Monk jam and cheese and

  me.  Of course they were expecting her.  A traveling companion took each gift out of a limpening daypack.  What had been a starkly sunny day was being overtaken by it.  People who cared about each other and humanity and the earth had made a spiderweb of communications about it.  Though to speak of its origins was tatamount to death sentence. 

  A man moved from between cars that seemed to have been sitting in place for a very long time.  Weathered.  The tires caving into concrete slab of a parking lot.  "We should go." 

  "Where?" 

  "Inside." 

  For three or five hours we read.  One window was okay to be left open a crack, the one pocketed in dead air. 

  "No sense saving it," was said of the gelatinous sweet in a jar.  We'd been given a third of a loaf of sourdough bread for our hike.  We ate silently as "the cloud of radiation" bristled all around us.

Everyone had guns drawn.

  "It's not fair," a large man was weeping and breathed heavy into the little microphone. 

  "Okay, okay," a mediator heard something and waved others over.  "Can you put it on speaker?" 

  "I tried," a woman's voice. 

  The timers had ticked down to the last seconds before people who'd volunteered not to be in or out had finished up in the Resource Center turned Campus.  So when a community leader was put on the also timed schedule of answering questions about the new exciting thing "this one" came up with and opened the leather portfolio... 

  "Is it a joke on us?"  People with guns turned and aimed at the person who'd promised to let them know. 

  "It dissolved." A person testing the piece of paper for DNA barely said aloud. 

  A diplomat crossing a courtyard fell to knees, briefcase falling on the ground, and a little dust devil breeze picking up a flurry of papers.  Instant weeping head in hands.

  "They couldn't

  "Wouldn't

  "Is this the Continent of Africa?" The airplane radio.

"I don't call a surge under gun-threat,

  medical duty." 

  "What happened here?" To a foot in a pool of blood beside a tank. 

  "Bled out because," 

  "Not your position to determine cause.  Next." 

  "Hands cut off so couldn't defend the border line." 

  "Report it to that Captain," handcuffed hands motioned which person.

Had had to Shelter In Place, so

  various people were "late" to the shadow-learning experience of a general assembly meeting. 

  Two people started to take off their coats in a foyer with a little coat closet that wouldn't open.  That was when each realized something about the other-not-enemy.  They'd been given souvenir pocket flags. 

  Outside a limo driver and a passenger started arguing. 

"Will you stop scream-whispering at eachother?"

  The frantic conversation in an absolute whisper continued. 

  "Please?"  The grownup in the position of child in a family not all together got off the cot and went to the fridge.

  "You've re-invented us guests as your family." 

  "What's that supposed to mean?" The wife turned and scream-whispered at the man.  The husband took the milk and put it back in the refrigerator.  "You are not family." 

  "Got you to stop fighting." 

  "We're not fighting." 

  "Heated discussion." 

  The husband got a glass and poured some milk.  "About what?" 

  Sighs.  "Should I be sorry I just asked that?" 

  Neither answered.  The husband poured two more glasses of milk.  Everybody sat at the table in the kitchen. 

  After considering how to frame a little bit if the big picture, the wife revealed that both their almost grown children had started University but changes had them both not at school now.  "Well, one's doing night school and ambulance driving." 

"It's just not what we planned for them.  For any of us," the Dad said. 

  "God has plans too," the guest said.  "Thank you for the milk.  I'll get more before we go tomorrow." They all sat with their own thoughts of the word tomorrow. 

  "I've never taught before," one young lady said to another.  "So," she gulped the coffee, "I am kind of nervous."  A slightly older man was about to speak when a ruckus broke out at the end of the hallway. 

  "Pull everyone off of everyone else." Other teachers headed that way reciting plan.  With everyone standing as individuals, straightening hair and pulling sweaters back into good shape the students were asked, "Who wants to go first?" 

  Nobody.  Folders were straightened.  Shoelaces tied.  "We'll just stand here then." People fidgeted backpacks on shoulders.  Finally one tall girl said to the seventeen people, "Your friends are terrorizing my friends." 

  "Who are you telling?" 

  She looked out the window, then announced, "I'm late for class." She walked down the hall and entered a classroom.  Others glanced out the window at a limousine parked on the street.  Also went to class.

  "That's not what I'm saying." A guy sat sideways in a breakroom chair. 

  "What are you saying?!  Because it sounds, er, ah like you're suggesting communism." 

  "It's not communism to control yourself." 

