At the height of its glory, the City was everywhere and everything. All that was, was the City. For a hundred brilliant centuries, the City defined and explained the human race. Those who came from other stars to visit the only naturally habitated planet of the system within which the City's planet revolved were unanimous in their judgment: Few glories in any galaxy could match the accomplishment of those who had created and now sustained the City.

And when, after ten thousand years of undiminished splendour, the City's greatness declined, it was no failing in itself or its citizens but merely the next stage in the planet's evolution. The human race, after millenia of contact with beings from light years' distance, began to understand their being and possibility in terms other than the City. The totality of the City's dominance of all things human had gone unchallenged for thousands of years. Humans had forgotten that once they were separate from anything like a city, much less the City. But in time, the realization reappeared, and almost instantaneously, the City began to diminish, not lessened in its splendour but only as the essential defining aspect of life on Earth.

Humans began to realize: the City was no longer everywhere and everything. There was more.

But, some fifteen thousand years before humans came to this realization, all that Monica and Alfred thought about was if they would be caught before they were done fuckng. The corner in which they stood, bodies pumping at each other excitedly, hurriedly, was dark and secluded, but people still came by occassionally. They had been walking by in that way when she had grabbed his hand and pulled him into that shadow, lifting her dress to leave no doubt what she desired.

Muffling her half-shout into his shoulder, Monica came with a series of shudders; a few thrusts more, and in silence, she felt Alfred spasm with his own orgasm. As he withdrew from her, she clung tight to him, arms around his neck, not in adoration but simply out of momentary exhaustion.

She did not love Alfred; she did not even know his name. They had been passing each other, walking in opposite directions, when they arrived at that secluded corner and she had grabbed his hand, dragged him deeper into the dark for a fast, furious, anonymous fuck. That was always the first risk: Finding the right partner. Mistake the look in someone's eye, they way they walked or dressed or glanced covertly at you, and you'd not merely end up in jail but medicated, mind-swept and desexed.

The thrill of the hunt was almost as ecstatic as the culmination of the sex. Either one could destroy your life, yet both gave pleasures and joys that made the rest of life in the grey world of the 22nd Century worth tolerating.

“If I couldn't fuck,” she whispered into Alfred's neck, “I would kill myself.”

In the grey morning of not-yet light and a low sky of clouds that hover seamlessly, motionless even in the chilly wind, in that unwoken dawn I feel as sleepy and apart as if I were still in bed. I wonder, in that part of my mind that sits off to the side and takes notes, makes comments, if I am awake or having one of those rare and wonderful dreams of vivid detail. But I honestly have never felt cold, nor heat, in my dreams, so I know that I am standing at the bus stop on my way to work and she is a real person.

In my dreams, here is what would happen:

She would turn around and look at me. She would not smile at me; she is too sad to smile anymore. Instead she would take the half-dozen or so steps to me and stand in front of me. Taking the ear buds from her own ears, she gently removes mine; the microscopic sound of our iPods buzzing together as they dangle on the cords she holds in her hand. Then, gently and carefully, she places her ear buds into my ears and mine into hers. And we stand there, close but not touching, each listening to the other's music. I don't recognize her music; it's something current, perhaps, pop and hiphop and intense. I like it; i want to ask her who the woman is that is singing. Perhaps it's a name I've read and just not heard the music. From my iPod, she is listening to Nanci Griffith, early Nanci from the 80s. I wonder if she knows Nanci and what she thinks of my music on this cold, dim autumn morning. She still is not smiling; I love Nanci's music, but I know there are times, and songs, that amplify my own sadness. This lovely woman is not smiling, standing so close to me, and we are listening to each other's music, and then she leans across to me and kisses me. Kisses me hard enough to tell me she means something important by it, but what that is, I don't know. And before I can ask her, she takes the earpiece from her own ears, hands then and her iPod to me, turns, and walks quickly away. I want to follow, but the bus has arrived and I have to go to work. I do go to work.

And I do go to work and wonder about the woman I did see at the bus stop, listening to the music on her iPod and shivering in the cold just as I was doing. One thing seemed to be true and not of my imagination: that she was sad. That she needed something, but we all need something. What I am longing for is that one day she, whoever she is, will need me.

