The End Is Now

But Vanessa’s not having any of it. She glares at him, plops herself into the chair. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “We’re all fucked anyway.”

This may be the first time I’ve heard her swear. Welcome to the end of the world, indeed. “Yeah,” I agree.

“Not in the abstract. I mean specifically, precisely fucked.” She points at the ceiling, the flaking plaster, yellow cracks spiderwebbing out from a bronze fixture that’s missing half its bulbs. “The solar panels, on the roof, in the rain. How long do you think they’ll hold up? Another four months?” Hard sigh, like she’s pushing all the air out of her lungs. “Hardly. I had to take one down this morning. Completely past repair. And everyone pretends not to notice.”

Cloud looks like he’s been bitten by a strange dog.

“What don’t we notice?” I ask.

“We’re running out of everything. I don’t mean going to run out, I mean out, now, today. So I’m not sure what good my vegetables would do, all things considered. I’m not pretending anymore.” She kicks a plastic jug under her chair. It’s a weak kick, toppling the jug, not moving it along the floor. It should strike me as pathetic, more sullen than angry, but it doesn’t: Her face is too hard. And suddenly, she’s shouting.

“Fuck this city,” she says, “with its goddamn fucking doomsday parties, and all the rest of it. You’ve convinced yourselves that you’re ready for the end, but you aren’t. You’re pretending. Still convinced that this can go on indefinitely. All the fun of the end of the world without the ending, isn’t that right?”

“Stop it.”

I think I’m as surprised as Vanessa when the words come out of my mouth. It’s her turn to say, “Pardon?”

“I said stop it. You don’t have to lecture me about endings.” I feel my voice climbing to match hers, and part of me wants to shut up. She’s scared and angry, she doesn’t deserve me yelling at her. But maybe it isn’t just her I’m yelling at; maybe I’m reaching for something else. Cloud has started to stare. “My mother died,” I say, “because she was hooked on prescriptions. Benzodiazepine. Not from an overdose. She went into withdrawal, and died from a seizure, because she couldn’t buy any more. Her body couldn’t get the fix it needed. So yes, I’ve seen what happens when things run out. I’m not pretending, either.”

Cloud is definitely staring at me, frowning, and I feel my eyes watering. Blink the tears away. I pull the graffiti sketch from my pocket and hold it out to Vanessa. “Now. What is this?”

* * *

The rain streams down the windows, etching white lines in the glass. Somewhere, distantly, thunder rumbles. Or maybe something is collapsing.

Vanessa takes the scrap of paper between two fingers.

“It’s Naglfar,” she says. “The ship made out of dead men’s nails in Norse mythology. My lab used it as a logo on some of our projects. Morgan helped me come up with it.”

“You used the ship of Ragnarok as a logo?” Cloud interjects. I remember he was the one who recognized it as a Viking ship in the first place. “Brilliant.”

“Well, we didn’t plan on sparking the apocalypse.” Turning to Cloud, she lapses back into classic Vanessa, and I can’t tell if she’s serious. “We just liked the look of it, the ambiguity. Forward or backward, who can tell? The project was intended to clean up the air pollution, replenish lost oxygen. I said we should try to make the bots self-repairing. Didn’t think we’d actually get it to work.”

“So Morgan, she’s the woman who’s looking for you? What does she want?”

“Her name is Morgan Larsen. At least it was. She probably goes by something different now. In Colorado, she was a manager at a music store, a friend of mine.” Speaking precisely, lining up the sentences like aluminum cans she’s going to knock over with stones. “At least, she started out that way.”

“And what is she now?” I ask.

“After what we did at the lab? What I told her?” An almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I don’t think I have friends anymore.”

The edge sweeps back into her voice, like a gust slamming rain against the window glass. Sitting in her wicker chair, staring down at her hands, her voice cold enough to burn. The rain comes in sheets down the living room window, and the gray spot on the back of my hand itches, whitening at the edges. Toxic, all of it. So toxic I could be sick.

“Well, fuck me,” I say.

Vanessa looks up.

“Fuck me and fuck Felicity.” I meet her eyes, warm cinnamon brown and hard as glass. Well, fuck it. I can be hard, too. “How long have we been bringing your water? You want to talk about running out, let’s start there. Start with the lines at the distribution centers, twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six hours waiting. For you, Vanessa. Start with the men Felicity’s been hanging around with because they know where to get it. Start with the goddamn trek I make on my bike to get down here. You know how lucky I am this is the first time I’ve been caught in the rain?” I grab her towel from around my shoulders, fling it into the corner beside the door. It wraps itself around the neck of a gallon jug.