THE Hale-Bopp comet had been of closest proximity to Earth on March 22, 1997, and consisted of a variety of elements: ice, rock, carbonatious crondites, methane, as well as organic chemicals such as ethanol, carbon and silicates. However, Hale-Bopp’s run passed Earth apparently had been of greater substance than that perceived by hundreds of millions of Earth folk. Indeed, at its closest point to Earth while passing our way, our planet was engulfed by the contents of the comet’s three, potent tails — one of which consisted of ions, the second of dust and the third of a thin tail of sodium atoms.

Due to the relatively close passing by this comet and its tails (not due to come back our way for about another 2,370 years), an extremely small quantity of Earth’s populace comprised of psychically orientated people had their varying abilities (some even greatly) enhanced and for some non-psychic-majority folk to witness.

Very few psychics could actually manipulate universal temporal reality and thus foresee future events — both of a good nature or bad, the latter being perhaps an approaching natural disaster — while some psychically talented people could sense the presence of spirits, be they residual or sentient, or see in their mind’s eye the exact location of a missing person — dead or alive.

As such occurred, it was recalled by some folk that about three centuries prior to the near passing of Hale-Bopp, one prominent and credible German psychic stated that her “spirit guide” — a proclamation that had gotten her hung by the neck — communicated “a knowledge” to her that on this precise date such a significant comet would pass, more specifically the zenith of its proximity to Earth, during which its three tails’ variety of unique non-Earthly elements would engulf the planet, thus settling onto Earth’s surface, though for no more than 60 seconds. This would enhance the psychic abilities held by an extremely small number of people who’d just by chance come into direct contact with the tails’ elements during that brief 60-second period. When asked by her fellow villagers why only these few psychics will be affected by the comet’s three tails’ elements, the renowned psychic replied that her “spirit guide” revealed to her that those few psychics had endured severe mental illness and then died an untimely, unnatural death in their previous life as a result of the mental illness. Unfortunately, they’d once again be afflicted with severe mental illness during their current incarnation.

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“WHOA, Chocolate! Whoa! Whoa, boy, whoa!”

The effort Wanda Smithers exerted to calm her horse, however, was for naught. The horse must’ve been spooked by something, she logically presumed; perhaps by some creepy crawler, like a snake. It was nevertheless irrelevant, for Chocolate was beneath her and racing wildly along the forest trail.

But soon she, as the horse owner and exclusive rider, noticed they were speeding toward a large structure.

Is that the old factory? she momentarily thought before confirming.

“Whoa, boy, whoa! Whoa!!”

Chocolate, though, simply wouldn’t slow down, let alone come to a stop. Instead, he even hastened his bolt towards the decrepit edifice. While rapidly approaching it, Wanda noticed that it was dark inside. Having reached the gaping doorway opening, she also noticed another sunlit opening on the opposite end (with Chocolate perhaps also aware of the situation ahead of them).

As they sped into the abandoned factory — with her wondering, Why are its doors open? — daylight soon turned into darkness, regardless of the sunlight visible at the open doorway at the structure’s opposite end. On either side of them as they raced through were aged, large, grounded machines and other related objects left behind by the former owner.

It then came upon her, like a strong tingling sensation in her head — a powerful feeling of gloom and extreme danger. It then quickly became an intense stomach-turning sensation, one that gave her an inexplicable yet unmistakable impression of imminent, oncoming, serious danger.

Though not knowing at all as to the sensation’s origin, she just knew that she must she must immediately lower her head — and thus did — far more than she already had it lowered, at least by a good thirteen inches. The intense warning-like sensation was enigmatic and perplexing, for she’d never even been near the building, let alone deep within it.

A sudden slight chilly breeze blew over the top of her head. The physical cause of the small blast of cold air indicating a very near miss, she believed, could’ve only been that of some heavy, metallic object passing very fast right over her head, by no more than an inch, as Chocolate bolted.

Imminently exiting the structure, they, under the horse’s will, came to a stop quite unexpectedly and without her saying a word. Becoming more composed, she found it within her to express, “Holy smoke! That felt way too close!”

Relieving Chocolate’s back of her weight, Wanda, a woman of thirty-nine years, stroked the horse’s head and neck, forgivingly. “What were you thinking?”

On a subconscious level, she avoided addressing (perhaps conveniently for herself) the anomalous ESP-like experience that day.

Before slowly riding Chocolate back to the stable, she went back to the abandoned factory to learn what exactly her head just barely missed.

It was still, as just fifteen minutes prior, dark inside thus leaving her to squint a fair bit while investigating. She looked upwards while slowly walking through, until she noticed the mid-section of a solid steel bar or pole, about two inches in diameter; attached at each end were chain links connecting the entire bar to a metallic walkway farther up above, which itself was linked to and hanging from the also considerably solid, metallic roof framing.

