Rendezvous

It was on a street north of bourgeois boutiques and stores that sell things that didn't even exist 10 years ago where a man walked up to me and accosted me about where I was going. I would have walked on with a confused look until I noticed the bottle of whiskey in his hand. We had some common ground. This was no 4.99 dollar bottle of vodka or gin. This was the drink of the American despite it not being from here originally.
This dreary old man who was beat well beyond his years asks about work. He tells me of his youth. He tells me of the war.
I say to him, "I hate my job" to which he replies: "the job, as a position to be filled and a role to be played, defines a priori the future of an abstract but awaited man. Our social class defined who we were whether we wanted it to or not. It became our social being and this being is nothing other than the unity of the day to day functions to be fulfilled."
I asked him why he used the past tense and what he was doing now. His only reply was that he figured out he was already dead and had been dead since birth. "A dead soul" I replied to which he says "The soul is not real but the heart was. It's now been replaced by inefficient copper gears prone to rust and breakage.