Seattle, Washington

Debbie was sick of thinking Serves me right but every other thought she had just made her angry. Not ashamed; she was surprised not to be feel ashamed, and even more surprised at her anger. Thinking Serves me right over and over and over knocked the feet out from under her anger, let her feel just wry enough to stop the anger from exploding into a rage she could not afford now. Not now. Later she could be as angry as she wanted, but right now she needed to stay calm, even if it was an irritated, tedious calm.

She'd come here alone; it seemed appropriate to her to come alone. There was no one to share this with, no one who would understand or give her the support she needed. Better to be alone than with the wrong person. Should have thought about that with him, she told herself, knowing the irony was worth a laugh and that laughter was something she was not able to do. Not now, not here. It might help, but so would a hundred thousand dollars and a time machine. She didn't have those either.

What she did have, she didn't want. Not like this. She had wanted it her entire life, from the time she was a little girl it was all she wanted. But not like this, absolutely not like this. It was supposed to have been so much different, something to celebrate. Instead she was subjecting it to a procedure, and if she let her think about that, her anger was no match for her pain and sadness.

God this is so fucked up. Pausing, feeling sorry for herself, and then thinking, just like me, and this time she at least grins at the joke. Not much, but she feels her mouth moving into the form of a grin. Close enough.

"Hey! Andy, hi!"

And he felt bad about it, but Andy had hoped Bob hadn't seen him, that he'd be able to quickly get to the corner, get out of site and not have to talk to him. But no such luck. Bob had seen him, and there was no way Andy could pretend not to hear. Besides, it wasn't that he was a bad guy, he was just, well....

"Hey brother, how are you?"

Bob was smiling; his face was friendly and, Andy realized, kind. He felt even more ashamed of trying to avoid him and hoped his own face wouldn't reveal any of what he was thinking or feeling.

"Hi Bob," he said, doing his best to show a nonchalant gladness to see this brother in Christ. "I didn't see you, I guess," his voice sound as lame as the lie in his own ears, but Bob seemed to take no notice of anything being wrong.

"Yea, I saw you," he answered, still smiling as kindly as he had at Youth Group the previous Sunday, "you must be in a big hurry."

Andy found himself stuck in a stupid lie, that he was hurrying and just hadn't seen Bob, that he was so engrossed in his important task that he was blind to all around him. The only trouble, of course, was that he had been in no such hurry, had no task of any kind. He was just going to meet Carol, Ben and a few others. Be cool, he told himself, stop ... whatever it is you're doing.

He knew what he was doing, and he suddenly knew Bob knew it, too. He was far too obvious, a terrible liar, just too transparent. And he realized something else, feeling immediately ugly and tiny: Bob was used to this. Used to being treated like something evil or diseased. Used to his fellow Christians avoiding him, feeling uncomfortable with him around. Oh Jesus, Lord, forgive me, Andy prayed, shame sitting in his belly like an old, sour rag.

Thirty minutes! thought Mike, could this get more humiliating? Well of course it could; in another minute, it would be thirty-one minutes, and thirty-one minutes of humiliation was worse than a mere thirty minutes worth. Sheesh, how had he gotten himself into this mess? How stupid, how pathetic was he? Apparently I'm thirty-and-a-half minutes' worth of stupid and pathetic.

At least he was with someone as decent as Mary Willingham, probably one of the kindest people on earth. Thank God it's Mary. Of course it would have been better if it had been no one, but given that he was to be as stupid and pathetic as this, better to be that way with Mary than, oh, say Leah. Or Carole.

Not that I would have ever been this stupid with either of them. Or that they would have let me be. Only Mary....

Poor Mary, this was just a lot to ask of even her. Mike knew that when he finally had the guts to get himself out of this mess, he'd owe her a huge apology and maybe disappear from her life for a while. Like forever.

Mike did not have a lot of distinguishing characteristics. He wasn't ugly or handsome, just okay. "Okay," in fact, described Mike accurately. Nothing special, but nothing awful. Just okay. Easy enough to be around, but just as easy to forget. He had never had a girlfriend, but he had lots of friends who were girls. He had the entire Youth Group to count as friends, but somehow it was always him calling others to ask if they wanted to do anything. He never had to decide between the competing demands or requests of different people. Whoever he called first who was free, that was who he spent his time with. Or just himself if no one was free, or wanted to make the time. Mike was okay with everyone, but no one thought he was very special. Or at least, if they did, Mike had no knowledge of it.

But he was okay with that.

