At the end of the world...

  Inevitably our travels would bring us to the "ends of the earth" and "the end of the world" as it had evolved given the factors of peoples and places. 

  In our "teenage" years we had more "older ones" to seek out and find.  For some of us, traveling buddies we'd "adopted", were becoming more like family than not-family.  But the further from mainstream travel, the more we were of a median age.  We were developing skills and wisdom and we didn't always have "answers". 

  Sometimes we'd just happen into finding ourselves part of "the humanity" on a coastal beach.  A knot of us would carry out routine...water, food, fire.  Other travelers might do the same.  A humanity offering a welcome to humanity. 

  Sometimes the beach campfires would sort themselves.  As often as not, there was an unspoken desire for "peace" or at least, no arguing.  Roaming creatives might spark song and dance.  Storytelling though happened even around the quiet fires.

Better, together, though not always by first choice;

  It was something to ponder as friends and family brushed up on lessons learned along the way and, "Where do I put the socks?" Someone asked a telephone receiver.  "I CAN'T SEE THE LUGGAGE SON." The younger man looked at the phone and recalled that he was on a phone.  After the father and son hung up he'd not wanted to let go of the phone.  "We feel close to home when we hear their voices," a just slightly older officer explained.  

  "Ready for the tour son?" The young man shoved the socks into a suitcase pocket; shut it, then opened it and put the socks in the other fold.  The slightly older stepped to the back of the man's head and peered at the point of indecision.  After the bag was zipped up again he said, "I would have put them in the other pocket." Hands paused on unzippering.  "No do overs in war son.  We'll get 'em next time." 

  The book Iwo Jima starts out with a quote from a Rabbi Chaplain's eulogy of 14 MARCH 1945. 

  "Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor--together.  Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews--together.  Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color....No prejudices.  No hatred.  Theirs is the highest and purest democracy." --Chaplain Roland B. Gittelsohn 

  He's also quoted over at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/gittelsohn-iwo-jima-eulogy.

  As we struggle with how to think of ourselves let us not forget to consider the meaning in our chosen words.

The man named Max didn't blush.

  He'd brought a whole box of them. 

  They'd sat the woman into a pleather wingback chair on one.  "Oh dear." Someone straightened her special skirtkilt over "knobby knees on the old girl".  "Have I passed that much air?" Sharp as a tack, that's your Indian name m'am, trying to see the coming and going.  People bodily blocking the view.  Mothball late winter blazers.  "Why cahn't I?"  

  "It's whahT. ah happened," spittle on the "tee", "And you being the most educated doctor hopefully must, absolutely Must, explain the situation to huh."  A wince of non-smokers lips at the pinch of a tet-in-us shot.  "Am I bleeding like a stuck elephant?"  Not a tsk but a grunt and one little pat of a no, of course not. 

The future

  "I see it." A person quickly passed the binoculars.  Another person held them in front of the elder's face pointed in the direction of the sloping street where a set of headlights appeared like the sun coming up above the horizon.  The stone building facing a stone building wasn't stone inside.  It was square walled.  The mix of emotions among the bunch of people gathered to never say goodbye was weighty but like a giant feather too. 

  A decade in Belfast.  Sisters passing articles of clothing explaining the why of this one's special.  A stew pot cauldron not flinching to the crackling of wood in a fire.  You will hear of wars.  

  "Bobs for the rest of them," was determined by the eldest.  The slow and mostly quiet jostling and giggles re-enacting a jig at a pub dissipated only as fast as a fruitcake losing its alcohol.  A girl would go into a bathroom and lose her locks, get the hairs broomed off of her, then file into duty.  

  Big shears catching candlelight.  Bags of clothing, you've wrinkled them, the chastisement to a man's cork of a face trying to squash the sobbing.  The sobbing hellbent on making way from breast.

  Wider.  The order.  The pants replaced on an arm held perfectly still, solid, out like a coat rack.  "The next pair should be perfect." Lasses and lads grabbing the shoulder next and whispering into ears.  That way word reached the bedroom before official charge.  "Who would you like to hear it from?" Two older girls stepped forward, expressions masked, like hearing your measurements carried the dread of a death sentence.  "No more Fig Newtons for yah, Missy." 

  "Been shitting like a pigeon." 

  The male doctor blushed, cheeks a tapestry of rose and parchment color. 

  "Up witd yer bum," to the being health checked, "Is dis tah wone?" A flaming lock of auburn hair slipped out from the peggy's cap and hung beside the cottony face mask.  "A snug feeling tho' skinny gut," eyes on clipboard, "It's hard to write fast in this cold." 

  The real sun coming up. 

  Cough syrup for the per-tuss-in.

"Apococalipsoooo me."

  The man took a deep breath sample of street air and launched himself into a vertical tunnel of being "radiated". 

  "God only knows what kind of germs," a mother wanded her son with a skin refresher.  It was not the prototype so it didn't just crisp moles.  "Healing is a much slower process than we first thought anyway." 

  "That's keeping chin up." 

  "Keep on the sunnyside.  Isn't that what they sing?" 

