Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of the IT department. From John, to Jeanette, those barriers cut across the room in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, near Angie and Steve, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Griffin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the help desk area, every man is a nerd, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Griffinite, forced to look upon a scar.