The Electronic Corpse

Remaining

We were hers, we were a fellowship, and we remained American. These facts could not be exploded and burned away. Nor could the currency of politeness. Please, Mrs. President said, and how wonderful to be reminded that we indeed had been calm, and all it took to carry on was remaining so.

Apocalypse, after all, was a kind of liquid state. We had been warned and threatened and steeled against the inevitable and full-scale. This particular explosion, it would turn out, was just a localized attack on the forty-third floor. But we’d had monthly evacuation rehearsals and knew what to do. Our president’s jowly face dominated every available screen, repeating herself.

So our phones did not work. Nor our tablets. And this was the real terror, honestly. But I passed the time during our stairwell descent imagining Micheala within some finely rendered game realm. She wears a dream gown that brushes the pristine marble of her castle’s floor. Her scepter is handheld and topped by her own personal heart. In order for the heart to continue to beat she must think constantly of the Paragraph Optimizer who has won its grace. She is rated M for mature audiences like myself.

Graham’s head bobbed hideously in front of me, like an almond gone very bad.

Michaela seated on an old rocker draped by a pure back sheepskin throw, alongside a crackling fireplace in some land very far north and very dark, now, constantly. She does what, there? Fishes. Prepares fish. Smokes fish and drizzles it with hand-churned butter and coarse sea salt. Do not ask me by what light she churns the butter. Michaela manages.

Any of these. Anyone at all.

By the time we reached the street, our phones were back to normal. Beneath the deafening scream of sirens I felt a text buzz through and thought for a second it was her. But no. This would be J.