There are twenty-seven members of the Rooftop Players Commune and they don’t want anything to do with this. With any of it. The bikers are kooky kids, the Professors are idiots, the Firemen nothing but hooligans. The Rooftop Players isolate themselves from all these groups as best as they can. The Rooftop Players believe in peace, and love, and music.
They have their own rooftop in one of the previously industrial buildings of Hamasger Street. They have built a crude wall around it, so that no one can see them. They built a primitive elevator from ropes and a plank of thick wood. They grow their own food, they raise their own children. They have three guitars — two acoustic, one classic — and at all times there’s music playing. Songs by the Beatles, imagine all the people, and by Jimmy Hendrix, little wing, oh, little wing, and by Led Zeppelin. When someone gets tired of playing, someone else takes over. For some reason they can’t explain they’ve been playing “She’ll Be Coming Down the Mountain” all day today.
Those who don’t currently play or take care of the children or sleep are busy making love. There are twelve guys and fifteen girls, and of those, seven are already showing signs of advanced pregnancy. There are neither condoms for the Rooftop Players, nor pills. There’s only love, and love is free.
They don’t remember how long they’ve been this way. They don’t care. The beards on the guys faces get longer and longer. There are two pairs of scissors on the roof, but they’re rarely used. They elevator themselves down only to fetch water or look for more canned foodstuffs, but they try to make those trips as short as possible, get back to the roof, where it’s safe. They feel like they could live like this forever.
But today something is different. Since midnight there’s no playing on the roof, no more music. A wave of nervousness passes through the Rooftop Players, and they sit quietly, separated, wondering what has happened. They think, each of them, they may have seen something strange and wonderful, a woman wreathed in light, passing down below, but it might just be the mushrooms.
Nevertheless, the image lingers, makes them restless. One of them stands up and goes to the elevator, lowering himself from the roof to search for water and food. Then another one goes. And another one.
After some time there’s no one left on the roof. The Rooftop Players walk, each submerged in his or her own thoughts, passing through streets that are no longer empty. Others walk the streets today, emerging from basements and fortified apartment blocks, from petrol stations and bookshops, from hidey-holes and safe houses, women and men, the young and the old, all who still remain. They think not of the war, not of safety or survival. None is aware of the others. Yet they all head in the same direction. All following the path. Her path.
Heading south.
Where the Central Station lies.