by CORIANDER NEUMANEIMANAYMANEEMAMANN, Alternate Reality News Service Urban Issues Writer
Some think of the Multiverse Manichean Moat as an ocean (that would be contract bridge demolisher Gerald Some and his family, except for his son Gertrude, who is at "a difficult age"). The gap between who has access to a technology like the Home Universe GeneratorTM and who doesn't is obvious in foreign countries where people don't look like us and talk in a strange language and eat weird food. Like Mongolia. Or, Scotland.
Sometimes, though, the Multiverse Manichean Moat can be as thin as the tear dribbling down the dirt-encrusted cheek of a homeless - [Oh, Jesus begesus, are you seriously opening this article with a maudlin sentiment? We get the idea - access to technology is just as dependent on income in developed societies as it is in developing societies (why does that remind of my early teens? Never ever remind me of my early teens again!). My slapping gloves bleed for the homeless - and you'll bleed for them if you don't abandon this approach and get on with some facts! EDITRIX-IN-CHIEF BARBARA BRUNDTLAND-GOVANNI]
You want facts? Okay. There are 3.4 million people in the Greater Toronto Area, almost 93 per cent of whom are sentient (using the broadest definition of the word possible without lapsing into Ukrainian). Fully 83 per cent of households have at least one Home Universe GeneratorTM, which means that 21 per cent do not (figures may not add up to 100 due to extreme rounding). The highest concentration of Home Universe GeneratorTMs is in the downtown core, where they are supplied free with every condo purchase (if you ignore the $3,500 "recreation fee"). The lowest concentration of Home Universe GeneratorTMs is in the Jane-Finch corridor, which has a median income three sizes too small, and no Whos conveniently placed to help it grow. Counterintuitively (that counter is one perceptive piece of furniture), the second lowest concentration is found in the wealthy Bridle Path neighbourhood, where the common wisdom "Other universes are for the little people" is more common than wise. In addition to income, lowered Home Universe GeneratorTM usage was correlated to age, gender and hat size; thus, the least likely Torontonian to own one would be an impoverished 80 year-old woman with a really big -
[GAAK! Facts...boring! Eyes...closing! Brain...shutting...shutting...shutting in whatever direction brains shut! Okay. You've made your point. Enough with facts! Go back to personality-driven journalism if you have to, but no more facts, already! BB-G]
It's a quiet afternoon in the Jean Chretien "I'm Not Dead Yet" Memorial Community Centre and Glee Club at Bathurst and Dundas. Gladys Kravitz, who seems to have gotten her name confused with a character from a sitcom she saw in her youth, and who tells everybody to "Please, call me Glad," even though she always glares at the world and intermittently barks obscenities in random directions, is sitting at the Home Universe GeneratorTM in the Community Centre's common tech room. It is an older model run on cathode ray tubes and hope. The cabinet, painted in neon orange as was the custom of the day, has had initials, names and the ingredients for tension bouillabaisse scratched into its side.
Surrounded by a nimbus of shopping bags, she is using the advanced technology to find live streams of cute kittens. "Ever since Prince Pubert was put down, I've vaccinated between the Eggbert Souzay and Kittie Mittenpuss channels," Kravitz explained. Then, she went on an obscenity-filled rant about nasal sprays that seemed out of place in print, but will be included in the director's cut of this article.
"Yeah, that happens," sighed Miguelito Pendragon, director of the Community Centre. "We thought that if the homeless could look into universes where they had made something of themselves, it would motivate them to do better in this reality. That's not how it worked out..."
Later in the day, Ralph Panties-Bundchen was laughing at the screen of the Home Universe GeneratorTM. "Look at that moron try to walk! This is better than The Three Stooges Meet Helen Keller!" The twentysomething man with the backpack, sleeping bag and Doberman Pinscher that was almost as tall as he was, was laughing at a version of himself on crutches; it was unclear whether Panties-Bundchen's other self had been in an accident, had some kind of genetic malformation or had his legs broken in some kind of hazing ritual.
"Baby steps," Pendragon said. "After they're done laughing at versions of themselves who have even worse lives, maybe they'll be inspired to...ummm...yeah. Baby steps..."
Pendragon pointed out that one of the problems with Home Universe GeneratorTM technology was that the poor had few resources to help them use it If you had money, you could afford to buy How to Direct Your Minions to Make the Most of Your Home Universe GeneratorTM, for example, or The Art of the Steal: How Donald Trump Got a HUGTM and won the Presidency, among others.
"What do we have here?" Pendragon asked, pointing at a sad pile of browning sheets of paper. "A photocopy of The Multiverse? Oh, Sure, Looking At It Probably Won't Do Any Good, But It's Not Like You Have Anything Better To Do With Your Time that has food stains and is missing several pages. We suspect they were taken by the raccoon to make a nest out of, but nobody wants to go near Rabid Willy to find out."
The abjectly poor aren't the only ones falling behind; the abject not exactly poor but not doing all that well, either are also having problems keeping up with the latest technology. Marshellac Pluntz, for example, is a mother of two who works at a call centre during the day and as a tent pole stripper at night (you would be surprised at how dirty tent poles can get during the day). Even with two part-time jobs, she finds she can't always make ends meet.
"The kids begged me to get a Home Universe GeneratorTM," Pluntz said. "All of their friends at school had one, and they were falling behind socially! So, fine, I got one of those contraptions for them. Then, for the next month, they begged me to get them food, even though I warned them that we wouldn't be able to afford both. But, no, all of their friends at school ate at least once a day, and they were falling behind nutritionally! I tell you, some little people are never satisfied!"
Hard numbers are ha - difficult to come by, but, if complaints on Reddit discussion boards are anything to go by, 87 per cent of Toronto residents are under-, quasi- or ill-employed. At least 67 per cent of them have had to choose between paying rent and paying their utility bills once in the past six months, and at least 37 per cent of them had to go without at least two meals in a 36 hour period nine times out of ten with a margin of error of a good headwind. That means -
[There you go with facts, again! No, not merely facts - statistics! Oh, my aching gluteus minimus! I'm pulling the plug on this travesty - wrap it up in six words or less or I'll wrap you up in seaweed and call you sushi! BB-G]
Six words? How do you expect