"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."

We'd made it to the barricades like

  fish in a fishbowl.  

  Breathe.  Breathe.  You're the last person I need dead right this minute, whack translated into a thud way down under a vest.  A cracking sound in the earpiece.  Dead, dead reverberated with the echoes of machine gun fire.

  Then total silence.  Everybody slightly on the move stiffened into a nest of coral.  The amplified soundscape blared a cigarette being crushed out by a foot atop pulverized building materials.  We wait.

  Like a magazine centerfold the seperatists had turned the whole scene inside out.

"This is very different," one envoy

  said to another envoy.  "How different?" The one opened a rolling suitcase and took out a stack of reports a foot and a half thick, put it on the man's lap.  "And that's just since the disruptions in budget cycle." 

  "I can't even read.  Don't know why you just put all that there." 

  "Our time assessing is over." 

  "What will you do now?" 

  The man sat in a chair beside the lap-laden man.  "Well, let's see, political shitstorm at homeplate," he ticked off reasons to just get lost for a minute on his fingers.  The fourth finger was made into a hook as he described the pathetic state of neighborhoods the world over.  "That's the bottom of my foodbowl," he stroked the crook of his finger.  "I don't own, don't plan to, and eat on the fly.  Between the drugs and violence more than an okay percent is making even getting lost an impossibility." 

  A woman walked up. 

  "Where you been all my life?" One asked. 

 "I was up at the big Courthouse waiting on decisions when people came and had to rearrange everybody in the building because their Directory made them sitting ducks ever since 

  "Spare me the details." 

  "You want some lunch?" The man put the pounds of paperwork into a briefcase sachel that then looked like it had swallowed a medium sized mammal.

After September 11th happened being

  involved with "governance" at any org was quite different than it had been before that attack.  In Academia and non-profits there was a period of seemingly complete disjointedness as each layer of to-be-addressed was readied for "surgery".  People used the many hats of personality and skill sets to peruse, criticize, discuss, analyze, and fight for how rules and guidance should be expressed.  How to reinforce appropriate-to-situation-behavior. And there was lots of observance of how selves and groups navigate.  

  We were all contending with stationary and moveable parts.  And we were not all interested in doing things the same way. 

  "What's your mission statement?" 

  "How was your reconn different after the Guidelines were updated?" 

  The editors had come out of their lodgings after coffeetime together and peppered everyone around with group questions.  "Not everybody in this group is doing the same thing," said a woman with a tangled beehive of hair on her head.  "Oh?" One editor said.  

  "Looks like you've been in the wind tunnel," the other said. 

  "There's a wind tunnel?" Someone asked. 

  "Would you like a tour? That can be arranged." Several people were enthusiastic.

"There's a high level of shmooze,"

  a guy of our generation had snagged a bowl of nuts and chips.  "We'll stay in here," our Spokesperson announced.  Reaching for snacks turned into a tower of hands USA strong.

  Our parents' generation were on the razor thin sometimes line between deciding their own fates and being swept along in political tide.  

  "She's too moody," ice being rocked side to side in a cranberry and vodka drink. 

  "It won't be that," lawyers assured. 

  "Turn this way," a paparazzi ordered.  Drinks hastily put down.  "Let's have a tour of the grounds, shall we?!" Arm hooks and holding backs.  "Not really associated with them," an inner core of Republicanism.  "Must be lonely," the man with the starting to sag face seemed to look at the drinks left behind and see only a challenge to tying it all together...like people roped together on a plank. 

  Scatter.  Then in their line of fire, with the cameras, freeze.  Team Captain said to if we get caught.  "Why is your leg doing that?" A dismissive look to a surprised look screwing itself into feeling sad.  "It just drags and stops working times." Tallest boy butt-wiggled over.  "Okay, you freeze first." A nod, good plan if I 

  Can make it that far 

  You can, yeah? 

  Yah! Can, can 

  CAN, WE CAHN 

  LIKE TREES WE SCULPT but for the rage

  "Good day Mother," hand gesturing WTF?!  "DON'T" smacking helping hands away "Don't mind us, trees, our 

  "Director, oh director..." 

  It was then we knew something more about poverty's effects and the shape of a pocket 'round bout, where...

  Our tiny ship hadn't moved but we'd been around the world in a minute.  Talk if you can, we'd tell our guests, the lamed and frozen and "Yah ony cover'd in dis,""'Ee shmells," Ah, de winO, ticked off the list if LOST AND FOUND.  "When?" 

  Distractions so a peek at a working watch.  "When the lad's brother camed to claim him for me mother." 

  "Got it.  Children, children." 

  "Go wi daht one.  Wote dis book." 

  "Follow that RAINBOW!"  People closing curtains and tucking treasures away.  "Don't look." 

  The boy had trained.  For weeks.  And the day had arrived.  A nun in engineer boots and a white blazer and skirt blew the whistle.  Running in gunny sacks, the children hurled themselves down and down on the pitch.  Parents whooped and hollered along the sidelines.  Some threw down jackets and athletic bags and yelled to keep going, KEEP GOING.  Kids got out of the gunny sacks and asked about rules then returned and kept going.  Our mom and a brother had a strategy.  The race seemed to be in slow motion, set to the tune of Chariots of Fire.  "Now hop like a bunny!  Three more steps," she fibbed.  The brother had shut his eyes and was veering off course.  Too much excitement, once they shut he couldn't fit in opening them.  "DO OVER! DO OVER!"  Kids started screaming.

