Joe tucked the folder back into his bag as he stepped off the bus. He hated talking to the cops. His Uncle Louis had been a cop, and Joe knew a little too much of what went on in the back room. And he didn’t like most of these young upstarts, just back from war, with their arrogance, and their disdain for these poor people trying to survive on the broken streets. As if this wasn’t a battlefield, too. But, here the land-mines were everywhere, not just underfoot. And chemical warfare, long outlawed by the Geneva Convention, was evident in the cancers that bloomed everywhere. The war here was just as endless as the one at the front lines. Not all the cops were so insensitive, but enough of them, so that it left a sour taste in his mouth.
 
     At least he was in popo territory, and he didn’t have to deal with the clean-n-safes. For them, he held another level of disdain altogether. Private security firms, originally hired by the neighborhood business associations to keep transients and other riffraff from their client’s businesses, the clean-n-safe’s were becoming Portland’s solution to social and economic breakdown. Over the years, they grew as corrupt as they were incompetent, and they controlled their masters’ fiefdoms with a wild ruthlessness. East County businesses hadn’t been able to pull it together to hire their own police force. There will be nothing but anarchy in East County, Joe thought, when the Portland Police Department is finally phased out.
 
     Across the street, a blackwater stood sentry at the westbound MAX stop, his semiautomatic clutched in his hands. From a block and a half away, Joe could see the nervousness in his young face, the unsureness of his footing. The waiting commuters eying him with a skittish diffidence.
 
     Joe approached the popos with caution, as he had been taught, flashing his identity badge to let them know that he worked for The Agency. He deliberately set out on a path close to the building so he could see inside the window as he passed.
 
     “You got business here?” the officer nearest him demanded.
 
     “I’m her caseworker,” Joe said, looking askance through the window. Inside, Connie slumped on a couch, wearing a pair of those dark wrap-around glasses, like the girl on the bus. No blood, no drug paraphernalia that he could see.
 
     “You were her caseworker,” said the cop. “Your docket just got cleared of one problem. This one’s gone to Sweetland, permanently.”
 
     “She’s got kids at school,” he said, adding asshole under his breath.
 
     “Well,” said the cop, “I guess you get a paycheck then, after all.”
 
     Joe seethed. He just couldn’t figure these kids out. Connie could have been this jerks mom. Men in uniform, the grunts, grew up in neighborhoods like these, with single parents struggling to survive, and yet they seemed so eager to turn on their own.
 
     Joe swallowed his anger. “What happened to her?” he asked.
 
     “I’m not at liberty to say, sir. You should go take care of them kids, now.”
 
     Don’t argue, Joe told himself. Arguing just gets you in jail. Or disappeared. It’s best to play their game.
 
     “I’ll do that,” he said, in his most practiced obsequiousness. “Thanks, officer.”
 
     Joe retreated to the bus stop across the street, weaving his way carefully through the bicycle traffic. Out of nowhere, a group of young boys dashed past and a bottle flew through the air, landing at the feet of the blackwater, who raised his gun menacingly. Crouching, his muscles tense, Joe felt the adrenalin rush through his body as he hurried across the bus lane. To his relief, a bus approached from the north, and soon pulled up to the stop. He stepped up into the vehicle, and two of the young men from the pack who had tossed the bottle at the blackwater, boarded behind him, taking the seat across the isle. Joe clenched his jaw. Perspiration formed on his forehead, and he wiped it nervously with the back of his hand. Why did they have to board this bus? These young fools don’t know what they’re playing with. They could get a lot of people hurt or killed, including themselves.
 
     “Did you see that blackwater’s face,” one whispered, excitedly.
 
     “Yeah,” said the other one, “he was friggin’ ready to piss his pants.”
 
     “You boys should be a little more cautious,” admonished a woman sitting behind them, who appeared to be about sixty.
 
     “Whatever, Grandma,” said the first boy, with a nasty snarl. But they fell silent, and then left the bus after two more stops. Joe exhaled slowly, and felt the pent up tension ease.
 
     At last, the bus pulled up to the office, which was housed in the basement of an old grade school. The school had recently been sold to the private sector, as had The Agency itself, which now existed in a gray transition zone. Many of Joe’s coworkers received their paychecks from A Better World, Inc. ABW was a joint-venture corporation recently created by several multinationals, to take full advantage of the mandated privatization of the public sector. In two more years, there would be no public sector at all. Just the so-called free market. Police, libraries, schools, social services, all under the dictates of private profit. Joe could see the havoc being wreaked by the gods of the Free Market. But, there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing anyone could do. It was what they called a done deal.
 
     A deep sense of despair overtook him as he entered the basement door, and walked down the dim, shabby hall, its light green paint peeling and covered with black marks from the soles of shoes where hundreds of weary legs had rested as they waited for assistance. Help that often never came. He slunk past Christi, the receptionist, and signed in, then he bee-lined straight to his cubicle and verified that Children’s Services Corp employees were picking up Connie’s kids. He didn’t trust the popo to get things right, and he was surprised to find that they had, if fact, made the proper arrangements. This time. Too distressed to do any useful work, Joe hung up and put in his buds, and surfed to his favorite gridcast channel. He would sit and listen to some soothing music. No one would know. Or care.
 
     “Today,” said the news announcer, “the war in sub-Saharan Africa has taken a new turn. Nigerian federal troops, advancing on rebel camps, met no resistance. The camps were empty, claimed startled commanders. They reportedly found no insurgents, yet inside the tents, arms, and ammunition waited, along with some meager food supplies, and a handful of field computers. One British observer reported, ‘it seemed as though the mothership came along and beamed them up. Very eerie…’ Meanwhile, in New York, to no one’s surprise, Governor Chelsea Clinton announced that she would run for President in the coming election. At a news conference announcing her candidacy, she emphasized the need to combat domestic disorder…”
 
     Joe removed the buds and put his head between his hands. “To hell with this,” he said in a whisper. Then, “to hell with this,” again, at the top of his voice. As the anger grew, he picked up a broken cup he used as a pencil container, and threw it across his cubicle with a violence that startled him. “I’m going home,” he announced to the office, making sure that everyone could hear. “Fuck this!”