The realization that you’ve wasted months of your life in a pointless exercise can lead to a wide variety of emotional reactions.  Some people are overjoyed; they find it quite liberating to discover that there’s no longer any point in going through the normal routine.  These people, though, are not by any means typical.  A much more common response is to sink into despair, to lament the loss of precious time, to wonder how you can possibly go on when everything you thought made sense suddenly doesn’t.

The old woman opted for a third option.  Her grip tightened.  “No, you don’t think, do you,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper so that the following crescendo could be all the more dramatic.  “You people never do.  Your minds are fixed on one thing: get to the train, get to the train.  Drop your hat?  Leave it behind so you can get to the train.  Spot an old friend walking the other way?  Lower your head so you can get to the train.  Get interrupted by a woman with a simple question who only wants someone to stay and listen for a minute or two?  Ignore her.  Get to the train, get to the train, get to the goddamn train!

“I sit here every day and I watch people go by and you know what I see?  I see a thousand people standing within ten feet of each other, each in her own separate world.  You wear headphones so you don’t have to listen.  You stare at your phones so you don’t have to look.  You cover your mouths and noses—even though it doesn’t smell that bad—so you don’t even have to breathe!  You love your routine so much that you seal off your senses, just in case there might be something out there that could shake things up!  It seems like your sense of touch is the only thing you haven’t figured out how to shut off.  And if physical pain is the only way to get through to you people, then that’s what I’m going to have to use!”

You might find it odd that Peter Hamlin, who had never met a situation he couldn’t argue his way out of, would sit there in silence while this little old lady rained abuse on him.  You could say it was because he was still half-asleep.  You could blame the fact that part of his brain was still operating under the impression that he was being mugged (he certainly hadn’t come up with any more likely theory to take its place).  Really, though, he was simply stunned.  He was learning—as was the woman—that all the prepared speeches in the world are no match for an extemporaneous tirade driven by an overflow of genuine emotion.

“All I’m asking for is a few minutes.  You all think that a few minutes of your time are more precious than anything!  That just a couple minutes’ delay would upset your schedule, throw your ‘harmonious balance’ out of whack, and ruin your day.  A couple minutes!  Do you have any idea how long I’ve been down here?  Two hundred thirty-three days!  You’d better believe my harmonious balance is out of whack!  I’m starting to forget what the outside world sounds like!”

Speaking of the music of the underground, the woman’s voice—despite its phenomenal volume—could not drown out the noise of the train pulling into the station.  Amidst the sea of confusion, dotted with islands of desire to apologize for offenses he had never committed, a beacon shone out in Peter’s mind: get to the train.  It blasted through the clouds of guilt formed by doing exactly what this woman (This crazy woman, the beacon corrected.  This raving lunatic who doesn’t know what she’s saying) was complaining about.  He was still operating under the mugging hypothesis, so rather than giving one last, desperate, pointless tug, he reached down with his other hand and pulled out his wallet.

Still in Action Mode, Peter’s first reaction was to pull.  He pulled hard, hard enough to remind his fevered brain that bones can break, shoulders can be dislocated, and that maybe charging ahead without analyzing the situation wasn’t the best way to get ahead in the long run.  After all, if he had somehow managed to get wedged between a pillar and a garbage can, all the pulling in the world wasn’t going to help.  But when he turned his head, he saw that what was holding him in place was nothing more than a human hand . . . a human hand employing a full-force Greco-Vulcan Death Grip that would have put an industrial vice to shame.

Now in Analysis Mode—but still suffering from lack of sleep and feeling dizzy from jumping down all those stairs—his brain immediately leapt to the conclusion that he was being mugged.  He had thought that this was something that typically happened at night, but then again, what did he know?  Having grown up in the suburbs, he didn’t know much about being mugged, other than that it was “something that happened to other people” and that it was “undesirable.”

He might have been able to accept a morning mugging, but, as his eyes adjusted to the lighting, the identity of the mugger was nothing short of dumbfounding.  She looked like she could use the money, but was this little old lady really capable of such a crime?  Was that really cold determination he saw in her crinkled eyes and her thin mouth, or was it simply a trick of the unpleasant subway station lights?  And how in the hell was she strong enough to have him trapped like that?

