Blaring "Mr. Wendell" we

  pulled our social justice defense line to the South while like-minded professionals from isolated parishes pushed north.  We had much to discuss having been carved into regions by a layer of corporate language seeming to have dissected American unity. 

  A brilliant sun shone on a garden that was kept lush and almost giant by carekeepers who had shunned the Miracle Gro ban.  "You can do that? Ban back?" 

  "Any side effects?" Science-oriented team reps hit the just getting ungroggy in time for brunch crowd with a barage of questions about the splendid setting. 

  Some went straight for the food.  Omelets and biscuits and, "Our biscuits are like their," an eyeroll north, "Cupcakes.  Well, at least around here." 

  A team of nutritionists smacked, lightly, hands away from a buffet feast being photographed while the authors of the food revealed recipe secrets.  Labels were typed out by organizing types.  And little magazine-worthy photo blurbs were instantly printed to stand beside gorgeous, simply gorgeous items in "the spread". 

  People milled about. 

  Concerns, issues, and updates were groundcover level of noise as people got their bevvie on.  "Beverage of choice?" A black-tie event server asked each person wandering over to a non-prominently placed "wet bar".  "Do we all have to hire servants for our professional presentations?" 

  "Not at all," a lady with a sundress over her blue jeans and garden boots fixed her lipstick in an antique with broken mirror furniture piece.  "I could fix that," someone said.  "Not right now.  Let's eat.  And by the way that's my daughter and her boyfriend serving today." Someone made a note to ask for an interview.  "Her Daddy is hellbent on keeping them mostly apart until wedding day." Little ahs.  One voice boomed from further back in the foyer, "Mine is too!  This kid's wearing a chastity belt." She thumbed at a teenager who turned neon red and visibly shrank about three feet.  "Is he here?" She grew taller than mom and asked down at her.  "Who?" 

  "My 

  Silverware on champagne flutes sounded a mass exodus to the lawn.

"But this says New Orleans,"

  the young person looked at the filled out form, issued it seemed, by representatives of both the BoP and the BoT.  A kind of colonizing missionary group had also signed the slip of paper. 

  "You got a problem with this?" 

  "Well, this is Georgia.  I may not know much, but States are still States, right?" 

  A man shook the peanuts in his bottle of soda.  "What's BoT?" 

  "Board of Trade.  They have those all over the world.  Connected to Stock Markets.  You ever heard of those?" Another man was picking the peanuts out of his soda and organizing them on the back of the pickup truck.  "He doesn't know all your big words yet.  What's the objective here?  Today." 

  "Okay, so did you see the storyline in all the regional magazines about the state of the fishing industry in our country?" The man organizing the peanuts did a soda burp then said in a deep, rich voice STATE.  "Not like I've had time to read.  I slept the whole way back from ChiEurasia." 

  "Are you agitated and annoyed?" 

  "Not exactly aggravated.  Why?" 

  "Because there are hundreds of other writers who could document us on this peacekeeping ambassador thing-a-ma-jig." 

  "IGAHMO." 

  "What'd he just say?" 

  "Nobody ever knows what my cousin is ever saying." A young black man had lifted the brim of his straw hat and took a blade of grass from his mouth to say.  "Related?" 

  "Distantly." 

  "Get to the point here people.  Or I'll 

  "What? Shackle us? Make us dig more trench?" 

  The woman looked at the ground.  "I'll have to go on without you.  All." 

  A car behind the pick up truck started up.  People looked around at the leftover sultry night steaming off swampy trees. 

  "Want to ride with us Country bumpkins?" A woman in coveralls asked the woman visiting this neck of the woods region. 

"What do they think,"

  a parent who'd come from all-night Kinesset talks asked out loud, "They are going to a museum?" 

  A couple looked at the photographs of the soldiers in white gloves holding machine guns.  "So...no fingerprints?!"  The couple spoke sentences together.  One starting, one finishing. 

  "Where did you get those?" 

  Of course, no one could answer.  It was one of the topics more hintimated about than discussed with any degree of certainty.  Like, a next generation frantic to survive. 

  "A slave?" A son serving both militarily and as medical tech asked his mother.  She'd gone to great lengths to have his "case" reviewed to determine his fate.  "My status is slave?" 

  The mother nodded, "Mine.  For right now." 

  "Have you people lost your minds?" A lumpy with cancer older generation Israeli breathed shallow and shifted his heft in a massage chair.  "There's no getting out of this.  Ever." 

  A middle-aged daughter turned on heel and spoke in Hebrew.  "But it might be different for them."  The old man groaned.

