The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution)

by Chris Dietzel

  Her parents had allowed the sightseeing trip through the country, but they wouldn’t let her entertain the thought of an adventure on another continent. Even though both of her parents had backpacked through Europe during their younger years, there were too many rumors of tourists getting stranded over there when an airline or cruise ship closed their doors and people didn’t have a way to get back home.

  “But, Mom.”

  “No. Do you know how often they have labor strikes over there? And that was before the Great De-evolution. Now that they know they’re the only ones who can do the job, they can make any demands they want. What would you do if you got there and then all the pilots went on strike, or worse, they never showed up to work again? How would you get back here?”

  Even as an impetuous teenager, she knew her mother was right. And, in fact, during the leg of her trip through the Southwest, she saw reports that there were massive labor strikes across France, Spain, and Italy as workers tried to squeeze whatever income they could out of their employers before their occupations became outdated. For months, there was no trash collection, no subway service, and no taxi drivers in much of Europe. At one of the many cyber-cafés along their trip, where Morgan and Anna checked their e-mail, Morgan’s mother included a link to a story covering the unrest in Europe, her way of saying “I told you so” without using those specific words.

  Friends, especially young friends, are meant to bicker and get on each other’s nerves. But for two months, Morgan and Anna got along fabulously. When they both had an opinion about the next place they should stop, it was always the same place. When either of them didn’t have a preference one way or the other, they happily deferred to their friend. They agreed on everything, from their route, to which city they slept in each night, to where they ate breakfast.

  They saw the Grand Canyon, the Alamo, and Niagara Falls. They saw Hoover Dam, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Cape Canaveral. For Morgan, though, nothing could match the Grand Canyon. As far as she could see, the earth was torn apart with rocks and caves. It was the power of nature. Something as simple as water had carved out a great portion of the land, leaving miles and miles of beautiful rock formations, crevices, and gorges. If water could do that to the land, what chance did she have of leaving her own mark on the world? She was only a girl—a young woman; she could never compete with simple forces like air and water and gravity.

  The most she could do was use a stone to scratch her initials into one of the rock formations. The rain would wash away her work within a week. It was a trivial reminder of how incidental her life was compared to the water, which had formed the canyons in the first place, and would continue to be on Earth millions of years after Morgan was gone. In front of her was proof that the entire world could be changed by the simplest of powers. But instead of making her life feel unimportant, the great rock formations, red under the sun, gave her a sense of awe. She felt lucky just to have a chance to live in this world where such sights could be seen. It took her breath away.

  Looking out at the stretch of orange and red canyon, Anna said something, but Morgan didn’t hear what the words had been.

  “What?”

  “I said it’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  After offering the acknowledgment, Morgan went back to staring at the expanse of colored stone all around her. It was a place she could spend the rest of her life. She would be perfectly happy to set up a tent and wake up each day in front of those rocks.

  “Ready to go?” Anna asked.

  Without saying anything, Morgan stood up and brushed the dirt off her shorts.

  For the rest of the road trip, though, she found herself thinking of those rocks and that canyon. No matter what other monuments or landmarks they saw, she would envision the expanse of earth carved out by nothing more than water. Anna said her favorite part of the trip had been the great redwoods and sequoias in California, trees so gigantic that other trees resembled nothing more than grass under their giant uncles. But Morgan knew, even as Anna mentioned the colossuses, that they didn’t hold the same power over her friend that the Grand Canyon held over her. She was thinking of it when they passed through Dallas and Houston, and she was still thinking about it when they passed through New Orleans.

  And she thinks about it now anytime she feels overwhelmed, which is quite often. Surrounded by Blocks, each of them withered and grey, like herself, she takes a deep breath and remembers how great the expanse of carved earth had been, that simple droplets of water, combined together into streams and rivers and lakes, could cut the earth away into something more beautiful than anything man could ever make with his two hands and his great intellect. These visions of the canyon allow her to remember that whatever is upsetting her, whatever seems like it’s too much for one person to handle, pales in comparison to the forces all around her. Her ordeal is nothing compared to what has happened across the earth for millions of years. After all, these final moments are only a grain of dust in the timespan it took for those canyons to be formed.

  Most often, the Grand Canyon comes back to her as she makes her way through the many rows of Blocks. Whenever she feels too old to reposition a body, or when her knees start to ache, she thinks of those bloodshot rocks, those burgundy canyons, and her hands stop their shaking. She even remembered it as the forklift carried Elaine’s body to the incinerator. As Elaine’s hair dangled off the forklift’s arm, Morgan thought back to how the sunset had competed with the earth for which could be a brighter color of red until everything in front of her looked like Mars, a place too amazingly beautiful to be real.

  She thought of the Grand Canyon yesterday as it rained straight through from morning until night, and, looking out at all the rows of people depending on her, she thinks of it again now.

  “If you liked the Grand Canyon,” Aristotle, her world traveler Block, says, “you would love Mount Kilimanjaro.”

