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The porch door opened, and a teenage girl stepped out onto the dirty farmland. She looked around admiringly. The farmland was littered with widely scattered paper, cans, broken bottles and rotting food. Nearby, the river Caliber oozed by, thick as applesauce, stinky and pink. This was Kansas in 5301, and the girl loved it. Clad in a white blouse and pink shirt, the girl just looked like she was the product of her environment.
Then the door opened again, but this time it was an old man. He was dressed in blue suspenders with no shirt. He was smoking a pipe and had a bucket in his hand.
“Do’thy, daer,” said the man, “I wants ya ta goes out to da co’nfield an’ gets sum corn. Hurry now, ‘cos I’am hungy.” He handed Dorothy the bucket. “Hurry. I’am hungy.”
Dorothy took the bucket and walked carefully to the hydroponic house, where the corn grew by sun, since the ground was no good for growing anything. She sent inside and looked around the house’s bare walls. In the middle hung a dried out plant under the only skylight. It was the corn, withered and useless.
Dorothy walked over to the plant, sat down and began to sing.
Until the last few days
Everything was okay
With the trees blooming green
The land was highly keen
The birds could fly and glide
The sky was open wide
And I could sit in the shade
Under the world that God made.
But
An airplane carrying the junk
From the country all the bunk
Came flying over here from hell
A story that no one can tell.
The plane blew up and went
The junk rain’d on the world bent
Now this world – just look!
All of this from one mean crook
Now this world – just look!
All of this from one mean-
Dorothy’s singing was interrupted by a whistle from above. Something was falling. Dorothy made no preparation to flee, just listen to what was the enemy plane dropping a bomb. The whistle became lower and lower…
Suddenly the building exploded. Dorothy was thrown against the wall, knocked her unconscious.
“Do’thy! Stop plane around and bing me m’corn!”
Dorothy could not listen, because she was traveling to another world…
To be continued…
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