.. vim: set syntax=rst nosmartindent spell spelllang=en_us:

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1990s gay science fiction story
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Scene
=====

I can't remember it all well.   We walked up a staircase on the side of
the brick wall.  There was a roof but the wind blew the rain on us
anyhow.  

I remember him fiddling with the lock on the door.  I remember how he
looked under the bright cold white security light outside his door.

He looked like an old ${future sport} fanatic.  Like the old guys
watching matches on the big screens in the park.

This guy was a zero.  And today he spent all day and maybe every day
making bets on sports.

We met there at the casino, walked here, stopping at a corner shop for
him to buy hash.

It's so wild how it's legal here.

Anyhow, I watched him try to unlock the door and keep failing and
wondered what happened.

The Zeroes lost their home.  They scattered.  This guy was a child when
that happened.  Now he's an old man, in front of me, fiddling with the
lock, and we're standing in the rain, waiting for him.

Such a strange thing.  It was really depressing.  I adored the idea of
the zeroes.  They were something good in this world.  Sure they all got
wiped out.

But they made it work for a while. 

So he finally got the lock to work and we got inside his place.  The
door went into the kitchen.  We walked through it.  Pretty dirty.

It just didn't make sense to me how somebody that was once a total
radical was now not that way.

We were there because he had something that zed wanted to buy.  It's an
old electronic component they don't make any more.  If we could get it
back home, we could repair the ${gizmo}.

He had one.

This guy was a revolutionary and now he was intently watching ${future
sports} game highlights on a wall of screens, and checking his bets.

It was sad.  Zeroes were brilliant.  At least I thought they were.

I walked around and looked at this guy's place while the other ones
talked about whatever.

It was me, zed, and the guy we met at the bus terminal.  the bus
terminal guy brought us to the casino, where we met this guy, and this
guy led us back here.

Now they were talking about other electronic components we could use.

I was more interested in trying to figure this guy out by reading the
books on his book shelf.