You are too old to go out and trick or treat, say Papa Wracks.  Now that you are in college why don’t you man the fort and hand out candy instead. 

That is a good idea, says Wracks.  I can read my textbooks, watch TV, maintain the special effects and hand out candy all at the same time. 

The kids start to come around dusk and then the flow peters out around nine o’clock, says Papa Wracks.  Your mother buys a lot of candy to give the kids so help yourself while you wait.

The special effects at Wracks house this year include pumpkins, lights and a boiling cauldron with Fog.  A plug-in device when set in water bubbles and makes fog that slowly oozes out the cauldron.  The luminous light inside attached to the device flickers with different colors and gives the bubbling cauldron an eerie and magical look. The carved pumpkins sit outside on the doorstep with candles lit inside.  The flames flicker diabolically when the wind wafts past the grinning mouths and mischievous eyes cut into the orange jack o Lanterns. On the window sill inside sits an electric pumpkin of plastic that emanates different colors with time out of a toothy mouth and slant-cut eyes.  Orange lights blink hanging from the rain gutters outside near the entrance and as night begins the entrance to the Wracks house becomes an aperture to the spooky and occult that waits inside.  Tonight the breeze blows minimally and the candles glow and wane with an ominous look.   The large harvest moon looms luminously high in the night sky and the immense glow gives the earth a semi-lighted appearance, light enough so that an observer can discern moving clouds seething in the darkness above.   Already the trick-or-treaters start to move in the neighbor hood.  Families from less opulent neighborhoods an hour away drive in and bring their children to trick or treat here because of safety issues in a crime infested neighborhood.  The smell of the ocean seems distant but arrives succinctly as the clouds move scurrilously across the night sky.  The stars twinkle and loom distantly behind the clouds projecting a three dimensional theatre in a sky illuminated by a huge yellow moon set in October on Halloween in the twentieth century.

The door chime rings.  A wrack opens the door.  Outside a little princess with her proud father and mother smile as the child shouts out, Trick or Treat.  Wracks hold the large bowl in front of her and she peruses the candy and chooses a handful of her favorite confections.  Mother Wracks buys expensive candy with coupons and the result means Milky Way bars, three musketeer bars, snickers, and butter fingers and more.  The pretty little princes says thank you and the family moves on and the door closes.  Next the bell rings again and this time a group of teenagers dressed as indigents appear at the front door.  Two girls in rags with dark make up and two gentlemen in bowler hats, cut gloves and linen shirts shout, Trick or Treat and Wracks brings the bowl and lets the hungry kids grab a handful each.  Their eyes gleam with delight at the candies and they turn and run away to the next house.  About fifteen minutes later the bell rings again and this time a bunch of hoodlums presents at the front door. All have masks on like raccoons and have obscured their faces with rouge, giving a rough and haggard look.   They wear old clothes and sport hats of different character.  For candy bags they all carry potato sacks with draw strings as petty thieves do when they enter a house and liberate away personal goods with some resale value on the black market.  Each criminal has a can of shaving cream on their belt to enforce the possibility of retaliation for a lack of commensurate trade.  The wrack holds out the bowl and they each greedily grab a handful of candy bars.  They then turn and quickly evaporate into the night.  Approximately every ten minutes a group of trick or teeters walk up the steps to the front door.  The candy bowl looks low so Wracks opens another bag of candy bars and pour them into the mix.  The night moves on, the door bell rings and Halloween celebrator fills their door with costumes and frivolity.  Mainly  young children trick or treat with their parents as chaperons and the costumes range from royal figures to puppies and tiger costumes to devils and monsters, depending on the age of the children.  Teen agers appear sporadically in rushes to obtain the most candy they can hold in their market bags and savor the next day.  A wrack sits in Grandfather’s old chair, watches Halloween sitcoms, glances at his textbooks and slowly adds to the pile of candy wrappers stolen from the main bowl. 

Around nine o’clock the frequency of guests starts to diminish.  Revelers start knocking at the rate of one every fifteen minutes.  After nine o’clock, Wracks hears the bell ring repeatedly and fists knock on the large oak door that frames the entrance to the Wracks house.  A wrack opens the door, swings it back and beholds a motley assortment of celebrators that appear in front of him.   These tweeters stand out due to the difference in their costumes and to the degree of elaboration in the theme of Halloween.  The first crew is dressed like a skeleton, a specter of death.  This tall skeleton steps forward and holds out a large black plastic trash bag.  A wrack presents the bowl and death scoops a large handful of candy into the sack.   The second reveler dresses like the devil.  A red skin-tight leotard costume with a tail behind, a black goatee and accompanying mustache, with two prominent curved horns on his head, steps forward with a large black purse.  Wracks holds out the bowl and the diabolical figure take a few select candy bars. Next, a pretty tall woman with bracelets, jewelry, and a black low-cut evening town steps forward.  She has white makeup on and a large French handbag which she holds out open.  The wrack takes two handfuls of candy and drops them inside the purse.  She smiles and two large vampire fangs spring out of her mouth and she laughs cunningly and then retreats.  Finally, a small ghost holding a small pumpkin steps forward.  The ghost wears a white sheet with holes cut for eyes and a thick manila rope holding the sheet around his or her waist.  The ghost has a brown paper bag with handles, like that obtained from liquor store, and then sets the pumpkin down on the ground and pulls a small J frame smith and Wesson revolver in 38 special from the bag.  The replica looks amazingly like a real police man undercover firearm issued by the LAPD.  Trick or treat the ghost whispers as he holds the toy gun up to Wracks head.   The wrack says, treats, and pours half the bowl into the brown liquor bag.  The ghost drops the gun back into the bag, picks up his pumpkin and says, Happy Halloween.  The gang turns away.  The wrack closes the large wooden door.  Only one or two revelers showed up for candy later that night.  At approximately ten thirty Wracks opens the door, steps outside and extinguishes the candles in the pumpkins and unplugs the fog maker in the cauldron.  The night cools off; the moon diminishes in size, and sets in the Northeast.  The wind whispers slowly and the wispy clouds linger somewhat and Halloween ends at the Wrack’s house.  Wracks steps inside grabs another piece of candy, slams the bar in his mouth and chews.  He then walks to the brown bathroom, brushes his teeth, and moves to the second bedroom that he shares with the Fonz.  The Fonz is not home and lives in a VW camper van on campus somewhere near the Beta House. A wrack takes off his shoes, removes his pants, and slips inside the covers on the bed.  The setting moon indirectly cast light through the shades into the bedroom and Wracks falls deeply into a slumber as is his habit of living.  Wracks will be on the 7 thirty RTD tomorrow on his way to school and he survives another Halloween in Tranquil Hills. 

Mom and Dad, I am going out with the boys tonight on Halloween.  There is supposed to be a rumble downtown like last year.  The boys fight against the Cops 10-31 in the Hills and radical tonight.

The police are going to arrest you again and then you will spend the night in jail without any candy, says Mom. 

Why don’t you dress up and torment the neighbors like you did last year?  Ride your mini-bike on everyone’s lawn and burn in ruts, says Papa Wracks.  Or heave water balloons at delivery trucks like you and Nate did last year. 

