The Man Who Watched the World End (9 page)

After coming back upstairs
with a box of baseball cards, I pushed the old rag under the doorway to keep the bugs downstairs where they belong. It would be nice if I could create a similar blockade for everything lurking outdoors, something I could put around my property to keep the predators away.

Standing
in front of the bathroom mirror to make sure no bugs were hiding on my clothes, my thoughts went back to my high school cap and gown, which were downstairs in a box between the safe and some family photos. The last time I tried it on, it still fit like a bed sheet, just like the day I graduated. I finished high school fifteen years after the first Blocks were identified and nine years after a hundred percent of new babies wouldn’t be able to speak, move, or do anything for themselves. As a freshman, it was the norm to get treated like shit by the seniors. It was quite a bummer not to have anyone to do that to by the time I was a senior. Andrew would have been a freshman that year. If I saw anyone hazing him there would have been problems; no one gives my brother a hard time except me.

My graduation year was noteworthy for being the same year the world’s population dipped back under six billion. At that point
, twenty percent of people were Blocks. This was reported on the evening news as my family ate dinner, the anchorman saying it with the solemn voice saved for declarations of war or assassinations. My mother seemed to take comfort in the number of people in the world becoming more reasonable. She didn’t say anything like that in front of my father, but you could tell she was slightly encouraged by the way she asked us if we would like seconds of the mashed potatoes. My father told us the world didn’t feel any more vacant: the roads were still packed during rush hour, the lines still long at the post office. The comment was meant to comfort us.

Those were the circumstances in which I joined the adult worE">
each for senior week. It was tradition; they felt like they had to let me go.

The trip was supposed to be my final seven days of carefree life. My friends and I got drunk every night and hooked up with girls just as each graduating class before ours had, but there were also nights out on the sand where we passed jugs of wine up and down the line of friends while talking about the future. The ocean looked black in the night. Waves crashed against the shore while we spoke, causing some of what
was said to be missed above the rush of water.

We
said the same things that other kids had said during senior week—“You guys are the best friends I’ve ever had,” and “I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life,” and “this is our last week of freedom”—but all of these things had a different context from when previous generations had said them. Each time one of my friends said something like this, it made everyone else in our group tear up. None of us made fun of anyone else for crying; none of us even really understood why we were crying, except there was a sense that things would never be the same. Even Trevor Hohntz teared up. In tenth grade, I saw Trevor yawn after his girlfriend broke up with him. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. And even he cried there on the beach that night. The rest of us didn’t stand a chance of not crying.

The kids in our group
who had older brothers and sisters told us how other years’ senior weeks were different from ours: “The entire beach was packed with kids. Take our group and multiply it by a thousand. There were parties everywhere. Nobody was worrying about Blocks or the end of the world. My brother’s greatest fear was getting caught for under-age drinking.”

This made some of the girls in our group cry even more because up to that point they felt like they hadn’t really missed out on anything, and now they knew that wasn’t true. Only four or five years earlier, things had seemed so much more carefree.

Half of our group, myself included, had Block siblings waiting for us at home. We talked about what it would be like for them to grow up: “At least we have this week. My brother will never have a senior week of his own. He doesn’t get to do anything at all. When I get back I’ll show him all the pictures we took and tell him as many stories from the week as I can think of.”

Each of us realized the tradition o
f senior week was ending there on that beach. But that was only one small aspect of our culture that was fading away as the Blocks began to outnumber the regular adults. A girl sitting across the circle from me sobbed until she had worked herself into a stupor and needed to go for a walk with her boyfriend. My girlfriend rested her head healthy heart and lungs sof against my shoulder and I put my arm around her. No one snuck away to have sex on the beach. Talking about the future killed any raging teenage hormones we had.

Up to that point I had struggled with the decision of whether or not to go to college. Acceptance letters from each of
my top three choices were already hanging on my bedroom wall. Each time a letter arrived my mom asked if that was the school I thought I’d like to attend.

“Mom, dad,” I said
, upon returning from the beach, “I’m not going to go to college.”

My father frowned
, but didn’t say anything. My mother squeezed his hand before asking me why I was having a change of heart.

I took a deep breath before saying, “Getting a degree doesn’t matter anymore. Nobody needs lawyers or doctors. In a couple
of years no one is going to need project managers or tax specialists.”

I put my arm around my mom when I said these things. It was important to let her know this wasn’t part of an impulsive decision, wasn’t me lashing out to hurt their feelings for no apparent reason. Simultaneously, my mom and dad put their heads into their hands. Even then, even for parents who had grown up in different times, it was easy to see that setting a course for your
future might be a wasted effort. Too many things were changing.

At the time, the number one book on the
New York Times
Bestsellers List was Steinbecker’s “Mapping the Great De-evolution.” Each chapter detailed the ramifications on society as the Blocks got older and the last generation of regular adults became senior citizens. Chapter 3 gave a forecast of what life would be like in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years. The author posed a question to the reader: ‘What good is excelling in the business world if the business world is quickly becoming extinct?’ Many of the key institutions were already closing shop by that time: there were no more pre-schools or elementary schools, the final classes were being taught in high schools; in a couple of years the colleges and universities would be locked and no one would ever graduate again. The effects were filtering down to the armed forces, Wall Street, and every other facet of society.

