It was a strange sensation laying there in a hospital bed, surrounded by people suffering, trying to determine how much of my life was left to put together.

The town I worked in, lived in, didn't exist anymore. My body had been found in the rubble the day after the attack, and brought in with many others to one of the hospitals in the city. I'd been pumped full of anti-rad pills and fresh blood. I was one of the lucky ones, just on the edge of the blast, and the building falling around me didn't crush me instantly. And I'd been found.

Turning on the news had been forbidden, as it was deemed 'too traumatic' so I and the others in this room, beds packed so tight I could reach out and touch the people on either side if I stretched, we all watched a game show on the holo like it was a pleasant sunday. Still, I'd heard the whispers. Millions dead or unaccounted for. Missile strikes all over the country.

Skyweb had worked, in that it had protected military and governmental sites and major urban centers, which kept the death count merely in the millions, but it couldn't be everywhere at once. China didn't have Skyweb, and the rumors were China didn't exist anymore.

As I lay, finding it hard to inhale past a point because of my bruised ribs, hearing the moans of people around me and the ghosts of the dead, I wanted to be happy they were dead, but I just couldn't. In some places over there, I'm sure the scene was the same as right here, people wounded and dying and dead. I couldn't hate them any more than the people next to me.

Strangest of all was the feeling of not knowing what was next. Everything I was, everything I'd worked for, it was all gone. I had money, sure, and assuming the system didn't implode, had insurance to cover everything.

So I could do what? Get back on my feet and spend the rest of my life in a cubicle I hated? Everything I'd ever coded for work was on servers which had been wiped clean by the electromagnetic pulse, it was like all the hours I spent hating myself and my job were all pointless. Did I have the strength to go back and do that all over again?

It was a pretty fatalist outlook, but I realized in the long hours in this hospital, even without nuclear apocalypse, my digital legacy wouldn't last anyway.

I had this fantasy when I coded, a common one, I think, that even if I changed jobs or died, some piece of me would live on in the applications I touched, the methods I wrote, the systems I designed. Harris the man may be only flesh and blood, but his work was eternal, existing forever in the soul of the 'net and the programs on it.

And yet...even as I wrote the code, I was replacing old, bad code. Some stupid nimrod who didn't understand two whits about quantum coding and didn't comment his code nearly well enough. Always out with the old, in with the new.

And in a fairly obvious-sounding epiphany, I realized that the old would someday be me. Some new hotshot programmer would sidle up to my life's work and stifle a laugh at how bad it all was, and code me out of existence, just as I'd done to the nameless dozens before me. Who wrote these originally? I had no idea. His digital legacy was dead. The closest I could say was my immediate predecessor, whom I knew only so I could blame him for all the code's failings.

My brush with death had me thinking of the permanence of anything, really. What jobs really were worth doing, on the greater scale? Inspecting houses which would one day be torn down? Writing news articles which would be consumed that week and never seen again? Even these doctors, rushing up and down the hallway outside, I was sure most of their time outside of crises like this was spent with people who had something seriously wrong with them, the infirm or chronically ill. Maybe their work could buy those people a few more years, but in the end death was still inevitable.

Not to put too nihilistic a point on it, but what was the point of anything?

A nurse walked into the room and called for our attention.

"Hey everybody," he said with a tired look on his face. "Everybody in this ward has been cleared to check out. There's crates of anti-rads at the counter where you will check out, you will be given a dosage and have to continue your treatment on your own. While normally, we'd like to keep you for treatment and observation, there are unfortunately too many injured and hurt for that. We need you all to please vacate in the next hour, please."

There were angry mutterings from the crowd. Where were we supposed to go? We have medical insurance, you can't treat us this way. I paid for medical treatment, and you just throw us on the street?

I moved the blanket off my legs and swung them over the edge of the bed in the narrow gap between me and my neighbor's bed and shuffled out sideways. People were looking at me. I found it hard to care, even as much as I had always had problems with public attention. I took a deep breath, and clenched at my ribs as they ached.

"Sir?" asked the nurse, clearly expecting an altercation or worse.

"Check-out's down the hall?" I asked.

He let out a relieved sigh and relaxed. "Yessir. Thank you."

As the door swung shut behind me, I heard others getting up as well. I found it hard to care about that either. I wasn't trying to set a good example for anyone, I just didn't see the point in resisting.

A few minutes later, I walked out of the hospital, a tube of anti-rads in my hand and reading the directions. Every four hours exactly, even in the middle of the night, take a pill with at least a quart of water. I'd be peeing a lot, but I guess the radiation had to go somewhere.

I pocketed the pills and walked at random. The hospital was a hive of activity, but the rest of the city seemed mostly deserted. People inside with their families, businesses closed, I guessed. I ran into the river and followed it, not sure where I was going, but with my head too full of stuff to stop.

