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Jack L Chalker - When the Changewinds Blow
WHEN THE CHANGEWINDS BLOW

Copyright й 1987 by Jack L. Chalker.
e-book ver. 1.0

For Eva
1
The Girl Who Was Afraid of Thunderstorms

There is something almost other-worldly about a huge shopping mall; enter it and
you leave heat or cold, night and day behind, and enter a futuristic Disney-like
vision of a future world which is all antiseptic, insulated, and artificial yet
somehow it caters to all your basic modem needs. It is the synthesis of the
ancient bazaar, the communal marketplace, the soda fountain, the drive-in, and
the town square and more. Its vast interiors with their wasted space, careful
fountains, phony waterfalls, plastic park benches and canned music which may be
The 1001 Strings Play the Best of the Rolling Stones but somehow sounds like the
same elevator music the parents and grandparents of those denizens of malls
heard in their day. To many of the youth who are too young to be allowed in the
adult bars and clubs and too old to be in by eight o'clock it is a massive
singles bar as well.
Wednesday night wasn't the best night out, even in the mall, and it was tough on
a school night to figure out an excuse to get there that parents might accept,
but teens have had many centuries of evolution to get to a point where they
instinctively know how to manage such urgencies when they have to, and Sharlene
"Charley" Sharkin certainly felt like she had to.
It wasn't anything to do with the mall itself, but rather what it filled in her
life. She was seventeen and due to graduate in five months, an occasion she was
looking forward to with great anticipation. She was bright, athletic, and had
good grades for the most part, but she hated school and all it stood for. Her
parents had all sorts of plans for her, all of which included college and
perhaps beyond, but the thought of four or more years of additional school was
just gruesome, that was all. She could see herself putting up with some
secretarial school-she was already a lightning typist and did some word
processing on the school computer for office brownie points-or maybe even a
medical technician's course, or paralegal, or something like that, but nothing
more. College wasn't like regular school in one way: if you didn't get it and
later regretted it there was nothing that said you had to be eighteen and not
twenty or even older to get in.
She had a nice, round face with just a bit of an overbite set off by mid-length
Clairol brown perm-curled hair, no beauty but cute and she knew it. She was
slightly chubby and thought she was fat and hated it but not enough to really
work at dieting or giving up all the nice foods that made life worthwhile. She'd
been a skinny, athletic kid but it had just started to come on and stay there,
particularly in the past year or two, but at five foot three and a hundred and
thirty-six pounds she didn't feel out of whack. She'd really let herself go
since-well, since Tommy.
She had just turned sixteen, and was real popular with the boys, and the night
of the junior prom Tommy Meyers had brought out this bottle of high-proof