::: Brief Glimpses of Somewhere Else :::

Saturday, July 23, 2005

:::The Great Puzzle Part I:::

Even after six months, I still flinched when I heard the police siren. It didn’t matter that I was across an ocean in an entirely different country where they spoke English instead of Spanish. The tension I felt did not end until the sound retreated into the distance.

I was sitting at an outdoor café in London, warming myself with a hot cup of tea and wondering what I would do next. For the last several months I had been working on a cruise ship with the plan that once I had saved up a little bit of money, I would start looking for work as a linguist again, whether it be teaching or interpreting or some combination of the two. I knew it was the type of work I was best at and even that I used to love it, but Mexico… Well, Mexico had changed things for me. There was a taste of something bitter in my mouth now, and I couldn’t seem to make it go away. So I sat in the café with my tea and brooded over the future.

What pulled me out of my own thoughts was a voice from behind me, speaking not in English but in Turkish.

“Gunaydin.” Good morning. “I’d like a cup of your Turkish coffee.”

“Ozur dilerim,” I’m sorry, said the waiter, “but there are no seats available.”

“There must be one somewhere – perhaps a table in the back can be brought out? I promised a friend I would meet him here shortly.”

“There are no more tables in the back, sir.”

I turned to look. The man was short with a dark complexion, a clean shaven head, and a curly black beard. The waiter did look like he could be Turkish, but I would not have been able to guess just from his face which, at the moment, had a slightly pained expression on it.

“Afedersiniz,” Excuse me, I said. “There’s an extra seat here. I won’t be staying long, and if there’s not another table when your friend arrives, the two of you can have mine.”

He turned and looked at me, studying my face for a moment before he spoke – this time in English.

“Thank you. That is most kind.” He took a seat across from me and placed his bag on the ground.

“How did you know where the waiter was from?”

“His bone structure – I am somewhat of an expert in physical anthropology. My name is Charles.”

“Phillip.” We shook hands.

“Are you American, Phillip?”

“That’s right.”

“What part of the states do you live in?”

“I don’t live anywhere at the moment, actually.” There was an emotional edge to my voice that I had not intended to be there.

“What about you?” I asked to cover my embarrassment.

“Like you, I have been a bit of a vagabond. Mostly I am wherever my research takes me.”

“And your research has brought you to London?”

“Yes. I am here for the conference and the talks on the Great Puzzle.”

“The what?”

Charles looked surprised.

“You haven’t heard of the Great Puzzle?”

I shook my head.

Charles chuckled. “I think you are perhaps the only one in the entire city at this moment.”

Anger rose up like acid inside me. It must have shown on my face because Charles took one look at my expression and instantly his mirth turned to concern.

“My apologies. I did not mean to offend you. It just surprised me because the story has been in the newspapers so much.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t read a newspaper in the last three and a half years.” I glared at him for a moment, and then I let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry Charles. I overreacted. I just…”

Charles waited, concern still softening his face.

“Have you ever been to Mexico, Charles?”

“Yes, many times.”

“How about Chiapas near the border with Guatemala?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I spent the last three years there in a jail cell.”

“My God – I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I was working as a teacher in San Cristobal. I worked mostly with the children of the wealthier Mexicans, but in the evenings I taught Spanish and English to the indigenous people who sold hand made goods to the tourists. Sometimes I also helped translate for the state officials. For years there the indigenous peoples have been taken advantage of by the local government and the landowners. And I thought that if they learned to speak to each other, then maybe it would unite them, you know? I thought that if both sides could just talk to each other and get to know each other better, then they would have to treat each other like human beings. God I was so naïve!”

“There was a dispute over some land that was part of an ejido, a local community of indigenous people, on the outskirts of San Cristobal. A group of Mexican business developers had paid the local officials for the right to build a tourist resort there. They wanted to build an exclusive private getaway outside the city to attract rich Europeans. But the land belonged to an indigenous community. I helped translate for the people who lived there and even helped them challenge the claim to the land in court.”

“One night, I was walking down a street and a police car pulled up beside me. Even then, I wasn’t afraid. My Spanish was so good, that I had always been able to talk myself out of situations with the police before. Language was like magic for me – it got me through the impossible. This time, however, they didn’t even give me a chance to talk. They hit me with their macanas, their batons. Then they put a bag over my head and shoved me into the back of the car. They never even bothered to come up with a crime for me. They just threw me in a cell and forgot about me for three years. Then one morning, they pulled me back out, put me on a bus for Mexico City, and told me not to come back.”