I was walking for maybe half an hour when I found a road going down a tree-lined path and turned down it. For the first time I felt alert to my surroundings because for the first time, they felt alive. Despite the calamity, there were birds sitting in trees and cicadas singing in the summer air. Minus the asphalt road and metal guard rails, it felt like I'd died and passed into heaven sometime between here and the hospital. The tall trees all around me completely hid the skyline, and without cars and people, it felt like I was walking down a country road in the middle of nowhere.

I had no idea Philadelphia held such places. There were parks around, sure, but the magic of this place spoke to me. The road became paths and soon I was lost amidst small trails surrounded by grass and trees on all sides.

I stopped at a bench and looked up at a great old tree near some historic stone colonial buildings. A sign informed me that this was the oldest Ginko biloba in North America, planted in 1785. A goddamn 400 year old tree, sitting casual as you please in the heart of Philadelphia.

I couldn't believe it. This tree was almost as old as our nation, standing silent and untouched through every political turn and calamity, and yesterday it had just survived yet another. That was the kind of legacy, kind of permanence I wish I or any of us had.

As I sat, lost in thought, a young woman approached and then, to my surprise, sat next to me. I didn't know why, or even what she looked like, because I lived in Philadelphia, and we proudly ignored other people here as a way of life.

So I was even more surprised when she spoke.

"Didn't expect to see anyone else out here," she said. I finally turned and looked at her.

She had short brown hair with a headband, dark eyes, and full lips. She was wearing a light jacket despite the heat and a pair of jeans.

"Neither did I. Expect to be out here, I mean. I just found this place randomly." I said, turning back to the tree. "Just needed a place to think about all the changes we're seeing."

"Yeah," she said, her voice heavy with sadness.

We sat in silence for a few minutes with nothing but birds chirping and the wind whispering through the trees for conversation.

"Were you...if you don't mind me asking...were you in the attack?"

I looked down at the gauze taped to my arm where I'd had an IV plugged into me.

"Just a little bit," I said. A little bit? My home and work and life were gone.

"That's good," she said. "Lots of people homeless. I'm glad you weren't one of them."

"Ah," I said. "Actually...I guess I am homeless now."

"Oh no! Did you call the number?"

"Come again?"

"The number, it's been posted on the news all over the place. If you're homeless by the attacks, there's a temporary city they're putting up, tents and prefab buildings and stuff. You can call or walk in and register."

"Ah," I said again, and pulled my mobile out of my pocket, before remembering it was dead. Fried, like my work computer and the work servers, and every other computer in a hundred miles of the blast, by the electromagnetic pulse.

"Ah, my mobile seems to be dead from the blast," I said apologetically. "I guess I can head back to town and register in person." I stood up, and she grabbed my arm. Her hands were rough but cool, and felt good against my skin against the heat of the day.

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"You can use my mobile," she said, fishing in her pocket. It was an older model, with a sliding holo that pulled away from the touchpad. Most mobiles nowadays were just one larger holo which served as screen and touchpad both, situationally. She pulled up the page with the number and handed it to me.

I tapped the number and held it to my ear. It rang and then I got a hold message, unsurprising I guess. I told her that while I sat holding her mobile to my ear.

This was awkward. She was just sitting there. I was standing here like an idiot holding her mobile, while it just played a hold message on a loop. I smiled at her and pointed at the mobile still. And then wondered why I did that.

She just smiled and waited. And that's how we spent the next five or so minutes, plus or minus me pacing and sitting down.

"*click* Hello," said a woman's voice on the mobile. I almost dropped it in surprise. "Due to higher than expected service volume, we are unable to provide emergency services by phone at this time. Please visit your nearest emergency shelter for additional details and further steps. We apologize for the inconvenience."

I hung up and handed her the mobile sadly.

"No good?" she said.

"Sounds like they're full up. The message said to report in person for next steps." I sighed. I didn't know what else I expected, they were probably broadcasting the number on the news for a day and a half, and I was one of the stragglers.

"Oh no! Where will you go, if they can't put you anywhere? Do you have any friends or anything you can stay with?"

I thought about it for a second. I had my office colleagues, Yoseph and the others. None of them could count as friends. I didn't have any family, and nobody outside of work.

"Haha, I guess not," I said. I didn't know why I was laughing, just trying to keep things light so she'd stop worrying I guess. "No friends at all, sorry." Why was I apologizing?

I felt all kinds of torn inside, but none of it had to do with the apocalypse directly. Here, talking to this woman, I just felt so...out of my element. I'd talked to people, men, women, whatever, every day of my life. The barista, the office clerk, my coworkers, the ever-changing parade of interns.

But there, I was someone different. I was self-assured and...well, thinking back on it, especially in the light of having no friends to stay with...kind of an asshole.

Now I was just...empty and lost. I'd always believed I could dominate and charm my way through any conversation with confidence and the programming clout to back my words up. And now here I was, talking to a girl nice enough to lend me her phone and care about where I was sleeping tonight, and I had nothing. I couldn't be an asshole, or confident, and if I was having a crisis over the worth of my digital legacy, I doubt she cared about it at all.