The Old Woman of Simon Park Station had not expected this turn of events much more than Peter had.  The morning rush was entering a lull; the last train that could get people downtown by eight o’clock had already departed, and it would be at least fifteen minutes before the nine o’clock crowd started to pour in.  She had been all prepared to settle down for a brief rest when she saw the young man come dashing in, all by himself.  When he started to slow down right next to where she was sitting, she just reacted instinctively.

“Don’t you think . . .”

She stopped.  She had started to ask the question automatically, just as she had approached the man automatically when he passed her pillar.  But what was the point?  No one ever listened.  He was just another guy in a suit, rushing to catch a train.  She had seen tens of thousands of them in the time she had spent in Simon Park Station.  She had really believed that eventually someone would come along, someone who would listen to her little speech, someone who would help.  But the law of averages had failed her.  This strategy wasn’t going to cut it.

“A charging rhino may be felled by even the smallest pebble.”

Were these the words of Aristotle?  Confucius?  Locke?  Or was it just one of those perplexing fortune cookie messages, the kind where you stare blankly at it for a few seconds while you try to figure out if it’s a good fortune or a bad one.  And then you throw it away because it’s not funny when you add “in bed” to the end.

Whatever their origin, these words were not running through Peter Hamlin’s mind in the slightest.  He was focused on one thing only: forward motion.  He was not thinking about tiny pebbles.  He was not even thinking about larger, more boulder-like obstacles, of which there were more than a few between him and his destination.

The first was the stairs.  Despite living on the seventh floor, he decided to skip the elevator, because he was in no mood to stand around doing nothing.  Peter’s apartment complex had been constructed in the early 1970’s and was designed to withstand riots, tornadoes, alien invasions and the like.  The staircase, however, appeared to have been put together in the Dark Ages by a man (or possibly an even less efficient team of men) who had never seen stairs but had heard of them from a foreign guy he talked to in a bar once.  Because everybody took the elevator, management saw no need to update them with modern innovations, such as the ninety-degree angle.

But Peter flew down those stairs.  This description is especially apt because his feet actually spent more time in the air than they did in contact with the steps themselves.  In fact, considering the staircase’s less-than-admirable sturdiness, this may have been the safest method of descent.

The danger, however, did not stop there.  After exiting his building, he still had to cross the street.  He lived in an area that was outside the boundaries of true downtown, but all that meant was that cars could actually move instead of just sitting there waiting for the sun to die.  Rather than go out of his way to make use of the crosswalk, he simply dashed across directly from the building lobby—like all good citizens of Crescenton, he knew the golden rule of pedestrian street safety: “When you jaywalk, at least cars can only come at you from two directions.”  Of course, most people would still recommend that you look both ways first, but he did not have those milliseconds to spare.

Upon entering the station, he had another set of stairs to deal with.  The subway stairs were made of concrete and would probably still be there even if the city was bombed down to the ground, but that did not mean they were safe.  The lighting was poor, and things that were dropped or spilled had a tendency to stay there for weeks or even months.  One wrong step and you could lose a shoe, and then that would be the least of your problems.  The stalwart impenetrability of a concrete staircase is significantly less comforting when you are falling down it.

But he got past that too, again by relying primarily on the always dependable acceleration due to gravity.  Despite having been captain of the golf team—that’s right, the golf team—in high school, Peter was actually a fairly natural athlete; he simply didn’t have the right body type to really excel in a sport like basketball or football.  In a situation like this, however, he could cruise, turning corners with ease, racing past the coffee stands, and soaring over the turnstile as he leapt past (even though the subway was free, all stations still had turnstiles, after the Ohio State Supreme Court had ruled that depriving citizens of the chance to jump over them was “cruel and unusual punishment” in the case Oates v. Laragheny County Transit Authority).

As he got closer to the platform and could see that there was no train there at the moment, he began to relax.  He had done all he could.  Slowing down, he decided that he could finally risk losing a second or two to look at his watch.

Except he couldn’t.  Something was holding on to his arm.

See, if I was the rhino, I wouldn’t be looking out for pebbles.  I would keep my eyes peeled for the crafty, desperate lioness.

You might not think that being late to a meaningless job is anything to be concerned about.  This is probably because you do not know a few key facts about Alexander Abrahamson, Esq.

The first is that Mr. Abrahamson was a morning person.  He had been an early riser for as long as he or his parents could remember—in fact, some believed that he had actually once gotten up before 4 AM on purpose.  He was the first to the office in the morning, which his colleagues often thought meant that he simply loved work.  This was not true.  Mr. Abrahamson loved getting work out of the way; to him there was no better comfort than finishing everything you have to do for the day before the sun has even started to think about setting.

