Free Dyscountopia by Niccolo Grovinci

measurable angle, could feel himself walking the infinite arc of the planet as if he was treading on the outside surface of a massive rubber ball.   No walls surrounded him, no roof but sky stood between him and the sun above.   Not long ago, Albert would have feared this place like hell on earth, but it seemed almost familiar to him now.   He’d grown used to being outdoors, to walking under the sun.   But not this sun.
    A gentle breeze brushed Albert’s lips, and he drank it in like cool water.   The air up here was fresh and sweet, not like the flat, tasteless stuff that made its way in through Omega-Mart’s air vents, continuously sanitized and sterilized for the germaphobes below.   As Albert tilted back his head, letting the wind wash over his face, he fixed his eyes on a single bird circling lazily in the sky above him.   He squinted at the bird, shielding his face until he could just make out the dark colored feathers, the long fleshy neck, the pink, naked head.   He watched it intently, wondering what kind of bird it was.  
    Several minutes passed and the bird floated in front of the sun, disappearing from view.   Albert’s eyes drifted sideways, almost unconsciously, to the face of the man walking next to him and those two ignominious words.  
    CHEWING GUM .
    The Doctor snorted.   “Get a good look?”
    Albert looked away.   “Sorry…”
    They walked on in awkward silence as Albert struggled to keep his eyes focused politely ahead of him.   But they insistently flickered back to the man’s forehead.
    CHEWING GUM .
      “Just go ahead and stare if it makes you happy,” Dr. Zayus grumbled.   “Why don’t you tear open my soul and take a good look in there, too.   I used to eat my own scabs when I was a kid.   And I’m a chronic masturbator.   Happy?”
    “Sorry.”   Albert looked away again, embarrassed.   He turned his attention to the group around him.  
    The Roofers were a miserable looking lot, dressed in mismatched, badly stitched clothing with crooked seams and sloppy finishing; T-shirts with upside down logos, caps with their bills sewn cock-eyed, discolored jeans with one pant leg longer than the other – things unfit even for the bargain rack.   He turned his eyes absently back to the Doctor, examining the faded red lettering on his dingy white T-shirt that read, I’m with Stuppid .   The arrow beneath it pointed directly to Albert.
    Dr. Zayus stopped in his tracks and gestured toward the horizon.   Albert’s eyes followed the aim of his bony index finger, falling on the outline of several low, misshapen lumps in the distance.
    “Rooftown,” grunted the Doctor. “Home, sweet home.”
    As they drew in closer, a squadron of tiny huts came into focus, constructed from empty milk jugs, rubber tires, and cardboard boxes, covered with blue plastic tarps; all huddled together in small, unregimented clusters, like a rag-tag army of silent, immobile blue hunchbacks.   Narrow streets traced enormous S’s through the settlement, snaking this way and that to avoid the random hovels that sprang up wherever a wayward architect had the urge to stack some debris and stretch a tarp.   There seemed to be no zoning laws in Rooftown and only one rule of urban development – that no two streets should run parallel to one another.
    The Doctor led Albert along one of these streets, passing a long trickle of aimless, sad-eyed men and women.   It had never occurred to Albert that so many people had been arrested for Lifting, that so many were so sick.   Many of the shacks they passed had children playing out front; dirty, snot-nosed boys and girls with unmatched shoes and high-pitched voices that chased each other through the streets and shouted obscenities.   Albert wondered dazedly how many of them were actual Lifters and how many instead were first generation Roofers, born to Lifter parents, forced to live out the rest of their days in exile for the sins of their fathers.  
    They