ali 35 bumpo had a lot of time on his hands, and he liked to go for long aimless walks in the city streets at any time of the day or night as he waited for his fate to be decided.
ali had an application pending to be employed as a third class cultural transition statistical analyst at the department of metaanalysis.
what he did not realize was that his every movement was tracked by the employment department and that the ideal of the employment department and all the other departments in control central was a world in which all citizens stayed in their allotted work spaces and living spaces at all times.
so, although he had not yet been notified, his application had effectively zero chance of acceptance.
ali took little notice of the people he passed on the streets.
but some of them took notice of him, nondescript as he was, because they saw him repeatedly.
a few thought he might be following or tracking them .
shari blaine was one. she thought ali was a creep, and called him mister anybody in her mind.
but she did not take the step of reporting him or complaining about him to any authority.
another person who noticed ali was pope joan x.
pope joan was a sidewalk inspector who walked the streets all day looking for cracks in the sidewalk - of which there were not that many - and in addition to her official duties as a sidewalk crack detector, she routinely reported creepy individuals like ali to the street polce.
the street police already had a fiie on ali.
they responded to pope joan ;
thank you for your input. we welcome all input from concerned workers and citizens. would you like to make a formal complaint against this individual? if you do, you will probably be required to testify at a hearing at department of social order headquarters.
joan replied -
no, thank you.
ali continued walking the streets.
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