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What was this future we were flailing toward, with its fires and floods? Its rolling blackouts and tornadoes? Where was the reboot on this? The plot twist, the science fiction dream turned real scientific breakthrough, that would make everything okay? Where were the venture capitalists with their cold fusion and their wind farms? Their plastic-digesting bacteria? Their CRISPR-driven vaccination platforms? Their cancer-curing pills? Were we all really just going to keep fumbling along through these storms of the centuries of the weeks? What would it look like when the power went out for the last time? When there was no one left to put the poles and wires back up? All those empty unlit rooms, all the rats and pigeons starving, and the subway tunnels full of water, a new species of blind shark taking dominion of the thousands of miles of man-made sea caves, reefs in the stalled cars whose windows had shattered under the pressure of all that water, and the broken glass worn smooth by time, and all the subway stairs become oyster beds, anemone tendrils adrift in the current—all those gorgeous impossible colors, a true new Eden, except of course that it would all be happening in absolute darkness, with nobody there to bear it witness, to register the beauty and terror of nature repairing itself. Who would rub the condensation from his dive mask and stare stupefied? Who would catch the silver gleam of scale or white teeth full of bloody shredded spoil in a dive-rated flashlight’s sun-bright beam? I got out of the pool, dried off, went downstairs, took a quick rinse, drank some water, and got into bed, whereupon I fell fast asleep and into uneasy chlorine dreams.
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