"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. 

 

Stopped short of leaping into his arms.

  "That's a big smile." The military man noted out loud. 

  "Haven't seen you in a while Sir." 

  "And that makes you happy?" 

  "Not that I haven't seen you, but here you are in the flesh and blood." 

  "You don't have to call me Sir." 

  "Okay." Men normally in long pants and shirts and ties dashed, strode, and just appeared in through doors of the gymnasium.  "Why not?" 

  "Still friends right?!" 

  "For life." 

  "What is the purpose of this exercise?"  A tall man in tiny shorts asked above heads. 

  "Just an icebreaker," the military man who was obviously short stood on toes and threw his voice in response. 

  "No whistles," a door moderator told a group of personal trainers moving as a group towards entering. 

     Grimaces, sighs, yelps, and grunts as the men warmed up.  Good overall health, a woman in a jogging suit commented.  Other military professionals mixed themselves into the room of stretching.  Each with a soft, strip of beans in fabric, brightly colored and long enough to forge a little perimeter around their selves. 

  Pretend we are in Outer Space, the leader of the exercise announced.  One younger man busted into a moondance.  "Pretending," another said with eyes shut.  "Looks dahchk," someone else described.  The military professionals donned hats, each with a NATO flag on the top. 

"We split it." The kid said

  of the one banana.  Repeating what the grownup had said.  Perfect mimicry although the child didn't know English.  Each person had a copy of the U.S. Constitution to ponder.  Little hands tried to re-assemble the banana in the now limp banana peel.  But the fruit was gone.  Trying to imagine the banana back in its peel didn't make it really there. 

  "So maybe it's like, uh, like..." The lifelong fisherman pretended he couldn't think of anything so the ladies would think of stuff.  No one wanted to or knew how even to just talk about it.  "You make a beautiful poem," another man spoke in English, each little word like a little box with a bunch of stuff in it.  A woman re-capped a thermos of tea.  Wiped the tiny forks and sugar cube tongs.  Folded a cloth napkin.  And put the items back into the backpack basket.  Then she sat.  Young body, weary countenance. 

  "Like the little fishing boat caught in the flotilla." She said almost sternly or with a gravity of understanding situation.  "We can use these! No?!" A man held up a Constitution. 

  "No one knows what's going on," a young teenage boy said of the busy port.  "Of course they don't," the father said heartily.  "Or maybe they do," the son said.  "And they just don't tell us?" The mother asked.  "Maybe everybody just knows what to do for themselves," the father said as he reached into a pocket for his wallet. "What if they forget?" 

  "What to do?" 

  "They default." 

  "To what?" 

  "To just breathing and I don't know," the father looked around at everything larger than little humans, "Just be amazed." 

  "Not much luck," a batchelor emptied a breast pocket of crumpled receipts and an un-neatly folded map.  The stewardess ticked off flavor of soda on a small sheet of choice.

"There are always dead bodies," a more senior

  Coroner was explaining to a wide audience about his profession.  

  The world's eye on protests had brought a generic potential-to-see-truths to many locales.  People with histories of gathering facts for newspapers, the legal system, and works of writing and art milled about on the periphery of what was largely and loosely being called disturbing the peace. 

  "Disturbing the peace doesn't explain this." A woman held up photographs of various bodies on the ground.  "And, these."  People turned from the Crime Scene Investigators still prepping supplies and gathered around the woman with dark undereyes and skin seeming to slip away from bones.

"It's poppycock!" A man stormed off.

  "A load of hogwash!" Another man declared equally as strong-voiced.  But he stood there. 

  All manner of pre-shower'd young people had formed a line in the street.  Low talking, coughs, reeking of alcohols.  The only way "out" was through a collapsible tube that looked like a sewer pipe or giant Slinky. 

  The propaganda had been a blitz.  "Mindfucked!" A tall boy spoke for those around him since he'd said that several times and nobody else argued.  "They are crushing our innocence!" Someone else in the line announced.  "Honey I've seen you in action for the past week.  YOU are not an innocent," a drawly voice lobbed a truth to the announcement. 

  Eyes darting towards any and all movement on the sidewalks.  Body heats melding as one vibe of stay strong.  "Like we can stay anything of ourselves.  This world is ripping us apart," someone said with a seriousness like entering a church. 

  Sets of parents began perusing the line, spotting mines and there you ares.  Some handed things to theirs.  Wallets and ties and jackets and clumps of money and shoes and whatever paperworks had been left behind in the call to stick together.  "So we can all get clubbed at once?" A firm-boned, hazy eyed young man in a filthy oxford shirt hiccup'd and assertfully asked.  Others otherwise in good general health retrieved stashed sachels and backpacks from behind counters and stuffed on shelves of books and pottery.  "Are we going home yet?"  Males and females acting incuspicuous about romance were timing near each other as they casualized a near-desperate search for schoolmates and knew 'm ats. 

 

"It's only an Anarchy between

  the haves and have nots." A book Publisher had a list of contacts.  "I'm not that old, but it's the same at the start of any warring." 

  "It's a gutfest," said a bubbly drunk on beer guy whose tee-shirt was shortening over his roundening belly.  Some guys were smashing their guts against each other.  "Like a beer brotherhood?" A young woman asked.  "Eggzaxly!" 

  "Where are you coming from?" A nurse asked people as they filed in and out of what was still open in Greenland.  "What news?" 

  Some Belgians and French were seen huddling together.  The young wives informed of scientific prize, "seed money" for startups and investing, and crates of stolen military equipment.  "They don't have these," a plain clothes U.S. military service person rattled the few bullets left from hunting food in a thin cardboard box.  "Does he have a gut?" A young lady asked a woman.  "What kind of question is that?" 

  "There's a bit of a beerfest in there." Was said and indicated by a slight turning of the body.  "Why I'll..." the wife stalked towards the keg room. 

ALL OUR SLED DOGS KILLED BUT WE'LL BE THERE

"That's not PC.

  And that's not morally correct either." The man winced.  Another man came back into "the room" that was being packed up and asked, "What is he bubbering about?" 

  Nobody wanted to speak for anyone else just then.  Geopolitically it was do or die.  For Christians it was "spiritual armor" head to toe.  As human beings on the poles of planet earth, it was the fragility of a bodily consciousness without applying some might to win against death.  "Let me ask you something sonny?" The older man said more like a demand than a question.  The younger man still with darts stuck in his winter clothing bitterly responded, Shoot. 

  "What do you call your ass?" 

  "Excuse me." 

  "Your buttocks.  What do you call them?" 

