"How was,"

  the young man held out a hand with the ink-scrawled place name on it and tried to pronounce it smoothly in asking the question.  "Clear the doorway, clear the doorway," a Beret advised.  

  People with cuts, bruisings, and other implement wounds staggered and dashed from every direction of the neighborhood.  Shovel fight, someone reported to the clipboard.  Hit with, hit on the head with an iron that holds open a door.  A medical person held out a pencil-shaped flashlight.  A person took it and checked eyes in a bathroom mirror. 

  Take them off, take them off a woman who'd had back surgery who'd been nearly stampeded and then couldn't walk pointed at the tee-shirts that said peace and tie-dyed the symbol of peace.  Water in a basin, bloody. 

  A crew had shown up at a family's house to film an Ad.  The peace plants had been overturned in their garden bed.  Armed gunmen responding to a local paper advertisement for Landscapers needed.  The older lady had been briefly held in a threatened way but hadn't caved to knowing the military neighbors.

  People had stormed out of a General Community Meeting when the American national anthem was played.  A kid had been forced to raise a spray-painted black piece of bed sheet.  "That's not our flag," a previously sullen older Veteran said over the speaker playing the anthem.  "What does it mean?" A woman caring for him asked. 

  "So," eyes swirling around the room but not focusing, "Fallujah never happened?" 

  "Not as a decisive battle, no son."  The young man pulled at the tuft of hair on his head trying to comprehend.  He got an aha! look.  "Oooooh, somebody thinks it's just ongoing forever like this from now on!?!" 

  "It can't be.  They've limited weapons." 

  "But not supply." 

  "And look at these new shipping lanes per them melting the ice." The scientists relayed to the group.

"A barrel bomb"

  had been intimated by someone far from a zone.  People who'd been raised through schools to specialize in one sector or another, like finance or culture paled. 

  On the monitors people going about their daylight hours not directly under the blast just collapsed. 

  Commanders conferred.  Suddenly they realized together and separately why some Gulf States had redirected material to a certain realm's leader.  With many accounting sheets zero-balanced and fewer and fewer people able to just put it on the credit card 

  People cried.

Back up in the norths...

  "This one'll need an advocate." The woman allowed to flip through one of dozens of binders of mugshots in an Executive Administrator's guest chair announced of the little person being processed.  An assistant wrote the ID number on a memo and stuck it on her arm.  "Coming through, coming through," said with what voice left.  Moved through a sea of heavy coat'd grown ups. 

  A phone call. 

  An order, "Take it outside." 

  Outside.  "Well we can't just not sell papers.  Lemme think.  Lemme think."  Snowfall on broad shoulders of a skeletal man.  "Run a Best Of."  The man hung up.  "At least the locals will pay to put themselves on their walls.  "If they win."

"I would say," a lawyer asked a lawyer

  if it was okay to express an opinion before getting an approval to "only talk about the food" to a gaggle of interested parties outside the detention center.  "I didn't eat the sample serving.  I couldn't." 

  "Can you describe what it looked like?" 

  "Some powder thrown on dirty water macaronis." 

  A hand in front of the person's face and a loud-into-the-microphones, We're done here.

"Are you going to file anything?"

  In the generic cubicle space even sound is suppressed.  

  A generically stamp-patched personnel uniform locked the door of a close-by room where a male colleague had been taken. 

  "Doesn't look like anybody whose been in this place has.  So I guess I'll pass." 

  Over long hours of doing nothing others were deposited in the shelter.  

  "Imagine." Someone said with all the loaded in that word.  "How Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms, said he could rule over all of them." A person groaned, "You would take it there." 

  "Is that what it's about?" 

  Always, came out of the dark.  It had been a last group decision to keep the lights on or turn them off.  We voted each time a "new person" joined. 

  "Said it was the only way 

  "There's rarely an only way 

  "Now imagine the opposite.  Imagine Jesus showing a man all the kingdoms he could rule

  "Or imagine Jesus showing Satan." 

  "To bypass," a long drag on an inhaler, "Nothing possible besides fighting on," a tiny hold of breath and a hand gesture offering of the object, "TWO STATE SOLUTION." 

  "YAH, now nobody can afford to be on that kind of Board." 

  "Good news is, it's all over." 

  "Bad news?" 

  "It's all more of a military thing now." 

