The following article appeared on the website edition (only) of the Observer in the Opinion section, authored by GBTL. It was not accompanied by any photos, just the GBTL logo.

I didn't know what a "mean street" was until I moved to Hathian.

Every City has places that aren't safe; whispered parks or streets where the good people aren't meant to go. Alleys or areas that are so-called 'Gang turf' and should be treated with caution. Even then, in the world I grew up in many of the risks attached to such places can be mitigated by just not being stupid. Keep the phone away and headphones off and pay attention. Walk away if challenged...

Yet in Hathian, the City feels oppressive, the mean streets almost everywhere. How do we protect ourselves, our loved ones and our own mental health among this senselessness violence? A few days ago I interviewed the Mayor and he said he wants to focus on the HPD, but really the problem is pervasive and I think many of us know it. The HPD are just one damaged branch. We see more damage in the loss of our Civil Services and the daily struggles the medical staff at HGH face. We are hollowed out of civil services which impacts all of us. When was the last time we read about the library budget instead of the latest body? When did mental health get the last tax $, instead of a new set of riot gear for HPD?

Today, I could have stabbed someone.

Instead they live. Their life saved through kindness from myself and strangers. I hope, foolishly perhaps that this will be a lesson, seen by them that way and not seen as a loss. I hope our kindness is repaid without further violence in the future, just peace.

Even as I was terrified for my own life and with the hot metal of bullet fragments scorching my leg from her gun, I couldn't do it, I couldn't take the life of my would-be-murderer. Afterwards I was told I was stupid. Stupid, what kind of place teaches us that mercy, dialogue and saving lives is 'stupid'?

So instead I left her my business card.

Before today I'd fought and lost, yet today I hurt someone when I didn't have to, once she was prone I kicked out, anger, hot anger inside. Is this how it gets easier for people out there? Do they hurt and get hurt in some kind of cycle so that one day they wake up and see someone walking to her job and decide to try and kill?

This lady, this likely gang-member in her Greens (and we know who they are) could have talked to me but she choose the baseball bat. When I tried to leave, she could have let me run, but she enjoyed my fear. When I pepper sprayed her in defence she charged, ever forward. When her baseball bat couldn't catch up to me as I ran again, she went for her gun, because what? why? Because Hathian.

Why? WHY? What's in it for you?

That's what I asked her as she lay before me, the tables having turned as she stared at me behind my own weapon. I had the tool but since when do morals get dispensed like trash? My wrong could never be excused by hers so as I asked her why she had tried to kill me and she looked at me with fear in her eyes which pleaded for her own life I realised that this was the ever unfair, lop-sided deal. My life meant little to her for whatever reason, yet when she knew that I could take hers, her courage left her. If I had killed her, the cycle would have surely ended up with my friends and I later dead and maybe some more of hers. So, she goes with a warning, but also an offer. An offer to stop and talk.

Hathian has wronged her as much as she wronged me.

What kind of City tolerates this, what kind of 'family' sends their children, friends, brothers or sisters out with the wellbeing issues that this woman clearly had? What system, 'family' or friendship circle encouraged her that violence is fun and that the weaker should be hurt. Hathian wrongs me, wrongs many of us and even yes, has wronged this would be murderer.

So I left her my business card and what did it say, tucked into her pocket as she lay unconscious on the street?

It said, 'Let's talk. Help us with the bigger problems... don't hurt us' and a few more of my scribbled thoughts. She has my e-mail and phone and we can talk. We can help each other, otherwise we know only a few winners... The rich, the HPD and death, and both are poor bed-fellows.

Maybe reader you think I'm stupid for giving her my contact details... but if she or her people want to find me, they will. Shit, writing anonymously in this place falls apart in a week, the Observer is as leaky as well. So I've got to pay my bills and therefore they just need to wait in the same place and wait for the student trying to walk to her burger job from campus, trying to make something better of her life. They'll get the time right eventually and can replay this as if it was a game, maybe if they brought two guns.? But instead of meeting me, or you reader, because it could be you next time getting chased for your life, maybe they could try a phone call and work on the bigger issues. Don't we have enough of them as a City? Don't we have people, like me, who want to deal with the bigger issues without fearing walking down the street?

The article ends with a link to various American charities for mental wellbeing, drug addiction and so on that can be accessed remotely.