  The younger man's jitters seemed to dissolve in a shoulder stress to floor little laugh.  "And don't tell me you call yours a dare-ee-air," the older man said.  "That would tell me something about you, I don't wanna know."  The mild front of the younger man was already tiger minding, feeling for intellect still in tact even though captured.  "I guess a sister or some cousin once called my ass a hine-y." 

  "Okay," the older man put a hand on the younger's shoulder and plucked at some of the darts stuck in the man.  "So, I need you to consider this, right now, as the alternative to one nation under God." One of the darts was more embedded than the others, where there was not protective covering of "bullet proof" vest over flesh.  The younger man had felt that one.  It had messed with the strokes of his skiing.  He thought through an hour or so of sixty minutes of world power in action.  Brushed off feeling pain.  "Do you think you could get your hine-y past those robot dogs?" 

  The silence was not silence to a "room" only hushing heavy, icy snowfall and the top of the hierarchical world's most powerful people clamoring to have a war because that's what they do, activating that part of the perpetual cycle.  

  "Guy's all muscle," the older man told a woman sticking head into privacy to make sure cleared. 

  "We'll follow you," the older man said to the far-away gaze at life-and-death-war and slight nod.

"Until I'm dead," the elder of

  the Conservancy group huffed out the words because tiring.  A peaceful morning coffee had broken into a rigorous schedule of appointments.  The people of all ages hanging on for every word spoken were un-phased by the minor cussing at aches and pains. 

  A sock, bloody at the heel, had been hung on a tree branch.  "It was probably a hiker's sock," the elder announced.  "Doesn't look like a bloody massacre." 

  "True," a middle-aged, mild mannered man who cares agreed.  "But with everyone on one channel of 'public' communications we had to do due diligence." Others nodded solemnly. 

"I guess I wasn't expecting

  them to look like that." The man looked shocked. 

  "One's in a hot tub," a sexy woman in fishnet stockings and heels told a little tape recorder. 

  "Did you call us 

  "Yes," a drunken man blubbered. 

  "The moral police?" Another sexy woman walked past seven men standing against the crispy dry bamboo partition-wall.  Behind were safety people with the last of the young kids ordered up by the pedaphiles.

  "Put that in your files," a lady flashed the Polaroid camera in the leader's face.  "What is it?" The dazed by blitzed-and-exposed Epstein asked.  "Your mugshot."  The lady took another.  In fact she piled up the photographs of the power people in a binder a skinny guy was carrying around like a pillow with a ring on it. 

  "Shrunken and shriveled now," one woman told the taperecorder and all the opposition -- men and women wanting such scum cleared off "the stage".  A wizened older man with a dispassionate interest came from within the widening perimeter with a stack of towels.  A Detective smacked a towel into the chests of each "stalled" partier.  "Might want to cover up." 

  "I assure you Sir, my lawyers are on the way."  The Detective thought to himself for a few seconds then reflected to himself, "No doubt.  But you," he got in front of the man, "Have no right to call me Sir." 

  The flow of all kinds of trafficking in the world quieted momentarily while these people in a motel were being filibustered.  "The cops are onto us!!!!!" A young boy with a fat, gold chain and no front teeth yelled from a balcony to the parking lot.  One set of car wheels squealed and burnt rubber.  A Squad car pulled in front of the parking lot driveway. 

  "Those don't look too powerful now," a woman traded heels for Service shoes and said of "the dicks".  The motel deskman had woken his family and all of them sleepily busied themselves behind the desk and wiping the dust off the lobby-size potted palm trees.

Christ didn't have a flag.

  I can definitely see where Christianity teaches a "love" that transcends nation even whilst nations get bogged down in the trappings of superiority. 

  And how it is that people feel compelled to attach beliefs to the flag.  Why we glorify certain aspects of previous warring.  And why there is much debate about correct path for nation. 

  Because all earthly "power" is a slippery slope, Christian-based people constantly check each other on motivation and meaning.  And that's something that can get lost in a Cyber-based world.  It can get really twisted in a political-based world.  And, in a weaponized world, phew, there can be no need at all for diversity of thought to war as the answer to all problems.

  I also understand campaign and victory mode as a mindset.  But, is it precluding Jesus Christ? 

  The moral issues around warring to win are many.  We see a lot of us already in this territory of thought-process.  And we're human beings with machinery, not algo-rhythms that just get tweaked and funneled.  

  I think threatening to rush Greenland for it's potential treasure is not the same kind of gathering the masses for the defense of nationhood that the Greatest Generation experienced in the second World War.  While the Allied Forces as opposed to the Axis Forces need to figure out how to function as a "unit" with pomp and circumstance, it doesn't serve the purpose of survival as a species to coerce people into warmode. 

Watching TV, PBS

  Well, "moderators" facilitate conversations...like make it possible to have conversations on TV.  The people conversating express themselves in the flow of the talking.  By listening we get a sense of the talking peoples' opinions and personality. 

  Sometimes people have opinions informed by learning and people also have like limits.  Like, I feel a certain way about something to a point.  Past that point I might feel different.  

  People even have opinions about what seems like solid topic.  Take nation for example.  There's a lot of opinions about that.  So a good moderator helps keep people on the topic and generally asks questions that aim to have people give opinions and maybe even explain their reasoning.  

  And in conversations sometimes people use strategy and techniques to argue.  So something like a forum is very interesting to hear.  It gives a chance for a diversity of people to voice stuff that matters. 

One man juggling two signs.

  People had been wounded in the protests and in defending the people from violence. 

  One sign read: It is not a crime to be a Muslim

  And the other-- I'm for SANITY

  About five Reporters accused of everything from activism to lying for the current administration were huddled in a bus with shot out windows.  They'd managed to re-winter-clothe themselves but their equipment was gone.  

  "But you said war means no sleep," a very young person said to a slightly older person.  The slightly older person gently laughed.  "That's just what we say on the road so we develop taking turns." The young person pulled at a shard of glass still stuck in the metal framework of the window.  "I'll have to go back," the young person said.  "We know honey," one of the Reporters finished a letter stating choosing to stay.  Another dug out a postage stamp.  The young person who'd brought the box of corn muffins was instructed that if the Post Office was closed, the letter should be given to a Police Officer.  The male Reporter tugged at the youth's coat tail to get the person to sit.

  There'd been spectacular life saves.  As in Chicago, word of impending danger could travel "through the grapevine" really fast.  Over there from Minnesota some newspaper people had been warned of drive-by shootings and an undefined but frenetic bunch of people searching for stuff.  All the people were caught in "crossfire" and no human was bullet proof.  That was how some grownups tried to explain suddenly no family. 