I ran my hands over my face, wishing I had cold water to wash away the memory of that filthy little room in the jail.

“So how did you wind up in London?” Charles asked.

“I was broke and homeless when I made it to Mexico City. With my language skills I was able to get a job on a cruise ship. It was good because I didn’t need to have a separate place to stay. And now that I’ve saved up a little bit of money, I had planned on looking for another job as a teacher, but things…well… I guess I’m not sure what the point is anymore. Do you know what I mean?”

“You’ve lost your belief that language can unite people.”

“Yeah… I guess that’s it.”

“It can help, but sometimes it is not enough.” He rubbed one hand across the smooth skin of his scalp. “Let me tell you a story, now.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and began to speak in a clear, practiced voice about the Great Puzzle.

“The first piece was discovered at an archaeological dig in India. The atmosphere was tense with Christians and Hindus menacing the site daily as they each blamed the others for allowing the dig to take place on holy ground. The head of the university sponsoring the dig was just about to order everyone out when she received a phone call from the professor in charge that something had been found - something big.”

“The one who found it was Professor Zamin, and what he had found was nothing less than a key to a unifying theory of religion. It was in the form of a tablet with two parallel columns of text, one in Sanskrit and one in a never before seen written language. There was no author. Nor was there any mention of an individual. There was no explanation of how the tablets came to be written. The writing itself was not so much a story as a history. It began with the following:

Life is a search for an answer to a question that can not be expressed in words. The answer is vast, and there are as many pieces to it as there are forms that life can take. Each aspect of life is therefore the key to a single piece of the answer. Humanity is at the forefront of this search, and it carries with it not only the awareness of the question but also the ability to gather the pieces of the answer together. Thus people scatter far and wide, and each one holds a different piece sacred. They call them religions, traditions, wisdoms, and truths. But it must be remembered always that each holds just a piece of this great puzzle, and it is only by bringing these pieces together that the answer will become known.

“When the translation of the tablet was published it was a hot topic amongst archaeologists but mostly ignored by everyone else. But then, only six months later, a second inscription with the same unknown language was found. This one was in an underground chamber beneath a Mayan pyramid in the jungles of Mexico. The core message was the same, but the language was Mayan and the inscriptions were in stone. Then a third followed in China and a fourth in Norway. Around this time, the story began to appear on a couple of popular blogs and from there it spread like wildfire across the net and onto newspapers and radio shows. Hundreds of millions of people were suddenly reading or listening to translations of the tablets. Professor Zamin became an elusive favorite of the press, always cutting a dashing figure in his fedora, sunglasses, and dark beard.”

“To the world's religious leaders, he was both a blessing and a curse. A few of the more open minded of them were excited by the discoveries. To them the Great Puzzle was an opportunity to share with everyone the best parts of their religion. Passionate debates began over which religious practices brought the most comfort and goodness to people's lives. But the idea at the heart of the Great Puzzle was a direct challenge to the belief that defines most religions: that their truth is the only one and all that you will ever need. What sacrilege! Most wanted it suppressed and the inscriptions discredited as fakes. The damage, however, was already done. Everyday, the idea of the Great Puzzle gained more exposure.”

“Still, the question of the inscriptions' authenticity remained. The writing on the tablets represented the first ancient language ever to be found spread across three continents, and there was absolutely no information about who might have developed this language. What's more, their verification had been exclusively the work of Professor Zamin, and although he was considered to be a premier authority in the area of archaeology, there were some who felt that such important work should not be left to one man. Religious organizations were pressing all of the governments involved for a chance to let their own team study the inscriptions. Professor Zamin offered to let anyone study the tablets in his presence, but he was afraid that religious fanatics might try to destroy them. And so he refused to release them despite orders to do so from the University.”

“Finally, as pressure continued to mount, Professor Zamin made an announcement. A conference on mythology was already scheduled in London for the next month, and the Professor told reporters that not only would he be speaking at the conference, but that he would be presenting a new discovery that would settle once and for all any questions of the tablets' authenticity.”

Charles leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his beard.

“That is why I came to London, and that is why you should come to the conference this afternoon.”

