Bummed.

  Some of the oldest girlfriends were sitting for a minute, God.  It was a warmer day of late, late winter.  Even in New York there was that sense about "the old man" that you've worn us out, but we're not dead yet.  Ever able to dig the deepest into the reserves of count your blessings our mom had spent her allowance on beach buckets from the toystore.  These were in a stack by the rounded up snow shovels in front of the brick flower box. 

  "You seem something," one older girl flicked a bunched up chocolate wrapper at another.  This seemed to slow an ugly brain churn.  "Not thrilled with her," a head shove in the direction of our mom. 

  "Moi?" Sherry vaguely disguised looking somewhat scared.  "What'd I do now?" A sleepy child shoved her elbows off her lap to make room for self. 

  "Ever since you and yours established 'the budget' pattern 

  "Challenge 

  "My sense of reality kind of sucks frankly." 

  Little moans of agreement from some of the other women.  A chuckle from a woman who's other half always spent their budget on drink.  More sleepy kids, some with milk mustaches, invaded the fairly quiet morning with the MOM, MOMs and the can I too's. 

  The early bird sleepy kid abandoned the lap.  Cupped hand, whispered, I know what to do.  "Okay." 

  "There's an alternative reality." 

  "Does it involve drugs?" 

  "What?! How dare you!" 

  "I only ask 'cuz I'm kinda drugged out." 

  One of them stood like a bouncer at a bar so another reluctantly put coffee mug up on a piece of four by four and stood up too.  "Jesus." 

  "What about him?" 

  "God." 

  Silence all the way around. 

  "We worked all night." Everyone was staring at the waitress.  "Didn't know it was a brothel." The heavy framed woman sat back down and planted her face in her coffee mug. 

  The little boy came back outside in a still creased and smelling like starch karati outfit and barefeet.  Told, "I made it from there to here.  No pain." He did some moves.  Pulled his hands into a praying mantiss position and bowed to our mom. 

  "Well, the Master has spoken.  I guess this day has officially begun." One other little boy said with the pomp of a parent saying not another word.  

  "We'd like anyone in a bullymood TO LEAVE." A sister announced.  Suddenly all the kids had shaken off sleepy. 

  People considered this and themselves.  Sherry stood up, undid her robe, and revealed a karate outfit.  "Actually, all bullies can confront us." 

  "We will help you." 

  "Help us what?" 

  The little boy thought hard.  His mom said, "Confront your problems." 

  Another really cool mom took a mirror on a handle out of a huge pocketbook.  Handed it to the waitress.  "I'd start with myself.  But I'm late for work." 

"I know." She'd found her sister.

  "No, you don't." 

  "And anyWHOooo," the clone started to say before someone ripped the charging cord out of the outlet.  "It looks peaceful when you do that." It did look at rest. 

  "It took us four or five days to get there," a grimey, bloodied, staunch finger pointed sternly at a hand-drawn so good people had kept it for generations.  Another hand held up the hand.  "I'm on my monthly." 

  "So am I," a man's voice entered the room before he did bodily.  "And we've no beans left." He scrubbed at his shock of hair with a handtowel and olive oil. 

  "And did anyone have anything to tell you?" Yet another woman asked. 

  There'd been no formal interviews.  No proper toiletry.  Only a crossroads between arid tundra of places with some ghetti trees. 

  "The nurse asked about the photographs." 

  "Which ones?  Let me see them." 

  "I've left them.  For Cairo.  And London if I'd had two sets matching.  That's the issooo down here.  I can't find two of anything the same." 

  The trunks had been opened while the small plane operator had been aloof on a day jaunt.  And though the people from another Continent were mostly piecing memory together with instance, stuff was missing.

"Please tell me this is not a rebellion."

  "Okay.  It's not a rebellion." 

  The mostly young people were standing around on the lawn but not close together.  More like eggs in a crate.  "What are they stoned or something?" 

  "I mean I can't speak for everyone, but on the whole, no." 

  "Are they watching for something?" 

  One woman cracked a shell and ate a peanut.  "Are we afraid?" 

  "They have ideas." The Indian Princess lifted her head from a feather pillow, unplucked her thumb from her mouth, and told. 