  Even more East of Chicago grownups had embodied the Republic and the American flag and teamed up to preserve, and discover.  And what they'd been discovering was absolutely scary.  A lot of people on drugs.  Some people frozen to death.  What seemed like abandoned towns and sections of city.  And, groups of older children following around bad leaders.  Not like shitty mayors, but leaders organizing gangs and not-American political movements! 

  Some people were so outraged they just couldn't.  Just can't be around anyone right now, and, I understand were the wisest words goin' around. 

  That was how the youth's day started.  With the chore/task of bringing a letter to the Post Office. 

"I've had enough,"

  said the Cadet Officer.  He'd eaten half of his steak and potato.  All of his green beans.  He motioned a guy already looking up to him, as younger typically does older, over to the afternoon campfire.  "See that that man over there gets this." 

  The ery from the past and the call of today; Earth wearies and wastes with her fresh life outpoured.... 

  The man accepted the food after the younger soldier pointed at the Officer as where it came from.  He put one leg up and across his tree trunk muscles and "sat standing up" to eat every crumb of the meal.  He wiped his hands on the side of the styrofoam container, ripped the lid off, and nested top in bottom to save space in the Campground trash bag.  He used a wipe to de-smell like something a bear might love to eat. 

  "Should be a heck of a sunset," he invited-without-inviting the Officer into Evening Activity as the young man came over to shake hands.  Both men stared at their hands shaking.  Both had been to a rushed talk by Doctors traveling back to the Middle East on hand injuries and head trauma.  "The singing is nice," the Officer broke off the handshake first and waved in the direction of a Church Camp.  "Baptists," the man revealed.  "Did you do Reconn to find that out?" The youngest of the three asked.  "Good question amongst ourselves, but no, I saw it on their tee-shirts." All three men lightly and together laughed off any awkwardness. 

  On our travels to the Capitol we got invited to a campus for a meal.  It had been a constant outdoing of each other on facts and figures.  Everyone was exhausted of the competition amongst ourselves.  Our grown up mentors were outright saying, I'm sick of you.  We were all so glad to talk to people from different States and who were studying different stuff.

  "Well, none of us has been in a world war before," said by a mediator type personality had us flocking to any older students we could find.  One late middle-ager later almost giggled when he spoke for other older students and said, "It seemed like a hundred years of waiting for young people to talk to us."

It was really only a few people watching in horror.

  "It's not like they actually flip a switch," a Federal policy person explained about the literal nine feet of space the money spokespeople had to cross to get to the microphones.  It's why Europe did "war-footing" pivot, explained a European Counterpart person.  "Free markets and defense coming on line is a bit different," a man writing for the Economist magazine declared to a team of micromanagers and observers of all process regarding the Allied Forces. 

  "That's a labor issue," a Pointperson deflected hot topic issues being filtered into in my face.  A lot of editors and writers and broadcasters had spent countless hours cramming their heads with process and form as opposed to style and function.  Outside people chanted and crushed forward, forward.  "That is not going to help them," an armed Security Guard remarked to what Administrators were seeing in binoculars. 

  "People think we stole the money," said a politician under a sort of house arrest.  His chest wheeze had eased with soothing by an EMT talking him through his tip into frantic.  "And nobody's been making any money in the Service sector." 

  A Military Advisor re-entered the fray.  He stood calmly still until the people told to talk to him approached.  "Add to that loss column, the catastrophic frontline wounded already today, and on this kind of scale, uh," he opened an envelope from within an envelope, "This much put up, came down," he indicated with his fingers a small amount, but...

  "In the vast interior of the country far from the Sea and the big port cities like Shangai, the war threatened to go on forever [in November 1941], the Japanese winning most of the set-piece battles but the Chinese giving ground grudingly, and with their inexhaustable manpower, chewing up Japanese troops by the score in every skirmish, sometimes by the hundreds, even thousands." --James Brady in the novel Warning of War, 2002.

In the 1970's a curious thing happened.

  We had a conflagration of people who'd been involved in military and war all over the world being American.  We also still had open warfare in hotspots and theaters.  And the battle actions since the beginning of time were training. 

  What that amounted to was bogged-down progress.  It was a weighted bunch of people, for instance, surviving Catholic schools.  Burdened with hundreds of years of religious fighting and persecution.  This distress was layered up with modern families having battled in the not-world-wars but not "minor" wars either.  For, no war is minor. 

     The badly "weathered" body of captured and tortured prisoner of warring arrived at our school one day in a shipping container with pounds and pounds of newsprint and "magazine" for our drive. 

     The person was hung on a  bamboo, sort of hammock-hanger.  It was shocking.  But right away, it became clear that some people are not moved to nausea by such sights.  Some people go right into a kind of overdrive as the person processes the information.  And some of the people in any situation that arises have bits of the mystery or puzzle.  The people there that day, doing a simple chore, volunteering, making the effort to at least try had no idea God was going to put that challenge in their life paths just then.  But it was the perfect example of how Americans have to work together every day.

"Are dey now?"

  The farmer's wife put down the cleaning rag.  She looked at two generations of family that had lived through World Wars before her.  She looked at her husband on a tractor in the field.  She looked at her own children.  Then she went to a shelf that was "the pantry" took some vinegar and put it in a bucket.  She began to clean the glass in the home. 

"Why are all these semen here?"

  "Oh honey, that's not good English." The ultraviolet wand and scope revealed the organisms.  "Oh honey, you know how the boys are at that age."  The two men exchanged porthole views.  The women froze in place to be photographed.  "Start talking!" A senior military man garbled. 

  Questions were being met with questions.  Questions like, why did all those people take up/leave position?  

  Most of us floated like flotsam amongst a convergence of navies mired in the legal lingo of offshore.  

  A calm had quelled potential "civil war" to sides behind cement barriers.  National Guard chalk-powdered the fluid frontlines based on reconn and captured infiltrator info-mation.  Monitors displayed what once were red and blue dominated images of Country as black space with fire hazard spots.

Filmed from behind like;

  The simile and metaphor was getting co-opted.  So instead of like bulldogs in a poker game, that iconic painting, the persons "in the round" were also filmed from behind as "mobsters" or "gangstahs". 

  An actor wanted to know "if the take took" the next morning so he might be allowed to travel to his other appointments.  When word of "socked in" came, he cried.  "The master is reduced to tears," an ornry "town crier" told the village of condo mates. 

  "All my life," he gasped to pull himself back from the asthma attack ledge.  All his life he'd been training and strategically experiencing.  In another room, a person was having an allergic reaction to pineapple juice. 

  "Now what?" A wife wanted an answer to how in the hell can I pay the bills.  "I guess," the man sipped slow on one of the last four inhalers, held his breathing still until he almost choked, "I guess I'll just," he took another intake of the medicine, "Stay here and be just another dough-dough bird in the big pile of doo-doo."  