The second is that Mr. Abrahamson, in his role as official supervisor of the summer clerks, was responsible for finding a way to evaluate their performance.  How do you rate the work of those who don’t do any work?  There were many possible options, including interviews, exams, mock trials, and bribes, but all of these involved going down to the 12th floor and spending time with the clerks, time he could be using to get his own work done.  So Mr. Abrahamson chose a method of evaluation that could be gotten out of the way quickly and early in the day: punctuality.  If you were in the office by eight, you were alright in his book.

The third is that Mr. Abrahamson, despite possessing a grandfatherly demeanor, was not someone you wanted to upset.  These days he spent little time in the courtroom, but the other partners loved to tell stories about how he had been the most feared prosecutor in the city in his youth.  Mr. Wachowsky had once told Peter that he was nicknamed “The Floodbringer” because of his ability to reduce witnesses, from widows to lifetime thugs who cracked heads for the mob, to tears in cross-examination.  The combination of alcohol and a very thick accent might have caused Peter to doubt this statement if it hadn’t been immediately—and somewhat fearfully—confirmed by everyone else sitting at the bar.

Peter didn’t have to check his phone for messages to know that his carpool was long gone.  Calling them at this point would be pointless.  Downtown Crescenton was a tangled web of  one-way streets that seemed like they had been designed to confound invaders rather than promote the flow of traffic.  Trying to turn around during the morning rush hour was like trying to reverse the rotation of the Earth by tying one end of a rope to your waist, the other end to a rock, and pulling.  He would have been better off trying to walk, though he would have had to have been an Olympic sprinter to have a chance of getting there by 8:00 on foot.

Fortunately, Peter was not in any mood to sit around and lament his fate.  He was still fired up from giving the Speech.  It was time for action.  Consequences could be considered later.  Looking could be done after the leap.  He was going to do something he had never done before.

He was going to take the subway to work.

Peter dashed back to his bedroom, seized his briefcase—which contained two legal pads, one blank and one full of largely regrettable attempts to compose poetry on the subject of boredom—and was out the door an instant before the digital microwave clock flipped over to 7:49.  His alarm clock, meanwhile, was learning something that has been true since the time of the ancient Greeks: those who try to mess with fate inevitably (and often circuitously) become those who carry out its will.

His friends had all given up on the project, saying that it couldn’t be done, or that it was a waste of time, because even if you did come up with the perfect speech, what the heck would you use it for, anyway?

“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

But Peter kept the dream alive. Every now and then, he would open his desk and pull out the stack of loose-leaf sheets he had been using to record the Speech since he was in high school. He would read it, cutting out a line here or adding one in there. Often he ended up undoing—and sometimes later redoing—changes he had made years earlier. Since he never gave the Speech in public, it was hard to tell what was an improvement and what wasn’t.

“Hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom; and awake your senses, that you may the better judge . . . no, that’s too wordy. Needs more punch . . . how about: The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones . . .”

Even Peter didn’t exactly “believe” in the Speech. He did it because it was good practice. As any good orator knows, it’s all in the delivery. The problem with the Shakespeare-Monkey-Typewriter Theory is that yes, given the random nature of the universe and an unlimited amount of time (and a plentiful supply of replacement monkeys), those thousand primates would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. But they would never be able to perform them. For the same reason, you could have the greatest speech in history in your hands, but if you didn’t know how to say it, you might as well be reading out of the phone book.

“I guess this is just another lost cause . . . All you people don’t know about lost causes . . . He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for, and he fought for them once, for the only reason any man ever fights for them: Because of one plain simple rule: Love thy neighbor.”

As a matter of fact, this was the first time Peter had ever practiced the Speech before sunrise, and he read it at the same volume he always did, or maybe even louder, in his desperation to keep himself awake. Either way, his neighbors couldn’t have been too happy about it.

But that was only because they couldn’t make out the words through the wall. Though it may not have been the greatest in all of history, the Speech that Peter had cobbled together over the years was a damn fine one, and nobody knew how to read it like he did. If his neighbors had been able to hear it properly, they would have been mad, they would have been riled up, they would have been screaming for blood—but not his blood. They would have gone after whoever he pointed at.

