#+TITLE: Prologue
#+SETUPFILE: ../../theme_lev1.setup

One could sense discouragement and sadness in the air. The intentions
were good: to let go of the disaster and to meet with friends again, in
a welcoming and protected place. But each one brought the wounds of the
vicissitudes just experienced. Many had lost loved ones, all had to
abandon their jobs, or their homes too. Distorted lives. How could
anyone remember? Telling what had been before, without get caught up in
melancholy, anger, fear?

Now, after the first practical matters, the enthusiasm had diminished.
Everyone was avoiding eye contact with the others. They were lost,
ashamed. The intention was to tell stories, yes, but how?

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Delia broke the ice. She was the inspiration of that adventure, they all
agreed that it was an exciting idea but also a frightening one,
especially now that they were face to face with ghosts of the recent
past. She had contacted everyone, she had suggested the place to take
refuge. No one better than she could tune their voices in the right
register.

Delia was not used to hiding. The tension had to be dissolved, she knew
it well. She quickly made up her mind while looking at those present.
She tried to look at the scene as if she were not there, she tried to
notice the details.

A knot of two boys and a woman with long auburn hair spoke in a corner,
they were Leo, Gep and Francesca. Two girls, Elisabeth and Rachel, were
busy arranging a table that in fact was already prepared, everything
seemed perfectly in place but they were asking another very young boy,
Samir, to go and get this and that. The fire emanated flashes of
Caravaggio’s light that lit up the scene in a rather dramatic manner.

Delia put her left hand in her pocket, rubbed the mixture of rosemary
and thyme that she had picked up earlier in the garden and brought her
fingers to her nose. She inhaled deeply. Whatever happens, it will be a
success, she thought. OR at least, it will succeed. She just couldn’t
stay in the drama.

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“What a company! What a society!” She said aloud, but as if to herself,
without talking to anyone in particular.

“Of course! A shitty society!” one of the two girls who seemed busy in
all other matters replied immediately.

“Shit? Maybe it was! Shit is gold, my biology professor once said. He
was an ecologist in his own way. I remember it as it was yesterday: the
bus full of shouting kids who suddenly start screaming ’What a stink!
How disgusting!’ Because we were passing amidst the freshly fertilized
fields of fresh manure. And he: ’Guys, but this is gold! Open the
windows, breathe deeply! This is how first fruits grow!’”

No general laughter broke out, but Delia saw some faint smile. Go on
like this, she thought…

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“Ah well, it’s easy to make jokes like that, but really there is little
to laugh about”, the other girl insisted, “Or do you want to make a toast
to shit?”, she provoked.

“Come on Rachel, don’t take it so seriously,” said Delia. “I didn’t want
to make a silly joke. It was an old memory, of forty years ago, I always
remind to myself that there are many points of view on things. And yet,
when something stinks, you are right not to trust it even if others
think you are a weirdo. Have I ever told you the story of the poop
prints?”.

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Rhetorical question. Poop prints? What kind of crap…

The faces become quizzical. Delia served herself a drink, she resumed
her position beside the fireplace, and began to speak.

* A Poop Society
  :PROPERTIES:
  :CUSTOM_ID: a-poop-society
  :END:

Just before the plague it became very common to have a dog. A cat. A
canary, or at least a goldfish. It was almost a craze, pet food stores
sprouted like mushrooms, especially in the big cities. There were
obviously also the eccentrics, which were accompanied by pythons or
others wild animals, not to mention endangered ones. In short, a huge
business.

I grew up in a house in the country, there had always been animals
around and at home. In 2017, however, I lived in London, for work. I
didn't like at all the idea of living with a dog or any other non-human
animal in an apartment. In May a dear friend whom I rarely heard from
called me. She had to leave suddenly, matters of health, but she did not
want to tell me much, except that she would have to stay away at least
six months, and then probably she would only return to the city
occasionally. She made me a proposal: to leave the small rented house
where I was living and go to stay at her home. It was an old family
house with two floors, a real luxury in the city. She would pay the
expenses, I only had to take care of her little dog that she could not
take it with her.

