X
A Day in the Life

“Good morning, and a happy January 1st to you,” Mike said cheerfully, as he rearranged the flamingos.  

Mags nodded.

“Hey, have you seen Harmony yet today?” he inquired.

“Nah, man.  I think she’s still in a ‘dream state’”

“You mean sleeping?”

“Yeah,” laughed Mags.  “Lance got up early though.  I think he’s in the air already.”

Lance was a key player in the kids’ momentous task of diffusing the remaining bombs buried out in the endless desert.  As a pilot, he could easily see from the air the darkened circles of earth and then drop little flags on them to indicate their whereabouts to the ground team.

“You know,” said Mike, as he feng shui’d a pink flamingo, "I started a new program today and I tried to date it 1980-something.  It still feels weird.”

Mags just shrugged.  “Well, I dunno.  I never have to write the date on anything, so I don’t know.”

“Maybe we’ll finish all the bombs this decade.”

“Not likely.”

Just then, Seth came out of the front doors of The Egg.  He looked exhausted.

“That,” he said bluntly, “was fuckin’ brutal.”  Seth’s mother too had survived the blast, and now spent her days gurgling and staring at nothing.  It is hard enough to get started in the morning without having to wipe the drool off your mama’s chin.  

Seth sighed and slouched against a plastic coconut tree.  He was wearing all black, as if he were trying to pull the shade towards himself.

“Nice outfit,” Mike commented.

Seth gave him a one-armed shrug, raising his hand in a half-wave, and said, “Dude, what the hell?”

Mike looked down at his own clothing and straightened his shirt out.  “Oh, you like?”
He was wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt; a print of little sandy islands (each with a technicolour palm tree) on a background of vibrant blue. His shorts were the same pattern, but in neutral, muted tones.

Before anyone else could comment, Harmony drifted out to join them.  She breathed the desert air deeply and took in the sunshine.

“I had a vision last night,” she said.  Mags rolled her eyes.  

“I dreamed that I was staring at the letter X,” Harmony said airily.  “Just X.  All night.”

“Yeah, mm-hm, that’s interesting, Harmony,” Mags said brusquely.  “So, I think Lance has gotten enough of a head start that we can head out to the field and start discharging those bombs now.”

Mike nodded and picked up the device they used for it.  It looked a little like an oversized version of the cookie-cutter gardening tool used to dig out even spaces for flowers, only with a few computerized gadgets on the handle.

“I don’t like all this technological stuff,” said Harmony, tossing her hair.  “People should just let stuff happen naturally.”

“I don’t want these nuclear bombs by our home to corrode away naturally, Harmony,” said Mags.

“Yeah,” said Seth.  “It’s a little late to go that route.”

Harmony sighed.  “So, explain how that thing works again?”

Mike scratched his head.  “It’s…kind of complicated, actually.  Basically, this thing fires particles into the bomb's inner casing, to trigger it, but slowly. You kinda have to set it off without setting it off.  It’s inducing fisson at subcritical mass.”

“Careless lazy neutrons that they are,” added Mags.

“So, there’s a way to make it act like it exploded,” Mike continued, “but skipping the explosion, so it’s like what we’re left with at the nuclear power station.”

“As if there’s not enough of that, too,” commented Seth.