I'm in the desert, having a conversation with a couple of German people. The conversation is moving along smoothly, until I can't remember the word for 'battery'. "Ist es 'batt-err-ee'?" I ask. I get laughter. I hem and haw for a while. "Ich weiss dass!" I turn to one of them. "Wie sagt man "battery" auf Deutsch?"  One of them, a young exchange student looking type, smiles and says: "Wir werden Sie drei Tagen verlassen. Wenn Sie sich erinnern nicht, wir sagen werden." (We'll give you three days. If you can't remember then, we'll tell you." And they disappear, leaving me to trek back through the desert to my 'home'. They drive off in a jeep.  By the time I get home, it is nighttime, and something has happened to the rest of humanity. Laura shows me a large circular map. "My mother just went out there and mapped the whole city. She didn't find anyone. They're all gone."  Indeed, I look at the map and see rows of individual houses, each marked with a little 'e' for 'empty'. "She checked all those places?" I ask.  "Well, it's like the Census," Laura said. "She checked a certain number and then extrapolated the data." Laura plays with a protractor and compass on the map for a while. She talks again: "At any rate, everyone's gone, whatever it means."  "If there's a God," I joke, "he probably wiped out the rest of humanity because they suck, and He wanted to start over from us. Like Noah."  Laura laughs. "But doesn't it say, in the Bible, that God said he wouldn't do that again, ever?"  "Laura, I was joking. It's a myth. Whatever happened, they probably just missed us."  Laura looks out the door. "Oh man," she laments. "Here comes another one! Can I have a pair of scissors, something sharp?"  I hand her the nearest pair. "This one has a little glue on it. Is that okay? Can you use it?"  "I'd rather not." She really doesn't want to. "It might get stuck, and then it wouldn't deflate."  "What wouldn't?"  "Oh, these damn inflatable babies!"  I grab a pitchfork and walk to the door. Sure enough, a malicious looking plastic inflatable baby, with little drawn on dots for eyes, is crawling towards the door. I should add that it was about six feet long and two or three feet high at the shoulder. It obviously means harm. "When you stab it," Laura advises, "try to leave the pitchfork in while still letting out the air. Otherwise they blow all over the place like a balloon." I stab the baby several times as it enters the house. As the baby deflates, it turns into a shrivelled-up, forlorn-looking plastic garbage bag. "How many of these have you killed?" I ask.  "Oh, two or three."  We walk outside. It's still nighttime out and there's a wierd glow to everything. I hear a voice and direct my attention to it. After a while we discover the source. The tall, blonde library page whose legs I once dreamt about feeling is sitting on top of some huge twenty gallon drums, nude, and some nondescript man is industriously making love to her. She keeps making cute little noises and thanking him.  I point to them and turn to Laura. "Under these circumstances, probably the best idea," I say. Then, after a short pause: "It's 'die Batterie', I'm sure of it. They were just fucking with me."  "David!" Laura says. "Get over it! Does it really matter right now?" I laugh, conceding the point.