  "All of it?" 

  "Even culture." 

"Of course it does," an

  Impact Zone person started by answering a frantic question from a young person, "Does global order change?"  

  This was back when the Soviet Union was weakening and coming apart.  Geopolitical entities can and do change.  And so relationships change. 

  "Changes happen because of natural disasters, wars, epudemics, drugs," the man looked down and just briefly far away.  Grief.

  "What should we talk first?" The world leader who'd managed to survive "a purge" of existing establishment, spoke.  It seemed like a "miracle" to a lot of people.  People who'd walked side by side people trying to survive a lot of change.

"You KITties coming up with

  a comprehensive summary?" An Executive asked. 

  A middle-ager not anything by association had done an "awake overnight" to quick-read a bunch of stuff.  "Well, history does show that the team touched on all the key points about an economical picture." 

  "And we don't seek to erase 

  "Or revise 

  "Our 

  "World 

  "history," they'd finished the sentencing together.  Another young person let a binderfull of paperwork crash to the floor.  Bitterly frustrated, someone mouthed.  "Perfect.  You're all just perfect.  To the point of finishing each other's sentences and," stood up, nobody flinch, flipped a tie up off a breast, "So matchy-matchy." 

  "Point is," the little like-minded knot in the stream of just talking kept on, "Even in the Revolutionary War days there was a not-greatly-publicized separation of powers before 

  "Different unifications as the battles happened." 

  "Wouldn't that have left people, sometimes, feeling very lonely?" The frustrated person asked.  "Come sit," said the middle-ager.  "Make room," said people who'd been forging skills at steely boundaries.  "And isolated," the middle-ager said holding up a Blackberry like the one the frustrated person had turned to grab before joining the talks.

Shuttle buses, cabs, and more flights

  for the American public piece-mealed by education-type and rank.  Young and middle-aged "baby boomers" accused of not caring were alive with an Americanism that tended to let Ozzie and the Beav play on, for Dad.  While they were fueling their passions for democracy IN A republic. 

  "Their coming out of the woodwork!" A young person in the 1990s didn't really complain. 

     "Anyone else's ego need feel better?" A personal trainer asked aboard one flight.  This was after kindofsorta a loss-win which perspective was helping people to understand.  But it was before there was much open discussion of private influence on the public.  "Can I get a massage?" A tight-muscled from precipice stress asked the seat in front of him. 

  "There are barely adult children in my book funding themselves and America's missions as National Guardspeople.  I don't give a rat's ass about egos and tired people." A woman's voice settled that flight into working trip right away. 

  Lawyers deciding which cases to pop and which to display on shelves quietly detailed major issues and sticking points.  While some people snored and drooled. 

  On the way to and from the bathrooms people leant an ear and gave little pieces of advice.  There was agreement about keeping eyes on the ball, and, state of play.  There was also acknowledgments aboard, "I don't know enough about that to say at this time," and, "Let me do some digging." Hard won confidences in a hard world put forth hedges like I'll find out; means I'll have to be in touch with so-and-so; I can do that. 

"We don't need to have a cock fight about this," said

  the only Reporter who'd made it out of a scorch.  No one could believe it.  The fire-fighting had re-directed all traffic further from safety zones in the territorial disputes over the California land. 

  Every car we'd mustered was promptly shot to shit.  We'd managed to crawl through choking smoke only to wind up on a "pot farm", get shot at some more, and tricked into respite from jumping off a cliff into a ravine. 

  "BE THE ONE WHO GETS AWAY!" A Communications Officer ordered and then kicked any still standing.  They scrambled, clenched, scraped, tumbled and rolled towards...something. 

  A world-renowned journalist expected Overseas hours before mocked the whiner.  "Nobody told me it was this bad.  Nobody told me to find out.  Nobody told that fine, that means it REALLY IS a WAR on everything!!!  Waaaaaaah.  Git!!!!". Back towards abandoned mansions. 

  "No." A person stomped both feet and threw fists at the ground.  "I'll shoot you."  

  "Shoot at me then.  But if you don't miss MY HUSBAND WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND," made the slit your throat gesture.  "Are you threatening me????" A shot went off and the person didn't move.  "We DIDN'T GET CHANCE TO DO THE THING SIR," someone else hollered. 

