Fishing 16

On the morning of the fifth day after the incident continued to snowball, a fresh front-page headline came hot off the press.

The entire front page of the Federal Times was covered in photographs—sixty-seven of them in total. Each had been technically edited to make it look a little less horrifying.

But everyone who saw the photographs knew that these people were dead.

The blurred images on their heads had to be bullet holes. Their lifeless eyes had already lost their focus, and their pupils had dilated so far that they gave people an eerie feeling.

The photographs made some people uncomfortable, but they also plunged others into a kind of frenzied excitement.

Jim was one of them.

His life had followed much the same path as that of most people in the country.

Free public education had allowed him to finish high school for very little money, but that was where it ended.

The university had not opened its arms to him. Compared with those "lucky ones" who could receive university invitations simply because they had "mastered a cooking skill" or "sang relatively well," he was clearly one of the unlucky ones.

Fortunately, he had not wasted his time in high school. He had dated quite a few girls, venting his inexhaustible energy with them during the best yet most bewildering stage of their lives.

After graduation, he joined an assembly line at a factory. He had lost his job some time ago, too, but fortunately his father had not, and the family had managed to get through the crisis without incident.

Now he had found a new job and had started dating a new girlfriend. He followed the topics all men followed, such as politics, the economy, society, healthcare, education, and front-page headlines.

The news in the newspapers