  “I wish I could have gotten a chance to see it,” she says. Usually, she hates it when people tell her what she would like and what she wouldn’t like, but when Aristotle says these things, she knows he is probably right and takes his word for it.

  Aristotle is one of her favorite Blocks. Unlike her, he was lucky enough to backpack through every continent (except for Antarctica) and got to see all the places Morgan only read about. He saw Big Ben in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pantheon in Rome. But more than those tourist attractions, he attended soccer matches in England and Brazil, got swallowed up in the crowd’s enthusiasm. He ate chocolate frog legs in a back-alley Parisian café and spider legs in Australia. And, in the middle of the night, he was able to sneak under the gates to the Coliseum and walk in the areas cordoned off to visitors. Every part of the world unlocked itself for him. He is the envy of every other Block in the shelter because of all the things he has managed to see.

  “There are some truly amazing places in this world,” he tells her.

  “Yes, there are.”

  As she moves to the next bed—her rounds don’t stop just because she wants to reminisce—she thinks of what the Grand Canyon must have looked like millions of years earlier when it was part of a sea.

  Maybe life can be measured by the first thing that takes your breath away, and by the last time you remember what that feeling was like.

  8

  She doesn’t let herself check for a response from Los Angeles until the next day’s chores are done. This means taking care of all of the Blocks. Rather than getting accustomed to the task at hand, it quickly wears her down.

  At least there isn’t one for every year I’ve been alive, she thinks.

  “How are Blocks different from Congress?” Cindy says. Without waiting for a response, Morgan’s comedian adds, “One can’t do anything for themselves and has nothing to contribute to society, and the other has you to take care of them!”

  “Come on, Cindy.”

  “Hey, a lot of comedians get funnier with age,” Cindy says, her lips not moving as
the imaginary words are formed.

  This thought does not cheer Morgan up.

  “Of course,” Cindy says, with regrettable grimness, “a lot of people don’t get funnier the older they get. They just die.”

  “Thanks,” Morgan says before walking to the next bed.

  But Cindy isn’t done: “Knock, knock.”

  Morgan groans, but plays along. “Who’s there?”

  “Block.”

  “Block who?”

  “Block who just made you sit here and listen to a bad joke!”

  Morgan walks away without replying.

  Everything she does is set against a numerical standard by which she can measure her progress. Only one more Block until this row is one hundred percent done. Two hours later: Only one more Block until this quadrant is done. Four hours later: Only one more row to go until three quadrants have been cared for.

  Everything is about the percent she has completed, not the percent she still has to go. It is easier to face the challenge ahead if she is almost done with each portion she keeps track of; if she were to get to the end of the first row and, instead of considering an entire section as almost being complete, look ahead to the other fifteen rows she still has to get through, she would quickly feel overwhelmed. Better to focus on tiny gains and progress until the entire thing is done.

  It is eleven at night before she finishes. She doesn’t bother with her own dinner before rushing to the computer. The final Block’s lips are still moist from the wet cloth she has rubbed across his face as her computer wakes up and her e-mail is opened.

  But as soon as it appears, her chest is deflated. There is no reply from Daniel.

  She chides herself for counting on an immediate response after she herself did not reply to his previous e-mail for over a month. She types a quick follow up.

  Please write to me as soon as you have a chance. I know you must be busy. I know how overwhelming it must be. But please write to me and tell me everything is okay. I need to hear from you.

  She does not like to beg. The last time she did something like this was when she was sixteen and was madly in love with a boy who acted like he was too cool to talk to her. The feeling of assumed rejection, the feeling of desperation, need only be experienced once for someone to never want to feel it a second time.

  I’m an old woman, she thinks, what do I care of coming off as scared and hopeless?

  She remembers how her own grandparents could get away with anything, for no better reason than they were old. Their response had always been, “If being headstrong in our old age is our worst quality, then sue us.” She tries to use the same argument for herself, but knows she is not headstrong, only panicked.

  The next day is the same: she forces herself to complete her rounds before checking for a response from Los Angeles. Her body resists the task ahead. Her legs are swollen. Her knuckles are hard balls of cartilage. But she moves forward anyway, hoping her body will feel better once she begins moving around and the muscles warm up. It takes more than three hours—she is already caring for the Blocks in quadrant 2—before her back and legs don’t hurt so bad.

  The faster she gets through with the Blocks, the faster she can be comforted by Daniel’s message. This is why she ignores the groans in her stomach and skips lunch.

  With the final Block cleaned, repositioned, and possessing a newly refilled nutrient bag, Morgan shuffles across the floor as quickly as she can to her computer. It seems to take forever for the screen to load. She fidgets with her fingernails while the screen goes from black to blue and then to the picture she has as her wallpaper—Earth from outer space a hundred years earlier. The entire globe is illuminated by tiny dots of lights—cities—coming together to make the planet look as though it’s glowing. The image reminds her of how much life was once in every corner of the world.

  Without realizing it, she has picked away pieces of a fingernail until it’s dripping blood on her clothes and on the keyboard. She lets it continue to bleed without a second thought.

  Finally, her e-mail is up. Her finger clicks as fast as it can so her inbox will appear.

