By Their Deeds Shall Ye Know Them

Yesterday I was in town to work on my quota, and I was keeping my eye open. It was the first day of spring and the sun was out. Everybody looked brighter, more hopeful. I wasn’t very good at doing good, and nobody seemed to be in much need. I felt a bit of relief, to be honest, but I knew the Mentor wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t do nothing. You can’t win.

There was a creased up old bloke with a grey-and-nicotine beard hanging off his face outside Marks’ selling the Big Issue, but he wasn’t an option. His bloodshot eyes met mine as I passed him, and there was recognition in his look. He knew alright. I turned away quickly and walked on.

I scanned the High Street but everyone seemed buzzing with the weather. There was a youngish mum about my age dragging along a crying brat, but we’re warned never to approach a domestic. They don’t appreciate you sticking your nose in and you can end up losing points when it turns nasty. I was starting to feel the pressure ratchet up a notch in my belly. You can’t go back to the Centre without a score, but I get nervous when I’m about to do something, because I know what they’re thinking and I hate it. Everybody knows what’s going on and I hate the way they look at you.

It’s the Scheme. Any kind of minor offence and you’re in for counselling. You get points for whatever they pull you on, and you can buy it back with an ‘unsolicited act of kindness to others’. Up at the Centre they monitor us with these tracking gizmos we have to wear. It was an initiative that made all the papers. The politicos love it and it gives Society something else to club us with. So now, whenever you do the tiniest thing for somebody else, if you’re not family or they haven’t asked you first, they just know you’ve got a past and they give you that look. And it can’t be the genuinely needy neither cos they don’t count towards your total.

There was one. This old lady, like my Gran she was. Struggling with her bags and trying to open the door to the shopping centre. You should have seen the look she gave me when she saw me coming. Pure poison it was.

There's no helping some people.