Slow Apocalypse (71 page)

We have an energy-use policy unimaginable a year ago.

We don’t pollute our precious water, and air pollution is negligible…though that will change as we burn more wood and coal, which is especially dirty. Nothing to do about it right now, but Mark is working on it.

We have a sense of community that, in most of the country, was as extinct as the family farm.

Most astonishingly, we have what is a virtual communism, without ever having set out to do so. There is no money anyone trusts, so no real rich and poor. People still own property, their homes, some land, but most of the countryside around here was owned by the state of California, the federal government, or large corporations. Theoretically they still own it, but just let them come and try to take it, particularly the agribusiness companies. They’d better bring a lot of weapons to enforce their deeds. We are well armed, we know how to make gunpowder, and we reload.

It might be very different elsewhere. And our dreams of holding on to the land could prove to be pipe dreams. Big corporations very well
may
raise mercenary armies. Time will tell. My hope is that most of them, and their stock shares and land titles and bonds and mortgages, are as worthless as federal greenbacks, useful for starting kindling in your fireplace.

But…

The country is fragmented. It hardly seems reasonable to call it a country at this point. We don’t know if that is good or bad, but most of us feel we must come together.

We have a distant government that lies to us routinely, habitually, brazenly, and it is quite clear that those who feel they ought to be in charge would like to clamp down on us all and see the chaos of the Collapse as a golden opportunity. There are hordes of restless, homeless, hungry people out there, and if a demagogue with access to television, radio, and the straitjacketed Internet were to come forward, it would be easy to scapegoat communities like ours, no matter how much free food we send to San Diego.

That is a worry for another day.

But I keep wondering…we have learned a lot in the short term, but how about five years from now? Ten years, twenty? The question before the jury is, are we an inherently wasteful species?

There is no lack of energy here on this planet. The disruption was caused by how deeply we were invested in petroleum. We were given no time to convert, and things collapsed. But there is coal, natural gas, and hydropower. There is enough coal to last a very long time. It’s dirty, but I don’t doubt that now that we have to, we will find ways to use it cleanly. The dams are still there, and some are generating again. Pipelines are being repaired. There are hydrogen, fuel cells, solar power, wind power. Only coal is abundant enough to take the place of crude oil, but anything else will help us pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

What I want to know is, will those millions and millions of cars sitting idly in every garage and on every curbside in America soon be converted to burning wood, coal, gas, or hydrogen, and get back on the road again? Will we once more have traffic jams, roads bumper-to-bumper with single-passenger vehicles? Will we use coal technology to flood the world with unnecessary plastic again?

The jury will be out for a while on that one. I’m hoping we have learned a permanent lesson, and will be more sensible and moderate in the future.

But I’m not putting any money on it.

I have kept this manuscript in a safe-deposit box at the bank. Boxes are about the only services they offer now, as financial transactions are pretty much in abeyance until someone comes up with a currency that everyone can trust.
Things still change hands, contracts are still drawn, but their terms are expressed as barter, swaps, rentals.

The box is free; just go ask for two keys from Harvey Wilkerson, the man who used to run the bank and is now a common laborer like me. I intend to keep this account in the box for a very long time, possibly forever.

Karen has asked me if I intend to publish it someday. The answer is no. I doubt there will be much of a market for stories of the Collapse. Everyone has a story of how they survived. Some of them are epic, and horrible, far worse than anything we endured. Who in this brave new world would want to read mine? I’m sure that, in ten or twenty years, someone will write the Great American Novel of the Collapse, like
Gone With the Wind
did for the Civil War,
The Grapes of Wrath
for the Great Depression. I won’t be the author of that book. I didn’t see enough of it all, and my story is only middling awful.

There’s a second and more compelling reason why I don’t intend to seek publication. I’d have to take out the beginning. I realize that my account of how and why this all happened would surely be drowned out by the incredible babble of conspiracy theorists, that I would sound like just one more nut. But I worry that Colonel Warner’s name might alert some National Security computer, and I remember what happened to him. I could change his name, I could fictionalize the circumstances and the location where the assassination happened, but why take even that chance? No, this account goes into the vault and stays there, a family heirloom to be shared (and probably disbelieved) only with my descendants, and those of the Winstons.

Speaking of descendants…

Addison is a year older, and has blossomed in a way that I suppose makes any father proud and terrified at the same time. Boys come calling, lots of boys. I see them flirting with her in the fields, and she flirts right back. My only hope is that she remains as levelheaded and picky as she was before the Collapse, but I’d be a lot happier if her birth-control pills hadn’t run out months ago. Of course I want grandchildren…but not yet, Lord, not yet!

But there will soon be a new arrival. In about four months Addison will have a little brother or sister. Karen has never looked prettier, or happier. At night I put my ear to her baby bump and, among the stomach gurgles, hear the kid kicking around in there. If there’s a more wonderful feeling, I don’t know what it is.

Life goes on.

Until two months ago, leisure time was a fond memory. Saturday night was just like any other night, and Sunday was just another day. We worked from dawn to dusk every day of the week, no holidays.

Then the city council decided we were doing well enough that we could set aside Sunday mornings. Those who were so inclined attended church services, which had been happening all along, on Sundays after sundown, for the very devout. Those of us not inclined found other things to do. Sleeping late was a popular option. Then, starting at noon, we would work until dusk again.

Last month we started experimenting with letting Sunday be a true day of rest. So far, we’re doing well with only six workdays a week.

With more leisure time than we have had since the crisis began, romance is not the only thing beginning to flourish again. There are the arts. A great deal of it is what we used to call crafts: quilting, knitting, carpentry, and the like, combining pleasure with usefulness. But there has already been one dance performance by a local troupe, and last Sunday I saw a man painting on canvas. Songs are being written and performed, dances and other gatherings are being held.

And the theater has once more staggered to its feet and trotted out onto the boards to beguile and amuse. I’d like to say that the first performance of the fledgling Lakeside Repertory Company was something like
Hamlet
—after all, what could be more appropriate in a community called Lake Elsinore?—but it wasn’t.

It is with a crazy mixture of horror and pride that I report the inaugural selection was three episodes of
Ants!
I’m not going to take this as a sign that civilization will eventually rebound, only that television will.

The first two acts were adaptations of two of the most popular episodes, and the guys we recruited to play the parts were quite good, and even looked like their television counterparts. The third act was an entirely new episode, cobbled together by Jenna and myself with a little reluctant help from Bob. (He came up with three good jokes, and actually smiled twice, which by itself made the effort worthwhile for me.)

The response was uproarious, delirious, all out of proportion to the quality of the material, but I don’t care. It reminded me of a scene from a Preston Sturges movies,
Sullivan’s Travels
, where labor-gang prisoners were taken into a church to see a Disney cartoon. Laughter lightened their burden for a while. That’s worth something.

It is now Monday morning, the kerosene in my lamp is running low, and my only pencil is worn to a nub. When the sun comes up I will take this down to the bank and seal it away, a time capsule to be opened when I or my descendants deem it safe. I send you greetings, descendants, whoever you are. Don’t make the same mistakes we did.

Monday mornings are my shift at the northern border of the community, so my day will begin there, scanning the horizon for threats. Later, it will be harvesting, which I like more than plowing or planting, and infinitely more than composting and ditch-digging. I’m learning carpentry in the hope that I can get on the crews building elevated aqueducts, but I’ll need to get a lot better. And, next Sunday, I will sit down with Jenna and Bob and write another episode.

There’s a lot of work to be done.