My mind was still trying to process all that he had said. I took another sip of my tea.

“Phillip, you said that you wanted to help unite people. Language is not enough – a new myth is needed for out time. Come to the conference and hear this proof. It may turn out to be the very thing that you are searching for.”

In the distance, a clock chimed the half hour. Charles reached into his bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“This is the agenda for the conference. Thank you for the seat and the conversation. I must go.”

“What about your friend?” I asked.

“If he has not arrived by now, then I don’t think that he is coming.” Charles stood up, lifted his bag, and pushed in his chair.

I held out my hand, and he shook it.

“Thank you, Charles, for the story and for the invitation. Maybe I will see you at the conference.”

“Perhaps…” And with that, he walked out into the street.

This part of town was quiet in the morning, so Charles had the street to himself. When he reached the cross street, he turned right and disappeared from my sight. At the same time, a man walked into view from the left and paused. He seemed to be watching Charles’s progress ahead of him. He took his cigarette and tossed it to the ground. Then he hoisted a bag over his shoulder and hurried across the street in the direction that Charles had gone.

“Ah,” I said to myself. “Your friend has finally caught up with you.”

I thought about all that Charles had said. Could this new mythology really unite people from different cultures and religions? And had I really missed so much in the last few years? Despite what I had said to Charles, I had actually looked at a newspaper once after I left Mexico, but everything had seemed so different. The unfamiliarity of the world had been overwhelming, so I had thrown it aside and not read another paper since. Now I wondered if I had missed something that would have changed everything for me.

I glanced down at the pamphlet. There was a tight, excited feeling inside me now. Carefully, I counted out some money and placed it under the tea cup. Then I grabbed the pamphlet and headed for the University.

*****

I got to the auditorium early to try and get a good seat, but the place was already packed. I had never seen so many people at an academic conference in my life. The room was filled with the buzz of excited conversations.

I grabbed a seat about a quarter of the way from the back and studied my pamphlet. Each event had a brief description of the topic along with a picture of the speaker or panel host. I read through the intro for this lecture, and then I studied the picture. It was of a man in his forties wearing a fedora and sunglasses and with a curly black beard. Somehow, he looked familiar. I peered closer at the small image, and then my eyes widened in recognition. I glanced at the tiny print below the picture.

Professor C. Zamin

The C. must stand for Charles.

BOOM!

Something shook the doors of the auditorium. The windows rattled in their panes, and I felt a vibration in the floor. For a moment there was dead silence. Then the room burst into chaos. Everyone began scrambling for the doors at once. I flinched as sirens began to sound in the distance. There was shouting from outside.

"A bomb! A bomb!"

"Professor Zamin…they've killed Professor Zamin!"

posted by D @ 3:06 PM |

:::[Announcements]:::

Sorry for the delay in posting. We have been dealing with some medical problems recently, so I haven't had as much time to write.

However, I am pleased to announce that there is now a Brief Glimpses of Somewhere Else Podcast!
Check out the show and you'll hear me reading original fiction from this site, learn a Japanese word of the day, and I'll talk about whatever cool stuff I've read, watched or learned recently.

If you want to let me know what you think about the show you can leave comments or you can email me at: briefglimpses@gmail.com

Also, I am working on a new story that I will probably post in 2 to 3 installments. So hang in there - more fiction is on the way!

-D

posted by D @ 2:55 PM |

Monday, July 04, 2005

:::Story Time:::

It was a quarter to midnight when the man with the life or death look on his face came into the bar. I was the first to notice him, walking towards us with purpose in his step and a yellowed newspaper clipping in his hand.

“You’re them,” he said, his hand shaking.

Billy looked at me and rolled his eyes, but underneath that he was smiling a little.

“Are you here for the convention?” asked Joe. He was always the most polite to fans.

The man hesitated, and then surprised us by pulling a chair out from the next table over and sitting down. I wondered if he was going to be one of those really obnoxious readers that want to tell you everything they think is wrong with your books.

“No. I was looking for you five specifically,” he said, that look of weary purpose still on his face.

“Us?” I asked.

He reached out and set the old newspaper clipping on the table in front of me. I moved my beer to the side and peered at it. It was a picture of the five us, holding our pint glasses up and looking at the camera. The caption read: “The five best writers in science fiction enjoy a few beers together after a long day of panels and book signings.”

