kept some good pairs from the old days, and he’d recently oiled the leather.
    You’re driving an illegal model, sir. And you might want to keep your voice down. The public doesn’t take kindly to these types of infractions.
    Though the crises seem to be on the wane, people are still volatile. No doubt everything will be different in the future and, in any case, I don’t want to paint a picture of humanity gone to the dark side—it wasn’t like those old Hollywood movies about the