“T
he military isn’t recruiting new cadets. And most companies aren’t running internship programs anymore,” I told them.

I saw my life as a road in which the end. Bobby Morrows. other was too far off in the distance to see, and yet I knew there was a clear end somewhere off on the horizon. The same road has been there for everyone
; the difference with the road I saw ahead of me was that mine had no forks in which different paths could be taken. There was one path ahead of me and one path only.

When neither of my parents said anything, I added, “My time will be better spent actually doing things rather than sitting in a classroom learning about doing things.”

Steinbecker projected that by the time I was forty there would only be two billion regular people left in the world. When I was fifty there would be less then 500 million people left. (The numbers ended up being amazingly accurate.) My parents grumbled and sighed, but accepted my answer. Instead of sitting in a classroom, I spent a couple of years working on a road crew. I got to go all over the country building stronger and newer roads that were supposed to last until my generation was at the end of its time.

Years later, from her hospital bed, my mother told me that she had a long talk with my father the night I told them about my plans to skip college. My dad was having a hard time coming to terms with
the decision. He told her how his own father was the first person in their family to get a college degree and how that was always the thing my grandfather was most proud of. He told my mom that he was equally proud of being the second generation of our family to get a college diploma. He couldn’t help but be letdown that I wouldn’t be the third generation.

She told him it wasn’t my fault, just something that
had happened because the world was changing. He understood that, but it still upset him tremendously. My mother said she kissed his cheek before reminding him that she had never gone to college and she had turned out just fine. When he started to protest, she told him Andrew wasn’t going to college either.

“I know that,” he said and turned away from her.

Knowing her, she would have run her hand through his hair to sooth him. “It just gives the four of us more time to be together.” She didn’t have to say it was time together before the end.

After that night, whenever my mom saw my dad get frustrated or feel sorry for himself, no matter what it was that was getting him down, she went up to him and told him to appreciate the time the four of us had together. Neither of them mentioned college again.

Three years later, the four of us went to the final high school graduation in our town. My graduating class had three hundred kids. The final graduating class had twenty. None of us knew and yelled, “April Fool!”or# anyone graduating in that final and compact class, but it felt important to see the last ceremony, to see the last kid crossing the stage with a diploma. The Survival Bill was starting to pick up momentum in those days, so people were openly talking about the end as something that was not only to be accepted, but something to be planned for. All across the country the final high school graduations were being celebrated as an accomplishment that everyone should take part in. Fliers were handed out telling everyone, no matter how long ago they attended high school, to show up to the final senior class ceremony.

An empty field next to the school was transformed into an outdoor auditorium in order to accommodate the thousands of spectators. Balloons were stationed in every possible spot. There was free food. There was an open bar for the adults. Everyone was given a small plaque that marked the date and reason for being there. Door prizes were
even given out. No amount of planning for the event to be a celebration, though, could override human nature. The festivities hadn’t even begun yet when the crowd found itself grumbling about the armies of gnats and the oppressive heat.

T
he valedictorian was halfway through her speech when she said, “I’m not sure what the future will hold for our class, but—“ and that made her break down in tears. Her parents started crying too.

In between sips of beer, a man in the
rear corner of the field yelled, “They sure don’t make ‘em as smart as they used to!” and a fight broke out.

The next speaker, the principal, tried as hard as he could to remind everyone that the night was meant
for celebrating an important accomplishment: “I’ve seen three additions built onto this school. It has enough room to hold twice as many students now as when I first started.” He seemed to consider what he had said, then dabbed his eyes and walked off the stage without finishing his speech.

No one listened to the next spe
aker; everyone was in line for another drink.

At the end of the ceremony, p
er tradition, the senior class president invited the junior class president on stage to accept a symbolic key to the high school. There was, painfully, no one there to receive it.

A man in the crowd yelled
, “Honey, you got stuck with a lot of book smarts and no common sense.”

Another fight broke out.

The fire
has burned itself out for the evening. Another day without being found. Tomorrow, the flames will be rekindled and once again send smoke into the sky. It’s amazing how fast my possessions are eaten by the fire. Already, all of the nearby twigs are gone from outside my home, all of the smaller pieces of furniture from around my house are nothing more than ash, and now my collectibles are going up in flames. And still, no one has found us.

The fire goes out at night for two reasons. First, the chances of someone noticing the black smoke against the night sky are not good enough to waste what remaining items I have to feed into the flames. And second, everything I throw into the fireplace burns away too quickly for me to be there all night. I would have to awaken every thirty minutes if I wanted to keep the fire going.
If someone drives by Camelot in the middle of the night, they will never know how close they came to saving us.

It’s
only after the smoke has finished drifting away from my chimney that I write these entries. It’s only in the evening, when dinner is finished and the dishes have been cleaned, when darkness is the only thing outside my window, that I turn on my computer and start typing. Why is that? Do my daily struggles and worries need to follow me all day before I can digest them? Do I write about the things that worry me before I go to bed as a way to get it out of my system and have a clear mind before sleeping? It would seem like a good strategy to keep from having nightmares. It doesn’t work, though. My first thoughts upon waking are the same as the ones I had when my eyes closed. And the time in between is spent having horrific dreams.