How did you get in here Cool, asks Wracks?   The doors are locked.  

Your dog let me flip the latch through his doggy door.   We are good friends, smiles Kool. Can I smoke inside?

Cool, do your parents know you smoke cigarettes, asks Papa Wracks. 

It is part of my religion to smoke cigarettes, says Kool. We are Serbian orthodox.

Neither your father or mother smoke cigarettes, says Papa Wracks

They do other things, says Kool, other things.  I forgot my matches, can I use your lighter.

Go ahead, says Papa Wracks and he walks over to his chair, sits down and light up a cigarette also.

Where is Koest, asks Wracks.

He is going to meet us at the bottom of his hill and then we are going to assault the city. Let’s go.

Tonight the night is warm and breezy.  The Santa Anna winds whip up the brown leaves and dust in an Indian summer before the winter sets in.  The moon and the stars glimmer across the black sky and the warmth feels like freedom before the storm inundates forever.  The street lights showcase the hills of tranquil hills and they undulate up and down as the road turns in a serpentine fashion into town. At the bottom of Casa de Azul, Koest waits with his back pack and gang costume.  In tranquil hills, the typical gangster costume exemplifies as cut off blue jeans, adidas sneakers, a tee shirt knotted at the arms and a baseball cap.  In the hood, like in tranquil hills the most easily obtained weapons work the best.   A short knife and baby baseball back when used effectively can then be tossed into the nearest trashcan or into the ocean.  However, the idle rich of Tranquil Hills acquire weapons much more costly, lethal and effective. The landed gentry prefer suppressed rim fire rifles with a scope to exert control and the upper hand over the masses. The key to not getting shot is to not venture to secluded areas and to always keep moving.  Running up Tranquil Hills High school hill and entering the town bordered by the funfair market and bicycle shop. 

On to Milton’s parking lot, says Kool.  Have your shaving cream and rotten eggs ready. 

I have my tear gas if they get uppity, says Wracks, Walbe sold it to me. 

In Milty, s parking lot, the juveniles have accumulated.  From the depths of the crowd an occasional rotten egg splats on the pavement or catches an unsuspecting participant in the face.  Koest pulls a rotten egg out of his knapsack, heaves it and it catches an adult on the side of the face.   The larger man turns into a saturnine figure and runs through the crowd trying to find out who threw the egg.  A Halloween festival churns on at tranquil parks tennis courts and the ruckus at Milty’s draw. The kids draw lines and rotten fruit from the back of the supermarket begins to sail through the air and hit unsuspecting people above the waist.  Rogues run out through the lines and squirt shaving cream from Cranks or Gillette foamy in a stream that reaches ten feet long.  Just as things start to escalate and get fun, three Police cars with riot officers in helmets and shields with long batons roar into the parking lot and form a line between the two opposing participants in the battle of tranquil hills 10/31.  The police get out of their cars and clash their batons against their shields.  An Officer with a megaphone leans out of the center car and states.  “Everyone has fifteen minutes to disperse or we will arrest offenders and take them downtown.”   With that a rotten eggs, his helmeted offer straight in the face and a huge rotten tomato hits the megaphone and hangs off its end.  The police start to charge the crowd

Let’s bail, says Kool, they are getting rough.

I nailed them, says Koest, I nailed them good. 

Here they come, says Wracks, run for your life.

The three exit quicker than they arrived and rest at the cul-de-sac at the bottom of way of Peace Street.  Kool pulls out a smoke and lights up.  Koest pulls out a smoke and lights up too.  A wrack is not addicted to nicotine yet and does have any.  He finds five pieces of gum from his knapsack, takes off the wrappers, slams the wad into his mouth and starts chewing. 

Let’s take the back way home; says Kool, I want to check out Kneemo. 

Not many street lights line those streets, says Koest, it will be rough going.

Lets stop at some houses and get some candy, says wracks, I am hungry.

Down and around the High school bordering the football field the road turns in a snake-like fashion and escalates up a hill steeply to the enclave that borders the high school framed on all four sides by streets that angle steeply downward then at the bottom turn up sharply again.   As the four enter the colony, a whizzing sound appears in the air and lemons begin to rain upon the three.

Run says Koest, we have been ambushed

The lemons come from everywhere and each one of the three gets hit with a hard lemon. 

A gang of young players appear out from the shadows with apple bags on their sides filled with lemons. 

Peepers, who has red hair is the first to speak

Any aggression and we will pelt you with hard lemons. says the red-haired teenager.

We give up, says Kool, where is Kneemo and Mondo?

They are at a Halloween party and we are holding their turf for them, says peepers

Can I have a couple lemons, asks Wracks.

Sure, we have a truckload of them, help yourself, says Peepers

A wrack grabs four lemons and puts them in his backpack for ammunition.  Happy Halloween the two groups say to each other and the three make their departure down the hill and up the hill again.  At blue Houses Street, Koste says goodbye and starts walking home up the hill.  At the next Hill, Kool states he is taking the round way home so he can visit a friend before going home.  Wracks walks along alone to home at about eleven o’clock on Halloween.  Most law abiding citizens sleep soundly and the porch lights shut down and the hills become dark, illuminated by the moon and shattered stars scintillating slowly.  The street looks dark; the way seems long and the moon light consoles Wracks who walks rapidly so he cannot be targeted by the elite.  Trotting by the convenience market on the street without lights Wracks moves as fast as he can without running.  Turn right on Bacon way, to the crossroads and then the grey gate on the south side of the house and enter through the back door. Wracks father sits in the chair smoking a cigarette, watching TV and the candy bowl still broods full.  A wrack grabs a handful and heads to his room. 

How was your Halloween, asks Papa Wracks

The police broke it up before it could happen, says Wracks

Crowd and riot scenarios can get vicious, says Papa Wracks, vicious.

Wracks falls asleep before consciousness can overtake him and Halloween is now history and memory. The moonlight shines through the bedroom window and the stars kiss young wracks goodnight. 

Lets go trick or treating tonight Kool, Wracks drawls, It s Halloween

Yeah, I have Cranks shaving cream and a carton of rotten eggs, promises Kool.

Wallbe sold me some tear gas, says Wracks, I can’t wait to try it.  We need some pretty young girls to terrorize on alls Hallow eve.

We can live on candy, says Wracks and Nate can come along.

See you at dark, screams kool, I have cherry bombs. 

Kool runs away screaming “Cherry bombs”, and he disappears up Mellowman street. 

Wracks, I don’t want the police to call me from jail like the day you and Timey were hunting deer down in the Canyon with Bows and Arrows, says Papa Wracks. 

I promise I won’t do anything radical except have a good time, says Wracks

Be home before curfew or they will run you in, says Papa Wracks.