“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”

It was so moving, in fact, that even Peter himself tended to get rather carried away when he was practicing it, especially near the end. He forgot himself, forgot what was going on around him, forgot everything except the task of delivering those words to his imaginary audience. He imagined he was up against the wall, trapped, surrounded by enemies on one side and the abyss on the other. But he would never give up.

“We shall go on to the end . . . we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!”

If the Speech had a weakness, however, it was length. He typically added more than he subtracted, and as a result it had grown to be more than three hours long. And once he had gotten a third of the way through, there was no stopping him until he reached the end. Even then he could not be reached by reality for at least of couple of minutes, as the awe of the Speech continued to wash over him.

When Peter regained his senses, he noticed two things. The first was that his neighbors—to the left, to the right, above and below—were pounding on the walls, floor, and ceiling. The second was that the microwave clock, which he just happened to be staring at, read 7:48.

“Uh-oh.”

As he had slept for less than five hours, it took Peter almost a full minute to figure out why it was so dark outside and why the clock on his microwave insisted it was not yet 4 AM. The spoon slowly descended, granting the Triple-Grain Honey Rings a reprieve as they rejoined their brethren in the bowl. Like the golden orb inching its way up past the horizon—something it was currently doing out in the Atlantic Ocean—a thought crept into his brain: “What do I do now?” It seemed more and more likely that the reprieve would become a full pardon.

A depressingly small number of ideas suggested themselves over the next ten minutes. Go back to bed? Tempting, oh so tempting, but impractical. He had already showered, he was already wearing his suit, he had already “made” breakfast—though at the rate he was eating it, he wouldn’t be done until dinner time. Peter didn’t think he could stand going through the painful ritual of waking up twice in one morning. Read a book? Watch a movie? These were simply code phrases for “go to sleep fifteen minutes from now rather than right away.” Catch up on work? He laughed. It was a harsh, gravelly sound. His voice cracked. Not good.

Peter shook his head. If he went back to sleep, then the clock would win. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, but if all that resulted from the early awakening was that he was robbed of half an hour of sleep, then victory was definitely on the side of the vile alarmbringer. Peter didn’t like to lose. He didn’t like being awake a four in the morning, either, but he especially didn’t like to lose. He was going to do something productive. He was going to work on the Speech.

With this thought in mind, he sprang—er, he lurched up out of his chair, put on a pot of coffee, and went to grab his notes. When he returned to the kitchen clutching a hefty stack of papers, he seized the pot and poured it directly into his cereal bowl. Not good.

“. . . because we’re panicking and he’s not. That’s why,” he muttered to himself, staring down at the soggy mess. He took a deep breath and hardened his gaze. “Now, we can get through this thing all right. We’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other!”

He snatched the spoon and shoveled the curious concoction into his mouth. The texture was awful and the taste was worse. But he ate another spoonful before flinging the utensil dramatically into the sink. He didn’t need food. He didn’t need caffeine. He was running on adrenaline now.

“Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives! But you’re gonna let it be the worst!”

The Speech was an idea that Peter and his debate team friends had cooked up back in high school. It was inspired by a dramatic win in the state tournament, a late-night victory party afterward, an unhealthy quantity of IBC Root Beer and a conversation about the theory that a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters could eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare.

“—but he’ll remember, with advantages, what feats he did that day. Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words—”

The concept was simple: by combining lines from the most famous orations of history, literature, and film, one could create a speech so powerful, so moving that it could stir even the laziest, most apathetic slug to rise up.

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields when the age of Men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand!”

The execution, however, was considerably more difficult. The words of the world’s great speakers could not simply be slapped together like letters clipped from various magazines on a ransom note. How to integrate the words of Cicero with those of Mandela? Was it even possible to seamlessly blend the orations of Bismarck and Gandhi? Churchill and Pericles? Bailey and Blutarsky? Despite having nearly the same name, the speeches of Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. blended about as poorly as French Roast and breakfast cereal.

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

Day 233:

A lot of the world’s more fantastic coincidences end up being blamed on the common alarm clock.  You know the story: if the alarm hadn’t failed to go off, then Person X would not have been at Location Y at precisely the right time to meet Person Z or experience Event, uh, Omega.  The idea is that the balance of our lives is so delicate that even the most minor rescheduling can have drastic consequences.  People like to think of their lives in this way, because otherwise they would have to stop wasting time daydreaming and get some actual work done.

