Usually I let my thoughts ripen a bit, as it were, before I write a post. However, I thought I should try to capture this one while it was still fresh.

I am currently sitting in a pleasant little cafe in a pleasant little college town in a pleasant part of California. This is one of those places that is packed full of grad and undergrad students working on papers, professors and TAs grading papers, and self-satisfied business types all rubbing shoulders and jockeying for the good tables. Notebooks, of both the spiral-bound and electronic variety, are everywhere.

I'm just sitting here, innocently working on my contract project. I come here to work probably 3 or 4 days a week, mostly because I can't seem to get any work done without background noise, and there's a much more energetic, convivial atmosphere here than in my largely empty apartment. Plus, $0.50 refills on iced coffee or tea and free wireless internet. Even though it is slower and less reliable, free wireless internet is somehow better than the wireless internet I pay for at home. It's just one of those things.

The place is jumping today, and I am lucky enough to be able to slip into a recently vacated table between two slump-shouldered, bleary-eyed academics. I fire up a few programs, a list of which will serve to indicate my single-minded dedication to the job at hand:

1) Trillian (a combination of ICQ, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo chat programs)
2) Winamp (MP3 player)
3) Firefox (web browser), pointed to Fark.com

My mouse cursor hovers uncertainly over the Macromedia Flash icon, as I wonder whether starting my work day at 11:45am would be a symptom of unrecoverable workaholism.

The decision is soon taken out of my hands.

A cloud passes over the sun, turning a sunny day into crimson twilight. The earth and sky are suddenly split by a clamor of screams, as if the hosts of heaven and hell were being torn limb from limb. In the terrified eyes of the people on the street, one can see reflected the very fires of damnation as a warm, red rain begins to fall.

Now condense the horror of that scene into a few microscopic particles, and stick them in your nose.

That should give you a good idea of what wafted past my face not long ago. This was no mere by-product of a malfunctioning gastrointestinal tract. This was almost solid; a shimmering, iridescent vapor only a couple of volts away from self awareness.

I wondered, through a rapidly narrowing field of vision, at the fact that no-one in my immediate area was reacting to the demonic incarnation rampaging through my sinuses.

Just as points of light were invading my vision and the opening strains of "Agnus Dei" were starting to echo in my ears, I staggered upright and pushed my way out the door to the street. There I stood, hands on knees, gulping sweet lungfuls of blessedly clean air.

After a few minutes, I felt sufficiently composed to cautiously edge back to my table, where I was relieved to discover that my computer hadn't been dissolved by the toxic cloud. Everyone around me was still heads-down, beavering away at their papers or what not. I was amazed.

I was also ashamed. Not at my weakness, but at the realization that in the great Game of Life, I had just lost spectacularly at a round of "You Smelt it, You Dealt it." I am sure every person here will be telling their loved ones about how I dropped a heinous bomb and left the room, abandoning them to their fate.

Bonus point:
I got an aftershock whiff as the woman next to me got up to leave.

Double word score:
It wasn't me, I swear.