  "He seems calm now," a medical technician reported back down the line of communications.  The actor traced the top of a salt shaker round and round with his dyed finger.  He laughed, funny-sounding because of his chest muscle constrictions.  "Yep.  Dough-dough bird.  Doo-doo pile," he picked up and wailed the salt shaker at a revel rouser, "Because of him and him and," his finger pointed as fierce as a sword in Saratoga during the Revolutionary War days.

A wall of Native Floridians had

  been breached by dismissed Cubans.  This was at a Disney property.  One "first lady" associated with POTUS people hollered, "Follow that nose!" Another "first lady" didn't holler.  But her English in the megaphone was impeccable; "Focus on the tricorner hat." 

  Waves of people voluntarily defended the Homeland by walking to and fro.

'My question Sir or M'am...'

  "Is ICE the Military?" Came the question into the vacuum silence of ceasefire.  

  In our own Country.

"I had no idea we'd pop out here!"

  As soon as we'd crossed the tarmac the pilot asked, "Where in the hell are we?" 

  MinNEso TAH 

  "Okay, Don't get mad," the young, fresh pilot started to tell the passengers...not Chicago.

 

"They've caught up." The

  woman put the satellite phone back into a leather filing cabinet on wheels.  She's shooshed away the real people on the bus saying stuff like, "This is getting really weird.". And she was seemingly talking to herself in the conversation. 

  "Want in?" She asked out loud. 

  Us younger people thought, this is it!  The FBI or something wants us.  One of us sort of instantly glowed at crossing some personal milestone of knew it.  Another checked the swelling legs of the older person we were trying to get to a clinic.  "Hang in there Mabe." Mabe nodded.  "Will do, will do." We felt relief at that.  Then her voice swung low and dired us, "Lord willing, Lord willing." 

  "Do you think there are other Academics at the," the woman looked at the brochure, "Cultural Center?" The fake people didn't answer.  "Not in what script?" The woman asked herself. 

  There was a building further on up the smashed white gravel driveway.  We could see the roof. 

  That's it, the woman compared a photograph to the building when we got close enough to just get out.  The woman asked why the bus bosses took our little cameras.  Someone bit the inside of a lip. 

  Approaching the building we noticed cultural center signs had been put over the lettering that had previously been describing the building's use.  Some Asian people were indicating where a man with a slouchy briefcase should get on another bus.  They'd say Stormin' Norman and smack him on the back making ooooos and ahs.  One took a picture of two posing with the guy.  "Turn, turn," the one with the camera said.  The guy with the briefcase turned around bodily.  With the camera went round to face him, almost smiling, and held the camera out to him.  The person pointed at the three of them.  "Oh, oh," he guffawed. 

  "Where are you going?" One of us asked the woman who'd come to the entrance with us.  "For my luggage!  I'll go on that bus with him." 

"It just so happens, I can go."

  "As if things weren't weird enough, right?!" 

  Silence but for the sounds of liquid guts and bus wheels on white sand. 

  "Is it this brochure?" 

  Someone had cut out and pasted a DVD artwork to the front, Trading Places. 

  "Anywho, as if we weren't thrilled our socks off enough by a gigantic 

  "Size of Babylon 

  "Oasis in the desert of so-called Arizona," 

  "Read the script." A Korean body guard poked a finger almost through a sweater pocket at disobeying. 

  "The Cultural Center of cultural centers.  The Shaquiel O'Neil of hosts," the reader speaking into the walkie talkie blaring the information out the top of the bus tried to make enough spit to keep talking, "Welcomes you." 

  "Wait.  You're going with us, right, Ellen?" 

  "Who's Ellen?" 

  A person at the back of the tour bus frantically rubbed and rubbed sweat-dripping fingers against Hydrating Space Foodstuffs.  "Use this," an older Greek tourist person handed a pocketknife, about two inches long, across the aisle.  People-looking-people started to rise from the backseats.  "It's a kah-nife!" One spoke without moving its mouth.  "Stop the bus.  It's my stop."  The other's "voice" was so loud it hurt eardrums. 

  The bus stopped.

Has to be analyzed,

  BUT NOT spliced, right??!!

  People observed the fear in peoples's eyes. 

  One room of world monitoring was heavily guarded and NO TALKING read the sign.  Other rooms were just deposit boxes for writing and images. 

  A nation using chemical weapons against their own people turned from a human rights matter into more complicated matters when evidence got "stolen".  

  "There's no production here." 

  "So????" 

  "Splicing counts at production." 

  "At the time these photographs were taken," a person held up images before a robotic video-recorder, "The Commanders were topside as proof of life." 

  The ones that had scrapped over "flags" had various wounds.  World communications were weaponized.  "Those don't give a fuck about censors, meaning, ethics, rules, OR HUMAN LIFE." 

  "AND THOSE have hooked up with those." 

  "Move along.  Hallway's getting too crowded." 

  "Remember 

  "Remind me 

  "No congregating." 

  People had gotten shot at; not the SAFETY robots.  

  "Of course they do," a man "getting it", what could've possibly gone wrong, answered what seemed like two questions at once.  A child was asking his mother if the safety robots really cared about people safety and people thrust into positions of leadership were asking if different armies use different maps. 

  Whoa!  The child stepped on IV tubing as he clamored to see e-cars racing to a "finish line".  

  "Well, considering that one's turning purple," a non-medical person rated "the wagon" as UN-safe. 

  "Pick up your foot," a young man got on the bus and told the child. 

  "What's the hold up?" A woman followed the man on to the bus and asked. 

  "There is no place to go." 

"We're still ourselves! Even in these

  stiff suits." The tallest Dad was in a way overly starched shirt and boxers and dress socks with little steaps.  Nobody'd wanted to get dressed up except his wife.  "That's why we gotta do this."  He snagged the three-corner hat from the bed and put it on again.  Since hanging out with the writer of the Christmas poem he'd been coming up with "meaning" to the hat. 

  "What do you think it means?" He started asking other people as part of his assertion that he was not.  "Not what?" An older daughter asked.  The elevator stifled the echoey sound voices can have in big open spaces.  "Not too self-absorbed to be a journalist."  The daughter considered all that was being said.  And which woman in his life may have been too harsh.  He got out after pecking a cheek and looking in eyes to center in a lot of commotion. 

  "He seems less sad." 

  "Everybody thinks they know him." 

  "And, a lot of people rely on him to come up with ways to, I don't know, break through I guess the oppression of the grind." 

  "The oppression of the grind.  I like that.  Can I use it?" 

  "Poem or some other piece?" 