One particular alarm clock, however, despised this view.  It had, on several occasions (often after consuming one or two beers), argued that it was a double standard.  How could it be fair to place all the blame on the clock?  “It takes two to tell time!” it would yell, the tipsy alliteration driving its friends to cautiously back away from the conversation.  “One to display, and one to read!”  Yes, the clock is at fault, but the human bears some of the responsibility as well, for accepting what the clock says without question.  How can timepieces be held to standards of perfection greater than those of their makers?  The idea is ludicrous.  And laughable.  And . . . hey, where’d everybody go?

After growing tired of trying to express his point with words (and of always having to take a cab home alone at the end of the party), the alarm clock decided to try a demonstration.  It would go off not one minute early, not ten minutes early, but several hours early.  The world would still be dark.  No other humans would be awake.  If the human realized the error and went back to bed, then it would definitively prove the Dual Burden of Temporal Responsibility Theory.  And if he didn’t, well, then he was just a hopeless idiot.

The other explanation as to why the alarm clock went off at 3:44 AM on that Friday morning is that Peter Hamlin—who happened to own this particular clock—simply screwed up when he set it the night before.  As a matter of fact, that makes a lot more sense.  That first explanation was downright silly, don’t you think?

Then again, you have to wonder: why would he be resetting the alarm at all for a morning that, at least up until the previous night, was not supposed to be significantly different from any other?

What Peter’s clock failed to realize is that humans thrive on routine.  Sure, there are a few eccentrics who live life without a schedule, but there are also clocks without numbers.  You know, those analog ones that only have hands, where you just have to guess what time it is?  It takes all kinds to make a world.

Anyway, the point is that regularity defines most people’s lives, and any irregularities can upset them with ease.  Humans are given cues and respond as they have been trained to.  Show a Days of Our Lives actor the teleprompter from Star Trek and he’ll read it, no matter how inappropriate the lines may be (actually, the effect may be an improvement).  Alarms are just another cue: they go off, we complain, we get up.  That’s the way it goes.  We are Pavlov’s dogs, except we never got a treat in the first place; we’re simply salivating for work.  Pavlov’s dogs got a sweet gig.

A scholar of logic, like the alarm clock, might reason that a person woken earlier than necessary would simply go back to sleep.  Anyone familiar with the human condition would not be at all surprised to learn that as soon as the alarm rang Peter bolted into the shower, or that thirteen-and-a-half minutes later he was sitting at the table with a spoonful of cereal in his hand, looking out the window and thinking, “What the hell?”

Sadly, not all cues have a programmed response.

Day 232:

Interviews complete. No conductor has ever seen suspect on a train. No LCTA personnel have ever sighted suspect in another station. Does suspect never leave Simon Park? How long has she been there? How does she survive?

Investigate: theft.

Further incidence of citizen-initiated contact. Should citizens be warned? If no one comes near, evidence of suspect’s wrongdoing will be difficult to find. Other lines of inquiry proving unfruitful. Must continue to rely on public’s unwitting cooperation for sake of justice.

Record of contact follows:

Asian-American male, late teens, walks rapidly away from suspect after standard rejection interaction. In three days of close observation, have seen 137 rejections. Where does suspect find will to persist despite repeated failure? (Officer Tang’s keen eye was considered matchless by the other officers of the Crescenton Police Department, but since she never used it while she was looking in the mirror, she was not able to detect that, perhaps, she and the woman in Simon Park Station had one thing in common.)

Investigate: drugs.

African-American female, late 30’s, approaches suspect. Female seems to have been listening to previous conversation. She squats near suspect, easily within attack range (Gun out of holster, safety off, cocked).

Female: “Excuse me. I’m a telemarketer, and I just wanted to let you know that I feel your pain. No one listens anymore. All I’m doing is offering them something. I understand that not everyone wants to buy what I’m selling, but the least they can do is find out what it is. Most people just hang up after, ‘Would you be interested in—’ . . . so, in my head, I usually end it with, ‘—purchasing a solid gold house for the low, low price of $1.99?’”

Investigate: real estate fraud.

Suspect, at first perplexed, scowls out of agreement (?) or general villainy (!) “Don’t I know it! Everyone just loves to think that they’re too busy to deal with me, as if their time was so valuable that simply paying attention to me for thirty seconds would be some kind of colossal loss. A lot of these jerks say, ‘Sorry, not interested,’ and then they go over there and stare at the wall for five minutes while they’re waiting for the damn train to come!”

Female appears close to tears (effect of a chemical weapon?) “I-it’s just so dehumanizing . . .”