Tonight, Cool, Wracks and Nate will ascend Bacon way and try to draw out the opposition.  Bacon way winds uphill, the incline increasing until Bacon way becomes Disenchanted Drive and Way of the Saint Inez.  Almost all the homes on Bacon way celebrate Halloween.   Some carve spooky pumpkins and set them out front with candles blowing eerily in the night breeze.  Others display lights and banners or play scary sounds through intercoms and hidden speakers.   Others just leave a huge bowl of candy out front under a light and next to a lighted jack o lantern because they are somewhere attending a Halloween party.   Kool , Wracks and Nate walk up to houses and level their shaving cream at the door of the celebrants.    When the door opens they yell “trick or treat,” level their weapons and pull their bandito masks over their faces.   The usual reply becomes a bowl of candy and the three scoop handfuls of the prizes and transfer the goods to their backpacks.   A little child dressed like an Indian walks by and Kool throws a lit cherry bomb inside his full bag of candy.   The bomb explodes with a loud wham and candy flies like shrapnel everywhere, and the little kid sits down and starts to cry.  The child’s parent starts to chase Kool but Kool outdistances the adult and hides in a bush. 

What is his name demands the distraught adult with a crying child dressed like an Indian.

His name is Barney and he lives on Mellowman’s says Nate.   Five houses up.  

You will all pay for what just happened, promises the adult.   

About half an hour later, Wracks finds Kool talking to one of the Neighborhood girls who is dressed like a Cat with a long black tail and tight leotards and a cat mask. They both smoke cigarettes and turn to look over wracks and Nate who are now nearing the top of the hill.  

Hello, I am Wracks, Happy Halloween.

The pretty little cat bats her eyelashes at him and then blinks.  

Kool, why did you blow up the kid’s bag of candy, asks Wracks

The devil made me do it says Kool.    Besides, I do not like his Dad.   

He says he is going to call the Police, says Wracks.

They cannot prove a thing, says Cool, not a thing. 

Let’s head over on Disenchanted, command Wracks. 

The three cross the street from upper Bacon and start on Disenchanted Drive.   The first house on the hill has lights on and looks open except that the owner has a huge dish of candy with a sign of “Eat at your own risk.”  The three youngsters dressed as hoodlums take handfuls of candy from the bowl and then Kool takes the bowl and empties the entire contents into his backpack.  

Yeah, says Kool.   Happy Halloween.

The house across the street situates on an alcove and lush foliage shroud the entirety of the house. Only a small entrance niche and a long living room window show the main extent of the house.  The three gangsters knock on the front door where a small iron pumpkin with a candle within flickers in an odious and ominous way.   The door slowly opens and a woman with curly hair in an evening gown greets them.  She holds a small dish with candy in front of the three and says, “Take one only.”  Wracks takes one, Nate takes two, and Kool scoops a handful off the tray.  The curly-haired woman smiles and withdraws.  Behind her sitting in the shadows is a man with a goatee and dark black beard, dressed in a suit with a black hat and black boots, almost like he was to attend a party, on a large chair that looks almost like a throne.  The shadows shroud the man’s features but his hands are long, almost feminine, with nails shaped like claws.   The door closes and the three walk off.

Nate says, that man in the chair looks just like the devil.  I can’t believe it.  What a radical costume.  I bet he wins first prize at a party.

A wrack says that man looked really evil.   His hair was black, he had claws and he dresses in a business suit on Halloween.  He must be really rich to afford a makeup artist like that.  I was ready to run in case he lunged at us and tried to grab our throats. 

Cool’s eyes turn up in his head and he screams out, “twisted,”   twisted on Halloween.   He then masticates a tootsie roll up into a wad in his mouth and spits the soft food on Nate.   Nate in disgust wipes off the sticky mess with a paper towel and glares at Cool.   “Don’t you ever make a fool of me again?”

Up a way on Disenchanted live the Pickle family and the Van horror.   The pickles live like active sociopaths and ride motorcycles out in the desert with Wracks brother.  The vans Horrors have motocross bikes too and the youngest van horror daughter has a beautiful face, nice figure and fine brown hair almost like angel vellum.  However, the van Horror beautiful woman was the subject of a supernatural horror film and no one dates her.   Wracks cannot figure out why? She looks unbelievably attractive.  Maybe if he had an income he would be able to date her although no one else does.  She looks at him and waves on this Halloween and Dike Pickle heaves a spoiled tomato and beans Wracks square on the chest.  With that initial sighting round, a hail of tomatoes, lemons and rotten eggs rain upon the three from behind the gate at the front of the house.

Retreat says Wraks, we are outnumbered.  The three turn about face and run down disenchanted Drive and then flip off their victorious adversaries from a safe distance.  In the distance Wracks sees three people with a huge slingshot muster a large water balloon.  The loader pulls back on the elastic cords holding the sling to the shot and then let’s fly.  A water balloon arcs towards the three from about one hundred yards away. 

Take Cover yells Nate.  They have artillery.  A large water balloon filled with house paint impacts and explodes ten feet away.   The three turn about face and run for their lives.  They have lost the battle of disenchanted drive and have been driven away.  Back down on Bacon way the three hunts for another gang upon which to take their revenge.   The only adversaries to be found are three pretty young girls dressed as nymphs in skin tight leotards with makeup and wigs.  Cool proceeds to inundate each of them with shaving cream and then toss firecrackers at them. A wrack sprays one of the girls who jumps away giggling.   The loud explosions of the firecrackers drive the pretty young girls away running.  Within ten minutes an adult in blue jeans runs at the three. Cool sees him first and leaps away into the bushes.  The man is Nate’s next store neighbor and he applies a headlock on Wracks and leads him away. 

Why are you attacking my daughter girlfriends he asks Wracks.

Because it is Halloween and everyone has to play pranks. Says Wracks

Where your shaving is cream, asks the man.

I must have dropped it when you put a headlock on me, explains Wracks. 

I am going to call the police and complain, says the man. Now be on your way

Go ahead says Wracks, I haven’t done anything illegal. 

Down the street, the two other cronies wait for Wracks. What happened, they asked.  An adult attacked me then let me go, says wracks.  They were looking for your Cool, but they got me instead.  Kool smiles and shoves another piece of candy in his mouth.  On Wracks watch he sees that the time is about ten thirty P.M. Cool says, I have to be home for curfew.  So do I, says Nate.  The three then shake hands and split up.  Nate walks back up Bacon way to his house.  Kool runs up Mellowman’s and disappears into his driveway and Wracks enters his house from the front.  His mother lets him in the front door and Wracks spies a snickers candy bar treat, grabs the candy, tears open the wrapper and throws it into his mouth. 

Happy Halloween, says Wracks and he exits to his bedroom where his brother lies asleep already, wrapped up like a mummy and snoring.  Wracks takes off his shoes, his pants and his shirt and slides into the small bunk bed on the wall opposite the Fonz.  Sleep rapidly overtakes him.

How was your Halloween, asks Father Wracks at the breakfast table over a cup of coffee. 

I was ambushed and pelted in an artillery barrage and then the neighbor beat me up.  

Don’t say I never told you so, says Father Wracks.  You should have stayed home and handed out candy.

I should have, could have would have, and then life wouldn’t be the way it is thinks Wracks.

