Who: James Cole jamescole & OTA What: Sitting around like a vagabond When: Wednesday, June 3, midday Where: Downtown Test City [Near the cafe, bookshop, main street, etc] Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised Warnings: Language since Cole is a mouthy guy, general rudeness, complete inability to understand pop culture references, and spoilers for all of SyFy's 12 Monkeys Status: Open/In Progress
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Money had no meaning in the future. It wasn't edible. It wouldn't keep anyone warm. No one could use it to cure sickness or treat the virus. Those were the things which were important in the future. Survival was what mattered in the time Cole lived in. He didn't remember a time when there was television or trips to the movies or people cared what kind of car someone drove. No one had 'credit cards' or 'debit cards' or any other kind of cards to pay for things because there weren't places to shop.
Stores didn't exist in his future.
Bartering was the way most people survived unless they were full-on Scav like Cole.
Scavs didn't barter. They stole. It was about survival and scavengers survived. Always. Cole had been a survivor before he'd gotten picked up by the West VII. He had done things to keep himself and Ramse alive he hadn't been proud of and then he'd done things which were worse. He'd kept on doing those things until it'd stopped feeling as if he were doing anything wrong at all. It was only the way he had to survive. It was his way of life. Nothing was going to change. There was no hope. Cole lived with his actions by keeping that at the forefront of his mind.
He wasn't a bad guy if he was only doing what he had to in order to make it.
Test City used the old-fashioned cards which supposedly had money on them. Cole had gotten good at swiping the thing at the grocery store. No one asked him about cash back or pin numbers or anything any longer. They knew better. He had an attitude, but if they had to live the way he'd had to live? They wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows either. Cole wasn't sorry he was rude. He was only sorry no one else seemed to understand how lucky they were in this place.
Lunch was a package of lunch meat he was eating with his fingers while watching the people wandering around in the streets. So many of them were going about their day with smiles on their faces. He wondered how many were smiling because they knew they were lucky and how many were smiling because they were too stupid to realize life sucked. Cole took a drink of water from the bottle he'd been refilling regularly. He scanned everyone around him warily. No one had turned into a monster recently, but it didn't mean they couldn't or wouldn't.
"Hey! Watch it! I'm trying to eat here."
Someone had gotten too close to him. He wasn't even on the sidewalk. Cole was actually positioned in a crouch in a piece of landscaping. Test City liked to put trees and bushes in elevated platforms in front of their stores for some reason. He figured it was for looks, but it made for decent cover for people watching. Cole wouldn't complain about it. He figured no one would care if he did anyway. It wasn't as if his opinion mattered. Cassie sure wasn't listening to his opinion as she went back to work at that stupid hospital where they'd barely managed to save her life.