What he was not okay with was the way his heart, every now and then, decided that he was in love. Mike did not get crushes on girls; Mike fell in love. Mike really fell in love, the same way a meteor falls from space: bright, burning up, threatening to flatten everything below. And just as Mike could not stop a meteor from falling to earth, he could not stop his heart from falling in love. He never knew who would be the victim of his heart's kamikaze dive, but he did know it would never be a good result. He knew from experience, from humiliation and disappointment and once a real broken heart, betrayed and destroyed in front of every person he knew in the world. Mike was not okay with his heart and the way it treated him, and he was more angry at his heart at this moment then he had ever been before.

I ought to feel ashamed, thought Debbie, but she knew what she was actually feeling: giddy. Happy. Free. Giddy. These were not good feelings, not feelings with which she was comfortable. She could hear the still, small voice telling her Bad girl, bad girl; but moment by moment, the voice got smaller and stiller. And giddy got louder. The blood crashing into unfamiliar parts of her body was loudest of all.

This was not the first time she'd kissed a boy, but it was the first time that counted. The first time she was kissing a boy on a date, and a boy she liked. A boy who liked her! That was the real miracle here: Kevin Nickels liked her! When Jane had told her, she refused to believe her. She had called Jane a liar all weekend but on Monday morning, when Kevin had come by her locker to say "Hi," as casual as if he'd dropping by her locker every morning for months, she was so overcome with embarrassment she could do little more than stutter a few words. But he had said "See you later" as if they'd had a coherent conversation, and then he'd sat down by her at lunch. Talked to her like they were old friends, friendly and nice and nothing like the brat who'd pointed at her chest in 9th grade and called out, so that every kid in the school could hear him, "Pebbly Debbly". Jerkface Kevin was somehow replaced by nice-guy Kevin, and right before he left school that afternoon, he'd asked for her phone number. Had called her. That night. Talked to her for over an hour, told her things she would never have guessed about him, had told her how great she made him feel. How easy she was to talk to. Had said "See you tomorrow" as if nothing were more special, more important to him than seeing her tomorrow. And not once giving the slightest indication that today was the first time he'd ever treated this way: like a real human being.

Tomorrow was even more delirious than Monday had been, and the week was a blur that ended with him asking her out at lunch on Friday, and he actually showed up, took her to a party at the huge house of one of the cheerleaders, her folks out of town or something. They had held hands, he had taken her hand as they approached the front door, had simply reached over and taken her fingers in his, gently and with a nonchalance that made her blush with happiness. They'd walked through the party, talking to people who were his friends and certainly not hers, but with Kevin holding her hand so sweetly, they knew she was now cool. She knew she wasn't cool, but being with Kevin, who was way beyond cool, made her cool by association. Being treated decently by these people was almost too strange to bear; she was handed a drink, something sweet with an undertaste that was harsh and bitter, and she sipped it with scarcely a nod to her conscience. She hated the tiny whisper Bad girl, bad girl, so she sipped and stood close to Kevin and let the roar of alien emotion drown out every voice.

Mike hated flying, so the confusing thoughts in his head are, at last, a welcome diversion. For the past month, the thoughts had kept him up nights, in thought and in conversation, trying to comprehend what was going on and how it had happened. So far he was at a loss to really understand anything other than he was pretty sure he had fallen in love and that this was possibly, already, the most genuine relationship in his life. How the hell had that happened? If he had any doubt about how overwhelming this was, the simple fact that he was flying into Seattle to meet Debbie erased them.

Debbie. Wow. Debbie Olsen. Of all the people on earth, he and Debbie Olsen had fallen in love and now he was on his way to spend a long weekend with her. With her. They both knew clearly what was going to happen this weekend; they had talked extensively about what they wanted, what they expected, what they hoped for. He had never made arrangements ahead of time for sex, not like this. But then again, he had never dived deep into a relationship via the Internet. Welcome to the new millenium, Mikey. All bets are off.

Had he known that the first email he had received from Debbie would lead to this, would he have responded? Damn straight I would have answered! That was an easy one to answer. Falling in love via email and phone calls might be crazy, might be new wave and terribly en vogue, but falling in love was always a good thing. And in this case, it felt like it might be the best thing he had done in his life.

