Future LOBOnian-American Diplomatic Relations in Question

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I remember "coming to" vaguely.

-A balding man, typing with one finger, is asking me questions I am answering on autopilot.  He fills out forms -replete with scan-friendly magnetic bar codes- in handwritten immaculate print as he examines my birth certificate.  On the counter in front of me is my two-inch thick manila folder containing my identity.  A tattered copy of the current Scientific American -which I pretend to understand intensely when I think I will have time to kill in public- is pushed aside in cramped space.

The hands of a plain clock on the wall, the kind I remember staring at endlessly in school, says 8:35.  The bleak sunlight fighting in though the glass doors twenty feet to my right suggest it is morning.

Isn't this Saturday?

"Would you like to be an organ donor?"

I notice a large picture on the wall of the Illinois Governor, obviously fake-smiling with big, crazy teeth.

He looks clearly insane.

Oh no.

"No," I reply.  "Nothing works anymore anyway," I lie suspiciously.

Cumbersome American laws require you to update an address change on your drivers license within 30 days.   LOBOnia -the mobile ten foot sphere that surrounds me at all times- has agreeable trade relations with America, so a scant three years later I deigned to acquiesce at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I am apparently awake about halfway through the process.

I died in my sleep and went to Hell.

But I have apparently planned for this in advance.  I am dressed nice, and remember promising myself to try and smile for the photo.  You know, try and change my Karma?  Still, this is a shitty, shitty way to wake up.

-In the subsequent photo of a man trying to force a sincere smile after going through the DMV,  I am obviously fake-smiling with big, crazy teeth.

I look clearly insane.