There I was, in the midst of the savage heart of Pelican Park, when Doug, a man with only a few surviving teeth, ambushed me as I emerged from the lavatory. His bloodshot eyes burned with the intensity of a thousand suns.
"Have you seen the council man?" he rasped.
"No," I replied, my eyes scanning the horizon for any signs of trouble.
"He was taking pictures of our cars, man."
We had met before, Doug and I, both inhabitants of this godforsaken parking lot known as Pelican Park. Living on public land in our vehicles, a twisted mockery of the American dream.
"The bastards," I growled. I told him I was Tom, and I'd write a letter of protest to the council. Doug's van was an absolute wreck, and he had a kelpie dog with him—a loyal companion in these desperate times. He grumbled about the difficulty of finding a place with a dog in tow.
I nodded in agreement. Even without a dog, the struggle was real.
Doug shuffled off with another of our tribe, a man named Andy. Like Doug, he was a truck driver, clinging to the ragged edge of society. They were on a mission to the Salvation Army, in search of food coupons and, perhaps, a morsel of hope. And I? I was hell-bent on defending the ragtag community of Pelican Park, each of us a victim of a cruel and indifferent system.
With the help of Open GPT, I crafted a letter to the Moreton Bay Shire—a raging, gonzo manifesto of dissent. The AI's words, though born of cold logic, burned with the fire of righteous anger.
We persisted in our squalid existence, taking refuge in the boat parking lot of Pelican Park. Our fight for dignity and recognition was far from over, but with the strength of our community and the bizarre alliance with an artificial intelligence, we found hope amid the madness.
Parked next to Doug's man, was his wife's van. She was in jail,'too many drugs,' explained Doug, who for the past five years took care of her children while she shot up all her cash in her arms. Meth is a big problenm in Australia yet the Australian government wants to ban dosposable dope.
'No meth in them,' says Doug, mockingly, who has now found himself living on the fringes, again.
'Been living this life, on and off for the last ten years,' he says, as he feeds the scraps of his evening meal to his dog, who has a nice pelt of black and white, 'and only eight months old,' Doug told me. 'Samual features in the Breakfast Club's calender, for this month,' he told me and showed me the caladender, produced by a local charity club that serves hot meals to the homeless at Pelican Park.Samual is a purebreed border callie.
And so, we plunged onward into the vast unknown, fueled by desperation and the unrelenting desire for change. In this desolate wasteland, we found unity, and with it, the will to carry on.
