Steven perched on a bench outside the small Tesco picking at his meal deal. He’d perfected his lunch. He knew how to get 76g of protein in one meal deal, but he resented Tesco. Did they think he was an ignorant fool? Of course he noticed the 15p price hike. The bench was in a plaza surrounded by flats and offices built in the new London vernacular, with an ersatz country pub, “Punk Pizza”, and an estate agent’s. Steven watched a pigeon hobble about on gnarled stubs but it didn’t care. It seemed to take whatever chance it got to get food, and on a whim it could fly up on top of anything it liked.
That afternoon, during the company’s quarterly town hall, he was sentenced to death by PowerPoint. As slide after slide burned away his precious life, Steven’s eyes landed on the windowsill, and there he saw a pigeon. It could go wherever it wanted, and it could be among the trees and its friends. It did things that mattered, that really mattered. Who cared about this year’s revenue? Instead of worrying about nonsense like jobs, we could all scavenge flakes of pastry outside coffee shops and flit between our favourite lampposts.
Steven walked to the lift, and when he was inside he noticed he could see himself twice but also zero times. He cocked his head to get a better look but the 360 view of himself bewildered him. He stumbled and saw his feet were covered guano but he was ambivalent. He flapped his wings and pecked the ground floor button out of habit before he realised he didn’t need the ground anymore. He was shooed out of the polished lobby into the street, and he went to get on the train for free. People were giggling, whispering, holding up their phones and filming him. He could be viral content. Steven puffed up his chest with pride, and went to perch on a chair. He arrived at the coast and went to eat the vagrant chips around bins for the rest of the day under the glorious setting sun.