  The wind is knocked out of her. Once again, there is no response.

  Maybe he’s ignoring me on purpose to get back at me for not replying to his last e-mail quickly enough.

  But she knows this isn’t the case. People don’t act like that once they become adults. They certainly don’t act that way as senior citizens. And, alone himself, he would know all too well what she is going through. He would have to be heartless not to reply and provide some reassurance and comfort. The thought reminds her of how painfully immature she was in not giving him a better response earlier. She was the very thing she doesn’t want him to be.

  He must be too busy.

  She repeats the thought in her mind because the alternative is that he isn’t busy at all; he is gone. Just like all the others. This idea, when it sneaks into her head, makes her chest heavy, makes it difficult for her to breathe. She has never had a panic attack, does not know what they are like, but if anything can cause her to have one, it would be the realization that she is not only alone in Miami, alone on the East Coast, but alone in the world. There is not a single other normal person alive on the planet.

  Did she contribute to his end? If she had done something as simple as email him back and allow herself to be vulnerable and admit her own fears, would he have had someone to share his own burden with? Was that all he needed?

  A shudder goes through her entire body. She retches, but no vomit comes up. A shiver racks her. Her hands are shaking.

  The last regular living person in the world, she thinks. And then: Please, God, no.

  It begins raining. Within seconds, the rain goes from being nonexistent to pouring down. It is quickly matched by a howling wind.

  From across the gymnasium, Cindy calls out, “Just when you didn’t think things could get any worse!”

  The metal roof whines under the force of the wind. If just a little bit of wind can work its way under the metal sheets, the roof will be gone.

  Not even Cindy thinks this possibility is funny. The comedian remains silent the rest of the night as the storm roars overhead.

  9

  Amazingly, there is no damage from the storm. Not that she can tell, at least. Of course, she doesn’t venture out of the main room of the Block shelter anymore, except to use the restroom and to take trash out to the incinerator. It’s possible that the main part of the school, where the classrooms once were, suffered severe damage from the wind and now resembles a Greek ruin. All she cares about is that the gymnasium, where kids once played dodge ball and attended pep rallies, is still intact.

  When she thinks of the history of the room she works in each day, she can’t help but think back to how long it’s been since she was one of the kids sitting in the bleachers. Somehow, the stench of floor polish and sweaty kids, of popcorn and hot dogs, seems to remain in certain corners of the vast room. She knows this is a trick of her mind, though. In her old age, she can’t even smell the urine, shit, and body odor that must cover every part of the group home. There is no way she can actually pick up the odor of something from decades earlier.

  In a similar gymnasium, a lifetime ago, she was one of many uninterested teenagers who was forced to listen to an old man speak about the importance of doing well in school, going to a good college, and getting a decent job. Didn’t he know that the Great De-evolution meant none of those things mattered anymore?

  Instead of taking notes and paying careful attention to what was said, all of the kids had day dreamed of what the Great De-evolution might mean for them. No need to find a job! A life free of responsibility. How naïve they had all been to think the end of man would make life more simple for them.

  After the Blocks appeared and the last generation of normal kids finished school, this gymnasium, like other school gyms around the country, was gutted of its bleachers and turned into a factory for making food processors. The same adults wh
o taught geography, grammar, and mathematics, took off their slacks and button-up shirts and came to work wearing sweatpants and t-shirts. They were joined by day-care workers and part-time babysitters—people who needed something to do with their time. Anyone who wanted to stay busy but no longer had a profession needed by the aging population appeared at the factory doors. Eventually, mailmen, landscapers, and taxi drivers showed up as well.

  A day came when food processors had been shipped out all over the country and the factory was no longer needed, just as the gymnasium had once become obsolete. At the same time, waves of new families were traveling south each day. Fifty years earlier, at the peak of the migrations, a thousand new Blocks arrived in Miami every month. Some were abandoned in city streets by people who could no longer take care of them. Some were rescued from those who preyed on the weak and defenseless. These bodies had to be put somewhere. So the assembly lines were torn apart and the giant room was gutted once more, but only so it could be packed with cots.

  That was also when the gymnasium was outfitted with a new air conditioning system. The previous system would break and need repairs every two or three years. As the population grew older, however, and as the room became filled with weak and feeble bodies, even a day without air conditioning in the hot Miami summers could mean hundreds of deaths. The same bill that produced reliable power generators and incinerators for each house in the country made sure new AC units were installed in each group home. Without it, Morgan and everyone around her would already be dead.

  But there is much more to the school than simply the gymnasium. There are classrooms, administrative offices, locker rooms. She does not wander the halls, though, does not leave the giant room where her Blocks are. There is nothing to be gained from looking into old classrooms where kids used to raise their hands to answer questions or look down at their desk if they didn’t want to be called on. Some classrooms probably still have framed portraits of each President. Each photograph, though, has faded beyond recognition. Other rooms have maps of the world. But the maps are outdated; the countries on them no longer exist in any meaningful way. Still other rooms have band equipment that has rusted and warped over the decades.