Back to top 4th Nov. 2005

After what must have been a quarter mile we were coming up on the barrier: an earthen wall that had been re-shaped to act as a gate hundreds of years ago. At one time guards were posted between the two sections of the city but this was eventually deemed as unnecessary. As the group moved into the government district Vincent a colored dotted line on the curb. The group of protesters seemed to turn at all the corners as this dotted line. He was sure there was no relation but he still wanted to ask Cogil about it.

The group jogged up upon the great Hall of Happiness and began to set up for the day's protest. As Vincent watched it occurred to him how rehearsed and coordinated it all was. It was as if the protestors were just going through the motions like a construction crew setting up or any other crew. But then he was still recovering from whatever had happened to him the night before, so he figured it could be a side-effect of that.

“Hey Vincent! How about a little help here?” Cogil was calling. The Hall of Happiness was a large building, at least on the outside, with a large set of steps leading to a large main entrance door that looked like a gate but was really just a big door. It was important, so the theory went, that the outside look big, domineering and impressive to leave an impression of power on the citizens even if the inside was much smaller.

“Uh Cogil? What exactly are we protesting? Have anybody here actually been inside this palce?” Vincent asked.

Cogil grabbed Vincent a tugged him a few feet out of ear-shot of the other protesters. “Look, this is my living. You can’t go and ask questions like that. At least not in front of so many people. I’ll talk to you about this later.”

“Ok, fine. Just wondering.”, Vincent said in a confused sort of tone.

The protest was shaping up now: brightly colored warning markers had been placed around the protest area, the signs were all in place and Vincent noticed the protest was taking place where the line he had noted earlier had ended with a rather abrupt symbol to mark the end of the line.

The protestors were now picking up their signs and chanting their slogan of choice: “hall of happiness, hall of choice; happiness hall leaves no choice!”

Vincent was pretty sure that didn’t make sense and this was all pointless. But he couldn’t think of anything better to do.  ¶ 5:34 PM