  "How was New York?" 

  "Lame.  How was here?" 

  A frump face.  "About the same.  It's like something's gotta give." 

  "Did those people ever unchain themselves from that big old tree?" 

  "We fed 'em for like a week." 

  "Then what happened?" 

  "Mad Max whistled like he was calling the dogs and a bunch of equipment came and they used lock cutters to move the people." 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "What are we gonna do?" 

  "About the tree?" 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "Naw man.  About getting in or out?" 

  "Didn't know you guys were a couple." 

  "Fuck you." 

  "Can we not ruin the nature walk please." 

  "Sorry." 

  "Now there's a word so seldom heard anymore." 

  The sound of pine beetles screw-milling the inside of logs never hauled off louder than the people then. 

  "I DON'T WANNA 

  A young woman with a foldable shovel poked it through the pine and asked, "What is she trying to make you do?" Then she came around the nine year old tree.  The Walkman was put on pause.  "Did you hear it?" 

  "Not sure." 

  "Sounded like jet engines or massive chain saws." 

  "Not sure.  Lemme listen again.  Mostly all I can hear is JUST BREATHE...." 

  "Where in the hell are we?" 

  "Angry motherfucker upon waking I see." 

  That roused the other passenger who'd dozed off.  "Why West Virginia by God?" 

  "Why not?" 

  "Friend of mine said needs help." Another fruit rollup wrapper thrown in the pile of three-days-either-side, expired.  Everybody has their quirks. 

  "Must've been one hell of a bonfire!" 

  "Yeah, and I got a maggot in my eye." 

  "What!?!" A throwdown of camera stalk and a rush over.  "In your actual eyeball?" A get outta my face mosquito swat of hands.  "Can't stand people coming at me like that." 

  "Can I kiss it?" 

  The cycadas vaulted their voice just then.  "My eyeball?  Freak."  Picking up equipment.  "Good thing I keep it in a tumble bag, this." 

  "Glad you chose to bring it." 

  "Eccentric.  Not freak." 

  "See where the cornfield is broken." 

  "Yeah." 

  Some of it was hacked with implements.  "They'd hidden their women there," a head point above crossed arms at a depression long like a trench in the not yet mudding soil.  "Only one 'guy,'" the arms made air quotes, "Was trying to save his woman's, you know, feeling down there." 

  Camera onto tripod.  "Can I come near you?" 

  "No kissing.  My heart's turned cold as ice." 

  "Just saying." 

  "I'm not sure what the fuck went on here and in this region, but it's adding up tah, 

  "Give me one." 

  "Whaddaya mean 'bout down there?" 

  The cigarette smoke was seen and smelled by others documenting aftermath and weren't long for others appeared from all directions. 

"We're not paying your fucking tribute!"

  The father yelled.  A boy ran up as best he could being lamed by polio and whacked the man on the head with a shovel. 

  Another boy dragged the man to the pile of people who would wake up. 

  A phone rang.

  "Little girl.  Little girl.  Is your mother there?" 

  "Which half of her you monster?!" 

  As it had been happening everyday the "new" neighborhood didn't miss a beat of it's routine.  The only difference was that a view-blocking levee had been leveled so the prison guards could view all of the suburban area.

  The people in the pile awoke one by one to the sounds of the scissor bird singing.  They had been bathed, and dressed in pajamas by real nurses who'd returned from the fighting Overseas.  There were the smells of tea and coffee and toasting slices of raisin bread, homemade in a brick oven outside.

"I told you people to lay low."

  "But no.  First one and then the other." 

  The two people not tied up with silk scarves picked up various tools covered in dried blood.  A pile of teeth on a steel table prompted one in a Tyvek suit to comment, We'll know who was taken this time. 

  The day had not started out this way.  Some travel bans had been lifted, some people braved sleet and snow to carry on.  Editors pursed lips together and caved without caving to the more economic-minded.  An editor who'd been a "combat correspondent" (back before debates about "embedding") had holler-hushed through painful coversation after painful conversation regarding do you know what this is going to do to me...to my family.  He'd locked himself in a broom closet at one point so as to not be findable. 

  "We can't." 

  "Can't what?" 

