Rubie

Male | 20s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 14

EXTRACT: Fact number one: the gender ratio is about five to one, male to female. Ipso fucken facto: your average dude's got to work a lot harder to get a root. He's got to have what we might call a competitive edge. Now: he's earning three grand a week and all that entails. But most of your basic contractors are on that kind of moolah... / So. He needs another competitive edge. And this is where your flatback turtle comes in.

Rube

Male | 20s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 32

EXTRACT: I'm across the pub yanking the thing out of her mouth and shouting at this bloke: What the fuck? How can you be so fucken careless? How can you just leave her like that? For everyone to laugh at. And I... I hit him. And they threw me out...Yeah. I give you the shits. So, you know, maybe I was wrong about you. I thought you were a mate, but maybe I picked it wrong. I thought: 'There's a dude who wants to cut loose. There's a dude hanging to get the air of freedom in his lungs.'

Colin

Male | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 39

EXTRACT: Premium-grade Brockman ore. Put a welding iron to that and it'll spark. It's the only spark this country's got. We didn't invent Microsoft. We didn't build Ikea. We didn't market Prozac. And so: we do as humans've done since we discovered opposable thumbs: we sell what we have. Empires rise. Empires die. We play out our little lives - and our little deaths - in their shadows. And if you think anything else, you're a fool.