In the thirty-plus years since he had last seen Debbie — they were unable to fix an actual date when that had been, but quite like about June 1975 — they had both changed dramatically. He remembered a prim, quiet girl, skinny and pretty and, for some reason, always angry with him. She had laughed at that last description; her recollection was that he frightened her! They both agreed they had been clueless about the other back then. They had not been friends; acquaintances through Youth Fellowship and little more. Their own friends had been friends, but the crossover had not brought them together as friends. Mike had had to confess to Debbie that he doubted he had given her a single thought since high school ended.

She, on the other hand, had simply forgotten how to spell his name.

No one takes notice of June 1st. No one speaks of the day; Andy doubts anyone other than he and Rebecca know why the days matters, and they never speak of it to one another. They have five healthy, happy children, five children to love and raise in the Light of the Lord, five blessings for which to praise the Giver of Light, five perfect and sanctified Vessels of Light. Praise Him. June 1st is a day of the Lord's will, a day of testing, a day to know His will and bow in worship. Just like every other day. Of course, Andy never forgets, and he knows Rebecca never forgets, but in the eyes of the Lord, and in the lives of each other, the day is one of silence about what was lost. Just like every other day.

The reunion was only two months away, and Debbie was still trying to locate people. She and Tanya, friends again after long years of estrangement, thought they had remembered everyone that had been part of their group back then. Thirty years was a long gap between one place and the next, but the two women had long memories. They also had photographs, memorobilia and email. As they found one person, they'd seek new information about whoever was still missing. Slowly the list grew until Debbie was confident it was complete and no name was missing. She only wished the same could be said of actual contact information.

She had eight people on her "named-but-missing" list, people for whom she had no phone, no email, not even the city or state they lived in. "Named-but-missing:" that was exactly how Debbie had the list titled in her spreadsheet ("n-b-m" on the worksheet tab). Paul Stram, Penny Davis, Tracy Rupman, Ben Hempstead, Linda Ericson, Stacy Crane, Mike Stuart. Linda and Stacy had married, changed their names, and not left anyone behind who could give Debbie and Tanya a single clue as to where they'd moved. Like Paul, Penny, Tracy, Ben and Mike, they'd simply disappeared. Paul, they were sure, had changed his name, perhaps his identity; he was fleeing a brother who was psychotic but, since his only goal was to kill Paul, the police were unable to keep locked away. So Paul fled. The others were simply invisible. They had gone off to college, the military, jobs "somewhere else," and they had just disappeared. No amount of googling could locate them, and Debbie had done her damnedest. Weekly, she went down the list, entering the names and searching pages of results, convinced that eventually one of them would something, anything, that would float them into view. A job promotion, a traffic violation, publish a blog. Nothing.

Jane had her own page: "Dead." Debbie could not bear to leave her off the list but could not bring herself to describe it further. "Dead" was good enough for a goddamn list. Almost thirty years now, and she still couldn't get over it, still could not accept that it had happened. She tried to think about Jane now and then, but it was not possible. And even though she and Tanya had reconciled, they did not speak to one another about Jane. There was enough in life to catch up on without that, enough pain and surprise and happiness.

She wondered, as she avoided that page of the spreadsheet, if anyone spoke of Jane. If she was more than a horror, an aberation, a mistake, someone lost too soon, too wrong. She was Jane to Debbie and nothing more. She couldn't bear anything more.

Denver, Colorado

The hospital room was dark and cold; it stank as a room will when a body is rotting, dying much too slowly. Sounds: a low hiss of air from the air vent, another hiss of a ventilator, a machine that beeped just like they did on tv, and the indescribable noises of a man's body breaking down for the final time. The man in the bed was the only person in the room; at regular periods, a nurse would enter, perform some prescribed task as rapidly as she could and then leave, praying that the information from the CDC was correct and this disease couldn't kill her if she was just careful enough.

Robert Sean Donohue had been dying for nearly three years, but he had only known this truth since last July. That's when the kid he'd spent the night with had made some comment about weird marks on his back and Bob had no choice but to see Dr Agnew, and Dr Agnew had told him what he had known from the moment that boy — the last one he'd ever made love to — had said, "What's that on your back?"

Fuck enough pretty boys, Bob had said to himself as Dr Agnew pronounced his death sentence, and you'll get it. And he'd gotten it. Had had it for some time, so the kid probably had it, too, and everyone else he'd screwed for the past few years. Bad enough he was going to die, he got to die knowing he'd killed others, too. I might as well have driven my car into a playground full of kids. The gay flu. AIDS. God's vengeance on the queer Sodomites of fallen America.

His last warning.