  "Can't bury it." Truths so terrible and tangled up in International Affairs pieces of paper with ink on them would only endanger more general population.  Other editors slid pieces of the stuff, paper, with lists of vanished and still not heard from, unknown location, and using vacation time under the broom closet door. 

  Feet propped on desks and sweaty armpits drenching clothing.  Food in sacks untouched. 

  That can't be that.  But look at these. 

  Military photographs and maps. 

  "How'd you get in here?" A publisher demanded to know.  

  "Oh, there you are and there they are," a nervous assistant followed the publisher to the desk and neatly planted a datebook there.  Pens from a suitcoat pocket offered but declined by way of being shown a breast pocket of those lined up like soldiers.

  She'd said it so many times she finally wrote it in block lettering on a big index card which somebody glued to a tongue depressor.  The little cafè table had become an impromptu fact airing on the fly get-lost launch.  "Worst!?" 

  "Let's not go there sister." 

  An eyeroll.  Really fast mention of having seen or been to and censorship bracket.  A thinking-about-it pause, maybe a hand lingering over both little signs, and a best guess verdict.  

     That can go in a book but not a newspaper

  "At this time," a peddler of newspapers was quick to remind.  Magazine people never sit still.  And look at those sharks.  A cautious glance at people literally acting like sharks.  Sort of circling and bullying and pensive then growling teeth at too close to me.  

  Lockers and lock boxes. 

  Discarded suitcases and purses. 

  Thick rolls of contract and tear sheets. 

  Horses bred for the purpose of starting gate. 

  Not more than a girl really.  Had appeared on the weedy hump between the nothing's moving roads near "le tromphf".  Wearing? 

  "Just a short utility dress." 

  Tanks lined, poised to anchor a boulevard, stopped. 

  A grubby postal/mail sack huffed at the girl.  "I'm going back now." 

  Type, type, type. 

  A long time before a ding.

  "They used to call these, this formation, gin palaces," the old man said it with conviction.  But then his eyes wandered and took in unfamiliar, modern landscape.  "It's a stranded train car.  So what?!?" The unfed man came out of the weeds zipping up his pants.  "Did you shake honey? I don't need you with that condition again."  The man wiped his hands in some oil-spattered dirt.  "Just like home," he scoffed.  Came up to the people on the tracks from aside them like in a parade.  "'Sides, it's like summer today." 

  "Yeah, wild weather in these times." One woman said.  So another asked, "What era are we in now?" A local history tour had gotten driven through by a drunk and some of the people took a dayhike a little farther rural.  The old man came to his senses again.  "Let's let the weaker ones rest in there while we go on ahead a little bit." A head shove and backhand at the little train car.  "Go ahead," a sassy-haired woman told the pisspot.  "Why 'gin palace' Uncle Joey?" 

  All the people but the man with the that's a great idea moved towards the car, still, awkwardly so, parked there.  "See this?" Everybody looked down the uncle's hairy, faded tattoo arm to see what he was pointing at.  Just took turns, then settled into around to hear a tale.

In between '75 and '77

  we forced ourselves to celebrate what some people call "silly things".  No more fighting about who is and who is not a Daughter of the Revolution had both sexes wearing clean mop hair and using up leftover World War II paint. 

  Drained it and "scrubbed the moss offah the tiled bottom.  I know because my team scrubbed it." 

  "With what?" A kid asked the janitor-looking man.  "Excellent question!" He smiled even though he was missing some teeth.  "That would've been with these," he skipped over to a garbage can on a wheeled cart and brought it closer since one of us was in a wheelchair.  Every kind of broom.  Some had been cleaned of the slime but still had that flooded river mark.  "Are those binoculars?" Mama asked the man.  "I'll let you peek at 'er, but first, it says here," he held the clipboard upside down, turned it round to show, no outstanding paperwork, we're expecting a special delivery." 

  "We are??" A little girl had donned a foreman's hat.  "But nobody can approach this...what is this? 

  "Fountain area 

  "Until the clean up 

  "Preservation 

  "Right.  Is done." 

  "No worries.  Sources which I cannot reveal have hintimated it'll come through there." 

  "He pointed at a fire hydrant." 