  "Maybe a song." 

  "Cool." 

  "Maybe not." 

  Some floor stops had people, some did not.  Stopping at each one dragged out free time from event-ing.

  "I want it to be like that."  The woman was drinking tea with honey and no alcohol.  She actually wanted to know about our experiences.  Another woman asked our friend from Jerusalem if the sore-throated woman had influenced peoples' hair color choices.  The man looked at all the blondes in the room and considered all the facts he knew about the people.  He put facts together with feeling the vibe.  After some kids explained in great detail the ways in which they'd managed to not lose their grownups even in the Crazy Crossings, the man said, "My feeling is that at least half of these blondes are PRETENDERS."  The words seemed to come out in slow motion the way dreadful things often seem to happen. 

  One girl gasped at the accusation-sounding determination.  Some little girls gasped too.  Head scarves were plucked and pulled from just put out inventory.  "Now they judging our hair."  A man took the cap off a flask, but smelled the coffee and smiled, and put the cap back on.  "It's pretty."  One boy popped up from behind a lot of hanging alligators on sticks and judged.  "They're coming!" Another boy reported of hearing heels on floor coming closer.

  "Where's..." The woman stopped herself short of automatically finding her husband.  She just made up or fibbed through the last of the sentence, a question word hung in the air until she finished.  "Where's the brochures gonna go?"  She walked her "million dollar legs" back to outside the doors of the shop.  "A friend" had lashed the box of brochures and inserts with a bunjee cord to a broken suitcase whose wheels still worked. 

  "Can I have it?" A tween asked the woman.  She barely made a face at sweaty-smelling teenager.  "Have what?" 

  "That."  The tween pointed with a sneakered foot at the bunjee cord.  "We'll see if you've been behaving yourself." 

  A teenage girl whispered an update of while you were gone into the woman's ear.  She narrowed an eye at a potential disturbing the peace and asked, "Just what are they pretending?" 

  "Wish I knew." 

  She started to rack brochures.  "Don't touch!" She smacked at a tween's hand.  "A job well done is money in the bank."  She took a step away from the rack to get perspective.  Then asked, "Straight?". Walked to a side of the rack and asked, "Maybe they are pretending not to be something, no?" 

 

The boy

  just laid there when they brought him in, someone had written on a "report". 

  "That guy's tweaking or something," a self-defined "frazzled Twinkie" told people who'd shown up at a County Jail looking for someone. 

  Within another forty-five minutes an ambulance was allowed access.  Gloves and swabs.  Packaged plastic tubing.  A chain of paperwork proving identity. 

  Neck braced.  Crying healthcare people. 

  It was one of the chemicals on a short list of stolen evidence.  "Get so-and-so on the phone.  Now please, and thank you."  

  "But how could that have happened?" The man re-cowered in a corner. 

  "Chemical warfare." 

  "Oh, they did?" On speaker phone so even a phone call could be witnessed and documented. 

  "Condition?" 

  "NanananaNOT good," the boy managed to say through clenched teeth. 

  "Is he conscious????" A Detective dropped the cellphone and bent over him.  "Squeeze my hand if you can hear me!!!!!" 

  The hand was frozen spastic.  "Doesn't count," a jail person said. 

  "Let's get him out of here!" 

  People with the stretcher noisely dropped the legs with wheels. 

  On the way to hospital, relay teams of people called out the names of people to locate.  Other teams of people analyzed "material":  unaccounted for; known to be missing; matches with symptoms of weapons used in "hot war" areas.  Medical people were also networking in secure conversations.  "Antidotes?" 

  "How long ago was it thrown at the person?" 

  The question pivoted some reporting to try and get the "backstory" on the case. 

"Get these people jobs!"

  Barked a hoarse up and coming leader of a newly minted Org.  "Yes Sir," responded an Assistant. 

  "It was a matter of National Security," the man told the other middle-agers. 

  "Someone" had been a-spying the dome on the mountain from satellite space and using it to mirror such buildings elsewhere in the world.  "You're shitting me?" 

  "Directing air traffic flow to accomodate druggies and terrorists!" The man's eyes misted.  "What is it?" The woman stepped closer.  "Breaks my heart." 

     "Little bites, little bites, little bites," a black woman who'd received weight loss suction was encouraging the roomful of eaters.  Some people eating had missed many meals.  Some had never had "meals".  One cried, overwhelmed at being given a toothbrush and soap.  "Like our National issues people," a Task Force person echoed the notion of little bites.  

  Then "too thin," but argumentative against being told what she was or wasn't, the little woman's skin had the scars of "having been fat".  Sometimes she raised her voice and asked to stares, "What you looking at?" Othertimes she surveyed the people inquiring with looks and started telling herstory again. 

  "All of 'em.  Come to us, America, with remarkable stories." 

  "Well, that's great.  But exactly who pays the bills here?" A postal worker held up the stack of mail and the neon colored sticker that had been on the post box telling Dead Mail.  

  Some people changed seats.  Most just looked absent-faced. 

  "So, I was thinking we could tackle the Story, I love saying that, from any of these angles," a young woman had drawn colorful circles of leads and sources of infomation.  She'd picked three or four areas of known factors in the story that were colored patches of what she called "overlap".  "Okay, I'll go but you gotta make clear to your boyfriend that 

  "Nobody's hitting on me." 

  "Gang warfare sucks!" 

  "Grew up in Orange.  I know." 

  Expensive and souped up vehicles went round and round in the disrupted traffic.  "Why is the clinic closed?" A person hanging out asked.  The question was repeated through a Community channel line of Communications.  "Who wants to know?" A self-identifying "mentor" sent a question back.  The younger person huffed, "NOBODY." 

  Something like 28 fires had been started for various "personal reasons".  Businesses were splitting shifts and hiring security teams to guard property and personhood.  CEO's temporarily hired extra assistants.

  Whole neighborhoods turned on lights for twenty-four hour days.  The smells of food filled the air.  People who knew about a people'd history of the United States stayed in the streets and on porches telling and telling about real life in America (as opposed to "textbooks", many of which were being burnt in grills and little piles on lawns).

"DEFENSE! DEFENSE! DEFENSE!" The

  political coach yelled through a megaphone.  The crush of people voluntarily leaving the rally dissolved into knowing someone.  

  "Not a DINKy, but I'm glad to listen," said a fellow traveler to an older lady. 

  "This is how we do it," people sang about getting safe from the wilds and fringes. 

  "A whole block is shut down because, that one," a mug shot in a cheese wrapper "dry sack" was pointed at, "Is taking pot shots at any movement." 

  "Maybe he's blind and scared," an advocate for We the People said stepping off the bus on the way to a housecleaning job. 

