VL-IV (15) Something Like Burning Plastic, pages 333/334

[Robin Landseadel]

Back in real time, Prairie, DL and Takeshi are traveling to the  
massive reunion in Vineland, right after the Karmic Insurance duo  
zipped back from Ditzah's destroyed home and the destroyed 24fps  
archives:

	. . . a loose formation of midsize, neutral-colored, dingless and
	clean Chevs, each with exactly four Anglo males of like
	description inside, and little octagoned E's, for "Exempt," on
	their license plates.

The real work is done by "Juvenile Hall badasses",

	. . . on the cement, conical black heaps smoked, glowed, flared
	here and there into visible fire. Metal reels and plastic cores
	were scattered all over, and besides all the unspooled film
	burning there was a lot of paper, typed pages mostly, any
	scraps that temporarily escaped, spinning in eddies from the
	updraft, sent back into the flames by a sweeping crew.

All that film, all that evidence of alternative history—up in smoke.  
Looks like the work of Brock Vond, though here there's a bit of that  
ol' "ritual reluctance goin' on here:

	It could have been handled with far fewer personnel, but
	somebody—DL could guess who—had determined to give the
	neighbors a show.

So our trio jumps into a $135,000 manufacturer's suggested retail  
price of a ride—

  	 . . .a Lamborghini LM002, with a V-12 engine that put out 450
	horsepower, custom armed, wired and dialed to the hubcaps. It
	was like being taken off in a UFO."

. . . up to Vineland, yet another Rossinian thread connected to the  
the classic comedy, like Shakespeare or Opera, with a marriage [of  
sorts], clan reunion, karmic payback, loose threads picked up,  
generally laid out in Rondo form—a-b-a-c-a-d-a-e . . , with lotsa  
returns to the main theme—along with the rather headlong tempo of  
Vineland's finale. Things are speeding up.