  The littlest girlfriend started to strip down to her bathing suit so a middle sister did too.  Their mother cautioned not yet, we'll get to a beach.  "What's a beeeech?" 

  The janitor man hollered a HEAVE HO, and dropped a small rope with a weight on one end down into the firehydrant which looked to be wearing a WWI helmet.  "Look it's an old hubcap." The man drummed a rhythm on it with tough fingers.  He attached an end of the rope to a little standing bell.  "Hurry up we've got an audience!" He spoke loud in under the helmet.  Two tugs on the rope clanged the bell.  Footsteps on a metal ladder. 

  "Ohmeegodgosh that's my brother!" 

  Our mother looked around at the topside group and suddenly looked shocked and walked towards the hydrant.  She was crouching as she got closer and foot slipped on the last bit of slime so she slid into the thing like a baseball catcher.  "Hi Mom." They pecked kisses.  Then she said, "Not sure that was the best way to get to here." 

  "Why?" 

  "Not exactly sure yet how I'll get you out." 

  "Okay." 

  "PASS THAT FOREMAN BACK TO THE END OF THE LINE!" 

  Clear.

  Clear.

  Welder coming up.

  "Everybody!" 

  "What?" 

  "I fink we should STEP BACK." 

  "GOOD THINK'N LINCOLN!" 

  A bunch of brooms made an initial perimeter.  Then sparks flew.  

  The janitor man fished a teeny hammer out of a bucket on the cart, literally.  His fishing rod had a magnet on it! 

  He let our mama tap on the brackets hilding the helmet on the big pipe.  Then he gave her some small binoculars from his pocket.  "See if they can spy any of the paints up on the lady." 

  "Aye, aye Cap'n," she saluted. 

"But I'll miss Spaghetti night."

  "Honey." 

  The phone was grabbed and a woman's voice said, "I'll feed them.  Spagetts if that's what they vote on." 

  "Uh, put my husband back on." 

  "Right here." 

  "Where?" 

  "Uh, can't say exactly but I teamed up after raquetball and now they suggest we don't go directly home." 

  "Is she ugly?" 

  "Very." 

  "Okay then.  Be careful." 

  "Love you." 

  "Love you more." 

  The silence after hanging up was most unusual.  Unusual times, a man had explained about ordinary citizens being pulled in so many directions, to get the boat uprighted, another man supported. 

  A neighbor woman's face appeared in the window.  She held up a lumpy pillowcase and mouthed look what I found.  Mother mouthed back, What is it?  The two waved eachother to the back door. 

"I will give you a taste

  of what this is like for me.  Us." The women and children neared the men who'd somehow survived another workday.  They'd been blindfolded with their ties, that day.  And ransomed back to their families.  The men could only smell what had happened to their loved ones.  And those were the lucky people in a Continental drift of turn of the new Century warring over money and resources like food and water.  Of course, the dominating question of the men was Who did this to you? 

  A slight bend at the knees and a whiff of magazine perfume, rubbing noses and a tender kiss on the lips.  "Oh my God.  Do I taste blood?" The necktie blindfold was removed.  "I bit my lip on the bump in the road near the pay tolls." 

  Stunned to see each other as the ties came off.  One man had several ties choking, over his mouth, broken nose, and lopsided over his eyes.  Handcuffed with a raw fish stuffed into his hands. 

  Nobody move.  The photographers obliterated existing light in the room with the flashbulbs.  The men were moved from rescue, through crisis/impact, and into survivor status rooms. 

  "Oddly, if you can stand and walk on your own, you're free to leave." 

  Each drove by pre-planning from the epicenter of "the pie" outward through an economic zone. 

The fact is...

  "Some of the facts are in competition with some of the facts." The woman's eyemakeup was awry for she had cried like Veronica not just for herself that night. 

  "Facts like what?" 

  "Like..." A final brush of tears like accepting skinned knees.  "Like, our gang of girlfriends.  We can be awesomely close but we can't get married or be romantic." 

  People, young and driven by raging against time, came and went from cabanas and closets snorting powder off trays and furniture.  "They'll get away with whatever they can," another woman maybe a decade out from teenager plopped a pillowcase of cheap cameras on the stone and cement slant siding the staircase.  "And I've brought these." Hands removed a box of condoms and a bag of film from big pockets.  "Yeah, that'll help.  We'll just give every female condoms and film as security."  

