"Look man," said Homeless Jack, "it's the particles. They're all around us. That's one of the reasons we have to completely separate ourselves from other people and move to our own land and just be by ourselves. Their particles are harmful to us and are probably killing us in a lot of ways we don't yet understand. Maybe they're even building up in our systems like asbestos, only to smack us thirty or forty years later or maybe even in the next generation."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "Do you mean the sub-atomic particles?"

"No. They're all around us too, but I'm talking about the kinds of particles that humans slough off. Somethin' I read in that book I told you about made me think about this so I went over to the library and checked this stuff out. Listen to this," he said, as he took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. " Do you know that humans normally shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour? We're in a friggin' giant soup bowl full of bits of skin from everyone who's around us. And, the skin cells shed by humans often develop a microscopic fungus that breaks them down and then friggin' dust mites eat them. You know what happens when you eat somethin' ? That's right. Same thing with the mites. Except, those bastards don't use toilets. The damn things poop in the air like friggin' birds. The difference is that the mite's fecal matter is so light that it just floats there in the air like tiny balloons waiting for us to breathe it in. And, just in case you think it's no big deal because these things are so tiny, get this: One tenth of the weight of a two year old pillow is friggin' dust mite feces, and most of the people with asthma and other stuff like that either get it or have it made worse by all this crap in the air."

"So, you're worried about dust mite droppings in the air?" I asked, not being exactly sure where Jack was going with this.

"Well, yeah, but don't get me distracted, here. I figure that the real problem isn't with the mite crap but with the skin cells themselves. You see, they all carry the DNA of all the living things that they fell off. Get it? We're in a friggin' soup full of the DNA of all living things. We're breathing this DNA in, and it's in our hair and in our noses and eyes and ears and stuck to our skin and getting into cuts in our skin. Then it gets into our lungs and our blood and all our internal organs and I'm gonna bet you some of it gets into our cells and screws up our own DNA and can modify it or harm it in some way or other and then it or its effects get into our reproductive systems and we pass it on to new babies. See, I figure it's all that human DNA that's the problem for us. You know how they say that you are what you eat? Well, hell, maybe we are what is all around us in this air soup.

"If you're just around your own family or people like you, then you're pretty much takin' in your own DNA or stuff that's so close that it don't matter. But, what about if you're around a bunch of people who are really different than you? You're takin' in their DNA and that's the problem.

"Then, add this to all the other stuff that's floating around in the air like dust and parts of plants and rocks and whatever, and you see that we really are in a big soup. Now, don't go tellin' me that rocks are dead, man. I don't buy it. I mean they ain't alive in the sense that we're alive, but rocks are all composed of atoms and you know that atoms are always movin'. I figure if somethin' is moving, even internally, then the damn thing is alive in some sense.

"Now, I don't know exactly how this other DNA and other stuff gets into our cells, but I bet it does. Yeah, I know scientists would probably deny it, but remember, it's only been about a hundred years now that medical science has understood that doctors have to wash their hands to kill germs before operating on people. Used to be they'd open someone up, reach their filthy hands in to tweek somthin' or other and leave billions and billions of invisible germs behind that sometimes ended up killing the patient even after an otherwise successful operation. Then a guy came along and said there were tiny little bugs--germs--that were being put in people by the doctors. Mostly, the docs just all laughed at the guy and said he was a crank, but he was right and all the rest of 'em were wrong. Today, we all laugh at the doctors who said the guy was wrong. We all think: 'Hey, we would have believed the guy about germs had we been alive back then.' I say, Baloney. Hindsight makes us all geniuses.

"Remember how I told you before that I figure bits of DNA and even molecules and atoms from so-called inanimate objects can somehow be taken up by animals and that they are modified by them? That's what I'm talkin' about here. As far as I'm concerned, Darwin didn't really explain how those bugs called Walking Sticks ended up looking just like the twigs on trees where they hang out or how other bugs look just like the leaves that they eat. I'm also not satisfied with his explanations of how larger animals developed camouflage that makes them look like their surroundings. Have you seen pictures of those fish that develop all kinds of strange appendages to look exactly like the coral where they live? I ain't buying natural selection as the total answer for this stuff, man. I figure all these critters take in the stuff that is sloughed off by things around them--including plants and rocks and all the rest-and in time they become like those things as their DNA is changed. Okay, so rocks don't have DNA. Big deal. Maybe what they slough off still contains some essential element of rockness that is the equivalent of DNA. I don't know. What am I, a friggin' scientist?

"Hell, I don't know the exact mechanism or why some critters seem to change to be like what's around them faster than others, but I'll bet you that it ain't gonna be too many years before science says I'm right. My guess is that one reason why it ain't been proved yet is because there are many variables and many factors involved that scientists don't know about yet. Maybe, for example, some bugs evolved to look like the plants they're on because of some virus in them that took up bits of the plant DNA and inserted it in the genes of some of their hosts and the genes caused these particular ones to change and they survived and the others that didn't get changed eventually died off in a kinda Darwin scenario but with some additions. Or maybe it has to do with the stuff only affecting, say, the sperm of males and not eggs or the other way around or only of creatures with particular blood types or mutations in their blood or something or only when females are pregnant and their immune systems have to be weaker and more open otherwise their bodies would reject the fetus. Maybe that's the door that all this other stuff uses.

"Anyway, I think white people need to live separate from other people in order to avoid the air soup that I figure can harm them. I think they need to only be around their own people and I also think that they have to have the right kind of physical surroundings--the right kinds of rocks and plants and stuff--so that everything that sloughs off and joins the air soup is stuff that will help them improve themselves."

#  #  #

2. THE OUTSIDER - (ISBN: 0-595-19424-9)
H. Millard’s underground classic story of alienation is
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