Today strikes as All Souls day, the day of the dead.  This day chronicles as a day the dead walk the earth and checks up on their families.  If on all souls day, a stranger walks up to a person and tells them something unbelievably poignant or entirely strange, then they are an angel. God lets the departed circulate freely amongst the living if they do not meddle or contact anyone.   Once a soul speaks to a mortal man or woman, they must be reincarnated and relive an earthly existence.  If someone who isn’t an acquaintance relays important information to him or her on All Souls day, please listen.  As punishment, they must be reborn. Happy Halloween.

His name was Robert.  He became autistic at the age of four and developed unremitting colitis in high school.  Whether the condition was due to a chronic intestinal tuberculosis infection or due to inherited immunodeficiency syndrome the result is the same. The medical establishment treated his condition with anti-inflammatory drugs and anti-metabolites, the same drugs used for cancer patients and when these did not help, they switched to immunoglobulins which ultimately precipitated his demise.   Balazide, azathioprine and Stelara gave Robert a fulminant cancer of the liver which ultimately killed him.   Antibiotics would have been more practical and would not have induced fatal neoplastic disease. 

Although Robert was 26, he was autistic and the medical establishment convinced him he would be better off dying in a hospice rather than a hospital.   Robert decided he wanted to die at home so the hospice installed a hospital bed and oxygen concentrator to make him more comfortable because his oxygen level in the blood was falling.  The nurses were very kind but insistent.  One blond who dresses in skin tight surgical garb told us to increase the dose of the medications he was being given.  Another nurse who was quite masculine in her assertations said to continue the medications.

The medications were a benzodiazepine anxiolytic and a schedule one narcotic analgesic.   Lorazepam and morphine were instituted at onset and Robert developed a huge rash over the entirety of his body.  Upon consultation, a doctor-nurse at the hospice substituted oxycodone and the rash started going away.  Robert at this point refused to eat so his parents would pour ensure provided by the hospice down his throat.   He was incontinent and paralyzed and had to be changed in entirety diaper and bedclothes three times a day.  He would gasp for air as if paralyzed and I think the medication was doped with succinyl-choline.   Succiny-choline is a paralytic agent like curare that anesthesiologists prefer to decrease muscle tone at surgery.  Given chronically,  Succiny-choline slowly paralyzes the breathing center in the mid-brain and the patient stops breathing.  Succinyl-choline is like acetyl-choline the neurotransmitter except instead of a two carbon acetate molecule on the choline it has a four carbon succinate molecule.  The result is than non-specific esterase enzymes  that hydrolyze acetyl-choline at the synapse cannot function, the  cell continues to depolarize and not snap back into repolarization.  On a human level this means the body senses it needs oxygen but the respiratory drive that provides the force for inspiration is paralyzed.  So it was for Robert who went blind and carried a flashlight in his hand because he could not see and he eventually suffocated to death.   Once admitted to hospice care, a patient can only leave as a corpse.  My wife watched this as he died and I sat with the corpse for three hours until the coroner picked up the dead body.   Prefer to die in a hospital.

This is the kind of treatment the 80% get with Medicare.   The other 20% get transplants and slowly evaporate at fancy assisted care facilities.  Serial killer inmates are euthanized more humanly than poor indigent patients of the general population.  These heinous criminals receive Nembutal, a barbital sedative to stop them breathing within seconds.  Robert gasped and writhed for a week.  For the most part, allopathic medicine does nothing but treat the symptoms and deliver to patients medicines that are more effective carcinogens than they are treatment medicines. Robert was tortured to death because he was sick and poor.   Like Upton Sinclair and the ones before him something needs to be done about medical care for the rest of us.  All the ballyhoo  of social medicine and the enormous cost of one-third of the national budget, that the politician’s diatribe is wasted on a medical system where the only medicines that work are antibiotics and treatments are often worse than the disease they are meant to treat.  Trauma surgery is only effective when you pour in fluids and sew up the bleeders before the patient dies. 

It is time to ask God for salvation.   Why does he let genetic defects  and fatal illnesses propagate in the general population when the result is disappointment, failure, pain and horror and a ghastly death.  Por favor pide el dios para piedad para los seres humanos.  

Screenings and blood draws and prophylactic medicine are the 21^st century version of a three-ring circus.  They do nothing but waste the time of the patient and generate money for the medical profession.   Human beings worship money.   Society is better served by generating clean water and unpreserved food for the fast-paced inhabitants of a capitalistic society.   Giving human beings a clean healthy life is far better than all the fantastic medicine in the world that exists.  Dios tiene piedad.  Fentanyl and Gin is a better way to go and quicker and painless.

It doesn’t matter what caused it.  Whether it is a sex-linked trait on the X chromosome, that governs immune regulation or an abnormal chromosome 6 that houses the human immune complex, the results are the same: colitis.  Whether males express the trait or any sex that inherit it on both sides have it, the body cannot make immunoglobulin to common enteric pathogens and what instills is a chronic diarrhea.   Pathologically, the cellular immune system intervenes and a granulomatous reaction occurs in the intestinal lumen that eventually progresses to complete obstruction.  This is when surgery is necessary for palliative reasons.   Anyone that contracts tuberculosis or pseudomonas of the intestinal tract that has this genetic condition, the results are invariably fatal.  Scandinavians exhibit a higher proportion of occurrence because in the cold bacteria don’t thrive and with genetic drift, they lost their ability to combat the bacteria that occur in temperate and tropical regions.  This is what my son inherited and this is what happened to him. 

My son was autistic.  When he was two years old my wife convinced me to leave him with them for a week and when we returned, he was autistic.   We raised him in special education and he progressed and everything was fine until his final year in high school. 

At the onset of adulthood, the body’s immune system changes and the beauty of strength and youth fall to the stark reality of adulthood.  The thymus involutes and the human being with the memory of antigen challenges approaches mature life. His thymus involuted.   In his final year of high school, my son developed an intractable diarrhea that would not remit.   He was hazed and belittled for his condition and the school gave him a diploma as an act of pity.  A regimen of thymosin which is a tri-peptide produced by the thymus gland and establishes antibody memory would have saved him, but my lack of funds and disbelief by the affluent professionals sentenced my son to death.  Evidently, they don’t want anyone to reproduce who inherits this condition.  

My son had two specialists and the most expensive medical insurance offered by my Wife’s employer but to no avail.   He was taking six tablets of Balaside a day with his meals.  This is an anti-inflammatory medication that is said to limit bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract.  The medication had little effect and eventually produced a generalized osteoporosis as is the side effect of anti-inflammatory agents.   They also prescribed Imuran as an agent to limit the granulomatous reaction of the condition.  This agent did nothing to help him and he took a pill religiously for ten years.   The affluent specialist said antibiotics are not indicated in this condition because the patient eventually develops C.dificile colitis and has to have their colon removed.   On the medications they gave him, he eventually had to have drastic surgery anyway.  A daily regimen of tetracycline and mercapto-purine would have saved his life.  Mercapto-purine is an anti-metabolite that inhibits untoward cell division and bacteria uptake and die.  Doxycycline is a broad spectrum antibiotic with a large margin of safety that can be used as a chronic adjunct in unremitting bacterial infections.  The affluent expert specialists concluded that the next step in my son’s therapy was to have anti-tumor immunoglobulins and prescribed Humira.  After my sons first dose of Humira, he started to bleed through the gastrointestinal tract and had to be hospitalized for five units of whole blood.  Then the doctors put him on Stelara.  My son was autistic and couldn’t adequately convey what was happening to him but he said he was in less pain with the Stelara so the doctors persisted.   My son developed an auto-immune hemolytic anemia and had to be hospitalized for more units of blood.  A hematologist was consulted to rule out the presence of Leukemia and they ruled him fit to tolerate more therapy.