  "Wait a minute, you were there the other night," a young girl came over from peeing in the bushes.  "IT WORKED!  WE, 

  Ssssssh, shuush

  "had almost no fatalities." 

  "People have been dying?" 

  "Yah.  Happens everyday.  Don't they even teach you that in schools here?" 

  "We call it a fatality when some asshole makes a girl do anything against her will." Crossed her arms over well endowed only with breasteses. 

  "And we're the party crashers," one guy said as a few joined the talking. 

  One ripped open a can of beer and drank it in one gulp.  "Belch, TO THE ISLAND." 

By then everything had been gridded.

  Up, down, forward, and backwards.  Artists had done ballets and installations and games on such imposition on free will, freedom, and homesoil. 

  It wasn't that people weren't believing each other and evidence (as well as destroyed evidence), it became matters of Affairs.  Each topic and bracket of information was put through human and machine tests to press the "minds" to coordinate and generate possible outcomes.  Trajectories and impacts were routinely discovered.  As well, moods and discernible characteristics of people about to use certain equipment and hardware and software.

  Tensions around greatly debated stuff eased and tightened, waxed and waned.  A lot of matters that had been tabled and shelved reappeared on the scene with many more pairs of eyes and sounding boards for ideas. 

  There were known hot spots of fighting and fighting's consequences.  And the list of unknowns dwindled into sources of power for some.  Just loss for others. 

  The work of getting un-infiltrated from farm to big city politics sort of resettled as old Continent impressionistic work.  More "moderates" and defending the "grind" that at least keeps it from being anarchy. 

  "Last one," a group of Surveyors allowed some people hungry for hiking to have some insight into how does it work.  How can computering need human observation?  How can a phone be a map? 

  A person already hot and bothered walked into the center of a square.  There happened to be a shade spot there, so person just sat.  Gadgets whirred to work, so to speak, and wallah, like magicians people had real time coordinates of the gridsquare.  Even directions to get there.  Person fell asleep.  Day moved on. 

  Sometime in the middle of the night, people who analyze data and meaning realized...something up above is not ours.  And that something was using the information to at least try and manipulate geographic, political, and cultural doings.

"I would neither like nor dislike this recommendation,"

  was furiously being typed as a father was trying to explain to a daughter about Colonials.  About how the trained and paid mercenaries outdid farmland militia by killing eldests and 

  Shit, shit the daughter looked at the countdown timer she had been given by a thug in a costume.  "Okay Daddy, you know I love you and all my moms, relatives, she took off a high heeled boot to reveal barefoot. 

  "That had to be the footprint in the dust back there," three counselors got shocked and awed looks.  "The one on the seventeenth floor?" A slow, painful nod.  "Where the Ibeams were sticking out?" 

  Aha, that building, another person said into a sat phone, then waved.  A red laser beam waivered onto the rooftop.  "Next one stings," the radios somewhere said. 

  The daughter was unzipping the back of a fancy black pantsuit.  "But nobody in your generation is taking this seriously." She back-stepped up onto the ledge.  "And I have to.  This is about the last hair of defense between the people I love and REAL EVIL.  DEFENDING" she untangled a push button wand from the sleeve of the pantsuit, "Our COUNTRY 

  "HeLLO!  REMEMBER US?  SHE WAS showing us some real estate." Dazed tourist-looking people wandered out of an arch covering over a steel ladder chute. 

  "It was always going to be between the movies and politics," she pressed the button but nothing happened.  She told her watch, "I'm coming down." The father's face blanched and he gripped his chest.  She almost went towards him, but stood ground.  Ripped off the pantsuit and little wings seemed to pop out of her armpits or the pit area of a secondary suit-type outfit.  She looked at the watch, took it off, as well as pulling the wand-tube from the inflator hole of the suit. Beckoned a person over, instructed, hold these

  And stepped off the ledge into a breeze that spun her.

  A cell-phone rang.  "I need to speak to...this is she...jumped off the top of the building in a flying squirrel suit...okay...not really.  Inventor's last words were, guy who showed up to test it got taken."