Lady or the tiger, I almost say. Are we joining the bugout UN or are we going to be vapourised? I surprise myself and reach down and switch off my comm and throw a nickle on the table to cover the pitchers and tip, and walk away before I hear the answer. The honking horns tell me what it is. Louder than the when the Jays won the pennant. Bicycle bells, air-horns, car-horns, whistles. Everybody's smiling. My comm chimes. I scan it. Dad and Mum are home. # They rebuild the Process centres like a bad apology, the governments of the world suddenly very, very interested in finding the arsonists who were vengeful heroes at Xmastime. I smashed my comm after the sixth page from Dad and Mum. Sometimes, I see Linus grinning from the newsscreens on Spadina, and once I caught sickening audio of him, the harrowing story of how he had valiantly rescued dozens of Process-heads and escaped to the subway tunnels, hiding out from the torch-bearing mobs. He actually said it, "torch-bearing mobs," in the same goofy lisp. Whenever Dad and Mum appear on a screen, I disappear. I've got over fifteen dollars left. My room costs me a penny a night, and for a foam coffin, it's okay. # Someone stuck a paper flyer under my coffin's door this morning. That's unusual -- who thinks that the people in the coffins are a sexy demographic? My very own father is giving a free lecture on Lasting Happiness and the Galactic Federation, at Raptor Stadium, tomorrow night. I make a mental note to be elsewhere. Of course, it's not important where I am, the fricken thing is simulcast to every dingy, darky corner of the world. Pops, after all, has been given a Governor General's award, a Nobel Prize, and a UN Medal of Bravery. I pinball between bars, looking for somewhere outside of the coffin without the Tyrant's oration. Someone's converted what was left of Roy Thompson hall into a big booming dance club, the kind of place with strobe lights and nekkid dancers. It's been so long since I was at a bar. Last summer. When they first ascended to the mothaship. I feel like an intruder, though I notice about a million half-familiar faces among the dancers, people who I met or shook hands with or drank with or fought with, some time in another life. And then I see Daisy Duke. Six months have been enough for her to grow her hair out a little and do something to it that makes it look *expensive*. She's wearing a catsuit and a bolero jacket, and looks sexy and kind of scary. She's at one of the ridiculously small tables, drinking and sparkling at a man in a silver vest and some kind of skirt that looks like the kind of thing I laugh at until I catch myself trying one on We make eye-contact. I smile and start to stand. I even point at my knee and grin. Her date says something, and I see, behind the twinkle, a total lack of recognition. She turns to him and I see myself in the mirror behind her.