We Are Gathered in Red
In the middle of the valedictorian’s speech, the hallucinations began. A giant mushroom cloud reared up behind the lovely, optimistic young woman at the podium. It was strangely beautiful, bright, golden, like the last perfect sunset she would ever see. Nicole Silvers set her face and pretended not to see it. It had been years, but as a child she had hallucinated often, and for most of her ninth year nearly every night, so while it was unwelcome, and the timing was terrible, she knew what to do. She breathed slowly and deeply, calming her nerves. She ignored the apocalypse which dominated her field of vision and tried to focus instead on the young woman’s speech. It was so dull, anodyne, predictable, nearly the Platonic ideal of a commencement speech, full of dreams and ambitions, signifying nothing, that it was difficult to find anything there real enough to cling to. But in the end its serene mediocrity caused the advancing devastation to flicker an...