Page 17 - Demo

Natch!3Watching the morning shufflers moving past Q, I%u2019m remindedof another blustery Monday morning. The D.N.A.%u2019s Eco DesignTeam had booked the 78th floor conference room for its muchanticipated kickoff meeting. Everyone on the team was on edge.Things had been a bit twitchy since the Homps released all thatcarbon%u2014lots of overtime, lots of caffeine and junk food, lots ofcursing. The Far South, long an arid frozen continent, had oozeditself into a vast slushy plain of mud and meltwater. The HotMiddle was still largely uninhabitable. The Far North hosted moreHomo arcturus than Homo sapiens. Some claimed that it was thedemise of the Homps that finally spurred the Department to act.I can neither confirm nor deny who or what prompted thedecision.The Department%u2019s work was as ancient and far-flung as it wasmysterious. Only the Folks Upstairs knew all the whys andwherefores, and they%u2019d always been a bit too tight-lipped for mytaste. You never knew what they would do or why. They rarelygave interviews or explanations, and when they did%u2026 well, let%u2019sjust say you can only read so much into a burning bush. Even theDepartment%u2019s D. N. A. moniker begged clarification. No one couldagree on what it meant. Everyone had a theory. Everyone alwayshas a theory. What%u2019s What listed it as the Department of NotableAncestry, but numerous callers whined about the Department ofNever Answering. Early retirees lampooned the Department ofNonstop Anxiety. Contractors grumbled about the Departmentof Non-budgeted Amendments. Definition Not Available was allwe ever got from the Folks Upstairs. So, we all just started callingit %u201cDeenah%u201d. Short and sweet!%u201cWho am I?%u201d They call me Scribe. I am the one who writesthings down. My job is to set down a record of what happenedand who did what, so that in the future if any of the FolksUpstairs want an accounting (they never have, by the way), I cansay, %u201cHere!%u201d and hand it to %u2019em.