Epic with no exit.

What must have been the most beautiful Louis Malle film in the world (until I realize I'm not living it but before I realize I'm dreaming it). The story of a girl stripped from her family by death but then reintroduced as a ghost that could be loved as no living girl could. Then a series of interlocked ghost stories each with a twist—the ghost kills his living sister, or the surviving mother kills the ghost of her unborn husband. And finally proof that it has all been for nothing.

When the old man returns I am cuddling at the belly of my guardian. He has never been so spry, and I feel a pang of shame, but don't lift my head from her belly. Later she convinces me to trade my bike and her bike for a car, at least for the day.

As I enter the community library, I see a light-skinned lanky black man jump down from a high shelf with a pile of books. We lock eyes for a long moment and he braces my arm as if to threaten me, then runs. The librarians comes over knowingly with the paperwork to register a legal complaint. I tell her I'm in a rush but she slowly fills out the mimeographed theft complaint in painstaking cursive as I can tell we're being watched. Finally another black man, darker and with larger eyes, who must be the accomplice and mastermind, reveals himself from behind a stack of books. He says that we've been part of an experiment, he won't say what kind. He abducts the librarian and leaves me alone in the library to discover the thief hiding behind a narrow bookshelf in the corner.

Erroll Louis assigns me to cover a travesty in the heartland. I later discover that he has also assigned the boss's son to the same story. We ride the giant roundhouse elevator up to the journalistic suite but can't get anywhere because it stops on every floor.

Dark thrust of peace.

The aliens send plans for the construction of an antique railway car. When it is airlifted in with armed guards we realize that it must be a surveillance machine. But we don't dare open fire on our own handiwork.

Taxi drive through the Berkeley Hills to a foot path where the driver gets out and carries my luggage into a sweeping predawn panorama, pink and blue.