The New Dumb

I was in town the other night. I was armed with a pencil, some notepaper and a 2 kilo net sack of Spanish limes. I was there to observe the new breed of instant-access dumb.
No sooner had I started than a small herd of Shallow Youth presented themselves reeking of over-priced aftershave and Corona. They were lobbying to bring back the death sentence and public beatings. The public was on their side and an Internet campaign was washing a tidal wave of tsunami proportions towards Westminster.
Expensive mobile phones fell from their person while each red face in turn battled to the forefront to give the most memorable sound byte to a television camera which did not exist. There was only me and the limes. They wanted to nuke everywhere east of Hope Street and phone-whip the liberals.
When a small stream of Fake-Tan meandered past, the young men lost interest in the limes and turned to follow, giving me the chance to silently pick off the largest one from the rear and drag him to the nearest dark alley. I used up half my limes before setting off to the Pilgrim to reassess my methods of collecting data.
I ordered a soft drink and a hard drink and sat on my own at a corner booth. Stashing what was left of the citrus under the table, I came across a pristine handwritten note, but with very poor penmanship. It read:

“Dear Father,
Please forgive me, I have not been honest with you, or anyone else for that matter. Father.
The thing is, I’m pretty clean now Dad. I have a new life in England now, with kids to look after, a wife, a house that doesn’t smell bad - and I’m doing my best work ever. The best work I’ve done since I hit puberty.
I’m not lying in that bare room on that half-mattress with an aerosol in one hand and my Zippo in the other waiting to burn roaches while that tree grew in the window before I’d fold the top of the sleeping bag over and sweat and cry the night away in case any of those roaches (who I’d hear scurrying between the carpet and the floorboards underneath me) crawled into my space while their blood-sucking cousins fed on my paranoia.
I can go months now without wetting myself or having a blackout, Dad.
The thing is Dad, I am respectable, but I had a traumatic experience lately and I’ve forgotten all my passwords.
It’s different now Dad, we all have passwords to get into our stuff, password to enter this, password to access that, and I had them all, but now they're gone. I could really do with some help here because to compound the problem, I answered all my secret questions as someone else. The security issues were paramount to me, being who I’m being, and I decided to go to the next level with all that stuff.
All that stuff I had stored and saved on Empathy, all my files in Grassroots and Jonny Cash are inaccessible.
I remember something about the sun through a magnifying glass, something about how to draw Fred Flintstone and something about Big Ben’s Banjo Band, but the oceans and space and time and the charity of the human spirit escape me. I’m drawing a blank on Freedom - nothing of Equality, nothing of Liberty, nothing of Justified Feelings of Aggression remain.
I’m not at one with the beat, Dad.
We used to lie in the sun, you and I, on the ranch and know what it was all about, because it was all about lying on the Hills in the sun, you and I.
The moment has gone Dad.
Bill says he has a sniper rifle like the one Rat Scabies and John the Baptist had. I hope he gets me, because he knows as well as the Kennedys that in spite of all the talk I’m still on the run.
I love you.
But I have forgotten my passwords.
Please help me Dad, I’m alright and pretty much clean. I don’t carry round a two-litre lemonade bottle, barefoot, pretending it is lemonade anymore. I know where I am most of the time now, but I have no idea who I am.
It’s the Identity password that I need the most Dad. If you can’t break that I’m going to have to ask you to send me about £4000, make it a round 10k if we’re talking dollars and that should sort things. I’m pretty sure I am you, today instead of yesterday and that makes us very different, but you should still be able to help.
Listen, just forget about the passwords and make sure you wire the money, that’ll do the trick.
Regards, George W.”

I quickly bagged the note and had it sent off to forensics the next day, naïve not to know it would go missing so quickly. I then returned to untie the brute I had dealt with the previous night, but not before tattooing seven of my passwords on him and swearing him to silence.

The new dumb are all around us, exactly as planned and as soon as they get a taste for brains, all lines of communication will be severed.