
John rises gracefully. "Hey, can you guys watch my stuff while I take a leak? Thanks." and he quickly heads off in the direction of the bathroom. A few moments later the lights flicker. "Oh, great," mutters the counter waitress—and then the lights go out altogether. Somewhere on the other side of the rest stop you hear a door slam open, followed by a vicious blast of freezing cold air that somehow finds its way over to where you sit. The wind howls like something alive, scratching and clawing at you with an icy grasp. Without even thinking about it, you abruptly realize that something is horribly, terribly wrong. Then you hear an awful racket from the direction of the rest rooms—violent blows, choking cries, breaking glass, and finally one more highpitched scream that makes your blood run cold. The wind howls again, more doors slam . . . and then the room becomes still again, except for the distant whistling of the storm outside. "What in heaven was that?" the waitress says in the darkness. What do you do?

-Nova
IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. --The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky. The New York Review of Books, February 23, 1967.