  "We didn't know." 

  "Know what?" 

  "Anything really." 

  "Let alone that there was a building up there that stupid people who mess everything up have been using to," the young girl fell quiet when the Policepeople came near. 

  "Do drugs????" A middle-age woman asked loudly. 

  "Not at that site.  Is that what you guys call places?" 

  "There's no more us guys."  The middle-ager explained that who the girls had been following around and trying to get in with were people involved in Corporations and Organizations.  "And not giving up their real jobs anytime soon." 

  "Fine." 

  "Figures." 

  The "third wheel" of the "girl gang" sighed.  Said, "I hate conflict." 

  "Yeah, everybody's got their panties on a little too tight around here." 

  "You're quoting!" 

  "Right," she said it again and accidentally scratched someone's face with a sparkly fingernail as she overkill'd on airquoting.  

  A guy in an anklebracelet hopped over to play up wounded with his Perscription partner. 

  "I would like to know." Said a trim physically man who everybody knew from Local TV.  The middle-age woman stepped in front of the girls.  "You could pay us for our information," she said.  "How much do you charge?" 

  "We've been traveling around the Country and taking photographs and writing blurbs for food." 

  "Still hungry?" 

  She looked back at the younger girls.  "They probably are.  This cultural twisting is making me want to puke." 

  "Like vertigo," the man said.

They'd looked like

  people in sporty clothing.  Out ahead of even the most vampirical papirazzi and died-in-the-wool war correspondents.  "Let's just call it a day and hike back to the "Last Chance Texaco" and, I dunno, get a burrito." 

  Warriors came up out of the sand.  

  "You think the dust storm went this way and blew like, some people out this way?" 

  "Did someone say burritos?" 

  Quickly children.  A busload of children was hurried towards us.  

  "Start vahlking," a gun was pointed at "Secret Service" people who'd been stripped of their shoes.  One old timer communications person took a local U.S. newspaper out of his rain/trenchcoat.  "Maybe it has to do with the prison riots on this side and that side of this strip of sand." 

  "Really Jim, I could care less right now." Angry to have had personal firearm taken away and then needed, a man stopped walking, grabbed the newspaper, crumpled it up, and then mashed it into the quarter of an inch of sanddrift on the tar road. 

  "Okay, okay, keep walking at this pace.  Minimize talking." 

  Bulldozers and backhoes and chains and straps pulled at containers trapped in sand.  Grown wealthy men pitched silent movie fits as machine guns trailed the "path to stay on" beside them.  Figures in black swarmed.  Motorcycle'd people corral'd the down flight'd that got up off the ground.  Black Knights on horses grabbed heads with hair and dragged them.  Helicopters commandeered were divvied up like pirate's treasure.  Orders issued in multiple languages. 

  

  "How many?" A tanker climbed out and asked.  "See those Town water tanks moving behind us?" The person looked in binoculars.  "Thought it was a mirage." Those are just picked up and carried.  "By who?" 

  "Volunteers I guess.  That gas station still open?" 

  "It was stripped and set ablaze about forty minutes ago." 

"Downing needs more fluff."

  The editors of "the sun papers" maintained a "calm and cool" even whilst they were realizing the enormity of challenges inherent to geopolitics calving this and that way. 

  "And if that weren't nasty enough," someone with a Church fan representing "the pond" so not having to say which side of the Atlantic people had been working on was peppering the ire at both notions of republic and democracy.  "Fact is," some fell silent to hear, "A religious group thinks that by claiming a king of the mountain 'stance' that group can force the others to pay their debts." The typewriters clucked and changed through a working "brunch".  "Not to mention control the eastern seaboard ports!  The people hunting criminals are

  "Look at what this team did!" 

  People gathered around a table on a piece of flooring some eight inches above the commotion of pre-production.  "They actually took on the costs of staying with the popstars of disreputable orgs and the world's criminals with freedom to roam.  Look how many have been 'round the world more than once during this interim or whatever the big wigs are calling it." People marveled out loud.  Some fell silent and turned pale at the implications. 

  "It's what they had to do in Italy at that point in the war." A WWII Veteran said it matter of factly.  "There'da been no survivors had the Axis ran over that island.  So the Allies allied with the few that weren't cronies of Mussolini and, and..." 

  "Sorry to interrupt Pops," 

  "Daphne!  What are you doin' in our broom closet?" 

  "We've brought your spot of tea on the mail cart Sir." 

  "Have ya now?!" 

  "Can we stay?" 

"Is that the Pope's people?"

  One man rifled through a tabletop of current magazines and newspapers looking for his eyewear.  While several people kept eyes glued to a wire-frought Tellie.  "Not unless they're into worshipping some sort of "X" flag these days." 

  "Might be," a teacup clattered against a saucer. 

  A hand took the saucer away.  "World has gone crazy." 

  Keep filming!  These people are waking up to the 21st Century.

Little ledges sometimes led

  to inextricable.  

  "The leg was quite broken," a woman stepped from a gathering crowd of mostly men and seemed to reveal about the then-missing body. 

  "What she said," a squirrly man with matted hair and knobby hands fighting the urge the cover his face almost yelled.  A Bobby took his photograph for the record.  "What record?" An actor asked.  "Who is saying what."  

  The actor told to "improv" his way across the courtyard inquired of someone looking like a director-type if this was being taped.  A person near the tripod and videocamera pointed to the open tape deck.  "And yet it says recording," other men had rushed steps over the the thing just passed the chalk outline of dead body.  One determined.  Another looked for a wire.  No feed that I can see. 

"An ambitious project,"

  the man's voice sounded as if he was far away and monotone.  Repeating what a younger man was not saying as succinctly.  The younger people took in the view from the cliff.  Someone unrolled a whiteboard map of the USA.  "How about your New Year's resolutions?" A helicopter mom trying not to sound too New Jersey, threw out only the heel of the baguette.  "I mean, aren't those so-called goals?" She rubbed her hands together feeling guilty.  "Why do you feel that way?" The young man son asked.  "What way?" 

  "Whatever that's expressing," eyebrows raised to not point at the handwringing.  "I threw away a crust of bread."  The man went to the grocery bag and swiped out the crumb and ate it.  "Don't be a waster," had been passed down like Scripture in their tribe.  "We should find a village and settle down," the boyman swallowed as young girls filed out of a tentshelter.  "Oh really Montésque?  That sounds kind of funny coming from a man in tights under a kilt wanting to ride horses."  The mother took up the tongs and stood like a worthy servant to see what might be decided.  "Dining in or dining out mum?" 

  The barely adult in the Western world girls attacked the little food spread. 

