Conditional Reality

Gangs of crickets invaded our town, chirping wildly for hours on end. None of us got any sleep for days. We cursed our fate, then accepted the invasion as something we could do nothing about. Later we learned to sing with the crickets, a tactic they seemed to appreciate. When we stopped, they stopped, and moved on—to the next town, we could only suppose. We slept again, but missed the cricket music and shed a few tears when we found dead crickets on our lawns. We mimicked cricket music for years, then abandoned our town to the cricket ghosts.