It was a fantastic opportunity. I would move to a big house with a small
garden in Hackney, not far away from the university where I taught. And
the dog, Lea, a crossbreed between a Norwegian shepherd and something
else, was twenty pounds of sympathy, a funny naughty furry creature. I
accepted the proposal without any hesitation.

Summer came. I liked walking with Lea. Our cohabitation was indeed an
idyll, even London seemed almost livable.

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Until one day, as I was coming back home, I found myself facing Lea’s
muzzle, stuck to the wall. At least, it seemed just her. Below was
written:

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“Wanted”

“Anyone who has seen this specimen is asked to report it, thank you.”

Followed phone number, #pooprintswanted, email address and others
references.

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I didn’t understand. Was Lea wanted? For what?

I tore up the strange poster and threw it in the bin. It had to be a
joke, absurd and idiotic, but a joke.

A few days later a strange letter arrived. It was signed “committee for
law and decorum”. I was commanded to subject Lea to “regular procedure
for recording the excremental DNA” in order to “Avoid further,
unpleasant incidents” with respect to “alleged defecatory
irregularities” of the dog in question. 

I could not understand what it was. Attached to the letter was a brochure of the /Pooprints, INC./ and
a package from the same company. It contained sterilized gloves, some
plastic bags and an invitation to receive at home “Free and without
obligation” the visit of a Pooprints representative to “solve the
problem of canine dirt” through a “safety, simple and reliable DNA
indexing”.

I did some research on Google and inquired among the neighbors. The
company had already been dealing for a decade with “Management of waste
through DNA”. A few months earlier the company had signed an agreement
with the two major real estate companies in the area, which controlled
large part of the locations. Tenants with dogs were obliged (referring
to specific contractual clauses) to provide a sample of the poop of
their dogs. 

The dog’s DNA was stored in a central database. In case of shit findings on the street, in the flowerbeds, in the dog areas and so
on, it was enough to test the suspect sample with the practical
/kit-control/ provided by Pooprints: the guilty quadruped was identified
immediately and without any error and the human responsible was
appropriately sanctioned.

Apparently, Lea was the last dog in the neighborhood not filed on the
database. Not only: several neighbors had carried out tests on samples
of shit found in the neighborhood and had given them to Pooprints which,
thanks to an amazing new predictive technology, had been in able to
provide an COLOR identikit of the alleged culprit: long fur, shepherd’s
face, medium size…

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I could not believe. Here’s what that “Wanted” poster was!

There was one thing that made me even madder about all this absurd
story. I had always been very careful to collect Lea’s shit. Sure, not
in the countryside, but in the city, yes, including the neighborhood. So
the should be a mistake. Unless… someone wasn’t trying to set us up!

The idea was put in my head by an old friend of mine, a real freak, we
called him El Mago. Together we had studied the fantastic services of
the poop society. It turned out that the canine DNA tests were very
precise, the chances of error were minimal. Then, according to El Mago,
there was only one real possibility: someone had messed around with
Lea’s poop! We had begun to draw a profile of the possible maniac.

There were a couple of neighbors who had always been really rude to me
and decidedly intolerant with Lea. In particular a middle-aged man,
tenant of an apartment building at the end of the street, who from the
first meeting had looked at Lea with ill-concealed disgust and he had
declared:

#+BEGIN_QUOTE

As I said to the other lady, you should put her on a diet, she’s too
big!

#+END_QUOTE

Once I ventured to point out that Lea was very hairy, and so she looked
a little chubby, and in any case what was the problem? But he mumbled
something unpleasant and went straight ahead. My sixth sense told me
that Mister “put the dog on a diet” had something to do with this. El
Mago agreed.

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From that day on I paid close attention to all the scatological details.
Until the discovery: that man followed us and gathered Lea’s poop from
the basket! El Mago had the photos that proved it. We found out that he
was obsessed with fat (yet he was not thin!) and he had chosen us as a
target.

And so Lea was exonerated, completely rehabilitated, and everyone lived
happily ever after!

Or rather, I was able to postpone the DNA filing to a later date. But
even then I was like a sore thumb, or a black sheep, the only one in the
district who was considered “uncooperative”. It was a strange time in
which those who did not conform, those who did not accept any news
without complaining or with enthusiasm, were looked at with suspicion.
Maybe they had something to hide…

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But that’s another story!
