Touched

That remained the future, the game, having just read Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, the ultimate sci-fi, published 2005, the last survivors of an extinct species cast millions of years into the future, a zoo. Everything collapsed into insignificance in the long time frame. There was a game as a kid, see how long I could go without speaking to anyone. If I made it to three days, much to my parents distraction, it was a major triumph. That was the mood now, gateways locked, outside either hostile or filled with melancholy of the most menacing kind, looking on in envy as normal people went about their business.

They were handsome, a lot of them, the boys, this being a student precinct near both Sydney University and the University of Technology, and the girls were healthy, in the prime of everything, while distancing prisms caught at everything he could no longer be, the colours contained




IRAQ WATCH:

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=c730b65295d60b9f&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Iraq Toll Rises; Shiite Militia Retaliates By EDWARD WONGPublished: November 24, 2006BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 — Defying a government-imposed curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in central Iraq today, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for a series of devastating car bombs that killed hundreds of people the previous day in a Shiite slum, residents and police officials said.
All day today, funeral processions wound through the crowded streets of the Sadr City section of Baghdad that is home to more than 1.5 million people, mostly Shiites.

An Iraqi wept over the coffin of his relative in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City today.As the death toll from those bombings rose above 200, gunmen drove through several neighborhoods in Baghdad and the nearby provincial capital of Baquba, taking aim at mosques with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades on the Muslim holy day, when many Iraqis go to mosques to pray.The wreaking of vengeance unfolded while a powerful parliamentary bloc loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr threatened to boycott the government if Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki attends a meeting with President Bush scheduled for Wednesday in Jordan. The legislators said the American presence was the root cause of the spiraling violence in Iraq.But it was Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, that Sunni residents blamed for the attacks today. From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in a single mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were completely destroyed, and at least five Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. Iraqi security forces were absent, unwilling or unable to stop the gunmen.“I live near Akbar al-Mustafa Mosque, which came under attack by gunmen around 7 this morning,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Ruqaiya and lives in Hurriya, the Baghdad neighborhood where violence raged all day. “Around 3 in the afternoon, those gunmen bombed this mosque and destroyed part of it. They left only after American and Iraqi soldiers arrived.”Some fighting continued into the evening, as gunmen in the neighborhood battled the invading fighters, the Interior Ministry official said. President Jalal Talabani urged calm at a news conference after an evening meeting of Iraq’s top leaders and said the defense minister had told him no mosques had been destroyed. Mr. Talabani also said he was postponing a weekend trip to Iran because the government had shut down Baghdad International Airport. In the far north, a suicide car bomber and a suicide belt bomber detonated their explosives at an outdoor car market in the insurgent-rife city of Tal Afar, killing at least 20 people and injuring at least 42.The bloodletting over the 24-hour period amounted to one of the worst spasms of violence since the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. The wave of revenge attacks in Baghdad came despite a traffic ban the Iraqi government had imposed across the capital starting Thursday evening. Most of Baghdad remained quiet today, with children playing soccer in the empty streets, but the attacks nevertheless underscored the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi security forces in tamping down on violence that is widening the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide and pushing the country toward full-scale civil war. The assaults against Sunnis today evoked the rampages by Shiite gunmen after a revered Shiite shrine was bombed by insurgents last February in Samarra, though this latest violence took place on a smaller scale. American troops stepped up patrols and operated checkpoints across Baghdad. An attack helicopter destroyed a rocket launcher seen firing from Sadr City into the nearby Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, the military said. An official from the Sadr office said at least three civilians were injured.The surge in violence comes at a politically fraught time for Prime Minister Maliki, particularly since he is preparing to meet President Bush in Amman. Both men face increasing pressure from their respective publics to come up with a successful strategy for stemming the growing carnage in Iraq, and both are navigating rising tensions between their two governments as they try to agree on a viable path forward.The announcement of a possible boycott by Mr. Sadr’s bloc further endangers Mr. Maliki’s political fortunes. Mr. Sadr controls Sadr City, and the attacks on Thursday appeared to have strengthened his standing and emboldened him. As long as Sunni Arab extremists massacre Shiites, Mr. Sadr can justify the existence of his militia and ignore entreaties by the Iraqi or American governments to disband it. “The occupation forces should shoulder the full responsibility for these deeds, and we call for them to end their rule in Iraq by withdrawing or at least setting a timetable for withdrawal,” Saleh al-Iqaili, a Sadr legislator, said at an afternoon conference. “If the security situation does not improve, as well as basic services, and if the prime minister does not retreat from his intent to meet the criminal Bush in Amman, we will suspend our membership in the Iraqi Parliament and the government.”