My name is Dumas Chang and I have a tricky relationship with time. I’m hopelessly multiracial. I have a condition, I have a seeing gene. And by seeing gene I don’t mean clairvoyance or a knack for photography. By seeing gene I mean I can see through people, and time. I can see things that are suddenly true.

The spectacle of a flying dismembered hand hurtling towards you is one of the many specific joys I can only wish for every single one of humanity to experience at least once in their lifetimes. I am mid-air as well, but as to how that came to be or why, I can’t tell you in a way that you would understand. I can sum up what’s to follow in this: I have never felt such boundless joy.

But to explain that, this: everything begins in violence. The treaties, the legendary sociopaths of our days, even the universe itself. By all means go do everything to restore peace, but violence is golden. It is the birthplace of creation.

The party begins. A real street party. Only it is a party somewhere in the west side of an isolated desert town called Claypool City. It is the year 2140 but we’re not moving to new planets yet. We are on Earth, patient, uncomplaining Earth, but a flurry of social, economic, environmental upheavals have finally nicked the world order. Uncertain times and uncertain pasts: we desert people have no choice but to live where life finds us.

Every great civilization, for instance, has always sprung beside some body of water. We are defying a host of forces being where we were. Granted that oil meant nothing to cavemen, but still, there was something arrogant and uncompromising about setting up camp in the middle of the Alebeian Desert.

I sit in the middle of the street because nobody minds by now.