"Record it as

  Asian On Asian.  I want to see who comes for the body." The grief-stricken faces of new friends made in a Grand Hotel kitchen bowed and involuntarily shook little nooo's this can't be real. 

  A whole Chinese female burnt to a crisp on a baking pan.

  The increasing violence seemed per "the news" the more security forces got closer to establishing buffer zones.  It wasn't helping that the worldwide leaderships' hands were tied on what they could and could not say, and, on how to act. 

  With this in that port and that thing up there, they strategized until decisions had to be made differently.  Enough of the world had "voted" to stop before annihilation. 

  Every kind of "paper" had to be held and lock-boxed from diplomatic suggestion notes to bankrolls, public and private.  "Take no action," was the word amongst a terrified humanity.  But the criminals were immune from such orders.

"So, you're telling me," he

  pointed at the table of overlayment, materials helping officials make sense of it all; "That tourism is our first line of defense?" The Governors of three of the sistering States' faces, blanched.  Attendants to State's business including all kinds of professionals erected the frame of an old medical check screen, and unrolled freezer paper and butcher paper over it.  This created a visibility privacy and allowed recorders to sit inside the little Parkway museum space.  And someone dug out some crayons. 

  "This can't be," people eye'd on the official scheduling of such emergency meetings.  An older T'see Ranger explained, "We're not Seaboard." 

  "That's right," a learning Forest Service person commented, "We're Interior here." 

  Men in uniform saluted full on Pine Tree salute as ranking Officials filed past a geological treasure trove to protect.  "I cannot let this be," an Army man said by way of as to why, "You called me on this." 

 

Monk jam and cheese and

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

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

  "Where?" 

  "Inside." 

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

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

  "You

  "Nancy 

  "You 

  Roused from a catnap between diplomatic rah-ows.  Bruisings really as the money trails trained debt and aid and war and all sides into one giant garbage can that hardcore, purist environmentalists wanted gone from the planet. 

  "Whaat," she sleepily growled. 

  "Turn up the speakers on that jet." 

  "Yes, yes I'm awake." 

  "Get your ass 

  "Plane 

  "Down here!" 

  "Okay, I'll get my plain ass down there." There hadn't been enough high security to go around so some of the jets bandied around up top.  While ground allies analyzed emissions and contrails and flow of luggage at airports.  With surface-to-air activity on the Continent and large swaths of population taking up cause it was better together and not government people as flaunting celebrity. 

  Husband and wife kissed casually as trained people measured everything about that type of transportation.

  "Thanks for coming Joan." At that the young reportorial writer burst into tears disguised as an asthma attack.  "That bad?"  Didion turned to other literary people.  "Did we fuck up?  Are we behind schedule?  What's this about?" A hand in a skirt pocket waved in the direction of walking away from.  "Soooooo STUPID.  I, I sneezecoughwheeze don't even know what a tarmac IS," ordered to FREEZE shouted after her. 

  "I'm ev'ry woman it's all in meeeee," a ringtone blared in the cavernous airport.

Everyone had guns drawn.

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

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

  "I tried," a woman's voice. 

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

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

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

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

  "They couldn't

  "Wouldn't

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

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

  medical duty." 

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

  "Bled out because," 

  "Not your position to determine cause.  Next." 

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

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

Had had to Shelter In Place, so

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

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

  Outside a limo driver and a passenger started arguing. 

"Will you stop scream-whispering at eachother?"

  The frantic conversation in an absolute whisper continued. 

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

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

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

  "Got you to stop fighting." 

  "We're not fighting." 

  "Heated discussion." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Who are you telling?" 

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

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

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

  "It's not communism to control yourself." 

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

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

  "Bad for our teeth." 

  "What is it about?" 

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

  "I don't even know that one."  

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

  "I saw a bookshop!"

"I HAD to!" Somebody yelped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I called her."

 "I called him." 

  "I called them." 

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

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

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

  "Hundreds.  It's been verified." 

  "What'd she say?" 

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

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

"You can't really

  take both sides." 

  "I disagree." 

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

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

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

  "Or getting the most people on my side!" 

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

The heel slid in the viscous

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

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

  Two Jews dove behind a folding table. 

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

"Hi Mom,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The baton was a bloody mess."

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

  "PUT IT ON." 

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

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

  "It seems it's all the same now." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Don't do that." 

  "She brought them here!" 

  An eye roll. 

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

  "And whoooo is this?" 

