"It's a dump."

  The lady walked the line of spray painted "trail".  Spoke into a multi-receiver.

  A world-renowned scientist was found in rags of clothing.  Crushed pile of glass, school supplies, a white coat with a bull's eye target spray-painted on it. 

  So wrong, the lady agreed with the scientist.  Eventually, "back up" got to the "observer". 

  The back up was "hospital" rounding up "the ones who'd got away".  From anywhere.  Production studios had been "hacked" and foreign operatives were "splicing" CC (closed circuit) TV with media and labeling "the narratives" news.  It was a way of isolating the enemy, in this case, Americans. 

  People made a "show of force" and "inner circles" on all matters of discussion.  This to level co-opted "rank" and bleed out truth from "captured" in situation.  Even peace activists and hold outs on calling it "culture wars" knew we were in some kind of war.

The woman laid a colorful bouquet

at Our Lady's feet.  Candles were burning a vigil light.  She knelt before the tiny altar to pray. 

  "The PROBlem is that they think they can go around poisoning people!!!" A man explained to Interpol over patch sat equipment.  "But YOU HEAR THIS.  My team is here no, noooOOOOOw," the man's speech was slowing down even as his mind was speeding up. 

  "I suppose you know that we also have presidential administrative people here too," an irate woman walked over and yelled at the man whose body was stiffening. 

  Leaks in all Departments pre-being-one-War Department had people all over the world bolting to help.  

  "The Sacred Thread must be held onto, so that we all belong again in the Sacred Hoop."  The feathers shook a see us, see us at the Sky.  "Great Spirit!  Hear us calling out to YOU!!" 

  "What's in the Great Basket?" Some Native girls with dried fish needing a way to be carried asked.

  The flowers were piling up and spilling out onto the snow.

 

  One way God showed me Jesus was missing in our lives...

  It was a long leg of journey.  There was a kind of madness in Alaska.  The kind that had people who identified as having a "soul" but who weren't necessarily connecting that with "morals" be expressing loss.  Tremendous loss.  "Like maybe," a trubador/interpreter clutched at the thread in interviews we'd gathered.  She let her shoulders relax; she sank her ears through the silence of respectfully listening; she patted her head and tugged on her outer ears.  "I just did that last thing for fun." She laughed.  We stared at her and that made her laugh harder.  "Was gonna say, like maybe how I feel as a retail worker.  People come and take stuff all day long.  And sometimes," 

  "Can I braid your hair?" 

  Her turn to stare for a second but we'd agreed to stop asking why so much.  "Okay, sure," she swiped a "tobaggon" off her head.  "Sometimes I feel empty shelf at the end of the day." 

  Hmmmmm, an openly empathic person acknowleged hearing.  The tea and coffee steamed.  The hot chocolate awaiting a bicyclist coming from the lower 48.

  In a morning people were up early and off doing stuff.  One piece of paper was on the cleaned off table. 

                   Itinerary

   Use the jet ski, follow the path, interview mystery guest. 

  I lit off.  Parts of the path were dotted with lanterns, gifts to bring the note said at one pitstop.  Yellow snow, my mind registered.  "I DIDN'T DO IT!" I yelped when someone squeezed me from behind.  "Sssssssshh, we gotta keep going before he wakes up." 

  "Who?" I was still asking as the gifts were put in a sack, other snow mobiles came creeping closer, and the animal fur covered person hopped on as driver.

  Parts of the path were mini expanses of wide open tundra.  "So we acclamate," the driver called backwards barely distinguishable from the purring motor.  I gave a squeeze, got it.

  Snow mobiles dashed ahead to scout. 

  When we finally caught up there was an exchange of foreign-to-me language.  Different kinds of snow mobiles were making opposite moving concentric circles.  Moving closer, now farther away.  

  A shadow eclipsed the snow-glow of sunlight for a few seconds.  

  Waving snow mobilers from behind slowed to ask about a cafè.  A grizzled man asked to see a tourist's map.  Whistled others over who made a tight circle to compare hand drawns to graphic-peppered.  "I just use this," a snowmobiler held up a GPS monitor but the dangling wire showed cracked.  "Or did.  I guess I used to use this." He threw it in the snow.  It only sank in a little bit.  

  "There are supposed to be flags." A woman's voice said. 

  Nobody said anything. 

  "Where they'll land," she sighed. 

  The satellite phone calls were brief. 

  "They knew before us." 

  "Too much legal stuff." 

  "Which museum got the money at that time?" 

  Small planes with floating feet came and went. 

  "I'll do better back in D.C." 

  The woman pressed a worried look into a stiff upper lip.  "Should I come with you?" 

  "Of course." The man looked at her and got the same look.  "I mean, if you would." 

  "We don't have a cultural leg to stand on here." 

  "Yes we do," said a small woman in a snow motorcycle-type outfit.  She subtlely moved a scarf to reveal an American flag patch.  And smiled.  A man groaned and shot her a dirty look.

  "We'll have to work harder to win people over," the woman said. 

  "We're too confusing.  Even to ourselves." 

  "Let's see what we can do," the man held out his hand to the woman.  And they mounted a snowmobile as if riding a horse.  After a minute or two the man called out, "How do I make it go?" 

  No one moved to show them.

 

The reserves of our collective sanity had been shadowed, shrouded, and precipic'd.  Well, before the clock struck "the twenty-first" Century, we had to get to work.