Billy reached over and pulled the newspaper clipping his way.

“Hey, this is us.” He peered at the picture, his eyes darting up towards each of us in turn then back to the clipping.

“This is us tonight.” He raised his eyebrows and passed it to Robin. She picked up her glasses and shoved them on before examining it.

“The date on this is tomorrow,” she said, “but the paper feels really old.”

I laughed.

“A newspaper clipping from the future saying we’re the five best writers in scifi? This is why I love this genre. The fans are so creative!” I said, pointing at the man. I expected him to smile, but he just looked really tense.

“Cool. So where did you get this? Did you make it?” Zoe asked, giving him one her charm-the-fanboys smiles.

The man sighed.

“There is so much that I have to tell you in such a short time. I’m not sure where to begin.”

I looked around the table. Everyone had the same hesitant, confused look that I figured I had. But before we could say anything, he doubled over, coughing heavily into a handkerchief in his hand. Billy slid a glass of water towards him.

“You all right, man?” he said once the man had stopped coughing. He nodded at Billy.

“As you can see, I have very little time – minutes in fact. But there is a story I must tell you. It is why I have come. If you will listen to my story, then I promise that I will not trouble you for long.”

“Okay,” said Joe, “but if you’ve written a story I would suggest that you try taking it to one of the writer’s workshops tomorrow.”

“It is not a story that I have written, but one that I hope one of you will write. I would try to do so myself, except, I am…not long for this world.”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. The other side of the coin about this genre is that sometimes the fans don’t know when they’re going too far. Oh well. Maybe once he told us his story idea, he would leave.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re listening.”

The man took a big breath and started talking.

“The second civil war was started as a cold war. The seeds of it went all the way back to the beginning of the new millennium. The US spent years fighting in the Middle East and central Asia, making little headway and loosing solders and credibility. At the same time, China became the new beacon of innovation. Students from other countries, fed up with being denied visas into the increasingly paranoid US, began flocking to China’s universities to study. Companies moved their facilities there and to countries like India and Ireland. Slowly, importance on the global stage shifted away from America as it had from Britain at the end of the nineteenth century.

“The changes seemed inevitable to some. History was full of examples just like it – nations that had caused their own decline by the choices they had made. To a student of the past, this type of shift in power was entirely natural.”

“There were many, however, who did not share that view–”

He broke off in another fit of coughing. When he stopped his face was ghost white.

“Maybe you should–”

He cut me off with a wave.

“There were many,” he continued, “that felt that it was almost treason to even suggest that the world’s greatest democracy was not destined to triumph over all. Were Americans not God’s chosen people? Were democracy, freedom, and the American capitalist spirit not the greatest forces to have shaped a nation on this earth? Of course – it was obvious that they were, but why then were America’s enemies gaining so much power at her expense?”

“Once they had started to think this way, the answer became obvious. If the system was perfect then it must be the people who are broken. A call to arms began to sound out on certain political forums. The message went like this: not only do we have enemies across the seas, but we have them here as well. They must not want America to prevail, otherwise why would they protest? Why would they dissent? Why would they weaken America in its time of greatest trial? These people were destroying America from within, and they had to be identified and stopped.”

“It was a viewpoint that grew quickly and quietly, spreading like a cancer. It started with the obvious. Laws were passed with patriotic rhetoric and pressure from various lobbies granting more and more power to the domestic antiterrorist intelligence branches. The so-called Patriots used these groups to develop lists of names of anyone who questioned the government’s policies. Unknown to most, these lists were compiled in a database. Corporate and government agencies were encouraged to query that database whether they were running a credit check for a loan or a background check for a government job. The Patriots felt that the less power of any sort, even economic power that the dissenters had, the better it would be for America. They hoped to eventually reduce their enemies to the same level of powerlessness as the poor that filled the countries ever-expanding prison system.”

“About this time, some memos were leaked anonymously to a reporter for the Times. They were called the Patriot Memos because they were addressed to ‘Patriot 132,’ and they both mentioned the database and discussed a plan to ‘isolate and disenfranchise the traitors hiding amongst us.’ The Times got three anonymous sources to confirm the authenticity of the memos, so they went to press with them. There was a public outcry, but the government denied everything. A senate investigative panel was formed to look into the allegations, but by the time they did, the Time’s three anonymous sources had all disappeared. The paper was forced to print a retraction of the story, and the reporter was actually prosecuted by the Justice Department.”