  "What thing?  What fucking thing?" The Officer yelled into the roar of smoke-filled air while looking down at the survivors in the ravine. 

  "We've been working multiple stories Sir and it's why we were coming in from the battlefield Sir.  Because the criss-cross can be devastating." "ARE YOU GOING TO LECTURE ME ON MY PROFESSION????????" 

  "NO SIR NO.  IT'S JUST THAT WE HAD THE FOOTAGE OF THE ASIAN ROBOTS BUTCHERING CONDO RESIDENTS, ELIMINATING EVIDENCE INCLUDING PEOPLE SIR, AND ACTING 'NORMAL' OUT FRONT OF THE condo, sir," lightheaded woozy took over the person.

  Fainting caught by the resistor to leaving.  And confirmation, they do it in hospitals and hotels the world over, long time now. 

Ordered: STAY

  Eventually, the batteries in the connective tissue radios died.

 

  Somewhere in the mix, back then, the power of sticking together, visual and written correspondence; art and writing, momentarily became a lethal deficit. 

  Some had been shoved behind enemy lines all over Europe because of the timing of policy and treaty filtering to the ground.  A spy nest happened to be where sudden infantry (moments before, pedestrians) "holed up" for as long as possible before having to follow, follow, move, move. 

  A strange thing had happened before being chased with flame throwers put people over that edge of truth is stranger than fiction.  A miniscule in the big geographic picture morning cook fire had drawn "locals" from a wooded area.  Only these had been staved from sudden death by being shown the photographs of professionals somewhere out there.  The place where the locals came from, a simple house, was then commandeered. 

  Before people were even shaking rest consciousness a person in a sheet came behind an innocent and slashed at throat.  Blood dripped through the frozen fingers of the hand that shot up "to feel" what was that.  The sight of a dropped folding knife with blood on it and the sound of footsteps in leaves, running away, explained what had just happened. 

  Not very long after gauzing the abrasion the group was shown the dozens of photographs, a hit list.  And the cut person's eyes welled with tears.  "That's not even me.  That's my sibling." 

  Eventually tackled and quartered the onis for "the botch" still fell on us.  Some of us lifelong friends had been in training together our whole lives.  And had, at different times, sworn before God and community, to uphold The Ten Commandments.  Thou shalt not kill, being one of those forced us to be clever.  Resistance, self-defence were set at the top of our priority lists with correspond.  A dis-arming "conversation" was all it took to break down warmode since the Arctic.  Seeing someone familiar before big-group clarification of tasks and goals had most likely significantly contributed to the mèlee that morning. 

  Although the debates about factors and instantly the past's actions are forever the skirmishes of history, in or out of a battlefield it is the God-given directive to survive.

"Hi! The Cherokee brought me."

  "Well, welcome to Durham," a highly clad in medals Salvation Army person stuck hands in pockets and propped out an elbow.  

  "Glad you could come," a more casually dressed person said from behind.  "Is that what that stance means? I mean, Are you interpreting?" The Salvation Army person broke into a grin.  "It's flu season.  I've a lot of elders in my territory, I mean community." 

  An elbow bump. 

  Inside some people seated at a round table.  One Forest Service person rose asking, "Did you meet her?  The Cherokee Delegate to Washington?!"  A man put a spiral-bound notebook in front of his face, balanced a laptop on his knees, and put his front teeth "bridge" into his mouth.  Notebook down.  "I need to see I.D. please." 

  Someone else explained, "In our State we databank Driver's Licenses." The man scanned the Identification.

  "You think young men are hard to pin down personality-wise, wait 'til you watch this," a female Reporter held up a videotape.  "Young women?" A Police Officer asked.  The Reporter nodded and said, "But I'm not sure how to describe what they are, uh, were doing." The officer didn't take the tape but instead said, "Let me get two other Observers." And left the area. 

  "Did you get to meet her?" The Reporter asked just as a man in dress pants and an all-black hoodie came into the room.  "What are you doing here?" The man looked over both of his own shoulders.  "We're, uh, trying to get permission to film something." 

  "Really?  I would've thought your people would've heard by now."  The man took a very compact Dictionary from the "kangaroo pouch" of his sweatshirt.  Handed it to the woman who flipped through the pages to get to the "M" section.  A very well-manicured fingernail made an indent on a big word.