Bill was worried too, the news said that there were riots in Denver and the last time he had heard from his friend Max was over a week ago, no phone calls, no emails, nothing. His parents also lived in a suburb of Denver, where Bill grew up and he could not get a call in to them either. He didn’t worry about his old man too much, since retirement Bill’s dad had spent more time dragging his mom around camping than staying at home. Most of the time they were out of cell phone range too, what with the mountains they typically camped in. Max on the other hand, had to work, which meant he was probably right in the thick of things when the rioting, or whatever was going on, started. Calls to Max’s home line just met with a “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try your call again” message. Very weird. Today he vowed to send more email messages and call and call until he got through to Max. It was Wednesday, if Bill did not get through today or tomorrow he was going to take Friday off and drive out to Denver over the weekend, National Guard be damned!

As a programmer Bill also succumbed to cruising the internet most days, he was a mild news junkie and the situation in his hometown had him concerned. His boss had to drag him in and speak with him about his internet usage yesterday, but understood that Bill was simply not going to be worth a shit until he had confirmation that his family and friends were okay.

As Bill drove into the city he hit a traffic jam. ‘What the hell?' he thought to himself, ‘It's six-thirty!’ In the three years since he had been driving this route he had never once hit traffic this far back. Cursing, he cut off Jimmy Buffet mid song so that he could listen to the radio. National Public Radio was funneled through a local station which sometimes did traffic updates for the poor suckers coming in to work, usually only if there was a major accident.