  Despair is a sin, a little kid had led a football stadium of people from a midwest place to a city chanting such things.  That was just after a kind of basement temple had settled in Detroit.  Many, many days had passed before a favorite football player had gotten broken and Americans sorted acts with hatred as motivation from other kinds of living.  Some other little kids who'd survived the fighting and pollution caught up with his optimistic walk towards the future and one played drum and another a fife. 

  "So our Academic Institution plans should be geared for the 21st Century?" 

  "That's right." A human who'd been to the future in a way took her time tasting her sip of real coffee.  "She's been with us our whole lives," a peppy preppy snagged the cup of not boiled liquid and re-iterated affirmative.  "And we want to stick together for the rest of ours," family members who'd had deaths and illnesses the previous year were joining the toggle.  Making way across a broadened pathway of "campus".

  "Yes, yes shocking." 

  "Like into a sinkhole in some places." 

  "Yes, yes.  I really must get back up there to records.  Are you in or are you out?" 

  "So you're saying people can't go back and forth through the gates anymore?" 

  "I'm not exactly sure what I'm saying." 

  The man's wife came over.  "He has no place to go." 

  "Against consultation I shall have to tell you," appalled looks disguising will I be accused of coercion here, "I feel mighty compelled to tell you," John Wayne/Ronald Reagan speaking voice, "Yes?" 

  "What happened at Columbia University last night 

  "Did indeed break it all into programs again?" 

  "Then I'll start re-fiddling mine," the husband said. 

  "I would need to check with a Gladys." 

  The wind from the subways blew a sheet of newspaper across the lawn.  Getting darker earlier days would mean cozying up with books.  People looked at wristwatches and calculated travel times and sheduals.  Pecks on cheeks and I'm offs.

"Unbearable,"

  the woman repeated of the truths of the world. 

  "So we don't consider the world 

  "All at once 

  "For our twenty-first century 

  "Plan.  It should be called a plan.  And it should include so-called politics." 

  The groups getting witnesses around the world with compassion, allowed their elders to enter metropoli in quiet ways.

  "With that," a replacement elder, youth, decided.  Everyone had been rounded up.  And decisions had been made ahead of time.  Many survivors had known for a long time that someday, someday, without resources and considering the dangers, there won't be anyone left. 

  Other groups used different decison-making and so there were different outcomes. 

  "Have you ever seen 10,000 people change trains at the same moment?" A quiz-z-icalor asked.  A friend's hair turned white before our eyes upon seeing such a feat.

  "With transportation came the solutions to our burial problems." 

  "LOCUSTS 

  The speeding trains co-opted in morning scouting trips whizzed into and out of stations where the fresh meat would have to find their own ways "back to wherever".

  A person wanting to be dead for a long time gave warning of what was coming and simply stepped out over the tracks.

"What's in this one La?"

  Backdraft was being filmed, so a big sister stood her skirted self in front of the cubicle room. 

  "Well; I've got news for you golden ticket holders.

  "Really?" 

  "Sort of.  That is a Gateway Room.  People have gone in their to pursue their," blush, "FANTASIES." People ooooo'd and awed. 

  Another chamber of elevator fell shriekshrank sounding down a shaft, someone made a ding, ding noise to denote floor level 22, at mile 22, a tour guide shoved some Sunday best dressed forward...

"Shameful,"

  An Observer listened and sort of nodded, really checking if neck broken or given a planned head concussion.  Disappeared from a PTA meeting.  A notetaker memorized.  

  "So it was shameful to have defied the orders of foreign operatives and go to the meeting?" A Reporter asked. 

"That's why we brought our Accountant," a Leer jet announced.

"Well, if I didn't the IRS would

  be in here like their hair was on fire." The woman brought before the One World Guvmint put her hands in her coat pockets and automatically unlocked her car doors.  "That's all I got.  I have got to go."

  Because the doorways and hallways were clogged with people, the woman walked up over a leaning over person and was "floated" out of the conferencing "center".

"It's still a crime."

  The front gate of the complex was still on fire. 

  "What's that?" Someone asked a few people with videocameras. 

  "That's a..." A guy pulled a sweaty piece of paper out of his pocket, "A goth." 

  "Looks like a person who can't decide should I stay or should I go.  Well, to me." 

  "Maybe the person feels bullied," said a woman with rope burns on her legs. 

  "Or maybe," a guy tried to surmise, "The person's under a Satanist spell!" Guy's wife's eyes grew wide, "That's this assignment??!" Her lips snarled.  "Not sure.  We had a choice between drugs or evil as far as the kids would say for events." 

  "What about what we talked about?" She rubbed her stomach. 

  "Well honey," he let the camera slide into its strap-hang over his chest and put his hands on the woman's shoulders and arms, "That's why we stuck with the team!  Put our monies together to get gas to get up here.  And..." 

  "And?" 

  "And taped all the slips of paper denoting dangerous assignments together on a pizza box!"  He snapped his fingers in the air.  Nobody moved.  "Booboo, get the pizza box," he said.  A weatherchaser stood in front of Booboo.  "He's a translator, not a slave." 

  "Oh really," said the anchorperson.  "I knew that." 

  A large tree branch cracked and fell to the ground.  "Are they lynching people?" A "colored woman" by self-description asked. 

  "Ah, yeah, about that 

  "The truth

  "We're waiting for non-superstitious law enforcement before we get any closer."