Lexicon

next two hundred years.

From: http://nationstates.org/pages/topic-39112000-post-8.html
    Re: broken hill conspiracies???
    what people don’t realise about broken hill is alot of the people didnt die from fumes at all at least not directly. it was the panic when they realised what was happning and couldnt get out my uncle was on the first perimeter team and he said people were killing each other in there

[TWO]
    She sat in a red leather armchair and watched a fish. The fish was in a tall hourglass, with water instead of sand. Every few seconds a drop fell from the top to the bottom with a
plink
she could hear only because the room was a mausoleum. The fish wandered around, ballooning as it approached the curved sides and shrinking away again as it neared the center. It didn’t seem to care that its world was shrinking one drop at a time. Maybe it was used to it. When the water level was low enough, the hourglass must tilt, swing the fish to the bottom, and start refilling one drop at a time. Some kind of art, she assumed. It was installed in the middle of this room with no other function; it had to be. It was making some point about time or rebirth. She didn’t know. She shouldn’t be thinking about the fish anyway. She was in a situation.
    Charlotte had driven her, deposited her in this room, and clack-clacked off into the depths. Charlotte had not spoken during any of this, not one word, even though Emily tried to provoke her. There was a disturbing softness about Charlotte this morning. A kind of sympathy in her silence, which Emily did not like at all.
    She wished Jeremy were here. She wished there was some possibility of this day ending in his room, her telling him about it.
You would not believe this fish hourglass they had
, she’d say. And Jeremy wouldn’t say anything but she would be able to tell he was interested.
    Her time at the school was over. That was what Eliot had said. But no one had made her leave. They’d put her in a different room and in the morning a fresh school uniform was hanging on the door. Then Charlotte, soft and silent. Emily didn’t know how to reconcile all this.
    She was giving serious consideration to running. Many problems, Emily knew, could be solved through running. She was not exactly sure which way led to the street, since she had arrived here via an elevator from the underground garage, but still. It was worth keeping in mind as an option. She stared at the hourglass.
Plink. Plink.
She couldn’t see a tilting mechanism. But it must move soon, because the water level was getting pretty low.
    She heard heels and identified them as Charlotte’s. It was her last chance to flee and she let it pass. Charlotte emerged and crossed the room without looking at her. She opened a door and waited.
    Emily rose. “Are we leaving?” Charlotte did not respond. She looked at Emily and her eyes made Emily feel like she had made a mistake not running. But it was too late for that. She would get out of here one way or another. She always did. “O-kay,” she said, and went through the door.
    Charlotte took her to a stairwell and finally to a door marked ROOF . She opened this and Emily stepped out into sunshine.
    The roof was maybe a hundred yards to a side, with gardens and a pool and a tennis court. Like a floating resort. And she could see other rooftops floating in the sky around her, and they were all the exact same height, because this was Washington. She marveled at this for a moment and the door clacked shut behind her. She turned and Charlotte was gone. “Hmm,” she said.
    She began to explore the gardens. There was a noise like:
schock
. Following this, she came upon a man in light gray pants, no jacket, standing with his back to her, straddling a green mat. His knees were slightly bent. He was holding a golf club. She stood very still, because even from here she could tell it was Yeats, the man Jeremy had promised her she’d never have to speak to, who had shark eyes.
    He swung the club.
Schock
, and a golf ball arced into the air. She watched it, thinking it was going to land on one of those other buildings, but they were farther away than it seemed. The ball fell below the horizon of the low rooftop wall. That would be kind of dangerous by the time it reached ground level, she felt. Kind of like a bullet.
    Yeats turned to her. To her enormous relief, he was wearing sunglasses. He almost looked normal. Or not normal, but like a politician—a congressman or senator,