The house was fortified to the highest military standards: thermal insulation, soundproofing, protection against explosions, protection against poisons, and a good deal else besides that the contractor had listed with visible pride and no idea why any of it was needed.
Shawn handed the man his card, waited until he was gone, and went into his shelter and shut the door on the world.
The television was talking to an empty room. Under the influence of unprecedentedly powerful solar flare activity, prolonged extreme heat is expected worldwide. Temperatures in many regions are expected to break historical records. All citizens are urged to take protective measures.
So it began, and Shawn was nothing but pleased about it.
The Earth's ionosphere is experiencing severe turbulence as a result of a catastrophic solar flare. Citizens are urged to take precautions against heat stroke and to avoid any non-essential outdoor activity during the middle hours of the day.
The temperature began to climb, and quickly. And this was only the beginning.
Out on the street the man selling fruit had his awning down and his voice up. "Supplies are running low! This is the last of it!" And he was thinking, quite openly, that this heat was throwing money into his face by the handful. He would be a complete idiot not to take a chance like this and hit the jackpot.
A pair of girls stopped at his crates. "Aren't you selling these watermelons a bit high? Couldn't you make it cheaper?"
Here was another one who looked at women as objects, and did not trouble to hide the drool.
"Watermelons sweet as honey," he said. "How about I cut one open for you? And if it gets really hot tonight, you can always come to me. I've got air conditioning, you know. In general." He laid it on them thickly, his whole rotten essence out in the open air.
Then an old man came up to the counter and asked, very politely, whether the price of water might be lowered a little.
"Small business, strict rules," the fat man shouted at him. "No concessions."
The fat man stank. It seemed to be his soul doing it.
It turned out that Shawn also harboured a grudge against this man, from a past life in which Shawn had been a genuine loser, which was logical enough. The fat man had grabbed him by the collar once and shouted so the whole store could hear it.
"This ragamuffin is stealing from me!"
"I didn't steal it!" Shawn had shouted back. "It fell. I was putting it back."
Who would believe nonsense like that? The fat man had said he would call the police, and enjoyed saying it.
Of course the vindictive Shawn had remembered. Small ego, big grievances. So now he came for payment.
He picked a bag of chips off the shelf and turned it over in his hands. "Are these made of gold? Or do they protect against heat stroke? Why are they so expensive?"
The fat man snatched them out of his hands. "Don't touch them if you can't pay."
"How can the boss care so much about his goods?" Shawn said thoughtfully. "How does the boss sleep peacefully at night, not worrying that something might be stolen from him?"
"Who the hell does this bastard think he is?" the fat man screamed. "He wants a kick, that's what it is. His brain has melted in the heat."
"Has the boss been suffering from insomnia lately?" Shawn asked. "Vivid, restless dreams. Pain in the lower back. Constant fatigue. Maybe a lot of problems in that particular department."
He was mocking him deliberately now, and you could see from his face exactly how much pleasure other people's discomfort gave him. Schadenfreude really was his governing vice. He even reached out and tapped the man on the shoulder, remarking that his gaze was unfocused.
"A classic case of kidney failure," Shawn diagnosed.
The fat man swelled up and swung at him, and it did not work, because nothing anybody swung at Shawn worked any more. Shawn stepped back out of range, pulled a loaf of bread off the shelf, and observed that excessive anger was harmful to the body, particularly at his weight.
In his past life Shawn had stood in this shop and suffered in silence and let other people walk over him, which was understandable, since he had not possessed a single quality worth defending. Shawn himself did not see it that way. A large insult makes him look small and pathetic, and he has never once noticed which of those two things he is.
Then Shawn remembered something the system had told him. The storage capacity could be expanded.
In the morning the heat was still terrible. The birds would be burning alive on the wires soon.