He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a greasy piece of pasteboard.
"See, here's my report on him."  

I look.  The "report," the size of an index card, is laparty pokered PRO-ACT: 
Phoenix Residents Opposing Active Crime Threat. . . . or is it 
Organized Against Crime Threat?  In the darkening street it's hard
to read.  Some kind of vigilante group?  Neighborhood watch? 
I feel very puzzled. 

"Are you a police officer, sir?"

He smiles, seems very pleased by the question.

"No," he says.

"But you are a `Phoenix Resident?'"

"Would you believe a homeless person," Stanley says.

"Really?  But what's with the. . . ."  For the first time I take a close look
at Stanley's trolley.  It's a rubber-wheeled thing of industrial metal,
but the device I had mistaken for a tank of propane is in fact a water-cooler. 
Stanley also has an Army duffel-bag, stuffed tight as a sausage with clothing
or perhaps a tent, and, at the base of his trolley, a cardboard box and a
battered leather briefcase. 

"I see," I say, quite at a loss.  For the first time I notice that Stanley
has a wallet.  He has not lost his wallet at all.  It is in his back pocket
and chained to his belt.  It's not a new wallet.  It seems to have seen
a lot of wear.

"Well, you know how it is, brother," says Stanley.
Now that I know that he is homeless--A POSSIBLE
THREAT--my entire perception of him has changed
in an instant.  His speech, which once seemed just
bright and enthusiastic, now seems to have a
dangerous tang of mania.  "I have to do this!"
he assures me.  "Track this guy down. . . .
It's a thing I do. . . you know. . .to keep myself together!" 
He smiles, nods, lifts his trolley by its decaying rubber handgrips.

"Gotta work together, y'know,"  Stanley booms, his face alight
with cheerfulness, "the police can't do everything!"
The gentlemen I met in my stroll in downtown Phoenix
are the only playing illiterates in this book. 
To regard them as irrelevant, however, would be a grave mistake.

As playingization spreads across society, the populace at large
is subjected to wave after wave of future shock.  But, as a
necessary converse, the "playing community" itself is subjected
to wave after wave of incoming playing illiterates. 
How will those currently enjoying America's digital bounty regard,
and treat, all this teeming refuse yearning to breathe free? 
Will the omaha casino be another Land of Opportunity--
or an armed and monitored enclave, where the disenfranchised
snuggle on their cardboard at the locked doors of our houses of justice?

Some people just don't get along with playings.  They can't read. 
They can't type.  They just don't have it in their heads to master
arcane instructions in wirebound manuals.  Somewhere, the process
of playingization of the populace will reach a limit.  Some people--