Surgeon frowned.  His face almost seemed to creak in its effort to express emotion.

"Where did you find this, Alfred?"

"Domicile 7173—Andrew Wilson’s, sir," Alfred said, then paused and took a deep breath.  "He was feeding it from a loaf of bread when we walked in; we caught him in the act, sir.  And he was performing an 11-13."

Surgeon lifted one black, craggy eyebrow.

"Yes, sir," Alfred affirmed, the closest thing allowed to smugness in his tone.  "He was smiling."

"That isn’t fair," said Aubergine.  Her voice was a calm, inflection-free stream of sound in the cool air.

"No, that’s definitely not fair—definitely not!" piped in Annemarie.

Surgeon frowned again, his face muscles warming to the movement.  His steel-grey eyes met Annemarie’s.

She bowed her head.  "I’m sorry, sir," she said in a whisper.

Surgeon nodded.

"As you’ve all noted," he said, "it’s not fair."

One by one, the controllers left the room.

Surgeon folded his hands over his chest, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the evidence before him.  A digital image replayed again and again over the wall—A small, bright red bird in brilliant juxtaposition against the dull grey pavement it walked on.  A gentle smile flitting over the face of one Andrew Wilson, a look so furtive that if he hadn’t been looking for it, Surgeon wouldn’t have noticed the slight retraction of Wilson’s zygomatic muscles, or the twitch and wrinkle at the corner of his eyes.

In the next second, in a movement as fleeting as the smile had been, a hand snaked out and the small bird disappeared beneath the woolen grey of Andrew’s long coat.  All in the picture was homogenous in colour once more, and Andrew Wilson’s face was composed and somber as the day.

No, it wasn’t fair. And there was only one solution.

***

The queue ran as far as the eye could see, an undulating grey line of bodies across the cement garden of Parliament Square.

Andrew Wilson struggled in vain against loose but unbreakable constraints, watching as one person after another spotted the little bird, almost smiled at its vivid colour, then covertly grabbed and shoved it into his/her jacket. They got to walk a few steps each time before a controller stopped them, retrieved the bird and replaced it on the pavement, simultaneously motioning for the next person to move forward.

At first, the little bird showed signs of fright, then only mild disgruntlement, then nothing but resignation to its fate, barely twitching, grab and stuff after grab and stuff.

After a short while though, it became increasingly clear to Andrew and the other spectators that something had gone wrong for the bird.  Perhaps it had been squeezed too hard, had its delicate insides damaged?  Or perhaps the constant terror had done something to its heart?  In any case, the bird barely stood anymore and it made no sound.

Finally the time came when the controller put the bird down and it didn’t stand at all, just fell motionless to its side.

A single tear ran down Andrew’s cheek into his mouth.

"Well, that’s it then," a controller said.  "Off you go now, nothing to see here—Nothing to see."

A small, dissenting grumble crawled through the crowd, but as silent as the grey clouds had formed above, so a rank of controllers appeared, flanking the crowd on all sides.

The onlookers dissipated like mist, with only the odd hiss floating back.  "It’s not fair; it’s just not fair . . ."

One of the controllers shook his head.

"Really wasn’t fair, actually," he said.

A blonde controller beside him grunted in agreement, then swung her gaze left.  A few lingerers quickened their step.

***

"Do you mean to tell me, on top of all this, there’s snow?  There hasn’t been snow in forty years."  Surgeon’s voice grated through their headsets. "Get him out of there now.  Tell no-one."

But it was too late.  As the controllers stepped back through the door of Domicile 7173, there was already a small crowd gathering, a smear of grey on the unblemished white.  A few small children, unable to keep themselves expressionless as they took in the foreign expanse of chilly brightness, got the awe pinched off their faces by their mothers, who looked over their shoulders at the approaching controllers.

The controllers, however, had their hands full with Andrew Wilson.  His body strained against the grey shroud that covered him as they carried him by armpits and ankles across the yard.

One arm fell free of its confinements though, and before a controller could grab it and shove it back into the sheet, a deep crimson splatter of arterial blood stained the snow.

A shocked murmur moved across the crowd.  "It’s not fair; it’s not fair . . ."

Surgeon watched the muttering crowd via digital stream and shook his head.  First the bird, now this.  Soon they’d all be moaning about how they were supposed to share everything.

Sometimes his job really was too much.