"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." 

The minister's body

  had been embalmed.  Very stiff stood he facing a thin space inside the building.  But without a head.  Until a they let a they pick from a fresh batch of having been told to go. 

  "It's history now." 

  A real journalist made way with the tale of a king's head on backwards.  From the curly cue between the east and west.  Came.  And left.  Spaces where no souls were to be found. 

Fluffy beards and grizzled skins, the Bards received.  A village clattered awake.

"And just for the record,"

  a very tall man smacked the newspaper ad for a "play" onto the restaurant table, "They aren't faggots, they're kooks."  A suited couple just stared at him.  "Creatives!" 

  The man started to back away. 

  In through the street door came a boisterous crowd of dramatists and critics. 

  "Nope.  No way," a woman with a literary reputation put her napkin onto her food and gathered up a thin briefcase and purse.  "We need to get out of here before we get sucked in.  We'll be here all night." 

  "Maybe we need to get out more," one young person said hopefully. 

  "We need water and sleep." 

  "Ironic coming from such a one," grown ups of the group were already inside and across the room and categorizing the patrons.  And the Society crowd just kept coming, louder and louder, on and on with a barage of "town crying" and people labeling. 

  Outside the air was cold and the sky a stark contrast to humanity.  "At least the article wasn't on a page that'll get ripped out as an advertisement." 

  "Doing that these days mum?" 

  "Whatever I can." 

  "I'll start running for my life." 

  The conversation was sublimated into lighting smokes and not really looking at each other. 

  "They need to know the truth."  The woman blew out the words with the vapors. 

  "They don't care."  A cab was suddenly hailed. 

 A similar fire as to 2025 Switzerland fire took place in Gen X's youth.  The panic was not only about dead and wounded, but "youth" becoming premiere.  "Outside the box" and so by-passing the ranks in such fields as paparazzi-style-"journalism" and espionage.  Faster and quicker were filling in the gaps and divides between people of different ages.  

  I remember Angela Lansberry (sp?) being "equally disgusted" with young and older being so hateful to each other, to the same team. 

  Way back then some of the youngest adults in the Western world were being shoved into the professions, as "the edge".  Sharp sword edges really in all the fields and trades because of greed and desire.  Ambition and desperation.  And an increasing number of factors at play in the old "chess games". 

  Europe and Asia had long been slow establishment in terms of world history.  "Rich kids" weren't even the size of mosquitos to the elephant of the world.  The baby boom generation of world leaders was just begin-ing when the Soviet Union weakened financially and the walls of the Old World got a few crumbly bits.  But East and West held sway on many issues.  Traditional human beings was of primary concern. 

  That being so, "rails" were necessary to avoid train wrecks and collisions.  Diplomacy people'd up where it could.  Investigations into alleged "crimes" took on divisions and modern "murder mysteries" may have become "genre" but "interference" was still against most countries' laws.  Technology slowly got sold as stabilizing forces intermingled with markets.  And when "the streets" as opposed to "royalty" settled down mostly, "geopolitics" almost replaced the more elusive politique and the body politic. 

  In Academia people balanced being both businesses and campuses.  Juggled conferencing and seminar with "course load" and development.  Wrestled with levels of competency and experience.  And started again to publish in journals (different than magazines). 

  "There are always going to be ugly truths in this world.  Focus up.  And wake up America.  You can take a little criticism now and then." 

  Not everyone could of course.  Hormones, personal lives, the press to survive and thrive or "die" was like its own kind of machinery.  "Flung from the carousel and the ladders," a mime frankly admitted on a pretzel break. 

  "Would you like to peek at our notebooks?"  Youth asked him just as he took a bite and it was hard to answer verbally.  "Studying?" He seemed humbled by the very possibility.  We nodded and told of Architecture and Set Design and Fashion and just writing.  The mime had been joined by other mimes and more pretzels and each admonished the one who'd talked.  Then each one mimed contented and maybe a little sleepy.  "Like history and civilization," a youth said.  A mime shrugged.

"So are you saying the exorcism

  didn't work?" 

  "Please don't tell them." 

  "It worked on some of us.  All that mumbo jumbo got us to quite drinking." 

  "Less toasting." 

  "What became of the Priest who tried?" 

  "Slain."