323

The screaming of the engines drowned out the screams of the passengers as they thrust into hard reverse to slow their unplanned descent.  "Unplanned descent" is what the spaceline called it, but to everyone on board, it was a crash.  The six passengers had been required to fully strap in as soon as Oceania 8 had a view of their destination, and only one had ignored the computer's instructions.  The 20-something girl in A-2 thought there would be just enough time to retrieve her Halcion IV Interactive, but there wasn't.  A-2 continued to get smashed around the cabin even after she became just a body.

322

Most people think that when you lose everything, it goes in a blink, but "everything" encompasses so much, it takes a while to finally get to nothing.  You keep redefining "everything" and "nothing" as you lose what you have.  Taking the bus is better for the environment.  Well, my job wasn't everything.  The house was starting to get to be too much anyway and apartments are low maintenance.  We're saving money by not having a pet.  And by not being able to bury him properly.  Hey, this generic food from Save-a-Lot is just like the food we used to buy at Trader Joe's!  Hey, these food pantries get the same food we used to get!  Hey, this shelter serves some good meals.  I could stand to lose a few pounds anyway, so skipping a meal or two won't kill me.  I don't need more clothes than I can wear at one time.  At least we have each other.

321

Everybody knew their Dungeon Master, Brian, had been out of ideas for weeks, but were still too hopeful that he'd get it together and plan the campaign through the end before their next meeting to say anything to him yet.  Brian's campaigns always started out great and he had a solid premise and some fun adventuring ideas, but once the four players had managed to make it through the planned parts, Brian would hem and haw and "Ummm..." after every move.  Brian's ability to "wing it" wasn't nearly as developed as the group's esteemed DM thought it was.  When Mike invited his new upstairs neighbor, Ernie, to the next meeting, everyone in the group, Brian included, was excited when Ernie volunteered to run the next campaign.

It was also a welcome (and, again, silent) relief to have Mike offer his apartment for the new adventure.  Like his campaigns, Brian started great; he had vacuumed and wiped down the table and he had even cleaned his bathroom.  By the third week's meeting, however, his apartment had gone back to its natural state of funk.  Adam and Celia would have offered their house, but they lived outside the city and, of course, it had always been Brian's campaign.  Celia was, perhaps, the most relieved, since the man/cat smell of Brian's apartment, and his rapidly deteriorating bathroom, always affected her the most.  Mike and his girlfriend kept their place spotless, and Lisa was more than willing to go out for the evening with friends.

320

There were some nights that Cara really, really wished she could go to bed without him.  Not for any of the mundane reasons couples usually have, but only because she used to use that time to talk to herself.  Out loud.  Or, at least, in a low mutter.  She wasn't sure how it sounded to anyone else because she only did it for herself, but she was starting to feel that these years of not being able to talk to herself before going to sleep was hurting her.  Cara's talks helped her straighten out the tangles of the day and helped her understand complications in her path.  She not only talked to herself, but she also talked to people she had met, or whom she had known, or who were dead.  These conversations sometimes ran in circles, or got into arguments, or even led to tears, but, she realized, they had been extremely important to her psyche because recently the voices were coming anyway, and they weren't hers.

319

Three sisters, standing one behind the other at an angle to the camera, from youngest in the front to oldest in the back.  Their old fashioned glasses and stiff hairdos make them look older than they are, which is, perhaps, in their early thirties.  The youngest, with a rounder, fuller face, is smiling.  The older two are not.  The oldest, however, has a twinkle in her eyes, which, even in a black and white photo, are clearly blue.  The middle sister's gaze is begrudging, forceful, maybe even angry, though I know the look is hiding an irrational fear of having her picture taken, a fear that will build into a phobia to add to an increasing pile of phobias and obsessions.  It is the oldest sister who is my grandmother.

