“Oh God—they did it, the bastards did it!” exclaimed Simon as he leaped from his seat at the head of the conference table.

Bill Macy heard loud and clear even as he read the satanically employed scripture on his laptop. Will had stumbled and toiled through life—doing well by his family and friends, though he could not keep his son from becoming a Green Peace activist nor prevent his wife from institutionalized oblivion once the dementia had taken firm hold. He had come to think of himself as a mere place holder in life, until now, until this very terrible moment.

Will has never considered the RetroGenesis project as anything more than a crackpot idea cooked up in the depraved mind of Danny Burreese to satisfy some obsession with doomsday contingency plans on the part of The Agency. Personally Will had come to resent the fact that the Think Tank had virtually become a subsidiary of a federal agency. He had not bothered to express his opinion to ‘The Three Wise Men’ on the company letterhead. But he had thought all along that working exclusively for such corrupt government entities would bring an eventual state of ethical compromise—and he was, at his Rubicon.

What was he to do?

Bill Macy was in for a surprise. As it turned out, after 62 years on earth he only now realized that he was a man of action, a man that could be counted on in a crisis. When Simon had cast about, lo these three unhappy years ago, for ideas for surviving such an audio plague in the absence of ear protection or audio-filtration countermeasures, Bill had remained silent, but had resolved in his mind’s eye that he would take away the power of such a man made scourge by taking his already failing hearing.

And, to his surprise, he was good for it.

The popping of his right ear drum came like a painful thunderclap and hurt so badly he wondered if he had damaged himself. He reversed grip on the pen, reached around his head, and stabbed into his left ear, at more of an angle, achieving a crackling sound that gave way to a flood of warm liquid rushing into the painfully raging ear canal. When he stood above cowering Aaron and dithering Joseph, he had but one thought as his ears raged—one like a wind tunnel and the other like an overflowing storm drain—Miss Jorgenson must be saved. Of them all she was the only one with demonstrable decency or a shred of innocence.

Simon was marching off to Hell—via the lobby no doubt—and Simon would follow him, only turning off to the right, on the path to Heaven, which wore high heels and a green dress to match her sparkling eyes, and was even now climbing the steps from the parking garage.

As Simon grabbed his briefcase he opened it and shook it out as he walked out of the conference room and past Mrs. Peachtree in a tangle of animal passion with the African security guard. His hand locked onto his headset, which he used primarily to listen to George C. Scott read the Old Testament and Charlton Heston read the New Testament. Will was a devote catholic, except for his contention that Purgatory was earth, and that Man chose his path either to Heaven or Hell.

He thought to himself, Purgatory falls and man no longer has a stage to purge his evils before ascent or, in failing, damnation—we rise or fall on this day! Miss Jorgenson, atheist though you may be, I cannot let you fall to damnation without a choice.

Feeling possessed by a rare strain of heroism, encouraged—though he would scarcely admit it—by an image of Miss Jorgenson’s matchless calves flexing as she reached on tip toe to kiss her earthly savior on the cheek, Bill Macy fairly marched out of the practice a pace behind Simon Durst and turned right, down the short hall to the stairwell access alcove and the water fountain.

Bill Macy found himself pleasantly surprised, that he had risen to the direst of occasions and that his old heart beat strong in his chest, as he imagined rescuing the young lady he had often thought of as the daughter he had never had, but who now hovered like a chimera in his mind’s eye as the best—and most proximate—possible Eve with which a Second Adam might people a new world. For this world, this ephemeral purgatory raised and now felled by Man’s own hand, had, at best, six days before it was nothing more than dust; barely a cautionary echo to haunt those few who remained.