  "Didn't say much," the mom reported to other crampy women in the deemed "unclean" bunch of women.  "This has been a shitty transition." One griped.  "Politically?" 

  "Naw, between Continents." 

  "To the Lands of Spring To Come," the most strikingly chiseled features man-warrior was on a big horse.  "For the maidens, I'm sure," a middle-aged woman yawled.  "Well, I'm NOT gay," the hansome man was mumbling in between photographic shots meant to portray iconic.  "That's too much pressure," a person holding the bridle of the horse conveyed of a saddle tightening by another person.  The horse's breath smelled of apples and hay.  "They'll be eating dry salty fish way up north," someone remarked.  Some people on foot turned south.  "Anyone allergic to seafood?" 

  "Does seaweed count?" 

  "Allergic to seaweed are ya?" 

  "Is it seafood?" 

  Someone on another horse smelled a clump of dried but not washed yet sold at a market.  "Smells like the Sea." 

Came the day.

  Ripshit. 

  Mad? 

  Ripshit mad. 

  Each artist took no more than three potato chips from the bag.  "Did you sleep?" A sip of the coffee.  An uh-huh nod and admission, "Sort of."  A photographer came down the Subway stairs and straight to the pile of rucksacks and dufflebags.  "I was 'the guard'," the woman said.  "Did it pay?" Someone asked.  "That I would not have to tell you." 

  "Why mad?" 

  "Apparently accreditation hung in the balance when some, and I quote, 'obnoxious motherfuckers' rallied to bulldoze the arguments about what is okay, and what is not with ART IS LIFE, LIFE IS ART.  I mean, I get hungry and all that, but it was a last straw." 

  "So she felt like the world's gone insane and those people are taking advantage."  She took the coffee. 

  "Not me." 

  "Of course not." The photographer had changed lenses and was offered the coffee as she came over.  "No tanks, I had tea." We milled about as the peak commuter hour waned.  "What's on the agenda for today?" A couple guys had joined us.  "Stillshots of movie sets." 

  "Broadway?" 

  "These are all over the place." 

  An office building.  Elevator to a top floor.  "The investors pulled out."  Elevator doors opening. 

  One guy.  Jumpsuit half off.  White tee shirt.  Introductions. 

  "So this is it?" 

  A whole water bottle drank in a sip of water.  "Not judging." 

  A four foot 2x4, 2x6 platform and gymnasium mat.  Had been practicing since, no stunt doubles. 

  "Give it a whirl." 

  The man stood and dove in perfectly slow motion.  The digital camera took 492 pics in the twenty-three second "scene".  

  I put the stopwatch back on top of the clipboard and handed it back.  The actor wanted to know, "Can I see?" 

  "Of course." 

  "Amazing."  Absolute quiet of a busy city outside of glass.  "The capacity." Another water.  "Amazing." 

  Back into the elevator.  "Can I ask a question?" 

  "Okay, shoot, but I like to think 

  "Not judging what? 

  "To myself in between 

  "I can't go with you to another. 

  "Weight.  Why not?" 

  "I've a temp job to get to." 

  Floors and floors of stories flicking by in numbers and lights. 

  "What is it?" 

  "Okay, supposed to have an elevator speech prepared, but I'll ask another question." 

  "He's shinny, why is he worried about his weight?" 

  "I'll ask him sometime." 

  "What's the job?" 

  "Medical coding." 

  A rooftop.  Cheek "kisses" just a brush up close of a hug.  "How's Texas suiting ya?" The man paused for a second to stop and smell the roses, then said something like, Texas is Texas.  

  A tiny herd of suits peered out at the roof.  "Time to eat," someone said gleefully.  "Why don't you two do lunch.  I brought mine," a walkie talkie announced, She's reaching into her pocket, and, pulling something out.  "Peanut butter and jelly." 

  "Now that's refreshing." 

 

  "What's the name of it?" 

  "Ocean's Eleven if they stick with that 

  Working Title 

  "I want you to see it when it comes out." 

  "Like I can afford to see a movie nowadays." 

  "Just rent it on one of these." A man shirked the discs from his hand like they were germs.  "What is it?" Others wanted to understand.  "A technology called Blu-Ray.  I think I will go to lunch.  Haven't eaten since dinner." 

  "Can you grab us a couple Reubens?" 

  "Can.  Will do." 

At the end of the world...

  Inevitably our travels would bring us to the "ends of the earth" and "the end of the world" as it had evolved given the factors of peoples and places. 

  In our "teenage" years we had more "older ones" to seek out and find.  For some of us, traveling buddies we'd "adopted", were becoming more like family than not-family.  But the further from mainstream travel, the more we were of a median age.  We were developing skills and wisdom and we didn't always have "answers". 

  Sometimes we'd just happen into finding ourselves part of "the humanity" on a coastal beach.  A knot of us would carry out routine...water, food, fire.  Other travelers might do the same.  A humanity offering a welcome to humanity. 

  Sometimes the beach campfires would sort themselves.  As often as not, there was an unspoken desire for "peace" or at least, no arguing.  Roaming creatives might spark song and dance.  Storytelling though happened even around the quiet fires.

Better, together, though not always by first choice;

  It was something to ponder as friends and family brushed up on lessons learned along the way and, "Where do I put the socks?" Someone asked a telephone receiver.  "I CAN'T SEE THE LUGGAGE SON." The younger man looked at the phone and recalled that he was on a phone.  After the father and son hung up he'd not wanted to let go of the phone.  "We feel close to home when we hear their voices," a just slightly older officer explained.  

  "Ready for the tour son?" The young man shoved the socks into a suitcase pocket; shut it, then opened it and put the socks in the other fold.  The slightly older stepped to the back of the man's head and peered at the point of indecision.  After the bag was zipped up again he said, "I would have put them in the other pocket." Hands paused on unzippering.  "No do overs in war son.  We'll get 'em next time." 

  The book Iwo Jima starts out with a quote from a Rabbi Chaplain's eulogy of 14 MARCH 1945. 

  "Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor--together.  Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews--together.  Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color....No prejudices.  No hatred.  Theirs is the highest and purest democracy." --Chaplain Roland B. Gittelsohn 

  He's also quoted over at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/gittelsohn-iwo-jima-eulogy.

  As we struggle with how to think of ourselves let us not forget to consider the meaning in our chosen words.

The man named Max didn't blush.

  He'd brought a whole box of them. 

  They'd sat the woman into a pleather wingback chair on one.  "Oh dear." Someone straightened her special skirtkilt over "knobby knees on the old girl".  "Have I passed that much air?" Sharp as a tack, that's your Indian name m'am, trying to see the coming and going.  People bodily blocking the view.  Mothball late winter blazers.  "Why cahn't I?"  

