<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0077</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0078.txt">Next (Page 78)</A><BR> It's that we're falling off this Earth now."<P><P>"How should we do it?" Mallie asked, getting disoriented.<P><P>"Do nothing!" Daptin yelled, feeling himself getting heavier and heavier. "Just sit still. Do nothing!"<P><P>Suddenly, all that could be seen was a close-up view of a wooden statue of a cannon, in an ornately adorned room. A musty odor came, along with the sound of a distant jet airliner.<P><P>"What kind of is this!" Wreckage Mallie could be heard to say, ever so faintly.<P><P>"Wait for the," Daptin said through clenched teeth, then lost consciousness.<P><P>"Does it please your myselfness?" Iterator of Rail Avenue blurted out.<P><P>All was dark.<P><P>Soon Daptin awoke, dazed, to find himself and his four companions strewn about the edge of a water tank in a water treatment plant. The others were stirring.<P><P>Pantry Lurkin, lying sideways, propped his head on his hand.<P><P>"I like this mission," the little imp said.<P><P>--------------------------<P>CHAPTER 18<P>--------------------------<P><P>Dolthethmen handed the cashier a five-dollar bill and a one-dollar bill. The cashier gave him two quarters and a nickel. Dolthethmen grabbed the coffee and the bag of nacho chips and the magazine and the gum and walked out of the store. He walked out of the store and into the phase of the fuzzy weekday afternoon. His car was gone.<P><P>No, the car wasn't gone. He was mistaken. He'd parked at a shopping plaza across the highway. Now he had to cross the highway to get back to his car. He looked down at the crap he just bought. He looked across the highway where he could see part of his car from behind a cement partition in the parking lot. The traffic on the highway was getting heavy, and Dolthethmen reckoned that his adroitness would be dampened by the coffee and the chips and the gum and the magazine. So he opted not to cross the highway just yet.<P><P>Looking to his left and then his right, Dolthethmen went right. Here on this highway, the parking lots of the stores, shopping plazas, gas stations, and movie theaters blended together. So you could walk along from lot to lot. But it was behind the stores and the plazas where it was cool. Because it's quiet back there, and remote, and abandoned--but someone or some car might appear at any time. Also, there were woods behind this highway's establishments. But Dolthethmen didn't feel like going behind the stores. He wanted to walk down the highway and maybe get to an arcade to play pinball or get to a movie theater to go and see a movie. <P><P>It was as this walk was in progress that Dolthethmen thought these things:<P><P>Here is reality. Right now it seems to me that I am walking down the highway. This is a fact, that to me right now I seem to be walking down a highway. That such a fact can exist is heartening.<P><P>For so much of life is unexplained, and there are so few facts. It is hard to understand what is really going on. But in the scope of what I understand to be going on, there are things which are plain, such as the idea of cars.<P><P>As I understand it, cars are devices built by people, used to go from place to place. But other things in life, such as the progressions of situations, are not so understandable.<P><P>But, like cars, these unclear phenomena are observable. So through reasoning, some possible explanation can be reached. And, though this explanation may be invalid, if it is a possible explanation, it can serve as the first level of basis in further examination.<P><P>In this way, at least as a sketchy proposal, reality can begin to be understood.<P><P>This is the season of my great discontent. I am not responsible for my situation, for in some way I've been thrust into this place and situation.<P><P>Will 1994 turn to 1936?<P><P>That's not a good, normal thought.<P><P>So it was a few nights ago, a stark chilly night under the crisp stars where I waited for that girl but she never showed up.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0078.txt">Next (Page 78)</A>