As Doomgirl I host a show called Bomb Shelter Radio broadcast at 147.859 MHz. The program is directed to survivalists. Mickey roped me into doing it because I have a pleasantly low voice. It’s his radio, and he rigged up an antenna, which bounces radio waves at a communications satellite so the show can be heard worldwide. I play classical music and do some astrology, but the show is mostly about survival.

Mickey taught me a lot of survival stuff and this is what the listeners tune in to hear. I can build an igloo in frozen Antarctic wastes or a cozy tropical shelter poised to withstand apocalyptic tornadoes and hurricanes. I can read a compass, hunt, fish, forage edible roots high in vitamin C, and I have helped Mickey construct our bomb shelter, which is A-1 deluxe.

Watching Seven Cent, I sometimes feel like I’m drifting through the icy rings of Saturn, sight unseen, far far away, safe and secure amid grains, flakes, and pieces of smashed comets. Chunks of rock the size of trucks are there, to be sure, but mostly it’s snow and ice. Who knows? I feel like those odd people reading your fortune at the carnival when I begin to speculate on things unknown. When I told this to Madame Rosa she threw back her Roma head and laughed like a hyena. Madame Rosa is a tarot reader with advanced paranormal skills. She asked me, “What’s your blood sugar? Ten?”

I am a type I diabetic with hypoglycemic unawareness. Because of this I’m on a first-name basis with every paramedic in town. “Laura! Laura! Can you hear me?”

You wake up with an IV in your arm, totally spaced. Every coma I have is different. When I have a rock-bottom seizure I come out of it feeling pretty good. It’s the light stuff that contains the most terror. They are the realm of the Bone Crusher and his dancing Salvador Dalí demons. You come out of those ice-cold and soaking wet. I follow my diet religiously, eat in a timely fashion, and test my blood sugar on the hour. People think you just go around like a reckless fool. “Here comes that dopey girl with her big bag of Halloween candy.”

Last night in the warm glow of my Aladdin kerosene lantern down in the bomb shelter, I was reading about a family in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital city on the planet but only 3 percent of the population over the age of twenty is diabetic. Three percent in a world where 8 percent is average! Many among the rural population of Mongolia, the prosperous ones anyhow, live in snazzy yurts. The people of Ulaanbaatar eat mutton dumplings, tinned herring, and cabbages. They smoke L&M cigarettes. Ulaanbaatar is like any other city except for the extreme cold.