Nine years of changing diaper pails for eighteen diapers per day and mopping the bathroom at least once a day occurred.    My son was not getting better and the doctors said to continue with the present medication.  His condition made him a shut in and he and my other son would go on walks and shopping once a week as a sole outing.  This is for nine years and countless doctor visits and procedures.  The physicians made a lot of money off his misery. 

My son became 26 years of age after living in a little room and playing computer games for nine years.   He did finish a career at a community college.  We convinced him to attend the community college to pass the time and told him to take online courses but he wanted to take art and the students and instructors hazed him.  He tried to hang himself on campus and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for observation.  They put him on Prozac and discharged him.   After six years of prodding and coercion my son finished an A.A degree in interdisciplinary studies and this was his pride and joy until his death. 

At this point a counselor suggested we enroll our son in social security disability A and B and this helped.  His monstrous medical costs were paid for by the state. At age 26, my wife’s employer insurance wouldn’t cover him anymore so we enrolled him in Kaiser Permanente and this move signaled an end to his life.  His new gastroenterologist put him on Humira and he had another hemolytic crisis and had to enter the hospital and have more whole units of blood.

It was around Easter time and we noticed our son wouldn’t eat his Easter Candy.  He would disguise his condition and vomit up his meal in the bathroom because he was obstructed.  This continued for three months and my son got sicker and sicker until we had him admitted for surgery.

After countless colonoscopies with his specialists over the years, that did no more than perforate him and make him bleed, they finally told us his colon was 90% obstructed and he needed surgery.  Kaiser Permanente told us they could only do the surgery in a facility hospital so they transferred my son from a Catholic Hospital to a pagan non-denominational one to do the surgery.   They told it was either move him or have no surgery.   The surgery took eight hours and we thought we would lose him there.  He survived and stayed in the hospital for two weeks and then came home.  It seems the surgery weakened him so much, that he could not persist and his pallor and gaunt complexion demonstrated his condition. 

My autistic son did not have the intelligence to convey his condition and make his therapy, reasonable, rational and realistic.  During his hospitalization, we re-arranged his room and got rid of old furniture to make his habitation more livable.  I bought him a new gaming laptop and a chair to sit in but he was too sick to sit so he would lie in bed and periodically get out of bed and play on his laptop.

On the Kaiser Permanente website which I was able to assay his care because he made me his guardian, a medical oncologist texted us and said my son had a thrombo-pulmonary embolism.   They sent by courier a case of injectable heparin which I was to inject him with twice a day without a treatment end.  This was the act that put my son to death.  The heparin made his wound and intestines bleed and he was back in the hospital.   I made a complaint but they persisted in assigning me an aggressive and non-denominational oncologist

The pathology report came back and said that my son had cancer. The pathologists would not tell us the type of cancer.  The whole thing was a mystery.   The drugs they prescribed for ten years gave my autistic son cancer and he would die.   Against my wishes the oncologist tried to alkylate my son to save him but he said he wanted to die and couldn’t stand it anymore so they put him in palliative care is a hospice.  My son wanted to die at home and the hospice brought a hospital bed to his room and he lies there incontinent for two weeks until he died.

The hospice crew are pleasant and helpful but they do not allow any therapy and put their patients to death.   My son was given morphine and this gave him a rash over the entirety of his body so they withdrew it and gave him oxycodone.   The treatment is lorazepam and oxycodone in syringes squirted into his mouth every six hours.   I feel something more than narcotic and sedative is in the syringes that eventually cause a patient to die.   My wife and I took shifts to be with our son and administered the cocktail to my son around the clock.  We gave him a flashlight because he said he couldn’t see.  After about one week, his breathing became more rapid and agonal and his eyes turned up in his head, his blood oxygen percentage dropped, and he gasped one more time and passed away.  He was pale, his brow sweaty and his body emaciated and I sat with his corpse until the coroner showed up and took the body away.  They were as kind and efficient as they were in the beginning and they removed the hospital be piece by piece and took the oxygen concentrator away from his bedside.  I mopped the floor and that was the end of it.

Most doctors are from the upper twenty percent of income population and treat the hourly workers like farm animals.  It took two months to get through the voluminous application for Medi-cal and this was for my son, an indigent with no net worth and no income.  The medical transportation costs were almost three thousand dollars each for trips from home to hospital and between hospitals.  Medical helps pay for these costs.   If it wasn’t for social security and medi-cal, my son’s final illness would have bankrupted us. God have mercy on his soul for a short, painful and hopeless life.  He didn’t deserve it!  For the people, there is only one person who speaks the truth and that is God.  The only one that speaks the word of God, his name is Muhammed. 

Youth is beautiful and optimistic and eternal.  The trees and shrubs grow verdantly around an iconoclastic institution.  A huge black onyx monolith grows out of the ground at the medical center.  Soon all research will be done here.   Already the huge dark windows without seams inundate the frame as it reaches up into the sky.  Where the entire subsidy comes from is beyond recognition but the sweet smell of non-olfactory money permeates the atmosphere and suffuses everyone and everything that abounds here. 

Wracks, there is a man here who wants to see you says Dr. Goodlife.  Go to room 412 in the medical school and he will be waiting to see you.  The Wracks puts down his 1G sedimentation apparatus that he fashioned from some catheter tubing and a large Nalgene tube. 

I will need some more fetal calf serum for the vehicle for the column says the Wracks

There is some more in the refrigerator.  You will have to autoclave it and do an osmolality reading on it before you use it.  A man is waiting for you, don’t miss your appointment.

The Wracks moves slowly out of the School of Microbiology and Immunology in the Medical School. It is said that the students in this medical school all have a 3.8 to 4.0-grade point average and he is in awe of them.

How did they do it?   I can’t figure it out?

Students sit in the halls on the ground in between rounds reading notes from stacks that are two feet high and Xeroxed from the main copy.  They all look pale and emaciated and the Wracks wonders.

He gets to room 412, opens the wooden door and inside stands a man called Mr. People.   Mr. People is of average height with brown hair, a slight build immaculately dressed in a charcoal grey suit with a dark matching tie.  He extends a hand.

Hello, my name is Mr. People.   I am from the pines of Lebanon hospital and I have the offer of a job there in the organ transplantation laboratory.   You will be part of a large team doing cutting-edge research in tissue transplantation and you will meet patients from all over the world who wish to extend their life due to organ failure or cancer. We have millions of dollars in research grant money and wish to establish the hospital as the world leader in organ transplantation.

What will I be doing on the transplantation team asks the Wracks?

