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Marhaver's fascination with the plague hadn't ebbed a bit in the first month(s) of its advent. Each night he stands in his lonely cellwindow with the anticipation of a child on some monstrously deformed Christmas Eve. They demarcate the sky like fat, autonomous confetti, creating whirlwinds that possess his consciousness (,) with the ease and grandeur of a sonicboom. / And Marhaver might consider himself some kind of pervert, some kind of voyeur with a heart devastated by animosity. But this is not to be. / His curiosity is largely academic, and yet not so unpersonal he declaims responsibility. He is a geek's academic, a child's ideal professional. Marhaver remembers the old truism that what takes place twice will take place three times, and so rightly suspects that a third plague will follow sometime in the near future. But he is at a loss to guess what this thing might be. After all, Marhaver was the last American generation of his field, and he should not be held to ...

What became of Great/Grandma Mischa is anybody's guess. Most people of her time would've been defined almost exclusively by their occupations or the role they played in family.  There'd be birthreceipts, taxes collected and so forth. Mischa... We can't even be sure what her last name was.  Why, how is any of this even a question, then? Because it was Mischa who packed 8-year-old Laura's crazy wooden suitcase for her to send her to America sometime in 1918.  Laura has virtually no memory of this. Mischa stayed in the old world, like some shadow filling a stone window. Laura says, (in the sense of said) that Mischa did her best in her household-Italian to explain to the man at the train station that she could feel her life coming down around her, that she was ready 'to take a trip on the old razor highway' as it were and that this lonesome child was all she had to give back to the world if this kind stranger in his felt/leather cap would only let the child on ...

Benny Horrowitz was sick of it. The junkies, the dealers, the cops. What should've been a dream job had become a chore. Never mind all this nonsense about spaceships and whatever; it was bad enough there was no payoff, not to him anyway. He was sick, tired, and sick and tired of being sick and tired.  And now he was standing on the porch of the collections house, waiting to get inside. Waiting to get the last of his money and get out of town. Someplace in Europe, probably.  "Good morning, sugar," a skinny thing in green lingerie. Clean, black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. "Come inside."  The door closed behind him and he instantly remembered how much he hated the place: the clay smell of death, the soullessness of the walls. "Down here, Benny." Horrowitz went to the voice and saw Kurt Coles at the kitchen table, where the uppertier distributor slid a chair with his foot for Benny to sit down. And he sat.  "Offer you anything?"  "...

And year after year, for a time that is anybody's guess, the government struggled with this and what police and soldiers were not utterly corrupt came forth to fill the roles of heroes.  And America got to where it was as good as it could be and this was universally understood and all parties knew that was not enough.  III.  So in a desperate attempt to start going again tremendous ships were assembled for passage to Europe and, eventually, Tequistan. What hope lay there was hard to express in words, but that any could live in the nightmare that was fallen America was profoundly more absurd. Times like these force you to know what you're made of.  And so the people got into ships (while the upperclasses and most of the government rounded up airplanes) and they set towards whatever the future might be. Ultimately crossing the land on foot and what crude vehicles they could manage. A pilgrimage to a holy land that each considered unnamable.  And that place came to...

His rowboat came the beach that was the shore of Western Europe, and he'd been awake for several hours, clear-eyed and fully conscious. He exits the boat with his small bag of supplies and takes a few steps into the sand and looks ahead to the treeline of the forest before him.  Sounds of woodland creatures and colorful birds call out the activity of their routines. He listens and the beauty rustles in his soul. It is the sound of someone who never was and never will be an addict. A person walking towards their confidence from day one. Yet within this introspection is a peculiar sense of dread. The young man listens with certain ears to an uncertain future. A time telegraphed by failure and insecurity and bitterness. A time whose notions had and took advantage of everything that ruined them. So, being who he is, he moves towards the treeline and enters its luscious bounty. The sounds of the birds and the creatures grow slightly more audible and then quickly fade to elsewheres. And ...

 III.  In the place that when it is referred to is referred to as Old Alaska, Sullivan Broca wakes up.  He knows far more of what he isn't than what he is, though with an impenetrable calm that disconnects any stem of anything like restlessness or anxiety or fear or apprehension. He has become such a master of self-control he pretty much doesn't even fart if he decides not to.  And he gets up from his blankets this morning after sleeping on the floor (there is a bed in the one-bedroom cabin, but he doesn't always use it) and he stands up into the sterile air of that room and breathes in with deep gratitude to another day alive. God is given no credit for this gift however as it was Sullivan who drew his name out of a hat when the times were as bad as they could be in 2014 and he drove himself up here, to this location north of every north, and he took care of himself not with prayer but rather effort.  Sullivan looks around the cabin, the woodstove, the single d...