My name is Sidney Romine. I am on a boat. The boat is cruising slowly in the

mid-afternoon sunlight. Showing the 200 or so people on board, the quaint

sites of Ellicott Bay and in the far distance now the Seattle waterfront. I have a

light beer in my right hand and I'm sitting below deck enclosed and out of the

sun. Everyone, the tourists, the locals on board seemed to be enjoying

themselves but I just saw something out the window to my left that has made me

worry. I'm afraid. There's something out there on the water, something others have

already seen but aren't concerned about in the slightest. It's just me, I'm sure.

But I've been conditioned by the past. I seem to have developed a sense of

imminent catastrophe. I've never felt quite like this before. And I think to myself

now, as I sit here not knowing what to do, that of course I should have known

better than to get on a boat. I should have suspected that the end of my life

would take place on a mechanism of transit. Likely one I hadn't thought twice

about. Even at the age of four you see mechanical things that moved at great

speed played a big part in my fears and my fascinations. When I lay in my bed

at night in the big house I used to live in with my mom and dad and I looked

across the dark bedroom at my closet. It was not a ghost or a monster I feared

behind its door. No. I never told my parents or anyone else about what I thought

was lurking in there. It was a car. A black, small but lethal car,

crouched in the shadows among my toys and games. Inches below the reach of the

hem of my winter coat. The car's cruel bulk took up every inch of space inside

the closet. I believed it retreated inside the eaves of the house during the

...