Anyway, enjoy this unearthed noodling, and hopefully there will be more fiction in the near future!
***
The Apocalypse happened about fifteen years ago, while my mother was pregnant with me. I don’t remember life Before, and my brother- four years older than me- doesn’t really, although occasionally he’ll surprise me by having a personal familiarity with something like “milkshake”.
We don’t live “near” anyone. No one does, these days. Well, some people do, people trying to rebuild the Cities, but Daddy says they’re short-memoried idiots. But there’s about a handful of us families that look in on one another, none closer than about five miles, and we all get together about once a month for trading and courting and that kind of thing. Mama says they’ve all been carefully vetted, they’re all the “right” kind of people, by which she means sensible folk. My brother says dryly that the Apocalypse did a pretty good job vetting our species in general, but talk like that always makes Mama angry.
“There were a lot of good people who died, a lot of smart people who just got unlucky,” she’ll say. “Not to mention the smart people who got lucky enough to survive, but were a hell of a lot worse for us than the dumb ones who died.”
Daddy says we were smart, and that’s why we made it through the Bad Years. Mama says we were smart, but also lucky. “Being smart just lets you take advantage of good luck when it comes along,” she says. “And good luck comes more often to those who don’t count on it.”
“Smart, and lucky, and ruthless,” Daddy will say, and kiss Mama. Mama says nothing. I know she considers being ruthless part of being smart. And I know she considers the biggest piece of luck having been married to Daddy. Daddy is the one who knew how to survive in a world suddenly stripped of modern technology. Sure, it was theoretical knowledge, knowledge he’d gleaned from a passionate interest in history, but between the two of them they turned theory into practice, and even refined it in places. And Daddy’s the surer shot when it comes to hunting anything on the move. Mama has said multiple times that we might have survived without him, but we never would have been so comfortable. Daddy always says we’d have done just fine.
“There’s no stopping your mother, boys,” he’ll say. “Once she puts her mind to a thing, it gets done.”
Daddy used to work with computers, before the Apocalypse. People would have problems with their computers, and he’d use his to fix them. He’s explained it to us a couple of times, but it’s sort of hard to understand. And Daddy says there’s really not much point in trying to understand, because we’re not likely to get computers back on any sort of a widespread scale anytime soon, and even if we did, they’ll be different.
Mama was something called a financial planner, which she says was even more worthless than what Daddy did. “I made a lot of money helping people prepare for retirement,” she says. “But when the Apocalypse made money obsolete, it became apparent that all I really did was tell stories.”
Mama is good at telling stories, tho’, and she’s a super-good planner, so I’m sure she was good at her job, even if there’s no such thing as “retirement” anymore.
Mama had a passing interest in history, but not like Daddy. She always liked art and literature and philosophy best, which she says are all very important things to individuals and societies, but not very good for building shelter or putting food in our bellies. She’s much better with people than Daddy is, tho’. Better at charming them, better at bargaining with them.
Better at killing them, when it needs to be done.
