FRAGMENTS I stand on the balcony and sip coffee watching the cranes add more crap to the skyline all around me. I yawn and wait for the repairmen to finish putting my broken floorboards back together. It seems the last person to live here had a thing for young girls. Very young girls. The police left with two black bin bags of photos of naked kids and left behind a hole in the floor that I keep tripping into when I wake up. A week later and I finally get someone round to patch it up. They also left a card with a number on it in case I find anything else. At night I wonder if there is more of that stuff in the walls, under the cooker, behind the fridge. Being insulated by torn and weeping children doesn't make it any easier to sleep. My email is now featuring spam from Asia. I can't decipher the text so I concentrate on the images. I can't decide if I am looking at a sex toy, an imitation gun or some kind of manga spin off product that doubles for both. I hate living in the future. That afternoon I have visitors. The people I see socially are a little strange. It's a side effect of the city and the jobs we have and each other. None of us are too keen on the 21st century so far or at least the little that we have seen of it. Everything is upgraded around us until we give up chasing it and get left behind. I watch kids dancing like crazy on flashing lights in video arcades and all I can think of is how long it took Manic Miner to load on my old ZX Spectrum. Sarah and Alex are also future dropouts. We stopped buying new books around 1995 and spend one afternoon a week flicking through dog eared paperbacks on market stalls in market towns looking for marginalia. I have an old battered copy of 'Pincher Martin' by William Golding and on the very last page written in faded blue biro are the words "my wife left me this morning and I don't know what to do". There are tiny little stains on the paper and I sometimes worry that I am missing something by not being married. There is no one to leave me so I have nothing to write about and nothing to cry over. Maybe this is why we all started collecting these fragments in the first place. Alex says he's going to build them up into an art project one day but I don't believe him. Sarah memorises her favourites and drops them randomly into conversation. I just keep the books. All three of us work freelance. We talk about old TV shows that play in the afternoons when we get up and email each other at night when we are working. Or should be working. We met on the set of a photo shoot for a magazine that I was writing for. Alex arrived late and got into an argument with the model who was supposed to look like Jackie Onasis. That model left and we hung around drinking coffee and talking about 'Columbo' until the agency girl arrived. When she turned up she was Sarah. The first thing she ever said to me was "Do I get to catch pieces of Kennedy's brain or am I fucking that Greek guy?" We never worked together again after that but kept in touch via my PC and Alex' Mac. Sarah didn't have a computer of her own but worked for a company that charges people to look at her naked over a web cam. She spends five hours a night every other night in a studio apartment that is divided by screens into cubicles with a couch or small bed for the girls. Sarah sits there in her underwear teasing men into signing onto the system with their credit cards. Once she sees the digits she goes 'private' with the guy and he types and tells her what to do. Alex and I both have private accounts that she gave us so that we can talk with her for free. All we do is talk. I mostly tell her that she needs a new job. What Alex talks to her about is Alex. Sarah says she likes the job, enjoys talking to the regulars and that I should stop trying to save her from something I don't understand. Sarah says that I'm naive. I talk to Alex about this in overpriced coffee shops in town but he agrees with Sarah. Alex says I need a girlfriend and that Sarah isn't ever going to be straight. Alex talks a lot of shit but on this he has me. So this afternoon we head out of the city to a little bookshop that Alex heard about in Earlsfield. It turns out to be tiny but we spend two hours in there, chatting to the owner and thumbing through yellowing pages ignoring the writer's work and looking for people like us. Sarah finds the best book of the day. A copy of Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi' which is scored through with notes. At first they seem to be the basic observations of an O level student but then the handwriting changes and Sarah reads to us. All of us. Even the owner of the store puts down his own book as Sarah's accent lends itself to someone else. "You say I need to grow up but if that means leaving an important part of me behind then I'd rather die. I think this is why I leave notes in books. It's a semblance of me left behind in case I don't make it intact. Or that the person who does make it isn't me anymore. I like the little dreams I have of what things may be like but I understand that the things I want to happen will never happen. Not to me. Maybe some of my friends will make it and maybe that will be worse. Afterwards, no matter how caring and tender you are and no matter how bright the moon is or the street lights are all I feel is the same darkness that I worry I'll get lost in one day. The thing that eats us all up as soon as we grow up and stop being afraid of it. I feel the exact same way that I felt when I was eight years old and realised what dying actual meant. Tomorrow I have to go Christmas shopping and I know exactly what I am going to buy for you." Mike Is blogging to: The Descendents