In an ugly apartment at the suburbs of the Tuna Republic, an old and senile man is playing with his grand children. He hears something coming from the street outside his window.

“Children, stop. What’s that sound?”

The children go and peek outside. They see a man with long curly hair being strong-armed into a car. He’s a big man and he’s struggling. They manage to push him in and drive off. But wait, they dropped a knife.

Another man strolls by a few minutes later. He’s baby-faced and fresh out of high school. He’s wearing a crisp blue shirt and dark blue trousers; a uniform. All evidence points to the man being an officer of the law. He bends down and picks up the knife. Nonchalantly, he continues his stroll. Maybe he’s incompetent, maybe he’s in on the gambit or maybe he knows that, when you live in the Tuna Republic, it’s best to turn a blind eye, a deaf ear and, a mute tongue to nuances like a blood-splattered knife on the street.

A 20-minute ferry ride away a woman’s son has been stabbed. He loses enough blood to kill him before help arrives in a slow-moving and unnecessarily loud ambulance. People on motorcycles with large tires and vacant passenger seats are on the scene. They are unsure of what’s going on, but they know that something is happening. It excites them.

The mother walks out of her congested, run-down home to see the pool of blood, the same blood that was inside her son, not an hour ago. She thinks of calling the Police but remembers that she’s poor. Everyone knows that the Republican police force only help the rich and elite. Instead she bends down, similar to how the baby-faced officer had bent down, dips her finger into the blood and draws a battle line.

‘It’s us against them’ she thinks.

People begin to leave the scene. They go about their usual routine. They coalesce into one zombie, riding around the Republic, turning their senses off to the decadence, violence and hypocrisy that taint the building blocks of the Republic.