Remembering Kohlrabi – which I do once in a while (usually when I’m depressed) – always brings up other curious recollections from that time. I had just moved to Gandhitown from Jobsville in an effort to ‘get back to real life’ (as ‘the movement’ called it), bringing along only the most rudimentary of my former tech; how ‘getting back’ does it get? I was unhauling my stuff from the airUber when I met him; he was moving in exactly then, too. What a cute meet, right? Only Kohlrabi stepped off an antique city bus, duffle bag over his shoulder, looking pleased with himself (as most bohemian-wannabes will).

The SLG (small living group) we were both registering in was euphemistically called Quasimodo Quarters. It was a doddering old wreck of an A-frame erected by dissenting settlers in the Sixties – rotting wood, leaky ceilings, slanted floors and dirty laundry in heaps everywhere. A long dorm with shifting corridors painted a slick mucus green, the hallways contracted as they went back; I remember having to lower my head as I approached the back exit. A real misanthrope’s utopia. Little did I know then what I should have expected, the whole building was subject to interconnectivity brownouts every time it rained. Of course, when it snowed, the transmissions got cut. Back to the simple life, that’s what I wanted – and got. It’s the premium immersion in poverty tourism.

Kohlrabi and I literally bumped into one another as we queued up to the registration desk, a dank little cage where a bearded little wise woman scratched our citizen info onto ...