Kevin Walsh is forty and works in a warehouse that makes plastic components for things he doesn't understand. He arrives at five-thirty every morning and leaves at four-thirty every afternoon. He eats a sandwich for lunch that his ex-wife packs on the first Saturday of every month when he picks up his daughter.

The sandwich is always the same: white bread, peanut butter, no crusts. His daughter is twelve. She eats it slowly while Kevin watches the television in the corner of the fast food restaurant where they meet. The television is always on a sports channel. Kevin doesn't watch the sports. He watches his daughter.

"Good?" he asks.

She nods.

He nods back. That's all.

At the warehouse, his supervisor is a man named Rick who is thirty-eight and has a face that looks like it was designed by someone who had only seen faces in pictures. Rick yells at Kevin on Tuesdays. On other days, Rick ignores him. Kevin doesn't mind the yelling. Yelling is predictable. Ignoring is not.

One Tuesday, Rick yells at him for packing too slowly. "What's wrong with you, Walsh? You drunk again?"

Kevin says nothing. He goes back to packing.

On the way home, he stops at the bar on the corner. It's a place with fluorescent lights and sticky floors and a menu that consists of beer and wings. Kevin orders a PBR and sits at the bar. The bartender is a guy named Tony who has known Kevin for ten years and knows everything about him and nothing about him at the same time.

"Rough day?" Tony asks.

"You could say that."

"Rough life?"

Kevin looks at him. Tony is smiling, but it's not a mean smile. It's the smile of a man who is asking a question he already knows the answer to and doesn't care about the answer.

"Yeah," Kevin says. "You could say that."

A guy in a trucker hat sits next to him. The guy smells like cigarettes and cheap cologne and something Kevin can't identify but recognizes as the smell of a man who has nothing better to do than sit next to him at a bar and try to make him uncomfortable.

"What's your name, buddy?" the trucker asks.

"Kevin."

"Kevin what?"

"Just Kevin."

The trucker laughs. "Just Kevin. That's funny. What do you do, Just Kevin? You a doctor? You a lawyer?"

"I work in a warehouse."

The trucker laughs again, louder this time. "A warehouse! That's great. You ever think about doing something with your life, Just Kevin?"

Kevin looks at him. He thinks about saying fuck you. He thinks about it for a long time. Then he says it.

"Fuck you."

The trucker stares at him. Then he stares at his beer. Then he stands up and leaves. Kevin watches him go. He finishes his beer. He goes home.

His apartment is above a Dollar General. He can hear the register beeping through the floor. He turns on the television. He watches a show he's seen before. He drinks another beer. He goes to bed.

His daughter calls him once a month on the phone. She asks about his health. He says he's fine. She asks about his job. He says warehouse. She says oh.

"Love you, Daddy."

"Love you too."

He hangs up. He sits in the dark for a while. Then he goes to bed.

This is not a story about Kevin rising. This is a story about Kevin existing. There is no system. There is no ability. There is no secret inheritance or hidden talent or magical moment of transformation.

There is only Kevin, working in a warehouse, eating peanut butter sandwiches with his daughter, saying fuck you to a drunk trucker, and going home to an apartment above a Dollar General.

This is what it means to be nobody in America. Not dramatically. Not tragically. Just... nothing special.

--- OTMES-v2 Code: OTMES-v2-1A3C23-025-M2-180-4R5510-0B56 E_total: 5.80 | Rank: 5 | Dominant Mode: M2 (Satire, 40.0%) Direction Angle: 180.0° | Irreversibility: 0.1 M-vector: [2.0, 1.0, 7.0, 1.0, 2.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2.0] N-vector: [0.5, 0.5] | K-vector: [0.5, 0.5]