  "I AM in control of myself.  But nothing else."  Other workers came into the breakroom.  Most had no lunch.  Someone ate a piece of bread in two bites. 

  "I think it's," the guy took forms out of a jacket pocket.  The woman sat facing him.  Put a hand on his flattening the creases in the forms.  "What is it?"  The guy looked in her eyes and didn't turn away.  She removed her hand, reached into a cargo pocket and offered a pen.  He shook his head no.  From the other cargo pocket she pulled out a soda.  "Share?" 

  "Bad for our teeth." 

  "What is it about?" 

  "My sister said kids at school are calling each other racists and," he took a folded notebook page out of a shirt pocket, "And this," he showed the word.  "Zygote?  Their calling each other zygotes?" The guy looked at the word under his thumb.  "No.  This one," he moved his thumb up an alphabetized list of words.  "Xenophobia" 

  "I don't even know that one."  

  Together they finished the soda.  "Let's go find a dictionary." 

  "I saw a bookshop!"

"I HAD to!" Somebody yelped.

  Standing around a mee-thane firepit.  People were a mixture of dread and terrible excitement.  Of course, like an American State suddenly having 10,000 new criminal cases it meant there'd be a "window". 

  "Stepped on my foot," a Scientist said to a Researcher.  "Stole my thunder," a fiction writer said to a general writer. 

  "Ate my crableg," griped a Veteran outdoorsman who'd practically been forced to eat beans-and-weenies in a can to the point of bored and...And what??  His sober-buddy pressed.  "Makes him wander off portside." 

  "You're sketches suck." One man gently ix-nayed an attempt to travel on.

  Hold it...hold it steady fellOOws.  The World War II torpedo was ensnared in a large fishing net and being dragged alongside a surplus submarine used for movies and maritime museum happenings. 

  "It looks rusty in sphots," a scuba diver didn't unleash from mask and Oxygen but teeth-clamp'd told.  "Give someone else a turn bloke!" Shorts and hairy legs with a whistle hollered.  Must've been this one, a serious painter said of a tossed sketch showing a submarine just barely emerging from behind a glacier finger. 

"I called her."

 "I called him." 

  "I called them." 

  There have always been times when the group psyche itself has been attacked.  Lexington, Pearl Harbor, 9112001, in the streets the world over. 

  "What'd they say?"  A daughter asked.  The man could not speak. 

  All phone calls were being recorded, so others listened.  There were dead bodies from the main village to the hotel.  "Hundreds?" 

  "Hundreds.  It's been verified." 

  "What'd she say?" 

  "She's still saying.  I'll put her on speaker phone.  Calling it like a break from reality of situation...triggered the reaction...response...loyalties...training...heat of the moment...irresponsibility of whoever let it get out of control in her opinion.  People kept eating breakfast, taking vitamins, checking snack boxes, tying shoelaces.

  "He said you'll have to take his place."

"You can't really

  take both sides." 

  "I disagree." 

  The fired-up, feuding groups in front of the statue did not quiet as the two people began a conversation that would last a lifetime and revolutionize thinking.  

  Both were out of work, out of school, out of favor.  Not without dignity, not without discipline, and not without the kind of experience in the world that forces people to have insight. 

  "It's not really about winning this argument." 

  "Or getting the most people on my side!" 

  They set about inviting people into a rented room for discussion.

The heel slid in the viscous

  covering the Right to Life poster on a stick.  "When we get there," the woman said to the phone.  People asked a few more questions about the re-arranging of the SAFETY lines of communication in emergency, and ticked off answered questions about insurance stuff after a hurricane.  The husband hadn't eaten and was feeling faint.  "Any more questions?" She asked everyone.  A long-winded question, two-part came from the back of the group gathered.  "That I would have to check with my superior on," some coo'd and ah'd at her graceful acknowledgment of having a superior.  She eyed the standoffish other party quorum.  "You know?!  You could just ask anyone of them since they are the party of God." 

  "Honey, we need to go," the husband called from the towncar. 

  Two Jews dove behind a folding table. 

  "Where did that come from?" A script-reader asked out loud and moved to have the gaff un-recorded.  Videographers snapped off cameras and packed up to leave. 

"Hi Mom,"

  Whoosh, whoosh, spitting out the spray of salt and sand and ice pellets.  "Is this a bad time?" 