“Although nothing had been proven, rumors still circulated on websites and questions remained on the editorial pages of newspapers. Then, a few months later, two graduate students from MIT announced that while doing research for their joint thesis on the relationship between the rise in personal information stored by credit card companies and the growth of online identity theft, they had found the database mentioned in the Patriot Memos. They even posted information on the web about what they had found. It lasted for almost six hours before the entire MIT server system was taken offline by the FBI. They told the press that the two students in question were under investigation for a security breach into a classified government server that contained highly sensitive information about suspected terrorists. They were taken into custody, their research was confiscated, and all traces were removed from the MIT computer system before it was put back online.”

“At their trial, the prosecutor invoked a special legal privilege used by the Air Force in 1952 that allowed the government to avoid showing evidence to the court if it claimed that evidence was too sensitive even for the judge to see. In the case of the two students, as in the 1952 case, the members of the court were instructed to take the prosecutor’s word as to the exact nature of the evidence that tied the alleged computer hacker crime to the two students. They were found guilty and sent to prison.”

“By this time, people were beginning to catch on. There were a lot of people who had visited the MIT website before it was shut down, and they spread the word about what they had seen. And when those websites began to be shutdown by various law enforcement and intelligence agencies, each for a different reason, it only fueled the growing understanding that a new cold war had begun.”

The man paused in his story, overcome with another coughing fit. No one said anything. We just waited for him to continue, caught up in the story despite ourselves.

“After that things just kept escalating. The Patriots flooded television with fake news reports filmed in their own studios that were designed to cast doubt on the morality and honesty of anyone who spoke out in opposition to the US’s policies abroad or at home. Grassroots organizations were formed by Patriot loyalists to raise more money and spread their ideas of a unified America made strong again. Churches began preaching of the righteousness of those who fought to ferret out traitors, encouraging their congregations to look around and take careful note of who was there next to them and who was not. ”

“On the opposite side, people who had been listed in the government’s database banded together. Since the banks would not give them loans, they gave each other credit, trading their services and whatever goods they could make. When they were turned down for jobs, they started their own businesses, using the anonymity of the internet to avoid discrimination. They created websites, podcasts, and vidcasts to share whatever they had learned. As computer skills became essential to their survival, many of them became hackers. Computer viruses began to circulate that filled any screen connected to the net with virtual pamphlets – counterarguments to fake news reports. Slowly, they developed into exactly the type of underground organization that the Patriots had been accusing them of being for years.”

“What finally ignited the situation into a visible conflict was a daring hack by someone calling herself America’s Conscience. She broke into an intelligence computer network hidden on servers that resided on a system of satellites and downloaded a video recording of American agents torturing a Chinese businessman who had gone missing a few weeks prior. He was the lead technology developer for a company that was rumored to have made a huge stride towards wormhole technology, the ability to send matter directly from one point to another without passing through the space between. In the video, a man in a lab coat was brought into the room, and he questioned the developer calmly on several technical details. After he left, the agents accused the man of plotting to send a bomb through a wormhole straight into Washington. The developer denied it, but they tortured him until he told them what they wanted to hear.”

“When the hacker, America’s Conscience, saw the video, she sent a copy of the file to a Chinese vidcast station and another copy to the UN. In less than twenty four hours from that point, everything was turned upside down. Hardliner Patriots in Congress forced the passage of a special powers bill that gave law enforcement and intelligence units the right to arrest dissenters suspected of endangering national security and hold them indefinitely without trial, bail, or even legal counsel. Police went door to door pulling anyone on their lists out into the street and shoving them into unmarked vans.”

“At the same time, the American embassy in China was overrun by a mob of angry Chinese citizens who had seen the leaked video. The ambassador and his staff were taken hostage, while the Chinese military stood by idly watching and only occasionally asking the mob to disband.”

“By this time, a riot had broken out on a university campus in Austin, Texas where over two dozen professors had been pulled from their classrooms. A group of several thousand students surrounded the vans, blocking their escape until a squadron of remote controlled battle helicopters arrived and opened fire on them. Most of the students were slaughtered, but the survivors sent out images of the massacre onto the net along with cries for help. In response, an emergency session of the UN Security Council was called, and a decision was reached…a decision to send troops into the United States of America to restore order and prevent another human rights atrocity.”

