[ WP ] America in 2065 . Unemployment is over 60 % . Your character is an unemployed young adult . What is their life like ?

`` Who wants this?'' He holds up the bronze token in the air. Its about an inch long and half an inch thick, made of dull metal that somehow still manages to glimmer in the morning light. 
 
 
 
 There's a roar of muted approval from the shambolic crowd below. Buck pushed past the man on his left who was missing part of his ear and stood his ground. Someone shoved him and he shoved right back, eyes fixed firmly on the small token that the foreman held between his skinny fingers. 
 
 
 
 Buck grimaced as the crowd around him jostled and cried out. 
 
 
 `` Please! I've got three kids at home.'' 
 
 
 
 `` My wife's ill!'' 
 
 
 
 `` Please, please. I have n't eaten in two days.'' 
 
 
 
 Buck did n't have a wife, or children. Yesterday he'd dumpster dived round back of McDonalds. Cold french fries are delicious when you're starving. But he had n't worked since mid-October and the pile of cash he'd got under his mattress from his last non-tokened'job' was steadily running out. He needed to do something legal for a change. But that meant getting up before the grey light of dawn and trudging, hands in armpits, down to the local lumber yard, where the foreman would hand out ten tokens to the ten most desperate and dangerous men. 
 
 
 
 The foreman holds the disk up a little further and the moans of humiliated men grew louder. Buck felt two hands push into the small of his back. He momentarily lost his balance before turning back round and punching the offender square in the face. 
 
 
 
 Then, before he'd even realised it was happening, the foreman flicked the token and it went soaring up into the air. Down, down it tumbled, towards the dozens of outstretched hands. It fell and ten men jumped after it immediately. Buck launched himself into the fray, refusing to give quarter. An elbow hit him, and a starburst of pain above his eye told him his eyebrow had split. Again. He kicked out at a man scrabbling on the ground. 
 
 
 
 `` Give it to me!'' He grunted, throwing himself down beside the prostrate man with wild abandon. 
 
 
 
 He gripped the man's hands and turned them over, revealing the little disk. He ripped and clawed at the man's hands until he started screaming with incoherent pain and rage. 
 
 
 
 There was an awful tearing sound which ripped through the noise of the screaming crowd. The man dropped the token and backed away, holding his bleeding hand. Buck had torn one of his fingers off. But there was no time to think about him. He picked the disk off the floor, now smeared in the man's blood and held it aloft. 
 
 
 
 `` I get work!'' He cried out, his voice hoarse. `` I've got the disk!'' 
 
 
 The crowd of men drew back, glowering at him with a mixture of jealousy and anger. Buck stepped up next to the foreman, doing his best to wipe the blood from his sliced eyebrow and from him hands. He handed the token back reluctantly and the foreman took it with a handkerchief. The gates to the lumberyard opened. 
 
 
 
 Buck was going to eat well that night. 
 
 
 