  "No, not really." Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.  "Aunt whooshchuggrindfoof-foof-foof wants to know where you are.  Always welcome in Arizona is the message." Truck gear parts splayed out on the road.  "Okay, I'll explain it.  Right now I'm shackled in a plywood box on a mountain pass in Utah." 

  "I'm sure those around you appreciate your dramatic flair." 

  "Remember my friends in NC who were gearing up to do the trucking show?" 

  "Well, I met a lot of people honey," 

  "Anyway, one of them is going to do a new show!" 

  "Pass those up there!" The Senior Correspondent on scene pointed to some antennae and up at the plywood box attached to a highway sign over the road.  "Well, I gotta go Mom.  There's food supply finally sprung from port strike and a bit of a convoy coming after they clear this direction of illegal drugs!" 

  "Never a dull moment.  I bubble you.  Lots of Rosary prayers." 

  "Love you." Phone given down and into waterproof bag.

"The baton was a bloody mess."

  The man had been video-documenting four days straight.  He crumpled.  The woman crawled past the few objects flying off a plywood table shaking this way and that.  Removed the heavy PRESS vest from the crumpled man who was yelping as the mortar rounds sailed in and pocked the area. 

  "PUT IT ON." 

  A slide on hands and knees through blood to a low-lying cot.  The hands that would not let go of the baton.  A bloody tug-of-war. 

  "It was this or that, down the line in corp." 

  "It seems it's all the same now." 

  "I haven't warn a suit since that day." 

  That day.  "He's lost his mind," top execs announced to security.  "Don't put your hands on me," he told them.  Then he spit on the flat turf-carpeting in the hallway like he was still at the farm.  Everybody stalled everybody until another guy came out.  We'd done it too.  One way or another botched the precision strike simulator test. 

  "It doesn't have to be this way," a young millie tried to explain. 

  Just skin and bones face stretched mouth to reveal really long teeth as an almost visible toxic cloud came from the man.  "It would help you out there." The "thing" comes with its own luggage.  Set up anywhere and strike away.  "That's beyond callous."  

  "Let me tell you something.  The enemy gets into cubicles and orb-armchairs and does the same fucking thing.  Like video games." 

  "We're not interested," said our little team's lead.  "We'll get our news the hard way." 

  "If I have to say that one more time, I am going to scream."  

  "Don't do that." 

  "She brought them here!" 

  An eye roll. 

  "He's putting it back." The search lights were not surplus.  They'd been borrowed by a conservancy group aiming to help preserve Broadway.  Muffled by curtains voices bickered up and down the squatting and sitting line of communicators. 

  "And whoooo is this?" 

  "He's my uncle." 

  "Oh sure, everybody's got an uncle." 

  "His field got merged into Culture when the federal system went private company/slash/generic.  Made us all more like the property of a Ministry, m'am." 

  "I see."  Voices quieted and people pinched and punched the person on either side of them.  She had to say it again.  "I haven't met any Muslims here in this city.  So I'm going back Overseas where I feel more comfortable." The five people taking the statement from the International body scanned, photographed, made the woman stick her tongue out, and checked all numbers on IDs and credit cards against the master world databank.  Then left.

  In truth the residents of the City were being held hostage to swarms.  Hence, occasional spotlighting of courtyards and alleyways and plazas and station platforms allowed stillshot photography of such--being swarmed. 

  "And why should I select this sweaty, sweaty man to give a calm and cool presentation?" 

  "I'm sorry, I, I," the Accountant let his had-been-in-a-Dentist's-chair groggy head drop into his hands.  "She loathes uncleanliness." 

  "Get him the thermos of black coffee." The order was heard down the line and the thermos was produced and passed forward.  "WHY????" 

  "It has to do with," 

  "Lift your helmet up.  Chin out.  And look me in the eyes." A medical flashlight checked pupils.  "Has to do with what?" 

  "I can't be definite on political party but let's just say, a bunch of people, with buying power," a sip of black coffee, "Had to or not had to, but stepped up and bought a whole bunch of stuff being sold on the freemarket." 

  "What kind of stuff?" 

  "Weapons and GPS and"

  "And what does this man," the man looked up and grinned, "Have to teach us?" The Correspondent looked at what had been written of a Bio thus far.  "Says here he's a Lutheran." 

  "Christ." 

  "And he invented 

  "Not really invented 

  "Developed the working concept of Forensic Accounting." The man swallowed hard and started to choke.  The people crouched near him slugged and whapped him on the back.  "Fine, I'm fa FINE," he stifled more coughing.