BEGIN THELastApohcohlhypseh for h'once

"We will keep farting a long long time,
You can't cover up that smell, not with deodourant."

"Na na na na na nee nah nah, ne ne nee whooo ga chyang ne noo,."

We will sing the praises to the great robot for he has made us so. We will buy the plastic wrapped egg salad sandwitch for 6 dollars and eat it in the safeway parking lot.

Tell me a story. Give meaning to my life. Paint a scene of tragedy, beauty or comedy for mine eyes and don't forget the flourish at the end. Remind me of a trick that was once played that almost made it all seem... Worthwhile.

Well,
I don't think so young lad.

The rumourmill is empty now. Filled to capacity and then drained, the contents beaten into a grey mush pulp and the left out to dry in large chunky turds of patience that will never be fruitful. We will keep waiting a long, long time for the right moment to come but until then we will avert our precious sorry eyeball starings, until then. But we will always die of old age first.

The tablecloth was finely woven, the most finest type of material that Japanese money could buy there in Ireland. The sushi was superb and the place settings minimal and elegant. The fire tore through that resaurant and left no survivors but at least we can say that probably they died happy; and with a full belly.

;

So, when the fruit was all picked we went up to the top of the hill and ate it. That was the last of the fruit left to ripen on the last of the trees. Tommorrow we would chop them down for firewood and only have our photographs and this one last meal to remind us of the natural sweet bountiful harvest that was once an annual right of passage on this now darkening earth.

We tried to send out a press release about the end of fruit trees forever and the usual moralising about eco destruction and humanities dire need to change before it was too late. But of course by now we all had known for years, since the beginning of our last great fruit tree revival project, that it was already too late. There were no news cameras of course, I don't think Steve Kisby ever really even bothered to send out the media press release since it was more trouble than it was worth, unimaginable to have it get broadcast into the media and the now empty symbolism of trying to communicate with the outside world always attracted more problems from the policeBots than was really worth the symbolic effort.

However, the cops showed up anyways to the final picnic, probably alerted to our scent by the detectors. The detectors were pretty poor of course and would have never been able to pick us out a decade ago when there were still lots of others dying, but now the air was mostly sterile so it was easy to find a group of 6 people gathered and having an unauthorised public collaberation. We ducked the fire quickly but Orlando was hit in the shoulder and was out cold in seconds. Emma didn't have time to activate his automemory self destruct before the arrests but what would it matter anyway. What secrets of the resistance remained for us to hide at this point anyway? The others were scattered and useless and there was no remaining sanctuary for the bots to find out then stamp out/.

Interestingly after only 5 minutes of flying and the usual quick probing for DNA ID, we were actually dropped off at our final hideout and even given an emergency package of food staples as well. They did not destroy any of our equipment and nobody was tagged. They left as quickly as they had came and were almost helpful once they sanitised and removed all of the fruit tree bearing genetic material remaining on our persons. Why suddenly the goodwill? Were we being used. Did they want to watch us. They knew we were the last and we had no contacts for them to wait for us to expose so what was the purpose in their leniancy?

This was answered 2 days later when a strange truck pulled up. It appeared from the outside to be run down but it worked excellent and was obviously somehow approved of by the DemocraticFreepublic, the dirt looked almost painted on. Two indistict looking delivery bots had some cargo for Fradja and though she would not fingerprint the delivery manifest the bots made out all friendly as if she had and dropped a large black box right on our doorstep. As they were leaving one of them said, "You kids are lucky, open it soon and don't look a gift horse in the mouth." The package bore the logo of the now defunct Grappa Syndicate, it was aboviously forged to look like a secretive gift from the once powerful rebel publishers. Grappa had been totally eradicated over 6 years ago and many of us still remembered the sting of lost loved ones. Lately we'd been hearing rumours from really bizarre sources about grappa reforming, but it was all heroics like some kind of agent-provocateur bit with bearing arms and all that. When we opened the package and saw the real live genetic fruit bearing plum tree in the box we knew how we were now to be used. We were to plant this tree and make like the resistance was still alive and kicking just to give some credibility to the neverending war on resistance industries that were of course always struggling now to invent new enemies in order to maintain the Freepublics sharade.

It was all very bady done as a set up and would have been easy to disprove even to the most alcoholic public, however of course now the individual mind was a kind of fictional thing in most productive citizen units and so it was more than enough to satisfy whatever curiousity there might have been if anyone even could think to investigate.

War with out end. Fire to ashes, Life into dust.