Riding with her were the homeless, wearing the multiple layers of clothes that represented their entire wardrobe, carrying all their other belongings in old duffel bags. Most had spent the entire night on the train or sleeping in the stations. Sometimes the police would run them off but most of the time they didn't bother. With their low wages, cops weren't too many steps from being homeless themselves. In fact, some of them were.

There were also the prostitutes and their pimps. The latter usually kept a low profile, knowing that the cops usually went after their girls that usually got off with no more than a warning, especially if they offered a freebie to the cop.

There were the muggers. It was easy to tell them apart from the homeless since the muggers were usually better dressed. One studied Sandy for a moment. She gripped her taser and prepared herself, but nothing came of it as his attention turned elsewhere.

There were also the activists, those who carried signs for all kinds of causes, proselytizing for some new religious sect or warning against some new government conspiracy.

It was hard to tell the difference between any of these and the mentally ill because those dropped by the social services often became homeless, prostitutes, muggers, or activists. Sandy also counted among the mentally ill the occasional flasher or other pervert.

These were the down-and-out of a society in chaos. Every year there were more of them as the world became more and more homogenized, the numbers in poverty increasing while a few maintained a sumptuous lifestyle. In the countries of the Third World standards of living had actually gone up, but not much. In Europe and the US standards of living had actually gone down. People worked harder, received less vacation time, and had exorbitant taxes and medical care costs.