Cow-eyed, the last Gen-Xer wets himself in a corner of the zoo. I was there taking the video, laughing with the crowd, watching the piss come out between his legs. We're coming close to the two hundredth year of our city's founding, where they've paraded out every last of our undignified fools for the posterity of it, mostly as a warning, but also to show how far we've come. Look at him, staring blankly at the keeper's outstretched bucket. Look at him, mouth opening and closing, mouthing something about last time we bought CDs from HMV, something about Borders, something about can't keep up with this energy. They called themselves 'kids', once. Very funny. Ha ha.

The boy next to me is doing his makeup in the pristine enclosure glass, angling his face so that the reflected light of the viewing gallery blocks the view of the sad man inside. He's making cute kissy faces so the green gloss fills the creases of the lips a little better. LED goldfish swirl playlists across his crystal cheeks. The man stares through the glass, uncomprehending. Unthinkable to our elders to write themselves on themselves like that. Theirs was a culture of noise, not defacement. Image-turned vision turned the world's wheels a little faster, turned into short-form video into a million fractal feeds, and suddenly you could be anyone, anywhere. He catches a glimpse of me in the glass and smiles sweetly, baring pixel-perfect teeth.

I charm him with trivia. "Did you know? They ruined the housing market forever. Took them fifty years to repossess the last aging three-room flats in prime locations from their stinking, kulak hands."

Later we'll get sorbets and warm water by the penguins. Exchange a kiss, perhaps with tongue. Sure as the sky we'll meet again somewhere. Catch other endangered local species on the way out, like the purple heron, the bobbit worm, and the rock pigeon who, too, turned out too stupid to survive. The speakers play on loop every song ever made and the children are walking around with handfuls of cotton candy in every single colour you can find. The tamed sun lingers. It's a sweet twenty-six degrees out. I say goodbye to him, and we each leave for the rest of our lives where we'll bartend, make slides, trade zines, and live simply by the sweat of our brow. File some paperwork for the heck of it. It's a beautiful little Tuesday at the zoo, and the future has never looked more alive.