Suspect in similar state (weapon misfire?) “Sometimes . . . I feel like I can’t go on . . .”

Suspect and female burst into obnoxiously loud wailing, hug. Subway passengers regard pair warily, give wide berth. Crying persists for several minutes.

Female: “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to be interested in buying a subscription to—”

Suspect: “No way. But, don’t you feel that there’s something missing from—”

Female: “Nothing I’d expect to find in a subway station.”

Suspect and Female release, regard each other fondly. Female: “Sorry about that.”

Suspect: “I know. Just had to get it out of the way.”

Investigate: public indecency?

Empathy was not Officer Tang’s strong suit, in much the same way as elephants are not known for their delicacy, but she had some skill at reading suspects. She hadn’t the foggiest clue as to their motives, but she could generally tell when they were about to run, pull a gun, etc. The vibe she was getting from the subway woman was loud and clear: she was nearing the breaking point.

Day 231:

After long stakeout, have concluded that suspect does nothing before commuters arrive in morning. Sleeping? Possibly. Thinking? Plotting? Likely.

Consult department psychologist for profile. What could she be planning?

Beginning study of how suspect chooses targets. Possible factors:
1. perceived vulnerability
2. receptiveness to her aims
3. walking speed

After extensive observation, have concluded that factors, with possible exception of #3, are irrelevant. Sampling appears to be random.

On occasion, citizens approach her instead. Following dialogue recorded for later analysis/submission as evidence:

White male, age 7-9, walks up to suspect. “Are you a princess?”

Suspect responds slowly. “What?”

White male: “I think you’re a witch, but my sister says you’re a princess.” Male looks back. White female, age 4-6, can be seen hiding ineffectively behind nearby pillar.

Suspect sighs (regretting the past? Or the atrocities she is about to commit? Gun out of holster, safety off, cocked). “I am not a princess.”

Male turns around, grinning. “I told you she was a witch!”

Female leaves hiding place, runs furiously up to male. “Nuh-uh! Nuh-uh! She has to be a princess, because, because Mr. Bear said so!”

Male: “Mr. Bear’s just a dumb stuffed animal.”

Female: “No he’s not! You’re dumb!”

Male: “Shut up!”

Male strikes female in arm. Female begins wailing piercingly. White male, early 30’s, approaches rapidly. “What did you do?”

After brief silence, suspect realizes question is directed at her. “I didn’t do anything.”

Young male: “She’s a witch, Dad! A real-life witch!” Wailing increases in volume.

Adult male picks up female, seizes young male’s hand. “You just stay the hell away from my kids, or I’m calling the cops!” Walks away quickly, looking concerned, perhaps frightened.

Investigate: child abuse. Will parents press charges? (unfortunately, having witnessed entire scene, cannot in good conscience accept father’s version of events as true. Remember: vigilance always has a price).

Day 230:

Despite legal obstacles, Officer Tang did not relent.  It is said that the early bird gets the worm, but the persistent bird learns the worm’s entire life, comes to know it inside and out (not that the inside and the outside of a worm are all that different).  In the end, the worm all but catches itself.  Of course, it is also said that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, but Officer Tang was not after flies.  She wanted that worm.

The woman’s situation had changed over the past few weeks.  As with all celebrities of her type, she was a flash in the pan, and her fame had been destined not to last from the instant the first wannabe journalist had mentioned her in his blog.  Besides, it was summer now, and people had lost interest in indoor attractions.  If she had been the Old Woman of Morrison Park she might have stood a chance, but she was in a subway station, where the air would only turn fouler as June became July became August.

Officer Tang hoped that her disappearance from the public eye would lead the woman to slip up, so she observed her at every possible opportunity.  She took very detailed notes.

Suspect continues to approach passersby with odd questions. (In her notebook she always referred to the woman as “suspect,” even though she had no idea what she suspected her of.  As soon as she figured that out, there would be no more need for the notebook.)  Can this be construed as a form of harassment?  Negative.  Those who want to leave can do so freely; those who want to listen stay.

Investigate: conspiracy.  Does she ever talk to same person on multiple occasions?  Need more observers.

Citizen approaches.  Suspect begins usual speech.  Citizen reaches into pocket, tosses handful of change in suspect’s face.  Does not stop, speak, or look at her.  Suspects sits quietly, does not pick up coins, looks dazed.

Investigate: money laundering.