318

When I want to make myself feel dizzy, I picture myself, feet not just on earth, but on the Earth.  I imagine myself being held to the Earth as it spins.  Then, like one of those videos from Cosmos, I pan out and up from me.  I am tiny on the Earth.  The Earth is tiny.  The solar system is tiny.  The Milky Way is tiny.  I am here, yet I am nothing.

That's when I start to feel dizzy and the pile of dishes and messages to answer seem... tiny.

317

The neighborhood used to be wealthy, and well-to-do families had lived in their grand city houses, sipping iced tea on their wrap-around porches and walking downtown to watch the boats glide down the canal.  Once traveling by boat on the canal was replaced first by trains and then by the thruway, the city had experienced an exodus of wealth.  The grand city houses became rundown apartments, chopped into bits with flimsy walls and crammed-in kitchens and baths.

It was easy to tell which were apartments without even counting the number of electric meters on the side.  The apartments were painted in whatever had been on sale in order to comply with housing codes that didn't want peeling.  The attics were often a different color because the ladders only went so high.  The carved porch balustrades and railings of old had rotted and were not replaced in kind, but rather with two-by-fours.  Porches sagged, chipboard patched, and windows shrunk, surrounded by unpainted, mismatched wood.  You could also tell by the strollers on the lawn, the upholstered furniture and rugs covering holes on the porch, and the small, cheap yard decorations clustered and broken near the cement replacement stairs.  Trash and mud clung to the yard.  Because inside doors leading to different apartments had been installed in what had used to be magnificent foyers, the front doors remained open to the elements.

316

A police siren undulated in the distance, crescendoed, and faded.  Traffic was quiet because it was Christmas Eve and most people already were where they needed to be.  The weatherman said the wind would pick up as a strong low front marched across the land, and though it was later than predicted, on it came.  The trees swayed and the low thrush of sound became steadier and steadier.  The temperature drop would come soon, but most would be in bed when the full force of the front passed overhead, not leaving red and green-wrapped presents, but rather downed branches and a sheen of ice.

315

Her face was hot and her eyes were dry and stung a little.  It was late, but Julia still had so much work to do.  What did it matter, she thought.  None of this matters.  The cleaning crew's vacuum had long since faded away, but here she was, still, pushing papers over her desk.  Copy.  Internal mail.  File.  Repeat.  Collate.  Staple.  File.  Repeat.  Julia's hands were dry and she was sore from sitting, forgetting even her own body as she went through the motions of work, work, work.  In her mind, she shoved all the papers off her desk in one swing of the arm, kicked the file drawer shut so hard the cabinet fell against the next, and yanked the phone from the jack, whipping it across the room.  In reality, she wrote dates, signed papers, filed, repeated.

314

It was firmly set in Jessa's mind that men who behaved badly in cars were not meant to be permanent partners.  The first boyfriend she had when she could drive was clearly a psychopath to everyone but her.  She was with him from high school and into college, standing by him through a series of last straws.  One of the final last straws happened while she was driving, nearing his small house with his mother and stepfather.  Little kids were on a walkway overpass, dropping snowballs on cars.

"When they hit your car, stop and let me out; I'll get them."

"No, it's okay, they're just dumb kids.  I can..."

"Let me out!"

"It's all right, watch..."  Jessa slowed just before the overpass, and after the kid dropped his snowball harmlessly on the road, she sped up and prepared to make the turn to her boyfriend's road.

"I said STOP!"  He grabbed the wheel and jerked it to the side of the road.  She had never felt so mad at him.  She was so mad she yelled, and he punched her in the leg.  She let him out and drove away.  Jessa wished she had never gone back with him after, but she did.  It wasn't quite the last, last straw, but it was the first realization that men who behaved badly in cars were not meant to be permanent.