“It definitely would’ve bashed my brains in — totally crushed my skull,” she gasped.

Although in considerable denial regarding the fact, the abandoned-factory incident changed, weakened, the special connection between Chocolate and herself; she sadly felt that she could no longer place her unconditional trust in Chocolate as she had for so long — indeed, for over eight years.

Some of her friends referred to Chocolate as her equal — that “they’re joined at the hip” — for, so very special was he to her; nonetheless, though, he’d be relegated to the status of (while quite depressing for her) a very special pet cat or dog, as notably special as the latter two species of beloved pets very often can be.

When Chocolate was settled back in his stable stall, she lugged herself into her adjacent house to lay back into her large, extremely comfortable black-leather couch.

Almost right next to her was the morning newspaper sporting a headline.

“Anomalous Record High Reportings of ‘ESP Occurrences’ Across Entire U.S. Leave Academics Bewildered.”

It took a half-minute to finally dawn upon her, but she thought about her anomalous incident at the decrepit, abandoned factory. The fact that I’m still breathing proves that something earlier today didn’t go the way it was meant.

Flipping the newspaper to its International News section, she came across a story about the Hale-Bopp comet being the very closest to Earth that very day. Wow — three tails, she mused, with all consisting of so many elements of alien origin.

It was 9:34 when she went to bed that evening.

That night, Wanda endured an atypically persistent troubled dream about children, all appearing to be of east Asian ethnicity and incredibly destitute. They were seriously ill — in such distressful state of being. All were desperately reaching out to her, so very many thousands of them, begging for help though with nothing but cement rubble all about them.

Awaking from her nightmare, she was obviously relieved, though only to go back to sleep to continue the same nightmare. In fact, the entire disaster scene had but worsened, with the sickly children beginning to undergo rigor mortis yet still reaching out their tiny, filthy hands to her.

It was quite the fitful night; and the nightmare continued until she finally got out of bed a few minutes after five the next morning, then brew herself some gourmet South American coffee.

However, it was coffee that she’d recently began reconsidering buying and, especially, consuming; she’d heard more than once about the extensively impoverished lives endured by way too many coffee-bean growers — long days of severely busting their humps to scrape together meager sustenance, almost entirely in Central and South America.

Admittedly, there was the Fair Trade coffee organization, she reminded herself, the traders of which pay a good deal more to the exploited coffee-bean growers; yet she’d never seem inclined to seek and purchase it in certain ethically-orientated franchise outlets.

Well, that’s just not good enough. I’ve not done nearly enough! Wanda censured herself. All grocery stores should sell a full variety of Fair Trade coffee — especially the major, humongous store-chains; that’s the only way all Third World coffee farmers won’t be economically prostituted. Not anywhere near enough’s getting into the growers’ very shallow pockets.

It was at that precise point that she decided to actually do something proactively progressive for Earth’s most needy citizens. I have money to hire workers to maintain my house. I even can afford to buy, own and fully enjoy a high-maintenance horse. Why can’t I do a lot more for the poor?! I really should get back into the Peace Corp.

She genuinely contemplated such an unconventional concept at that point in her life(style), of her rejoining the Peace Corp. I could do it — wherever I’m needed the most.

That day she excitedly spent over eleven hours contacting former colleagues regarding current locations of Peace Corp. camps and which were in most need of her abilities. For six years she was an emergency ward medic at her university hospital, regardless of the wealth left behind by her deceased father.

While corresponding via telephone and e-mail that day with former colleagues, she learned that Japan just the night prior suffered an 9.3 earthquake, its epicenter almost directly beneath Hiroshima (and relatively shallow, to make matters far worse) — thus making it the most needy location of foreign aid ASAP.

Also learning that the Peace Corp. had already set up a base-camp in the devastated Japanese city, Wanda knew what was to be her imminent destination and purpose.

“Alright then, Paul; I’ll pack some stuff and meet you at the Hiroshima base-camp, there,” she insisted over the phone. “They came back to normality after being nuked in 1945 — they’ll survive this one, too.”

“With outside assistance, and lots of it — yeah, they will,” he wearily affirmed.

Having closed the phone, she was so preoccupied over preparations for her trip to Japan that she’d completely forgotten her continuing nightmare the night before and its obvious significant relevance.

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Wanda Smithers immediately made her way to earthquake-ravaged Hiroshima, and she profoundly assisted in aiding very many victims, especially the orphaned children who were in the worst of health and greatest need. However, she developed severe dysentery during an outbreak of the illness due to exposed breaching sewage lines and tanks throughout the city. She died just fifty-six days after arriving in Hiroshima. At her memorial, Paul noted that she knew of the various hazards involved in Peace Corp. duties, yet she got deeply involved nonetheless. “While she’d deal with her severe depression on the job,” he eulogized, “I’d always prefer to think that her work with us alleviated at least some of her formidable emotional turmoil.”