smog

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience_ but we__ be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives_ because we didn__ like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?

Mandy loved the smell of a sunny day after a night of rain. The sun hit the orange puddles, the overgrown, soft, green grass on her lawn, and it beamed down through the orange steel mill smog, sending otherworldly, bizarre shadows across the concrete sidewalk.

I__e seen a lot of stuff_ maybe I__e seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I__e seen what they can do, how evil they can be_ I__e seen the Holocaust and I__e seen Jonestown, I__e seen the Vietnam War and I__e seen Hiroshima_ I__e seen the Chernobyl disaster_ I__e seen the World Trade Center attack_ I__e been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,_ Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.

There was a super-8 steel town somewhere, where all the forgotten things in the cruel world ended up eventually, Mandy was sure of it_ this place, she decided, was called Smog City.

With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature,_ Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. __ didn__ create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren__ many of them left these days but they__e still very dangerous! They__e here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don__ understand the world of Representations.

I__e seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly_ they can__ kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I__e seen humans die from smoking them_ if I were you I would stop smoking them.___hy should I? You smoke __m all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes,_ Mandy pointed out.__eah, I started doing that back in the Sixties_ for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes_ but I__ not a person, I__ Pollution, things like that aren__ dangerous to me but they are to you,_ Alecto told her. __t__ not a good idea.

_Maybe I__l be watching super-8 home videos,_ Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. __ love my super-8 camera, it__ an Eastman Kodak one_ Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products_ it__ sad._ __ell, uh_ well, have fun watching your home movies then,_ Mandy finished, but she didn__ have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

The sound of diesel fuel rushing through grimy pistons and cylinders below a morning-fogged window bored through his ears like a deep-water drill bit, and the thump of his own heartbeat cursed him for breaking one of his many rules.

When you looked out my window you could see the whole city crouched under a blanket of car smog.

People could say a lot of negative things about the apocalypse, but there was no arguing the air quality in Los Angeles had really improved.

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.

The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.

She glanced outside at the sky, filled with clouds and smog. All the pollution, all that hell__ven the stars didn__ stand a chance.

The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. __ydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well,_ he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. __ou know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it__ a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so_ strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills.___hat about the pollution?_ Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. __hat if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?___ey kid, I don__ even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there,_ the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. __hen it comes down to all that __o green_ crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person__ income, their job, their family_ their life? I__ not saying you__e wrong, but these newspapers might have a point.

Our thoughts are not the problem. Our thoughts do not create the psychological smog. It is the way we respond to our thoughts that creates the smog.

Yeah, you__e right about having entire rooms full of film and photos_ in that Sydney Mines house I have a darkroom, I have boxes of film and home movie footage_ I have a few projectors, I have piles of Kodachrome slides_ I like photographs. The world is always running away from society and the only way to keep the stuff that__ happened in the past is by taking photographs, I can keep memories of things alive with photographs,_ Alecto responded. __eople say that a time machine can__ be invented, but they__e already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world__ first time machines_ The steel mill, the coal mines, the train tracks, the smog in the sky, I__e been able to rescue it on super-8 and Kodachrome, and no one can remediate those photographs, I can keep them as long as I want to.