  "It's whahT. ah happened," spittle on the "tee", "And you being the most educated doctor hopefully must, absolutely Must, explain the situation to huh."  A wince of non-smokers lips at the pinch of a tet-in-us shot.  "Am I bleeding like a stuck elephant?"  Not a tsk but a grunt and one little pat of a no, of course not. 

The future

  "I see it." A person quickly passed the binoculars.  Another person held them in front of the elder's face pointed in the direction of the sloping street where a set of headlights appeared like the sun coming up above the horizon.  The stone building facing a stone building wasn't stone inside.  It was square walled.  The mix of emotions among the bunch of people gathered to never say goodbye was weighty but like a giant feather too. 

  A decade in Belfast.  Sisters passing articles of clothing explaining the why of this one's special.  A stew pot cauldron not flinching to the crackling of wood in a fire.  You will hear of wars.  

  "Bobs for the rest of them," was determined by the eldest.  The slow and mostly quiet jostling and giggles re-enacting a jig at a pub dissipated only as fast as a fruitcake losing its alcohol.  A girl would go into a bathroom and lose her locks, get the hairs broomed off of her, then file into duty.  

  Big shears catching candlelight.  Bags of clothing, you've wrinkled them, the chastisement to a man's cork of a face trying to squash the sobbing.  The sobbing hellbent on making way from breast.

  Wider.  The order.  The pants replaced on an arm held perfectly still, solid, out like a coat rack.  "The next pair should be perfect." Lasses and lads grabbing the shoulder next and whispering into ears.  That way word reached the bedroom before official charge.  "Who would you like to hear it from?" Two older girls stepped forward, expressions masked, like hearing your measurements carried the dread of a death sentence.  "No more Fig Newtons for yah, Missy." 

  "Been shitting like a pigeon." 

  The male doctor blushed, cheeks a tapestry of rose and parchment color. 

  "Up witd yer bum," to the being health checked, "Is dis tah wone?" A flaming lock of auburn hair slipped out from the peggy's cap and hung beside the cottony face mask.  "A snug feeling tho' skinny gut," eyes on clipboard, "It's hard to write fast in this cold." 

  The real sun coming up. 

  Cough syrup for the per-tuss-in.

"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." 

The whys were harsh all over the world.

Only a few neighbor kids came through

  the roads and tunnels of bramble.  Just back.  

  "What'dwee miss?" 

  "Why so few?" 

  People crowded round people to record every spoken word. 

Word came.

  "Ixnay theah stepney childrenay 

  "BOOK.  And stop talking pug Latin please, you'll corrupt my children."  Robot-dancing children, some tall, some short whikiwheered their ways over to a knot of grownups.  Everyone had a lot of projects on their plates and like diplomats were dividing vacation zones into spheres and zones. 

  A third understudy for Lucille Ball slipped her way out of a vat of grapesmashing.  Huh, someone grabbed a baby's "spit up" towel and made a desperate attempt to clean up the filthy tracks left behind from a gradual stomp over to the aw-dervs.  Little hot dogs in pastry.  The hiked up skirt fell to ankle length as a woman, an actual, biological woman took a babe in arms.  "Did y'all leave me out of a literary discussion?" 

  "Stop it.  Stop it," another lady air-grabbed for the towel.  She tried to stop the man's obsessive compulsions to clean and not to waste.  "That's why we're doing this outside this time," a lady in the vat waved her hand at the beautiful sunshine.  "Fresh air," started a man in a moustache, "And far less cleanup," the handwaving lady announced okay day, okay with this much work. 

  "How difficult?" Another man asked while taking the baby.  "Quite," said a person in a typecast Detective "get up" holding a magnifying glass to fingernails to affirm that an impeccable manicure had been given the man.  "It's very simmulahr." A person on Nana's golden phone sounded trying to convince the MOST most famous Director in the world. 

  "What is?" Different people asked simultaneously of difficult and similar. 

BoooofhphmpAH

  The woman fell on all fours when she'd run smack into a kiddie pool.  "That'll be a bruise," to several other people commenting, gasping, laughing, and one person being tackled by a body without arms but flailing in an air jump.  "WHADDYA TELL HER TO RUN FOR ARSEHOLE????" 

  "Wa, wah, WE'D HAD TO." 

  "SO THAT MEANS WE SHOULD TOO?????" 

  The tackled fell into laughing hugs. 

  "YOU DON'T GET IT!!" 

  Ssssshhh, sssssh, "Blind, not deaf, remember." 

  "What don't we get?  And don't call anyone a communist again or I will have to smother you." 

  "I am so SICK OF POLITICS!" Someone yelled. 

  "Yeah, I think a line has been crossed myself." 

  "POOL'S RUINED." 

  "Where are those going to have their puppies?" A glance in the direction of dogs rescued from a "pound". 

  "Is that what this is for?" 

  Shocked awes.  "You didn't?" 

  "Oh I did." The majesty said. 

  Some people chose to get up off the ground, others stayed put. 

  "What were you thinking?" 

  A huuuuumph and laugh.  "You all need to love again." 

  Na-ah, no way, a lady said to her promised man (nobody was going to be sexual for seven years, past even their "promises" made in front of family and church groups to wait until marriage). People shot stares and awkward gawks at the couple talking implying the question:  Is someone pressuring someone?  

  "We can't AFFORD TO feed a puppy."  The man's shoulders slumped, sad, dejected.  "AND, we'll be traveling." The man's eyes grew wide and his shoulders lifted his back straight and tall.  "Really?" 

  "Where you sneaking off to you two?" 

  A hand held up two cigarettes. 

  Puff, puff, drag, blowing smoke out relief.  "What did you mean?" 

  "About what?" 

  "And I quote, 'We'd had to.'" 

  "It's complicated." 

  A cigarette crushed out with a shoe'd foot.  "Try me." 

  "I, I...." 

  "Don't trust me?" 

  "Trust you?" 

  Eyes peeking through bushes.  One's down on one knee.  Is it a proposal?  I can't hear that far away. 

"These accomodations are killing us."

  The flight attendents crammed the last of the seemingly shrunken meals into the racks. 

  One passenger griped out loud, "Really.  What are you trying to do?  Take over the flight?"  A business-suited, Saudi head-wear man was stared at.  "Must be sitting in the front row," someone said like an actor had said in a movie.  Forced a laugh and told of other funny lines in the script.  Others started staring at others aboard.  The regal man took a palm pilot from his breast pocket, typed in something, then said in heavily accented English, "Please, you are making me very uncomfortable."  A minder gently backhanded a staring person's arm.  The person continued to glare.