Dreaming
I dreamed last night of death. I was driving our car on city streets and passed a parked police car with no one inside. Somehow, I felt it had been attacked. Half a block later, I saw a multicar wreck in the middle of the four-lane street. There was a police car stopped, several cars in odd positions clustered by it, a paramedic rig stopped alongside, and bodies on the pavement. No one was standing; everyone at the scene was down. I kept moving and saw a couple of people lying on the sidewalk to my right. Then more dead on the grass beyond, some with plastic sheets pulled over them. More bodies beyond them. Maybe 50 dead within a block of the wreck and no one walking anywhere. A block after that I began to see traffic again, people walking as if unaware of the dome of death in their midst. I stopped at my errand (don't remember what it was) and saw that people were either staying in their homes or carrying guns. Something had happened, been responded to, happened again, sweeping away the police and firemen who had responded. There was no blood. No obvious injuries, just dead people, some covered with plastic sheets, others lying quietly nearby exposed. The raido said it happened in Sepulveda. Something very limited (a neutron grenade?). Terrorism no longer required mass distruction to be hard on buildings. Their ends might be achieved by a remotely detonated small device. There was no panic; no safety. What future?