You could already begin to see the results of the program. All over the world the weather was more bizarre than anyone could remember. There were unusual storms, massive rains, horrible droughts. The deserts were expanding into the farmlands of millions of people.

"Can you imagine the consequences?" the guy asked. "In the end nobody will be safe. They'll get us all."

He was whispering very emotionally as he explained all this to his friend. Like a man who had found Truth, he was compelled to spread the word. And like a good evangelist he had skillfully woven myth and fact, vision and reality, into a web so entangled that you could never be really sure of anything.

What if it were true? What if even just a part of it were true? There were so many possibilities, so many ways that such conspiracies could grow in the modern world with the systems of power so unaccountable and so intertwined, not just on the surface but intertwined deeply on many unpredictable levels.

There were always stories about how the former head of the intelligence agency was now on the board of the corporation whose president had a brother at the World Bank who arranged billion-dollar loans so that a third world nation with a new right-wing regime propped up by the intelligence agency could finance a construction project proposed by the corporation.

Under such circumstances you had to admit that almost anything was possible.

The bus arrived in Harvard Square and I stepped back out into the snow. It was coming down very hard, but there were a lot of people around, a crowd milling on the sidewalk.

I saw the rescue truck from the fire department parked in the street. And then I saw the body on the pavement in the middle of the crowd. It was a young man with blood pouring from his head.

Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him--or if they did know they refused to say. Was he a drunk who fell and cracked his head on the curb? Or was he attacked?

The rescue squad put an emergency dressing on the wound and carried the man to their truck on a stretcher. I stood there watching as the truck drove off and was swallowed up by the swirling snow.

The crowd of people dispersed, and all that was left was some blood and stray pieces of gauze dressing on the sidewalk. But the snow was quickly covering up that, too.