  "He's my uncle." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "It has to do with," 

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

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

  "What kind of stuff?" 

  "Weapons and GPS and"

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

  "Christ." 

  "And he invented 

  "Not really invented 

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

"How was,"

  the young man held out a hand with the ink-scrawled place name on it and tried to pronounce it smoothly in asking the question.  "Clear the doorway, clear the doorway," a Beret advised.  

  People with cuts, bruisings, and other implement wounds staggered and dashed from every direction of the neighborhood.  Shovel fight, someone reported to the clipboard.  Hit with, hit on the head with an iron that holds open a door.  A medical person held out a pencil-shaped flashlight.  A person took it and checked eyes in a bathroom mirror. 

  Take them off, take them off a woman who'd had back surgery who'd been nearly stampeded and then couldn't walk pointed at the tee-shirts that said peace and tie-dyed the symbol of peace.  Water in a basin, bloody. 

  A crew had shown up at a family's house to film an Ad.  The peace plants had been overturned in their garden bed.  Armed gunmen responding to a local paper advertisement for Landscapers needed.  The older lady had been briefly held in a threatened way but hadn't caved to knowing the military neighbors.

  People had stormed out of a General Community Meeting when the American national anthem was played.  A kid had been forced to raise a spray-painted black piece of bed sheet.  "That's not our flag," a previously sullen older Veteran said over the speaker playing the anthem.  "What does it mean?" A woman caring for him asked. 

  "So," eyes swirling around the room but not focusing, "Fallujah never happened?" 

  "Not as a decisive battle, no son."  The young man pulled at the tuft of hair on his head trying to comprehend.  He got an aha! look.  "Oooooh, somebody thinks it's just ongoing forever like this from now on!?!" 

  "It can't be.  They've limited weapons." 

  "But not supply." 

  "And look at these new shipping lanes per them melting the ice." The scientists relayed to the group.

"A barrel bomb"

  had been intimated by someone far from a zone.  People who'd been raised through schools to specialize in one sector or another, like finance or culture paled. 

  On the monitors people going about their daylight hours not directly under the blast just collapsed. 

  Commanders conferred.  Suddenly they realized together and separately why some Gulf States had redirected material to a certain realm's leader.  With many accounting sheets zero-balanced and fewer and fewer people able to just put it on the credit card 

  People cried.

Back up in the norths...

  "This one'll need an advocate." The woman allowed to flip through one of dozens of binders of mugshots in an Executive Administrator's guest chair announced of the little person being processed.  An assistant wrote the ID number on a memo and stuck it on her arm.  "Coming through, coming through," said with what voice left.  Moved through a sea of heavy coat'd grown ups. 

  A phone call. 

  An order, "Take it outside." 

  Outside.  "Well we can't just not sell papers.  Lemme think.  Lemme think."  Snowfall on broad shoulders of a skeletal man.  "Run a Best Of."  The man hung up.  "At least the locals will pay to put themselves on their walls.  "If they win."

"I would say," a lawyer asked a lawyer

  if it was okay to express an opinion before getting an approval to "only talk about the food" to a gaggle of interested parties outside the detention center.  "I didn't eat the sample serving.  I couldn't." 

  "Can you describe what it looked like?" 

  "Some powder thrown on dirty water macaronis." 

  A hand in front of the person's face and a loud-into-the-microphones, We're done here.

"Are you going to file anything?"

  In the generic cubicle space even sound is suppressed.  

  A generically stamp-patched personnel uniform locked the door of a close-by room where a male colleague had been taken. 

  "Doesn't look like anybody whose been in this place has.  So I guess I'll pass." 

  Over long hours of doing nothing others were deposited in the shelter.  

  "Imagine." Someone said with all the loaded in that word.  "How Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms, said he could rule over all of them." A person groaned, "You would take it there." 

  "Is that what it's about?" 

  Always, came out of the dark.  It had been a last group decision to keep the lights on or turn them off.  We voted each time a "new person" joined. 

  "Said it was the only way 

  "There's rarely an only way 

  "Now imagine the opposite.  Imagine Jesus showing a man all the kingdoms he could rule

  "Or imagine Jesus showing Satan." 

  "To bypass," a long drag on an inhaler, "Nothing possible besides fighting on," a tiny hold of breath and a hand gesture offering of the object, "TWO STATE SOLUTION." 

  "YAH, now nobody can afford to be on that kind of Board." 

  "Good news is, it's all over." 

  "Bad news?" 

  "It's all more of a military thing now." 

  "All of it?" 

  "Even culture." 

"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.