Pick a Crime

In a future where the Crime Prevention Association has made illegal activity nearly impossible, a down‑on‑his‑luck man named Joe clings to a desperate plan. Carrying a CPA ID that marks him as a “Dangerous Criminal Tendencies” individual, he can’t secure ordinary work, so he decides the only way forward is to become the very thing society has eradicated. He meets a street‑wise woman in a dim bar, offers her cash, and whispers the audacious proposal: help him commit a crime so the system will finally grant him a legitimate job.

The story paints a stark, satirical portrait of a world that has outsourced punishment to high‑tech hospitals and eliminated prisons altogether. As Joe and his new accomplice plot their first move, readers are drawn into a razor‑thin line between survival and rebellion, questioning whether a society that removes criminal impulses can ever truly be free.