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The dark clouds above that encased the city only pretended uniformity. If you stared at them long enough, they would let you peek through their facade. It was like gray people on the streets--everyone looked the same from afar in their dark slickers, but they all managed individuality somehow. I saw the sky's dark blues, purples, dark greens, mustard yellows, and grays too.
    Besides the pitter-patter of the rain hitting my vehicle, the only other sounds were from the old monorail line about thirty feet above me--I could hear its hissing rumble every fifteen minutes. I wanted to be left alone to rain-watch and meditate, or whatever I was doing in my head. My vehicle was parked on the ground in an alley and the only people around were the scarce few that walked past the entrance to another alleyway fifteen feet from me. Other than that, there was no one to bother me--no sidewalk johnnies, no troll moles, no passing garbage hover-trucks, and no juvenile delinquents skipping school and looking to do crimes.
    My mobile phone had been off since last night. Who knows how many messages I had waiting? But I didn't care. I needed my alone time.
    Twenty-four hours, seven days, three-hundred-sixty-five or fifty-two weeks or twelve months. The endlessness of it all.
    I had been in a funk for the last few days. It happened every year before, on, around, and after my birthday. I was always especially morose during this time. An evil day invented to force you to take stock of the thing called life. I wouldn't want to be around myself, which is why I segregated myself from friend and foe for as long as possible until the spell passed.
    I felt trapped, like a bug in a spider's web. Everybody followed this system of life from the littlest guy shuffling to and from his nine-to-five, all the way to those god-like guys, living above us all, consumed by their own power and fortune. We all had the same basic concerns, but in the end, we all ended up at the same place--meat at the morgue. The masses did a lot in that in-between time to go about life in the rain with style--designer Goodwill wet-wear clothes and colored neon shades--to blot from the mind the fundamental drudgery of it all. To survive to your ultimate destination, you had to know your place, not upset the order of things. You either worked for the international, multinational megacorps; or you worked for uber-government, the "state," and, though you'd never get Up-Top, you could retire free-and-clear for your last decade or two of life. It was the unsaid, universal contract that most accepted.
    But I had tried to make my futile mark on the cosmos with my contrarian self. I avoided umbrellas--instead I wore my tan fedora. I didn't wear neon shades and I didn't wear dark-colored slickers--instead I wore my favorite tan coat. Everyone had dark colored hover-cars; I drove a bright red, classic Ford Pony. That's what I did to separate myself from the masses--pathetic and pointless, but did it anyway and could do no different.
    What the hell have I even accomplished? If I clocked out of life, what exactly would be my legacy? I hated my birthdays. My parents told me I hated it even as a kid, the time you're supposed to be the most optimistic in life, even despite all the sweet birthday cakes and presents from every known relative on the planet. My girlfriend said I needed to stop my annual "morose period." "There are people in the world with no food to eat or born with no eyes or limbs or born mentally retarded. What is your complaint?" she'd say to me. "An innocent kid was shot in the head today and will be brain-dead for the rest of his life, or a women had her kid crushed by a drunk driver in a hover-car," she'd add.
    True, I had no serious tragedies to complain about. No great losses. No disabilities. I had all my fingers, toes, limbs, and other natural organs--not a bionic part anywhere. Metropolis hadn't been bad to me.
    Everyone simply had to accept it all. I did. But this was an