You will be engaging in HLA testing and genomic analysis of host compatibility with donated organs. 

Mr. Peoples looks at him intently with dark very closely set eyes and a clean-shaven face. 

The Wracks is young and altruistic and stupid.  This is a true job opportunity but he says:

Organ transplants are unethical.  The only way a host can get a good graft to work is to kill one of their offspring and take their organs or borrow one from an identical twin.  Working with mice, we see that some brother-sister grafts are rejected by the host even in syngeneic species.  We have had the best success transplanting arms and legs between brother and sister mice rather than organs or bone marrow.  The organ trade is unethical and illegal.

This concludes our interview says Mr. Peoples.   Thank you very much for your time.  That way is the door. 

The Wracks walks out of the room, down the hall amidst students sitting on the floor, back through the huge wooden oak doors, and into his laboratory next to the mice room.  

How did it go asks Dr. Goodlife?

They wanted me to do HLA testing in their program and I am going to try and get into medical school says the Wracks.

It is your decision.   You passed up a tremendous opportunity and these don’t happen much often says Dr. Goodlife.

I am too truthful for my own good says the Wracks.  It is one of my failings.   I have one more run on my velocity column and then we can publish.   I have done all the statistics and standard deviations. 

The Wracks did not know it yet but Mr. People is a very powerful and influential man.   He did not know it yet but this act precluded his admission to a medical school based on research subsidies.  The fans were done in Mudsville; the Mighty Casey had struck out.  The campus is beautiful, well-trimmed and very watered.  It is a nice place to hang out and appreciate nature.  The libraries are spacious and well cared for.  The Wracks pauses and has another cigarette like his father.  He sits on the steps, of the hall on the campus in a metropolitan city in the heyday of prosperity and opulence in a society of cheap petroleum.  Times may change but people don’t and today is another day in the life of a student seeking a nebulous future.  The last bus is at 9:30 and they don’t wait so it helps to be there early.  The Wracks never attended graduation because of the hazing and tomorrow the sun also rises.

Except for May and June the weather in southern Mexico is delightful   In May the environment is so hot a person has to shower two times a day because the sweat desiccates on the skin and forms a crusty scum.  The Wracks is on a bus like he was in the states going to a non-existent future.  The six-foot-long smoke stack of the diesel engine belches huge amounts of black sooty exhaust into the air particularly when the bus climbs a hill.   This is a lot better than nitrous oxide emissions from chemically treated gasoline in the states thinks the Wracks.  It is a lot better. Soon the monsoons will begin, the corn will grow, and the beautiful sweet rain will bring life back to the earth for another season.  All in all, it is the Tears of Allah breathing life into humanity.

The Wracks sits in the alcove inside the vending machine boutique with the strange elevator at Bollocks Hall.   Named after a very excellent famous engineer, the school of engineering manufactures Bell ringers for the nation in the next generation of Scientists. The reason the Wracks sits at engineering near the strange elevator that only he notices is that his fellow students haze him at the chemistry and Biology Building.  It is the Wrack’s way of hanging out instead of falling asleep on the cushy chairs in the main German Annex that is the next station before dinner at the student union.  Every day is the same at Bullocks Hall.   Computer science students with shopping baskets full of white computer cards come in and out of the building.  A single brown-haired tall man with long appendages appears and with a key on a long keychain, he unlocks the elevator door, enters and descends downward.   Sometimes the Wracks catch him coming up four hours later and he exits the elevator,  makes sure the lock is secure and leaves.

There is a bloody nuclear reactor under the hall and they manufacture isotopes says one disgruntled student.

They can’t have a nuclear reactor on campus of a major university says the Wracks, It is illegal.

Bollocks says the student Bollocks.

It is time for Biochemistry and then the physics of Energy class and the Wracks moves to the major lecture hall that houses three hundred people.

A small, wavy brown-haired student with a big nose and freckles enters the quad.  

Fag he says.   Queer, and he sticks out his tongue at the Wracks.

The Wracks move into the lecture and tries to sit as far from the heckler as possible.   At the end of the class he exits rapidly and starts walking to Bullocks.

Gay, says the brown-haired student who then struts off elsewhere. 

The girls are high class at the big U.  Dressed in designer clothes from exclusive locals, the females are wearing makeup and well washed and groomed.   They are looking for eligible bachelors to marry them.  They don’t notice the Wracks anymore.  He says, I don’t have a car and they turn about face and look for some more fruitful ventures.   The students on scholarships wear tattered clothes and sulk from one library to the next.   The Wracks chooses the research library because it is ten stories and easy to get lost in the stacks.

He doesn’t study in the School of Medicine library anymore like the pre-med students do.  One day a petite Japanese lady accosted him on the elevator going to the fourth-floor study hall.

Do you want to fuck?  Says the tiny girl.

I don’t even know you say the Wracks.

Fag, says the girl and the Wracks disembark from the elevator

So the Wracks moves after afternoon classes to German Union and takes his one hour nap before dinner where he joins Dave and they study in the research library.  There you can smoke in the stacks

It is early morning and the bus dropped him off at north campus and he sits on the steps at the main amphitheater opposite the physics library.   He pulls out a Pall Mall gold cigarette.   He smokes just like his father does and blows smoke rings into the sweet early morning air.  An Italian girl in bell bottoms and a halter top without a bra sits on the steps too.  Her father is a tenured professor of Psychology at the big U and she is a Psychology major too.   For some reason, no one hits up on her like the other girls experience at the big society at a major university.  The Wracks wonders why?  She smiles and says goodbye and goes to class and the endless stream of humanity exits classes and lecture halls and move to different locations on campus like the vast Serengeti Plain.  The Wracks is alone again and wonders why in the first place he is here and he lights up another cigarette to celebrate

It is the cheapest quality education in the United States so enjoy it says Father Wracker.

The Wracks still don’t know why he is here and he is just passing the time for something better which will never happen in his life. 

All great things have modest beginnings as is the birth of modern Immunology.  In the twentieth century at a place removed from the influence of the east began something that still shrouds in mystery.  For Wracks, it is the selection for Immunology Research as an elective because at the big U at that time, everything was about basic research.  The Immunology team located in the west wing of the Biology building in the science quad and the Wracks is now part of the team.  The preceptors are Eli and Dr. M with an Israeli with a funny sounding name as consulting physician.  They work with mice and the Wracks is going to work with mice until he moves to the Medical Center next year.  The mice they use as experimental objects are Balb/c and C57.   Balb/c mice are white spotted brown and c57 are all grey.  These strains represent highly inbred lines making their genes almost identical between lines and suitable for experimental design.   The Wracks and mike are going to assay bone marrow transplantation in line and between lines as a model for human bone marrow transplants.   The major organ of immunity in mice is the spleen.  A scientist challenges the spleen with an antigen and then harvests the spleen and does identity assays on the cells.   The identity assay Eli and Dr. M use is the plaque-forming assay.  A scientist harvests a primed mouse spleen, homogenizes it, blends it with gelatin containing the antigen identity being assayed on a petri dish and then counts the rings forming on the disk.  If rings form which are antigen-antibody complexes, then this connotes an antigen-antibody reaction and a positive test. 

