Early Draft of Talking Points for the Sixth Emergency Broadcast with Editorial Suggestions by the Office's Unpaid Interns Bob and Isabelle

Helena Bell is an occasional poet, writer, and international traveler which means that over half of what she says is completely made up, the other half is probably made up, and the third half is about the condition of the roads. She has a BA, an MFA, a JD, and a Tax LLM which fulfills her life long dream of having more letters follow her name than are actually in it. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Clarkesworld, Shimmer Magazine, and Brain Harvest. She also has appeared previously in Daily Science Fiction.

Author Comments

An early draft of this story had been languishing on my hard drive, forgotten, since I wrote it. Since I don't generally write humor (what I find funny most people find disturbing) I didn't quite now how to make this piece into a story just beyond a list of relatively useless things you may hear during an emergency broadcast. When I finally took it out for a revision and immediately started debating myself on the grammatical rule for possessive in appositive phrases, I stumbled upon the idea of two interns continuing a conversation throughout the piece thereby turning it into two stories which wind themselves apart and then back together (unnecessarily long sentences, like unnecessarily long titles, are my great love). Also, Professor Benedict is a real person. I wouldn't advise trying to infiltrate his compound during the apocalypse. I also hope he doesn't mind the tuckerization... (P.S. My real name is Mary Elizabeth Shingle and I live in Alaska?)