<div style="text-align: right;"><em>“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” <br/>― Friedrich Nietzsche</em></div><br/>The young man simply kept on walking, eyes narrow and jaw shut tight. He stepped into another side street as he lied to himself that his frustration and anger was mostly due to the smell around him.<br/>That smell, that God-awful smell is everywhere. You think eventually one would get used to it, but the truth is you just can’t. It smells like rotting garbage left out in the sun for a few weeks too long.<br/>That’s what Alex told himself, the garbage that was never taken away, but deep down he know the truth. It’s the bodies of the millions, maybe billions of people who are lying dead, everywhere. Mankind had shown its true colours when society began to collapse, rape, murder, torture, and theft, all of it bubbling up to the surface. Finally humanity was honest, letting out the ugly beast it had kept dormant for centuries. Alex had learned what that beast was the moment he had been born. His father was an even tempered man, only really hitting him with beer bottles or a belt when he had deserved it. The man was a kind man, if not a great thrower. Alex had seen prostitution in young children, living organ theft, rape, public hangings or burnings, all of it.<br/><br/>A few decades ago one might have diagnosed such a child as traumatic, yet Alex was one of many. Not a single child born in this hell hole was free of witnessing such events. Some towns and cities still clung to an ethic code, although it was only a sliver of what it had been.<br/>Among the old people –the ones who had seen the world before the great collapse-, a sort of paralysis set in among most of the survivors around the world, paralysis and a fanatical craving for news, more news, the latest news about... well, about the situation they were all in. When that craving for news was met with only more disappointment, many of them chose the easy way out. You can still see it in some of their eyes; the sorrow and pain because they had seen what mankind had once been.<br/><br/>Alex stepped over another corpse –or something close to it-, and made his way back to the garage. He wasn’t as drunk as he would have liked, the interviews having sobered him up somewhat. He spotted the large machine he called home and stopped in his tracks. He noticed an ogre of a man standing next to his handler, simply towering over her. They appeared to be chatting and the way Aurora was glancing now and again spoke volumes about her opinion of him. Alex had to grin at that. No doubt Aurora wanted to make a good impression.<br/><br/>Collecting himself, Alex leaned against a nearby wall. He’d wait a few minutes before he moved towards them, introducing himself as he passed them. For now he simply wanted to observe them and pray that the interview he had just done would not be aired this same day.<br/><br/>