[ WP ] In this world , physical appearance depends entirely on personality . All babies are born identical . Beauty is achieved gradually through good thoughts and deeds , while the opposite is true for ugliness .

*Ugh*, thought Ryan, as he slopped another ladle of lumpy broccoli soup into the waiting bowl. He could smell it, even over the stink of the soup. A combination of week-old piss and year-old sweat. It turned his stomach. 
 
 The guy standing opposite him was wearing a filthy old T-shirt, linen pants held up with rope, and threadbare leather sandals. His hair was a matted tangle of black, encrusted patches of snot in the mustache of his long, straggly beard. 
 
 Beneath this, though, Ryan could see that the bum was a decent-looking guy. It just went to show: looks were n't everything. People still fell through the cracks. 
 
 He glanced along the line. Most of'em were easily a seventy, enough to claim government benefits and get on a lease for their own place. 
 
 He ladled out another bowl and looked to the sign above the door, proclaiming the Bay Area 51st Annual Homeless Soup Drive in big, overexcited letters. How much longer would he have to do this shit? Becca downstairs had volunteered with the animal shelter for four months and got herself up from a forty-seven to a seventy-eight. Now she was gone, moved on, moved up. 
 
 Ryan, on the other hand, had been at this for nearly two years and had n't wavered from twenty-eight, not a single point. Twenty-fucking-eight. 
 
 The tramp standing in front of him was holding her bowl out, searching Ryan's face with pale blue eyes and an expression of faint disgust. He wanted to take the ladle and cave her goddamn skull in. He was used to this sort of look; people saw his pug nose, too-small eyes, and slightly lumpen forehead, and assumed that he was a bad person. And he was n't, not anymore. Yeah he'd done some heinous shit when he was a kid, but everyone made mistakes. And if he'd **enjoyed** those mistakes, well whose fault was that? Not his - he could n't help how he was wired. 
 
 Two years. Two years of soup kitchens, and graffiti-cleaning, and helping out at the old people's home, and he'd not gone up one lousy point. He needed forty-two more. That was the point at which the Universal Moral Fiber Act ( or Ugly Motherfucker Act, as it was better known ) mandated he'd become eligible for a Betterment Grant and could get out of government housing. Most firms would n't hire someone below that level either. Seventy was the golden number. 
 
 He still sent his photograph and the forms in every month, and every month he got the same reply that they'd run his picture through their processing software and determined that his Appearance Index remained at twenty-eight. 
 
 Ryan clenched the ladle tighter in his fist as the blue-eyed woman walked away, cupping her bowl in both hands, that look of distaste still written on her stupid face. 
 
 Twenty-fucking-eight.