Eli is tall and of Scandinavian descent. His long curly hair and grey eyes are set in a pair of worn jeans and tee shirt immersed in Mexican huarache sandals.   Today he wants the Wracks and Mike to drive to the radiation facility and irradiate some c57 mice with a cobalt 60 bomb so he and Dr. M can practice syngeneic bone marrow transplants.  Mike has a car and the Wracks carry the cage of mice to the facility at the Veterans Administration.  They leave the car at a parking lot which also was a radioactive waste dump and is still hot.  The administration paved over the dump with asphalt and conclude that people parking there will suffer little radiation exposure due to the brevity of their stay.  This is the great and opulent veteran’s administration on the west side of town and if a person knows where to go and what to look for, they can find an irradiation center with a cobalt 60 bomb in the center.  Mike and the Wracks find the building that no one knows about, enter it and display their student identifications to a soldier that guards the entrance to the building.  The physicist that maintains the bomb welcomes them and crosses off their names on the schedule that only he possesses.   The irradiation room is a small ten foot by ten-foot concrete grey room with beacon lights hanging from the ceiling and in the center is a podium that elevates to expose the bomb.

Be sure you are out of the room when the beacons and sirens go on exhort the physicist in charge.

Mike has walked out of the room and the Wracks sets the cage near the podium sunk in a lead scabbard in the ground.  The wracks make sure the door is open when he sets down the cage of mice because without the door closed the bomb will not elevate.  Keeping his eye on the door, he runs out, the door closes, lights like a police car flash and siren goes off and an atomic bomb like scenario happens in the room.  The Wracks smells lightning like a strike at the beginning of a rain storm and time freezes and then everything becomes quiet.   The door opens and the Wracks goes in to fetch the cage.   The mice are still alive but look strange like they have just been through a savage fight and they sweat and their fur is matted and askew.   Mike and the Wracks thank the Physicist and take the cage back to the Biology facility.

The mice have no white cells now says Eli.  We will transplant syngeneic and allogenic bone marrow cells in their abdomens and see if they take.   If they can mount an antibody-antigen response on a plaque-forming assay then the transplant is a success. If the mouse dies with allogenic cells which are mouse cells from other inbred lines than this is graft versus host reaction and cells from another similar but different strain attack the host identity antigens. 

The results from our group are as follows:   cells from genetically identical mice usually but not always are accepted by the host.  This means that there is enough genetic variability in identical inbred strains to prevent bone marrow transplants.  Allogenic cells from an entirely different but related strain never accept the host antigens and are rejected.  They conclude that bone marrow transplants do not work and should not be used in humans.   Cells from similar but different lines are universally rejected.

Every Friday the group meets in a conference room at the medical facility and Eli and Dr. M bring beer and pretzels and discuss research findings with their students.  The Wracks is not yet 21 and is under age but he drinks beer and eats pretzels and chips and listens to the high-tech research discussions.  He is on his third Styrofoam cup of beer and is feeling good.  He wolfs down the pretzels because he is starving and it is a free meal.  There is a virologist with thick glasses and wiry hair at the get-together as are other graduate students in Microbiology.  Eli is animated and his research excites him and he speaks and the Wracks listens with his good drunk buzz.

Our next phase of research connotes the transplantation of tumor cells.   Mice will be induced to produce leukemic cells and we will introduce them to syngeneic and allogeneic lines and note if there is an antibody response to cancer.   In other words, is cancer transplantable, and to what extent do mice make an immune response to transplanted cancer. 

The concepts are highly technological and cutting edge but the laboratory work is very simple to perform in context and the Wracks is part of it for two quarters, until the summer session.  Summer is now here and the Wracks has to take an English class to satisfy his major and he folds his hands in prayer at the student  cuad on the north campus early in the morning on the steps of Bunch hall.  No one could imagine what he has been doing for half a year and the findings are revolutionary and poignant.  Not even Crandalman has inkling of what the Wracks is doing in the school of Microbiology in the Biology building.

You will never get into Medical School with a B average asserts Crandalman.  You should become a lawyer like me. 

It really doesn’t matter says the wracks.   It really doesn’t matter.  

The Wracks has a counselor.  She agrees to give him advice on what classes to take in his academic career at the big U.  She is of average height with short cut brown hair, about middle-aged and dresses in a casual blouse with pants.  The Wracks does not notice if she is married.  She sits in a big office with an official oak desk and portraits of her alma mater here at the university.  Her grey Anglo-Saxon eyes look at him intently without displaying emotion.

What classes should I take in my Biology major at the university asks the Wracks? I would like to attend graduate school and eventually become a doctor of Medicine.

You should take challenging classes and get at least a B average in them says the counselor.  Graduate schools tend to favor high graduate exam scores over grade point averages because they are not inflated by which university you attend.

I would like to attend an Immunology Class offered by the graduate school chimes in Wracks.  It sounds interesting.  Do you think it is too much for me? 

No I don’t say the counselor.  You have until after the first midterm to drop the course.  You will probably enjoy it. 

Thank you very much for your advice says the Wracks.  I think I have fall semester planned.  Have a good day.

Fall quarter begins early in summer for students using the quarter system.  Instead of two semesters there are three quarters a year and a summer session.  Each quarter is ten weeks long.  Immunology class hosts in the main lecture hall in the chemistry building because that is what immunology is: cellular chemistry.  The science initially came into being from the discoveries of Sir Harvey Burnett and Professor Roit who discovered immunoglobulins and elucidated their properties. The big lecture hall fills with at least one hundred people, most of whom the Wracks have never seen before.  There are graduate students who sit in the front row, medical students in their white uniforms, and graduate students from other universities who drive here because this is the only place where the new science is being hosted and offered.   The professor is a researcher who wears a white lab coat and a tie and goes by the name Clark.  The Class is long and full of the chemistry of proteins that are called antibodies.  Antibodies have chemical properties just like salt; protein or sugar in a biochemical system and Medicine is studying them now avidly. 

It is now wintertime in California and the autumn winds have gone away and the professor lectures and the class goes on and finals are very soon.  Midterms have gone smoothly and the Wracks has an A average going into the final.  However the final is one-third of the grade and anything less than a B plus knocks your grade from A to B.  Dr. Clark gives Wracks the option of taking an essay exam or a multiple choice exam.  The Wracks options for the essay exam but chickens out when he sees the questions and asks to change to the multiple choice examination, and is given the change.  The exam fills with graphs and data spreadsheets for the Wracks to analyze and the Wracks is befuddled and make wild guesses.  It happens that the Wracks is a good guesser and scores one point below a B plus and Dr. Clark is feeling charitable today and gives him an A in the course.

Would you like to do research with mice asks Dr. Clark.  In the winter and spring quarters we have openings for students in the School of Biology to do murine research in Immunology under the auspices of the Graduate school.  The grants are fully funded and all you have to do is complete the work to get an A.  It’s a lot of work and your other classes will suffer.   Are You Up to it?

It sounds good to me says the Wracks.  My counselor told me to take challenging courses.

It will be challenging and I will inform the professors that you will enroll.  Good luck.

