A place called Attar.

The first flake floated to Earth unseen by anyone except a daydreaming boy in third grade who was looking out the classroom window. No one else was even aware of the white speck that lazily settled on the asphalt of the playground...and quickly melted.

A second snowflake fell. It landed on a letter a mail carrier was about to put into a mailbox. It melted even without smudging the handwritten address, but the mailman glanced at the sky and pulled up the collar of his coat.

Soon large fluffy flakes were falling. At first they melted almost immediately upon touching the warm Earth. Then their assault gained strength...like troops crossing a river on the dead bodies of their own advance guard...and the numbers of survivors increased.

Storekeepers standing at their cash registers eyed the snow through their plate glass store windows, and those with snow shovels and warm mittens to sell smiled to themselves, just a little.

Street and road maintenance crews studied the grey sky, now salted with swirling snow. They filled the gas tanks on their plows and resigned themselves to working late.

People in homes, offices, and factories turned on their radios to listen to weather forecasts, and mentally prepared to have their lives disrupted.

By one o'clock the superintendent of schools had made his decision: school would close early. The children were in a holiday mood when they heard the news.

Grocery stores and gasoline stations had a run on bread, milk, cigarettes and beer. Sales of condoms were brisk.

By evening, the roads were thick with heavy slush, and vehicles built to travel 70 or 80 miles in a single hour either crawled, or stalled.

Still the snow came. The air grew colder. The wind increased, and snow crystals drifted across roads and fields like blowing desert sand.

Radio stations announced closings and cancellations. Each time it was read, the list grew longer.

One flake of snow, seen only by a small boy, had fallen. Then another, which fell on a letter a mailman was about to put in a mailbox. Then more and more...some caught on children's tongues, some looked at as "pretty," but most, by far, unseen, unnoticed.

But when the individual flakes started to number in the millions, and the billions, and the thousands of billions...

The snow clung to tree branches and wires. A single flake was so light it could be caught on a young child's tongue leaving nothing more than a cold sensation. But in concert with many, many others, it sent heavy, aged tree branches crashing to Earth. Some of the branches dropped on power lines, and other lines dropped from the weight of the snow itself, cutting off electricity to homes and workplaces. In the city, traffic lights and elevators were out of order, and the Men were paralyzed, unable to function without their mechanical servants. Airports closed. Snowplows were called off the roads. Nothing moved.

Nothing except the snow, which continued to fall, and to drift, and to advance across the land like an invading army. The snow and the wind, not the Men, were now in control.

The Men, with all their machines, all their science and technology, all their power--had been conquered.

Just as the first snowflakes went unnoticed, unheeded, other signs also were ignored.

Just as individually powerless snowflakes combined to bring Man's civilization to its knees as surely as an enemy's bombs, other small powers were combining; powers whose damage would be far greater.

If the Men had taken this lesson from nature, if they had understood, many of them would have perished: if not from fright, then by their own hands, knowing they were not strong enough to face what was to come.

For although they didn't yet know it, The Time of Troubles was upon them.

--Excerpted from Chapter 18 of The Place Called Attar, by Jd Belanger.

This isn't great writing. Maybe it isn't accurate prophecy--although that remains to be seen.

But for anyone who believes that vast changes are sweeping across the world...and that those changes are brought about by actions and events that are seemingly as insignificant as a snowflake...The Place Called Attar is moving and thought-provoking.

To get your copy send $9.95 to: Jd Belanger, N2601 Winter Sports Rd., Withee WI 54498.