313

Imagine a city where more than half its population has left within the past forty years.  The people who remain cannot afford the upkeep of their houses, nor do they even wish to keep them at all.  If a family still lingers in the city, they will dump their home at the first chance.  A house, for example, in the middle of what had been a thriving part of the city, was dumped for $12,000--more than $50,000 less than assessed value, which was already tens of thousands less than what it should have been.  The house was snapped up by professional landlords and stuffed with tenants, including a family of ten in an illegal apartment in the attic.  The attic burned.  The house emptied.  Although it was salvageable, who wanted to invest in a partly burned home on a street where anyone could easily purchase crack?  Windows were broken and the house was pillaged of materials.  Eventually, the grand, 3,500 square foot house, built in the 1800s, was torn down.  A weedy lot remains.

Now, put a natural wonder nearby.  So nearby that in the quiet of the night, from that weedy lot, you can hear the thundering waters of nature, cascading over a mighty cataract.  Welcome to Niagara Falls, New York.

312

My name is Benjamin.  Benny, to my friends, which is why nobody calls me Benny.  I hate everyone and everyone hates me, and that's the way I like it.  My bedroom is my castle; my sanctuary, if you will.  You will because this is my journal and I was told to write what I like, so this is what you get.  I may even swear in it, but if I don't it's only because I didn't want to.  I can end sentences with a preposition, and nobody can stop me.  I am a rebel without an out.  Get me out.

Monday.
I've decided to write the days in my journal because I want to.  It helps me stay on track since I have been kicked out of school and I can't see the day on the corner of the board anymore.  Yeah, that's right: I was kicked out of school.  Bad a$$.  I made a fake swear because I wanted to.

311

"Jettison the extra."  The captain's pronouncement froze his crew.  "Now," he added to jump start them breathing again.  It was a testament to their training and their belief in their captain that all three of the crew were jolted back to work.  Ben prepped the magnetic release, and Jo went to double seal the airlocks in reverse from the rear of the main ship.

Although Gia continued rerouting critical systems in preparation for release, she was in doubt, and not afraid to question Captain Halloran.  "Captain, there could be another way.  What if we..."

"I have thought about it plenty, Gia.  This is our last chance.  Ben?"

"Mags ready, sir."

Jo skidded back onto the bridge.  "Airlocks sealed."  Gia swiveled her seat to look at Jo; to see how she felt.  Jo wasn't looking back, but her lips were tight and she seemed pale as she sat back in front of her console.

"Jo..." Gia began, only to be cut off again by the Captain.  "Gia, prepare the thrusters."  Captain Halloran dropped into his chair and buckled in; everyone followed suit.  "Ben."  The Captain ran his hand over his face.  "Release the maglocks."

310

I dream of disaster.

Every night I have dreamed of disaster, global, catastrophic, unavoidable.  Invariably, the military is deployed, but even from my puny vantage point on the ground, I can see that it will be futile.  The people escaping with belongings stuffed into cars is also futile.  Destruction will be complete.

I wake to my alarm's soft chimes, increasing in volume if I ignore the call to the waking world.  It is hard to wake, and I struggle to the surface, still tired.

309

Her hair was lifted by the wind and the strange updrafts that swirled around the building.  She held the edges of the open window, ducking a little as it wasn't quite as tall as she was.  One foot in.  One foot out.  She looked back into the room and smiled a transcendent smile, and took her last step.

308

Have you ever thought to yourself, "This is what could kill me.  Yep.  This right here."  I seem to be thinking that more and more often.  Earlier today, I thought that while I jumped off a short embankment into a lake I knew nothing about.  There are hikes in large expanses of state-owned woods, you know the kind of woods where people get lost and die?  Well, these kinds of woods make you sign in and out, so they know if there will be any lost dead people.  I signed in and followed the trail, like an obedient person.  It was very quiet, excepting all the animal noises, mostly birds and rodents, of course.  It was also hot and after about an hour I came across this lake.  I hadn't seen another human this whole time.  I took off my hiking boots, my socks, my shirt and my pants, and I jumped in wearing only my skivvies.  What the hell was I thinking?  Oh, I know: This is what could kill me.  Yep.  This right here.