From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: 0: Dusty
Date: 14 Apr 1994 07:58:01 GMT

ZERO: DUSTY

Perhaps at one point in time the desert was fashionable, inky reds
and shocks of stark blue overwhelming the skyline for kilometers in
every direction.  But jesus christ!  --

	Alarms everywhere.  Flash of white, bright, unfocused.  Then.
	It was the clock.  It was becoming impossible to live with
these archaic gadgets, buzzing and squeeking.  The familiar empty hiss
of microelectronics and computer terminals at work had been gone for
years, and still she missed them.  A tiny voice in the back of the
mind crying for what once was, but never again.
	The desert dream again.  Sometimes it kept her awake or
invaded her forages into the city for supplies annoyingly, and at
all the wrong times.  The fucking image wouldn't leave her alone, but
wouldn't do anything but sit there.  There.  Right there in her mind.
In her --
	Dark-ringed blue eyes trailed downward.  Her fingers, perched
between her collarbones, were twisting around something that wasn't
there, fondling it, groping for the feel of something she had thrown
away yet kept fondly alive in her mind.
	Disgusted with herself, she stood and dressed in the near
darkness, resisting the urge to scratch whatever had infected her back.
	The smell of water was heavy in the air.  The chance to be
clean.  At least, today.

	Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[Confused?  Comments?  Mail is welcome.]


---
Kent Jenkins	|	I love the world			|  This space
("Thenomain")	|	And if I have to sue for custody,	|  intentionally
		|	I will sue for custody.  -TMBG		|  left blank



From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: 0:DUSTY ONE
Date: 19 Apr 1994 07:31:29 GMT

ZERO:DUSTY ONE

	Without the echoing in the cavernous shell the noise may have once
been tollerable.  But it wasn't and everyone just better damn well put up
with it, because that's life.  And there was a lot of it.  Everywhere.
	During the night (which was most of the time), the patchwork of
girders along the rooftop were barely visible save where the odd building
scraped at the artificial sky.  At one point the huge dome arcology was
supposed to support five hundred people without need to leave, but with
failures come the lowest willing to build on the scraps left behind.
	Nearly two thousand failures crammed into AgrArcology One, making it
run as best they can.  No one could keep the windmill-generators going for
very long so, as usual, it was night inside, moist and hot and smelly of dirt
and sweat, loud from bartering and conversation.  Nothing like a desert at
all.
	She cursed herself.  She could see this entire expanse as a muddy
black spot in the midst of a huge desert.  Someone walked through an imaginary
tree basking in the cruel sun.
	Lit by unnatural phosphoresence were many small stands, most of them
selling food.  Real food and sealed, fresh and altogether unthinkable.  Most of
them free of acid, which is what made dirt like her crawl to a fetid hole like
this.  The damn fool dome was a perfect shield against the uncomfortable rain.
	She just stood there, trying to grasp the situation as the glow became
flickers of sun against the sand.

	Sand blew across a hundred careless people and they didn't see a
single grain.  The people became ghosts and she stood, alone, on the parching
plain.


---
Kent Jenkins	|	I love the world			|  This space
("Thenomain")	|	And if I have to sue for custody,	|  intentionally
		|	I will sue for custody.  -TMBG		|  left blank