Free Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh

ability to learn. As the Will had all but eradicated cultural and social differences, this proved to be very similar in all Cyrastorian citizens.
    It had previously been somewhat hilarious for Gezra to fritter away leisure moments watching primitive cultures like Earth continue down their blind alley of external technology development. Now however, many of the renegade Cyrastorian youth were moved by at least the idea of this visceral touch, feel and taste nonsense. Primitivists, they sought physical types of interaction for its own thrilling sensation, and often with races who were little more than savages. Gezra knew, however, that the renegade leader, the Younger called Tazak, had, for all his rhetoric about the cult of physicality, extremely developed psychic powers, and would sense any Elder attempts at the detection of his presence through the exercise of the Will.

6
    The young team were sitting drinking cheap wine by the reservoir. Jimmy remembered that, only a few years ago, they had fished for perch and pike in its waters. Glue had taken over. It wasn't really that it was less boring, more that being glued up was like the excitement of a catch spread over the whole day. There was an aroused sense of wasted purpose and at the same time a comfort in the oblivion it produced. Of course, they all knew that it was going nowhere. While intoxication provided a multitude of misadventures, tales of which could, under certain conditions, get you through periods of mind-crushing straightness, it too often only led to greater frustration and anxiety.
    But fuck it though. Jimmy yawned and stretched, feeling the pleasurable unravelling of his limbs, you always tended to follow the line of least resistance. What else was there? Jimmy thought of his parents, now split up, their quaint notions of 'respect', hued from an era of full employment and half-decent wages, floundering on the remorseless, depressive nothingness around them. He couldn't respect them, nor could he respect society. He couldn't even respect himself, only band together with his pals to enforce others to respect him, in a way which became more limited and proscribed every day. You just had to stick together with your mates, and make sure there was a clear tunnel ahead and hope for a better world if and when you emerged into the light.
    Maybe the travellers had the right idea, Jimmy thought. Perhaps movement was the key. Why the fuck had the sad cunts come here though? The stretches of wasteland, between the Barratt schemes, industrial estates and flyovers, had become home to people from all over Britain and even further afield. All those fucked-up cunts, talking about a 'force' that had brought them here. Here! For fuck sakes. Anyway, to fuck with all those cunts, Clint was out tomorrow. They'd register the crime with Drysdale and then take the criminal injuries compensation wankers to the cleaners. Easy.
    Jimmy swigged back half a bottle of Hooch lemonade. They had graduated to beer and spirits, their current favourite tipple being a few Hooches, super lager and fortified wine with capsules of temazepam if available. Their mate Carl had almost drowned the other week, falling asleep by the side of the reservoir, only for it rise in the evening. When the others, who had staggered back into town, had realised he was absent and gone back to find him, it was nearly over his mouth and nostrils.
    Looking up at the ugly, hollow sky, Jimmy wondered if there was anything out there. This was one of the top places in Britain for UFO sightings, and every six months or so, scientists and journalists and UFO spotters would be hanging about the town. It was always in shitey redneck places like this where there was fuck all to do that people saw those things, he reflected bitterly, lobbing an empty bottle into the reservoir. Why the fuck would aliens come here? He'd been talking to that dippit wee Shelley too much, her that was getting fucked by that Alan Devlin cunt, the city boy