The ruins loomed at the edge of a sprawling, self-similar suburb. Boxy three-bedrooms painted in the same shades of rust, grey and olive marched endlessly away in all directions from the massive and crumbling edifice of red bricks. Like a factory out of the world wars, the building looked like a cross between a fortress and a red stone steamship. Three majestic smokestacks rose from behind the shabby facade. The roofline was crenellated with age, looking as though the place had been bombed out. The bricks had fallen in large bites to the rubble and debris below over many years. This exposed the bones of the old building, iron girders bracketing fragments of nighttime sky. I slipped between two identical houses through dewy grass and up the embankment behind. There was a sagging chainlink fence haphazardly thrown around the property, but even this token gesture lay flat against the rubble where it sagged too far between bent poles. I stepped over it at one of these places and easily hop
A decision needed to be made, now is the time for something to be done. I stood in the center of a wide, circular, concrete plaza. I had the feeling that this was a high-school, but it could have been a junior college of some sort. This pristine expanse of variegated grey was broken only by precisely geometric section lines. From the sky I bet it looked like a compass. Nary a weed or scrap of litter in sight. At the cardinal points of this quad area were the corners of four tallish buldings. Four stories of smooth cement broken only by a single band of tall windows for each floor. These windows were all a surreal blue to gold to white gradient like in a marker renderings or a cheap color manga. The sky was blue, the midday sun white and high. I was just getting to wondering where everyone was when I remembered the Decision. The president was to make a speech today, about this time in fact. The soundbite taken from the last press conference with the guy leapt into my mind "A decisi