"There's a reason for

  everything." A woman ahead of us in the processing explained.  "And if we can't know, there's a silver lining!"  A random person in line was told to hold out hands.  These were swabbed with something similar to an alcohol pad.  There proved to be gun powder on the skin.  "He had to fire a pistol." Someone else vouched. 

  He'd fired it the way a Colonial re-enactor had fired a musket to show us boy and girl scouts how to signal that the red coats were indeed coming.  

  "How can we counter terrorism without understanding what terrorism eesz?" An Indian man philosophized.  Part reinforcing we'd not actually done anything wrong in busting through a Klan block of the roads to D.C., part making good on a promise to at least listen to a "talk".  

  Potential "mentors" for next steps on career paths came from a labyrinth of double-doored rooms.  They looked at name tags.  A friend snickered.  Before we'd left home they'd even checked our teeth like we were horses. 

  "It's been quite a saga to get here.  Peacefully.  And not killing anyone on the roads." Our peer-group rep informed a sweatered man with a shirt pocket bulge of pens.  "We appreciate the effort." 

  "Taking a stand on anything in such clime has actually 

  The line of us started moving.  "My mentor is twenty-six years younger than me," a man hoarsely said into a woman's ear.  She handed him her pocketbook.  Took flats off feet and slightly shuffled along in nylons.  "They get numb.  It's not a forever mentor.  I mean maybe you two will hit it off.  But some of us are just here to get updates and some backstory." 

  Out of the building onto a sidewalk.  Clouds gray.  Into another building. 

  "A mass vetting of people willing to get shot at for Our Country?" The man's sweat was dripping out of him onto the walking belt. 

  The shootings in Virginia were not showing a clear pattern.  Civilians buying junk food and prices-soaring gas were on the TV in the weight-training room.  "The Humanities people need to get their files." 

  "Do we have them?" 

  "Supposedly.  The Censor Council needed to put Arts and Science in you guys' Department." 

  The man swiped a face towel from the handlebars of the treadmill.  Shut the brisk walk off.  "Let's check on the timing of the request!"