Okay, so I knew one of their names and that we'd all gotten here through a...portal? Is that what that was? The Gwar-looking guy shook my hand and that was it, while the girl, Axeka, introduced herself and walked away.

For a second I stood there with my hand out, about to introduce myself, when I realized neither of them were even looking at me anymore and seemed to have moved on. Well then. I will remain anonymous if they really don't care.

While they dug through the masses of books, I went outside and fiddled with the antenna on my earpiece until I picked up an AM signal. It was a news station, and I stood there listening to the latest haps for about ten minutes while passerby glanced nervously at me and whispered to their friends.

From what I could tell, there was currently a mass war movement on the other side of the country, which seemed to be America, comfortingly enough. It seemed they were advocating war with China for taking work away from U.S. citizens with their cheap labor force and massive amounts of factories.

That didn't seem much different from before, but I noticed that no one was mentioning bombing or nuking China. All they talked about was sending an army of drones and hovertanks, which, from what I could gather, were nowhere near as destructive as nuclear explosions, even en masse.

I wondered about this until the program ended, at which point a man in a black uniform similar to Axeka's came up to me and grabbed my shoulder. "Sir, you're obstructing pedestrian traffic and appear to have illegal bodymods. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you in for questioning."

I stared at him with a purposely blank expression for a moment before waving my hands in front of my face, murmuring "I am only a figment of your imagination," and sprinting back into the library. I don't know whether the cop believed me, but I heard him yelling and loud footsteps as I huddled behind a bookshelf near the doors, stifling laughter.