Hi Irene:

I hope you are well. I know that you left a message wanting to know when we arranged tour guides. I’m answering you late because one guide has not yet gotten back to us. So, here’s the best information I can give you, at this point.

Quimby and I would like to pay for two days of touring. One has already been scheduled and paid for. It’s for our boys to go to Vallis Bohr and the Bohr Crater. The tour guide will pick them up at your cube and drop them back off very late in the day. He will make sure they hydrate at appropriate times and will otherwise take good care of them.

Eva Wright announced her wedding engagement with little forethought one cold April morning, during an uneven thaw at the end of an unseasonably long winter. She’d been wandering for hours along slushy Chicago streets, admiring the frost glittering on the petals of tulips, when she decided to visit her father, if only to fill the empty hours of a quiet Saturday morning.

“It’s been awhile,” Thomas Wright said. He averted his eyes from his daughter’s frayed sweater, an affront to fashion that recalled the color of withered limes.

In a huge cavern in Transylvania, a hundred thousand bats gathered for an emergency meeting, clinging in tribal clusters from stalactites. At the center of the cave, various national representatives nudged and wedged themselves into better spots, until a huge ancient bat with scarred wings, raised his head and emitted a sonorous whistle. All fell quiet.

A stray hamburger in the middle of the freeway stopped traffic for three hours. The news crew came in helicopters to film the event and conduct interviews. The hamburger had nothing to say. It was there for only one purpose: to be eaten. But who would eat it? It had been laying in the hot sun and there were probably bugs crawling on it now and at least a few people had wheat intolerances.

Mrs. Whittaker paused from grading papers to appreciate the room. The kids were engaged in what’s called Flexible Learning, working in what is called Flexible Groups, to accomplish Flexible Goals, based on a Flexible Curriculum. The class almost ran itself, although Whittaker had a very important role as professional educator—to applaud loudly these children’s talents, to cultivate their unique gardens, to preserve and prepare their individual snowflakes only to release them at the end of the year, ice crystals now advanced in length and complexity, for three months of summer and another teacher’s care.