The Wracks sit in the refreshment venue newly built at the science quad of the big U.  All in white concrete, the picnic tables sit in an amphitheater in front of a grill and fry shack that serves delicious hamburgers, hotdogs, and French fries.  The Wracks doesn’t have any money to buy the delicious food and sit there and smell the delicious odors.  His mother who works at the big U told him to take a sack lunch because they built the science quad over a radioactive waste dump.  In the old days before government regulations, nuclear reactors and researchers dug deep holes to bury their radioactive isotopes and waste, and here and up in Northern California are unmarked graves of radioactive waste.  The Wracks savors his cheese and crackers packet and two slices of Wonder bread together with a V8 juice bought from the vending machine kiosk at Bummer Hall.  The savory odor of French fries boiling in grease suffuses the air and the Wracks reads some of his notes bought from an official note taker who sells her wares at the Student Union.  Soon it will be here at the Student Union where the Wracks eats his daily two dollar bowl of soup meal at the Student cafeteria with all the coffee you can drink for a quarter.   Then it is up to the research university to study for three hours and then take a vacant lonely bus ride home to prepare for another day.  For a student monthly pass, the bus ride home is only one quarter.

This was in the good old days when the government wanted all their new generation to succeed and subsidized intrepid learners with low tuition stipends and low-cost meals.  Anyone who wanted to work hard and better themselves could be a technician or professional and shoot for the stars.  Life has changed and everything is expensive and the middle class slowly phases out.  These are the good old days when the nation was great and its citizens were the bell ringers and shining examples in the known world.  Now it is all about money.

It is not part of the medical school at the big U but it is inside the Medical School.  A wanderer needs to enter the medical school and see the students with their huge stacks of Xeroxed notes loitering in the halls walk down the main hallway and then enter the big beige oaken wood door with a window five feet up.  A sign above the five-foot wide ten-foot high door reads School of Microbiology and Immunology. On the door is a deadbolt, and only the janitor can let a student in after six PM.  Inside the door are laboratories, each with an oaken door, and each with a deadbolt.  Only a researcher with the proper key can enter a laboratory.  Down near the end is the Tumor Virus laboratory.   The lab is long with open bulletproof glass windows lining the room so anyone, anytime can look in and see what is going on.  Small white centrifuges line up on the black lab bench and refrigerators and cryo freezers stack in the back.  There demonstrates ample workspace for isolation techniques and apparatus to be displayed.   The door to the unit has two deadbolts, one high and one low and the curator alone has the two keys to gain access to the lab.  In case of an emergency, two professors each unknown to the other has one key and the Dean of the Medical school is called to summon them because only he has both of their names.    The curator has the name Dr. Singh.   Slightly beyond the virus repository and to the left is the aviary.  Here monkeys with terminal cancer are evaluated with therapies and cats with brain tumors sit in cages and scream. Some have electrodes sticking out of their head.    Animals with cancer are in pain and bite.  The curator of the animal plant is a huge man in a white coat and his name is Charcot. 

The Wracks is in the happy part of the complex in the beginning of the hall near the mouse house.  In this room, syngeneic mice lab subjects run in circles is cages that are cleaned and changed once per week. The mice are fed a standard blend of brown kibble with ample water.  Occasionally a mouse gets loose in the hall is caught and euthanized because each group of mice in a cage is an Immunology experiment in the making and the scientist cannot be sure of the origin of the mouse.  The professor assigns the Wracks with a SJl/J strain infected with type B oncovirus that develops reticulum cell sarcoma.  The analog in humans is non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The SJL/j strain is a white purebred mouse line and when they are full of tumor, they puff up into huge balls and necrotic cinders protrude from their back.   The Wracks is assigned to sacrifice mice at end date, collect their serum and analyze the serum for tumor-specific transplantation antigens.  He is also to develop a 1 gravity sedimentation column that ultimately evolved to flow cytometry.    Their huge spleens which occupy their whole body cavity at term also harvest for isolation of type B virus-infected cells for transfer.   

The Wracks spends a day calibrating the fetal calf serum that will form the vehicle for the sedimentation column.  He tests each lot on a liquid osmometer to standardize the specific gravity of the solution so the experiment has validity.   After the final run, he cleans the osmometer and the researchers like him because he cleans up after himself.  Inside the animal morgue is a pathologist from the National Institute of Health who autopsies dead animals with cancer.  He dissects them piece by piece and makes slides and talks into a voice recorder while he works.  He has dark hair and looks like a person you would never want to cross ever anywhere.  He acknowledges the Wracks presence as the Wracks walks by. 

Tonight it is the end of the quarter and the Wracks is behind in his work because of his course load.  He has taken too much burden for a junior at the big U.  He finds the janitor for the medical school in his room on the main hall and the janitor opens up the door to the school of Microbiology and Immunology. The hall is dark except for the tumor virus repository where the lights are always on.  With his personal key he enters the lab, takes his supplies out of his refrigerator and sets up the column on the bench in a stand with a vice.  Taking his tumor cell suspension that he harvested earlier in the day and resuspended in pink minimal essential media, he layers the cells on the top of the column and sets the timer.  Near the front of the large laboratory is a coffee stand and hot water dispenser with a coin purse and he puts in a quarter and makes a cup of instant coffee.  He quaffs it down his throat and gets back to his timer set at ten minutes for the first aliquot.   During this time he cell counts the suspension in a manual cell counter microscope and notes the value in his experiment journal that he keep in his desk near his refrigerator. The timer goes off and he turns the siphon at the bottom of the column and pours five millimeters of fluid in the first tube labeled one and resets the timer for another ten minutes.  Putting the cells, labeled with trypan blue in the cell counter, he counts them and notes the result in his experiment book. Repeating this action until the three hundred milliliter Nalgene tube column empties the experiment is finally done.  He will have to repeat the run tomorrow.  The coffee wears off and the Wracks start to fall asleep at the bench.  The time signals well after two o’clock.  Suddenly a noise startles him and a man in a suit with glasses and a radioactive Geiger counter hosting a foot long rod sensor walks into the lab and asks him what he is doing here so late at night. 

Just running my experiment.   I am late and next week is finals week.  I have to finish up my work. 

The official-looking man looks at him intently and scans his body with the Geiger counter.  The machine starts to click.  

Radioactive chromium he says.  We use it to label white cells.   When you are done clean up and don’t forget to turn off the light. 

The official leaves just as quickly as he arrived.  He must be the head of the department thinks the Wracks, I haven’t met him yet.

When the experiment finishes, the Wracks washes the column and puts the supplies and the labeled aliquots in a rack back in the freezer.  He closes the laboratory door after turning off the lights. The white Ford Pinto borrowed from his father, parks in a loading zone in front of the school under a single street light.  The Wracks smiles, he hasn’t got a ticket.  The police are not up this late at night. The Santa Ana wind blows quietly and the Wracks drives back down Moonrise Boulevard to his home in tranquil hills.  He enters the house, finds his bedroom and falls into bed.  His brother’s bed is empty and the Wracks wonder where he is.  Tomorrow is another day.