  Inside the school building, still no litmus paper.  "What other Science can we do?"  One kid patted down his mother's coat to find, Oh good we've got these! 

  "Maxi PADS!" 

  "Let's look at cotton under the microscope." 

  "Won't you be glad when the teachers return from Overseas?" A substitute-only woman poked her head into a classroom and asked.  "Oh, I will," the mom said politely before turning and growling everyone into their seats. 

  "Why aren't you using your thinking caps?" A short male teacher asked the room of people tasked with a re-set.  A grown up raised his hand, waited to be picked, then told, "Our heads have been all over the place." 

  "Oh, I heard.  Especially this head," he plonked the gelatinous bust still sitting on a Science table with a rubber-tipped chalkboard pointer.  Then he poked it.  He was drawn into "the art as science project" by the immovability of the object.  "Would you like to explain?" He asked a woman in a paint smeared male shirt.  "I can," was all she said.  He sighed.  "How about a presentation?" 

  "Well, I 

  "Sometime next week?" 

  A tweenage kid walked to her desk and got on one knee.  "Willya steel be home mum?" 

  She mumbled that she didn't know what to say before putting blank fresh sketchpads and charcoals in a soap dish into a sachel.  She started for the door.  "Where are you going?" The male teacher asked.  "Did I say something wrong?" The woman didn't turn around and said, "I must go.  I have to get ready." 

"What are they doing?"

  She wiped the lick of mud off his face with a tissue. 

  "Just 'cuz you get to pick which story doesn't mean you can just takeover MINE." 

  "Did you just raise your voice at me?" 

  "No ma'am."  

  She gave everyone who came over little wrapped chocolates. 

  A thwap on the coverall'd arm and chocolate-y grunt.  "Start talking." 

  "Well, since the hurricane and all," one girl started saying.  But she held a hand up.  Took a tape recorder from her greencoat pocket and asked, "You mean to tell me you people have been out here since the hurricane?" 

  People looked around. 

  "Not exactly." 

  "Most of us." 

  "Why?" 

  It really was complicated.  Between the layoffs and housing shortages and people with sick relatives the personal whys went on until she clicked the tape recorder off.  "Now what's the reason for this story?" 

  Nobody said anything. 

  She clicked the recorder back on after checking to see if and how much tape was left.  "This is," stated her name, rank, and serial number, "In a Godforsaken swamp, near some damn dams, and..." Click.  "Okay.  Have a good day.  Good time.  Doing whatever it is you all are doing." She pocketed the tape recorder and started to walk back to the little car.  When she got there she opened the door and shut it.  Then said, "Just know you all are on surveillance." 

  A person hiding out from being a writer went towards the car.  "Her wheel is stuck n the mud guys!" Other people also moved towards the vehicle.  When there were seven or eight people someone said, "We've uncovered peat moss." Hand gestures had people surround the car, pick it up, and move it out of the mud hole.  She ignored that.  "So?" 

  Hand gestures also told, another person in the car, but people had started to go back to dregging the river.  Person sat up and got out.  "We can do the story or I can make a phone call and have you all arrested." 

  "There no signal," someone said. 

  The second person flipped open a phone.  "Did you pay your bill?  Mine's fine." 

  A man rested his butt on the hood of the car.  "Don't get it dirty," the first woman said.  He wiped a finger down a gaiter and scooped mud onto it, then wiggled a muddy line across the hood. "I guess I might could give you some details for your story.  What I won't do is get arrested again because everybody's got their PC panties on too tight." 

  "Okay.  You guys have fun talking.  We're outtah here!" One woman shot a hand into the air and two-snapped.  Some of the people literally formed a line behind her and they started walking towards the main road.  "What about our stuff?" One was heard asking.  "Just donations.  We'll get more." 

  "See this muddy line," the man said.  "This is the river."  He rubbed his temples.  "Got a map?" 

  "Somebody check in the glove box." 

  "Officially Army Corps of Engineers needs to know why some water flowed outwards from this area even before getting to the dam zone." 

"Where's the bus?"

  "Just act like you're in high school." 

  The first shift server slammed the dishwasher tub of mugs down on the bartop. 

  "That's what all the cougars do."  Three shots in a row and not quite "fat" fingers in all three.  A five dollar bill in the one on the far right.  He took it to the server.  She plucked the fiver.  "Maybe you'll get some sleep tonight.  Our gang's clearing out." Both vogued and did their secret handshake before the man walked backwards towards the swinging doors.

 

"Why is she here?"

  The voice was on the speakers up front even though the person asking the question was in a tiny supply closet. 

  "Not because I need to be rehabilitated," one of the Visitors told the speakers.  "It doesn't work that way," a desk person flopped a pencil onto the clipboard'd SUPPLIES LIST.  "Just go talk to her." 

  "Still mad at me?" 

  "Maybe."  She used a broomstick to push a box of toilet paper closer to the edge of a high shelf.  Four hands caught it as it fell. 

  "Remember like two summers ago 

  "No 

  "When you said 

  "No 

  "You said and I know you are always true to your word 

  "What'd I say?" 

  "You said we could call on you when we really needed you." 

  "Not whenever." 

  Three rolls of toilet paper out.  "I'm at work.  Put this back up there."  She exited the closet.