I was awakened by the barrel of the gun against my temple, so close I could smell the oil that lubricated its insides. Some of my insides spilled out. 

“The hellyoudoing?!” my voice squeaked like a little kid's. Barely audible. 

“They are doing.” the young lady finished. She wore a mask across her face, but it was lowered beneath her chin. I guess she figured that facial recognition stopped at my bedroom door.

“What?” 

“They. My pronoun is ‘they’,” she insisted.

“They? But you’re right here.”

Heavy breath. A smile through gritted teeth: “They’re right here.” 

Who are right here? I wanted to ask, fully converting the exchange into the ancient Abbott and Costello routine. But I took a beat. Sitting up in my bed, hands propped on the mattress.

“What’s your name?” I asked. I already knew everything else. My latest datacenter protests put me on a list. She was just checking off names.

Amazingly, she told me: “M.” Again, not much for secrecy.

“Em? Like short for Emma?” At that question, disappointment shuddered through her entire body. She sagged so hard the gun almost dropped out of sight. Another Bleedsy™ freelancer, amateurish, but still dangerous. 

“No.”

“So, it’s a code name?” Like I’m known as Greedo, by our peers, I did not add. 

“No, I just go by the letter M,” she smiled, “You know, like ‘Prince’”

I had to blink hard at that. Prince was his actual name, Prince Rogers Nelson. I mentally corrected the idiot. It’s not like it was short for Princington or Princeval, or something. But it wasn’t worth it. Or maybe I just didn’t have the heart to tell her. 

“So, which platform do you work for?”

“One does they work for?”

“Um, what?”

“My boss’s preferred pronoun is “One”…what's wrong with you? Your implants should be giving you all these details!” Her finger slid over the trigger. It hadn't been primed to shoot until then.

By implants, she meant the Gawgles™, the chips that I was supposed to have implanted in my retina that forwarded biometric and biographic info directly onto my visual field. Nothing useful, just trivia about the person—couched as ads, mostly.

“Mine are in the shop.” 

She blinked blankly at the reference, too young to know about shops or getting things fixed. Pretty much everything was in a constant state of disrepair. A state of permanent enshittification. Most things didn't work, and free—if you had the social credits. 

And, if you didn’t? 

Well, then you got visits in the middle of the night like this.

“No implants. No preferred pronouns. I should’ve known.” Her hateful judgment rolled off her like molasses.

But, the truth was, I was feeling a little triggered myself—as in, the trigger of my gun under the pillow, where my finger rested, long before hers.

As I pivoted and drew, the room exploded. 

We never had a chance.