The End Is Now

Then came the murmuring and exclamations of people from downstairs. The generator was finally done, the last drop of fuel having been used up.

Maddie stared at the dark screen of the computer in her room, the illusion of a phosphorescent glow matching the sky full of stars outside her window—she had already been keeping the monitor off to conserve electricity. With no lights for miles around, the stars were especially bright on this summer evening, brighter than she had ever known.

“Goodbye, Dad,” she whispered into the dark, and could not stop the hot tears from rolling down her face.

* * *

They heard on the radio that power was being restored in some of the big cities. The government was promising stability—they were lucky that they were in America rather than somewhere else, somewhere less well-defended. The wars raged on, but people were beginning to make things work without connecting everything together. Millions had already died, and millions more would die as the wars spun on like out-of-control roller coasters, following a logic of their own, but many would survive in a slower, less convenient world. The hyper-connected, hyper-informational world where Centillion and ShareAll and all those darling companies of an age where bits had become far more valuable than atoms, where anything had seemed possible with a touchscreen and a wireless connection, might never return again. But humanity, or at least some portion of it, would survive.

The government called for volunteers in the big cities, people who could contribute to the rebuilding effort. Mom wanted to head for Boston, where Maddie had grown up.

“They could use a historian,” she said. “Someone who knew something about how things used to work.”

Maddie thought perhaps Mom just wanted to stay busy, to feel that she was doing something to keep grief at bay. Dad had promised to protect them, but look how that had turned out. She had recovered her husband from beyond the grave only to lose him again—Maddie could only imagine how Mom suffered under that strong, calm exterior. The world was a harsh place, and everyone had to pitch in to make it less so.

Grandma was staying. “I’m safe here with my garden and chickens. And if things get really bad, you need a place to come home to.”

So Maddie and Mom hugged Grandma and packed for the trip. The car’s tank was full, and they had additional plastic jugs of gas from the neighbors. “Thanks for everything,” they said. Here in rural Pennsylvania, everyone was going to have to learn to cultivate their own gardens and how to do everything by hand—there was no telling how long it might take before power was restored where they were, but a tank of gas wasn’t going to make any difference. They weren’t going anywhere.

Just before they got into the car, Maddie ran into the basement and took out the hard drive that she had thought of as the shell in which her father had lived. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving those bits behind, even if they were no more than a pale echo, a mere image or death-mask of the man himself.

And she had a sliver of hope that she dared not nourish lest she be disappointed.

* * *

Along the sides of the highway, they saw many abandoned cars. When the tank got close to empty, they stopped and pried open the tanks of the abandoned cars so that they could siphon out the gas. Mom took the opportunity to explain to Maddie about the history of the land they passed through, about the meaning of the interstate highway system and the railroads before them that linked the continent together, shrank distances, and made their civilization possible.

“Everything developed in layers,” Mom said. “The cables that make up the Internet with pulses of light follow the right-of-way of nineteenth century railroads, and those followed the wagon trails of pioneers, who followed the paths of the Indians before them. When the world falls apart, it falls apart in layers, too. We’re peeling away the skin of the present to live on the bones of the past.”

“What about us? Have we also developed in layers so that we’re falling back down the ladder of civilization?”

Mom considered this. “I’m not sure. Some think we’ve come a long way since the days when we fought with clubs and stones and mourned our dead with strings of flowers in the grave, but maybe we haven’t changed so much as we’ve been able to do much more, both for good and ill, with our powers magnified by technology, until we’re close to being gods. An unchanging human nature could be a cause for despair or comfort, depending on your perspective.”

They reached the suburbs of Boston, and Maddie insisted that they stop by the old headquarters of Logorhythms, Dad’s old company.

“Why?” Mom asked.

If you ever get a chance to visit the past . . .

“History.”

* * *