S: Hello, my name is Steve. I am a rubbish collector. I detoxify the city. I see you looking at these houses, there is no way for you to move in. The people who live here are a closed community.

A: Hello, my name is Angel, but I used to be called Xin.

S: Hello, I am a rubbish collector by vocation. And who are you? Are you nobody, too?

A: There is a pair of us.

S: Let me buy you a pint, and tell you my story.

A: Let me beg for forgiveness, and tell you mine.

S: I’m working class.

A: I’m upper middle, I used to be a slave. How is that possible. The wonders of the empire.

S: I watch a lot of movies, and feelies, too. I am very busy. But I am very busy. I mean lonely.

A: I am too busy to be lonely, but I feel broken. I used to hate the Joyride, now I am one of ’em.

S: One of what? We are all one in our ecological rubbish dump. We are all in the gutter…

A: But some of us feel guilt.

S: I don’t feel guilt, I don’t think there is anything unfair about the multi-verse.

A: I used to be a child with a red-passion track suit. Now I am trapped in a grey flannel suit.

S: But you are still that child. Just remember to take one step at a time, and breathe.

A: I can’t breathe, at times. I don’t gamble so much more, anyway, but no matter how much money I spend, I feel empty. I am not sure why I am talking to you like this. Do y’know, I used to be in the army? They told me: “In your mind, you may think you are a woman. But in the army, you are just a faggot.” They beat me, because I was reading a book. Savagely.

S: What was the book?

A: King Lear.

S: I grew up around here, I was an orphan.

A: My father killed himself, so I grew up amidst women on Rex Nebular. My mother hated me every minute of her life. I was born with a genetic mutation.

S: What was the mutation?

A: I was born a man in a world of women. I tried to please the community of women that my mother belonged to, I had to change my sex. But they still hated me. They called me a genderbender. So they sold me into slavery at the age of twelve. I have been on the run from them all my life. I think the miner’s colony was better. Then there was the rebellion. Then… then, I forget. Was I in gaol before or after that? I think I was tortured. I don’t remember much. I think I was in a war.

S: What you need, is a bit of the old detoxification. You need to go out and live in the woods. Plant trees. Watch flowers grow.

A: I have business to attend to.

S: Money doesn’t sing.

A: My mother wouldn’t approve.

S: And your father wouldn’t mind.

A: Don’t talk about my father. I hate him. He was an immigrant on a planet of women, and he killed himself. He left me there.

S: You are not a child anymore.

A: Says who? I thought you just said that I still am that child.

S; You can’t be. Not after everything that’s happened to you.

A: I just want to get even. Sorry, I have to go now. There are people that work for me that I need to punish. They are slackers, and they waste my money and time. Forget what I said.

S: I will be here next week. I always go for walkies. See you around.

A: See you. The next time you can tell me about yourself… sorry.