Tears were in the man’s eyes when he stopped speaking, but they did not fall. He looked at a spot on the floor for a long time before he spoke again. It didn’t matter if it was an act, I realized, because he was living in the events that he was describing right now.

“That is my story. That is the one that you must write.”

I looked around the table. Billy took a big swig from his beer. Joe was frowning which I knew meant that he was thinking, and Robin and Zoe were giving each other some sort of look that I couldn’t interpret.

“It’s a good story,” said Robin. “You should write it.”

“I told you that I can’t.”

“Why not?” Zoe asked.

Robin leaned forward. “There something you’re not telling us, isn’t there? You left something out of the story.”

I had no clue where they had gotten that idea, but they must have been smarter than me, because the guy sighed and started talking again.

“I was the man in the lab coat, the scientist who interviewed the kidnapped Chinese businessman. For years, I had hidden away in the research lab, intentionally not paying attention to politics. I had been working on the same problem as the Chinese company, but I had made far less progress. Then a man that worked for the government came to me. He told me that a scientist had defected to the US, and they wanted me to interview him about his research. I was overcome by excitement at the possibilities of collaborating, and I agreed. He told me everything he could remember about the project. It was amazing – ten years of research in a single hour. I had no idea that he was actually a prisoner, and I swear I didn’t know what they were doing to him.”

His nose began to bleed, and he pressed the handkerchief to it.

“That’s a great story,” I said. “You’ve even picked an interesting character for yourself, but what I want to know is why you keep saying you don’t have any time left. I mean, you don’t exactly look healthy right now, so why don’t you go to a hospital or something?”

“They could not help me.”

“Why not?” asked Billy.

“You will not believe me, but I will tell you anyway. It is part of the story, after all. My sickness is an effect of traveling through a wormhole. That is how I got here. The Chinese company had solved the problem of opening up a usable wormhole between two points in space, but only for non-organic matter. Experiments using animals had all resulted in an unpredicted side effect – cancer that spread in a matter of hours throughout the entire body. You see, that last terrible day of the story was today for me. When foreign troops began to land on US soil, I was overcome first with despair and then with guilt for the part I had played in it. Finally it occurred to me that I might still be able to do something about it. I had long felt that if a wormhole through space was possible, then opening one between points in time was possible as well. I couldn’t wait, because the lab would surely be taken over by UN troops once they reached it, so I made a few changes to the apparatus and…stepped through.”

“But why here? Why were you looking for us?” asked Joe.

The man coughed again, and when he stopped, his voice had taken on a raspy quality.

“Because you can change what happens. I read your books when I was young. Actually, I’m probably reading them right now, in the house where I grew up.”

He paused to cough.

“That is why I saved this clipping. You five and other writers like you are the ones who inspired me to become a scientist. But it’s more than that. Science fiction has the power to teach us things. Inside a story you can rewrite the past and the future. And if we can learn from the mistakes of a possible future before it happens, then maybe we can avoid it all together.”

He coughed harder.

“Maybe...ahhch...”

He slumped over in the chair, and dropped onto the floor. Billy was up in an instant. He kneeled down and touched the side of the man’s neck.

“His pulse is really weak.”

I ran over to the bar and told them to call an ambulance.

By the time it got there, he was gone.

After the ambulance had taken away the body, we slumped into our chairs at the table. The bartender brought us a round of beers on the house. We sipped them silently for a while, unsure of what to say. Zoe finally broke the silence.

“So how are we going to write it?”

“You mean you believed him?” I asked.

Joe looked up.

“Does it really matter?”

“Yeah,” said Billy. “Like, whether or not he was for real isn’t even the point, right? I mean, we got this possible future now, in our heads, and we should do something because…”

“Because we have a responsibility to help our world avoid the mistakes of the future,” said Robin.

“Yeah,” said Billy.

I looked at each of them. They were my friends, and I knew them well enough to read the determination written on their faces. And despite the serious events of the evening, I felt myself beginning to smile.

“Did I ever tell you guys why I really liked this genre so much?”

But before they could answer me, a voice interrupted us.

“Excuse me. I’m with newspaper here in town, and we’re doing a story on the convention. Would you mind if I took your picture?”

posted by D @ 6:50 PM |