Aftermath
“And can anyone tell me what this is?”
“Wood chips!”
‘Pulped wood!”
“Colored paper!”
“Yes, children, very good. It’s all of those. It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y. Can anyone tell me what that is?” asked the teacher.
Silence. Even the hum of desktops had died down once they had typed in money.
“It was used to buy things?”, said one child in a tentative voice.
“Yes, very good, you can see it over in the archives …”
I turned away and continued on down the hall. This is what it had all come to. Kids in a high-tech classroom learning by computer and not really experiencing anything beyond them. I turned into the staff room and poured myself a cup of artificial coffee. Joe was already in and I joined him. Joe was an ‘old worlder’ like myself – gray hair and wrinkled about the face. A rarity these days. We had been from different walks of life in the old world, but were thrown together in the aftermath.
“Steve Manning. How are ya?” he drawled at me.
“Pretty good Joe, y’self?”
“Aw, me hip’s playin’ up today but I can’t complain.”
Joe had been well beat up in the aftermath, as was I. The young folk had taken it into their heads that anyone over the age of about thirty was personally responsible for the nuclear holocaust that ended civilization as we knew it. They’d rampaged up and down the coast killing all the ‘oldies’. Joe and I were the only ones left when they slowed down and realised they could use us.
“How’s that chest of yours doing?” he inquired.
“Well they keep telling me there’s nothing they can do, but I reckon that new laser thing they’ve got could just cut it right out. I think they just don’t need me around any longer.”
“Goddam, we gotta go together Steve, because I ain’t gonna stick around without ya’. It’s hell already but at least we got each other.”
“I know mate, I know,” I said, and reached out to hold his hand. He gripped mine back just as fiercely.
“Whatta ya’ got today?” he asked, changing the subject as neither of us wanted to discuss our future again.
“Ancient History” I replied dreamily, drifting off as I so often did lately.
When they had started to rebuild after the holocaust they had kept us alive to help them. When they murdered everyone of maturity, they lost a lot of knowledge. The Head Citizens wanted us as advisors because they did not want to make the same mistakes as the last civilization. But of course they were making them anyway.
Once they had banded together and leaders emerged, they were well down that road just as surely as if we had pushed them. Maybe it was inevitable. Now they only kept us around like specimens to show the kids and to drag out at peace parades as symbols of the former, violent era.
“Ancient history, huh? Now there’s a laugh,” said Joe breaking into my reverie. “In my day Ancient history was bloody Egypt and India and the first civilizations.”
“I didn’t even do ancient, I did modern history,” I replied, “and that was just as boring. Now they start at 1800 and basically go through all the wars. They gloss over all the good things that happened. They don’t even mention the breakthroughs with AIDS and the big ‘C’.”
“You’re right,” agreed Joe, “they only want to tell the kids how bad things were before the Asians went off and it all fell apart.”
Joe was a computer expert working for the government when things started to deteriorate in 2006. A self educated man, he had been privy to some of the interchanges between the respective governments of the day. Now he wasn’t allowed near a terminal for fear that he’d tap into it somehow and do something horrible. Talk about paranoia.
“I got math’s today,” he said as if it was the end of the world again. “About the only thing they let me do anymore that I enjoy. If only they’d let me show the kids on the computer. They don’t take it in if it’s not on a screen in front of them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “At least they listen to me. The kids seem to enjoy the break between subjects. I’m always slotted in between ‘communal obligation’ and ‘loving your neighbor’. They enjoy lighthearted stories of old after that shit. They know what happens to them if they fail those ones.”
“Yeah, correction school.”
“Correction school my ass, don’t be naive Joe.”
“What do you mean by that, Steve?”
“Surely you suspect what they do? They gas them and dispose of them outside the walls somehow. Much like Hitler really. The kid’s don’t even seem to wonder why they never see their mates again. And you know I don’t see the point of it all anyway. All this shit about being good citizens, but they never get to be good citizens, do they?”
“How’s that?”
“Well you think about it. The Head Citizens are so paranoid that age and old people equate to violence and the old way of life that they kill them off at 30. The pick the best of the crop that can recite all the new rules and they dump the rest. They never get to live. They learn, learn, learn and if they don’t cotton on they lose anyway.”
“I thought they got moved off to that other city down south?” said Joe.
“No, they kill ‘em. I don’t think there is anything down south anyway. The Jews in Europe thought they were just being relocated. These kids are the same. No idea. Improvement huh? The new era? Who are they kidding! These kids get one whiff of their fate, or there’s one kid who hasn’t had his brains bred out of him, and they’ll rebel. Then it will be all on again.”
“God I hope I’m not around for that one Steve. The last one was enough, and that was meant to be the war to finish it all off.”
“So do I Joe, so do I.”