Gordon was on his way to work the other day. A sticker struck him in the face. Quite literally it had peeled off the slap it had been stuck on, caught by a fierce gust, and sailed right onto Gordon’s gob.

I worked hard for this, was what Gordon’s face now said, with an image of a turtle resisting the force of ten cars stacked on top of it.

“Well done indeed,” said a passerby. “Who?” said Gordon, spinning blindly at the sound, but the passerby had passed by. And another, “Congratulations and salutations!” but gone again quick.

Gordon pulled the sticker off his face, and read it, I worked hard for this. Gordon scowled and his palm, not because he was disappointed in the little creases it had developed and wished they would go away, no it was because he had a sticker on his palm now – right from wrist to fingertip – which said, I worked hard for this.

Gordon puts cereal flakes into his mouth every morning with a spoon. He soaks them beforehand with a little milk because the thought of eating them otherwise is really displeasing to anyone. His bowl supports twenty spoonfuls of muesli. The muesli is imported from a small town in Cambodia where the individual oats are crushed between the forefingers of a one-hundred year-old man.

It takes five hours to crush enough oats to fill a bowl like Gordon’s.

Each bowl carves a sizable piece out of Gordon’s tiny paycheck, if he were to have a tiny paycheck. But in fact he has a paycheck of tiny paychecks, delivered to him by hand by a nice man with a soft voice who sits at a desk all day and only gets tiny paychecks. The nice man actually has a voice full of gravel when he gets home and beats his wife and kicks his dog to sleep. I worked hard for this.

Some of Gordon’s friends at his work tape their paychecks all around their silk jackets which fit them very well because they get them fitted weekly. It’s important to get your nice jackets fitted each week so that they can tighten up any of those new body bulges.

They worked hard this and deserve new body bulges.

Fred is one of Gordon’s lunch buddies, which means the two of them sit so close while in the cafeteria that they take turns inhaling each other’s breath, they smoke on each others wet germy lungs. Fred reaches in his pocket, a nice pocket assembled from about ten paychecks – incredible craftpersonship, the signatures on the checks flow seamlessly – and he pulls out a little laminated piece photo. Every lunch Fred does this, and Fred then says, “Gordon, would you look at this. My girl’s a phenomenon – absolute prodigy if you ask me.” Then he prods the photo in different ways to indicate to Gordon where the prodigy lies in this five-by-four rectangle. “Look straight A’s, even passed her state exams with a perfect score.” He looked up at Gordon and Gordon mouthed in his head exactly what Fred would say next, I said, Tina, honey, I’m so proud of you. You need to wear a blindfold for the next one just to give everyone a fair chance. Fred then cracks a laugh and a bit of mayonnaise squidges from his baguette and right onto his trousers. “Damn, I just got these fitted.” Gordon wonders, come the end of each lunch, whether Fred is lost inside Fred’s head.

I worked hard for this.

Gordon is in a tram that is trying desperately to rattle everyone inside back to reality. “Wake up! “ the tram shakes, “Wake up! And look out my windows, isn’t is such a beautiful day.” The tram takes a sharp turn. “Look, a mother and child holding hands and laughing at a seagull. Look, a puddle that won’t be there tomorrow – the first and only puddle of its king.”

But humans weren’t designed to hear trams, and the trams words are lost. It will try again tomorrow. The lady next to Gordon is piping news directly into her mind via a large, floppy stack of papers with all sorts of interesting fonts. Gordon peeks over her shoulder and reads one of the headlines, Millionaire at Twenty, World’s First. The first word in the article catches Gordon’s brain by surprise, compels him to continue reading. The first word in the article is mayonnaise. The article goes on to tell Gordon all about an eighteen-year-old child who started a remote mining contract service in their parent’s basement. Venture capitalists, adventure capitalists, vulture contortionists, men and women in suits that fit them so well, had poured paychecks over the child. The child had so many paychecks that they started eating them for breakfast and before long needed to get their clothes refitted every week to manage the growth. The article ended by appraising the child for its impressive drive – “What a mind,” it said, “to have built in two years, what would take a professional a lifetime to assemble. He must,” it closed, “have worked very hard for this.”

On his way into the office Gordon walks past a vendor who sells cherries by the punnet. Those cherries are admirably displayed, Gordon always noticed, each one shines like the sole of a gala-bound gentleman. He is meticulous in orientating each cherry just so such that it catches the sun and sends a specular glow. Those cherries shine.

Fred doesn’t really like cherries, so he tells Gordon. “Someone should grow,” Fred says, “cherries without pips.”

“That’s a berry,” says Gordon. “What?” says Fred.

Gordon has never seen anyone buy a punnet of cherries from the vendor, but the vendor is faithful to his square of sidewalk, keeps it dry with his umbrella of cherries one-hundred upon a foldout table. “Thank you.” the sidewalk would say if it could talk, “Now see that man over there playing with his child in the puddle…” Gordon is compelled, today, to purchase a punnet. He doesn’t want to this purchase to be one of pity, but his stomach already begins the process of curling into itself and tightening up. Gordon stops at the vendor’s table, the man expels a grin that couldn’t be hidden by a hundred stock performances. “Good day,” says Gordon. “Hello sir, thank you sir. Please sir, I have very nice cherries.” He shows Gordon a cherry, shows how it is designed to be a tool for sending sunlight into the eyeballs. Gordon smiles, but the vendor never had a chance to see Gordon’s smile.

Gordon’s entire face is struck by a flying sticker.