157.
   I was alone in my bed. My heart was slamming in my chest. I stared at the ceiling. My God, I thought, where am I now and how the hell do I get back to my friends? I sat up and looked around the room. A calendar hung on the wall. It was no longer 2006. It was 2010. I looked in a mirror. I was no longer a young man in an incredible dream. I was no longer a young man. I frantically searched the room for my friends. Conrad, out of the corner of my eye lay in the crumpled sheets. Claudia moved toward me as I looked to her and saw nothing. I pulled the pillows under my arms searching for the warmth of Pat and Nanette. It couldn’t have been a dream, I thought. Whatever had happened in the last world, it had been real.

   Then this world came growling back. We had elected our first African American president. We were going to take back our country. But the lobbyists were more powerful than ever. Health care reform turned out to be a gift to the insurance industry. Banking reform was a joke that amused the bankers. The Patriot Act had been extended. Guantanamo was open for business. The war criminals who killed hundreds of thousands had been given immunity. We were still in Iraq and Afghanistan. For one brief, shining moment there was hope in America, then the man who promised it walked through the doors of the White House and closed them behind him leaving us standing out in the cold feeling like cooing, moaning, half-wit shit for brains.
  Get dressed, I thought. Get some air.  High fog and ground fog blew around the city. I crested a hill and noticed an American flag attached by only one ring flapping on a pole on the roof of a building.