Chapter Fourteen

A GANG SELF-DESTRUCTS

While the literary Rebellion fights for its survival; while various other gangs plot against the rebels but also against themselves, the n+1 "Negativity Plus" boys have abandoned the battle altogether. Their latest project: building an "End of the World" underground shelter.

They meet in their current green-walled Manhattan headquarters, spartanly furnished, the walls bare save for one tattered poster of Karl Marx; tables empty except for stacks of unsold copies of their hysterical (both meanings) journal.

The five-person decision-making staff sit around a trapezoidally-shaped staff table with one leg shorter than the others, so that it rests permanently askew.

"This is the plan," Chad Harebrane, the looniest of their loony hyper-intellectualized ranks, lectures while unfurling many dozens of graphically colored blueprints and charts. "The planet begins to reach maximum crisis point early next year. I've located an abandoned stretch of subway on the upper west side. I've taken it over. Stocks of soon-to-vanish oil will power our computers and air-conditioning."

"Oil?" one of the others asks.

"Oil," Chad affirms. "It's vanishing anyway. Might as well grab our share." (Ideological consistency is never a concern with these fellows.)

"A private jet, already fueled, will be down there with us, so we can continue our flights to Cali and Europe. Best of all"-- he points to a stairway on a map-- "this leads directly to the heart of Columbia U, so we'll be able to continue to teach, at least until the heat aboveground becomes intolerable, which I estimate will take a few semesters."

A self-satisfied smirk, of a kind usually seen in an Idiot ward, takes shape about the corners of his mouth.

"What about food stocks?" one of the other sober-faced nut cases throws at him with an Inquisitional glare.

"Plenty of food stocks!" Chad assures them. "Enough for staff and select friends-- very select friends-- five dozen in all-- our entire readership actually-- plus allowances for expected 1.1 children per couple, though why we'd care to introduce new human-types into this awful planet is beyond comprehension. All-in-all, an adequate plan; enough food, oil, jet fuel, and DVDs of pretentiously bad foreign language movies to keep us entertained, right to the deadline of Earth Day, April 22, 2050."

"What happens then?" the others ask, hunching closer around the cockeyed staff table.

"Why, the world ends," Chad tells them.