In short, I had no idea what I was doing, and acting like an idiot.

"Don't be sorry," she said. "Let me think for a minute." She took back her mobile and sent some messages, chewing her thumbnail while she typed with her other hand. Chewing nails was a disgusting habit, but somehow her round full lips made it seemed a lot less gross.

"Hmm. Okay, it's settled then. You can stay with me tonight if you need to."

"What?"

"You don't have anywhere to stay, right? You can stay at my place if you need for a while. Um, you're not a rapist or murderer or anything, right…?"

"No! Nothing like that. I'm just a programmer."

"Sure. So, offer is there if you want it," she said, snapping shut her mobile.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you offering to let me stay."

She smiled and sat back on the bench, legs swinging off the end in the air. "I'm just trying to help out, y'know? We're going through a major crisis, and everyone needs to help. I don't have a lot...I'm a gardener here, not a big-shot programmer or anything, but I have a house and you need a place to stay."

"But why me?"

"Why not you? You're a person who needs help, ain'tcha?"

"I guess so." I couldn't wrap my head around it. If our roles were reversed, I saw no benefit in it for me. Was this some kind of game or…

I studied her closely, looking deeply at her face. She had wide brown eyes with almost a hint of amber in them. She smiled and shifted a little at my scrutiny. I saw a hint of a flush in her cheeks and felt bad.

...or was I really that horrible a person?

"Um, I accept, but you'll have to let me thank you. Maybe I could take you out to dinner or something, once this thing blows over."

"Sure, I'd like that," she said airily. "Do you have a bag or anything? I shook my head. "Well that makes packing easy, I guess. Want to head over now?"

As we walked over, I tried to keep up with her conversation, but mostly she just talked and I listened and responded when I felt like I had to. She didn't seem to mind. Mundane things, like what music I listened to, movies that just came out. I appreciated that she wasn't digging into my personal life, but at the same time, I wanted to know more about her, this beautiful woman who would help someone like me.

I was happy I'd volunteered to take her out to dinner and she'd accepted. At the time I hadn't considered it a date, but the more we talked, the more I realized I'd really lucked out on that one.

We reached her place, a small row house on the edges of the shady part of town, and she had to lean into the door to get the key to even turn. Everything seemed kind of run down and crappy, until the door opened.

Inside were plants everywhere. Flowers of all kinds, baskets on every open stretch of wall, tables covered in cuttings, ivy growing around doorways, fresh herbs growing in the kitchen. It was like walking into the amazon. It was breathtaking.

"Sorry everything's such a mess," she said. "I've got a bunch of spider plants which are only just taking root, so they're kind of everywhere. There is a couch under all this mess somewhere, and when I find it, it's yours."

I hadn't noticed, but there was a couch next to the table with all the plant clippings, covered in what looked like junk mail and old magazines. She began picking them up, and I stepped in to help after standing there uselessly for way too long.

"Thanks a lot, really," I said.

"No, it's nothing."

"No really, thank you, I mean it."

"Haha, it's nothing, really, really."

We got caught in that kind of loop several times through the evening, as she did everything for me from cook dinner to giving me a towel for a shower. I wished I could get her to understand just how appreciative I was of everything she was doing, but she just laughed and waved it off.

Ashley, or Ash, her name was. I didn't even learn it until we were almost at her place. Looking back, I felt bad that she'd already offered me a place to stay and I never even asked her name.

I was laying on the couch looking at the plants all along the walls when I heard the shower turn off. A minute later, the door opened, filling the living room with light for a second before she tapped the switch and dropped me back into dusk. Barefoot footfalls across the tile hall, and then the bedroom door quietly snapped shut.

A minute later, she came back and loomed at me over the back of the couch. "Still awake, Harris?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am."

"Since you helped me rescue my couch from the mail monster, do you mind if we use it to watch something?" she said walking around to join me. She was wearing short cloth shorts and a tee shirt, probably ready for bed. Her hair was flat from being damp, and even so, only just came down past her neck. I guess short hair was probably good for gardening in the summer, but I imagine she also wore a hat a lot. Still, she was super tanned and fit. The opposite of my shut-in complexion, where the most radiation I got was from my holo at work.

Shit, I forgot. I pulled the vial of pills out of my pocket. Probably about four hours now.

"How many cups are in a quart?" I asked. "Um, and can I borrow a cup?"

"Haha, sure thing. It's four. You cooking something?"

"No, I have to take my anti-rads every 4 hours with that much water."

"Oh, not fun. Want me to set an alarm?"

"Please, that'd be great."

I drank and drank and drank. Four cups at once was way too much. I felt bloated and cold afterwards, but if that was how to not die, I'd take it. I sat back down with her afterwards.

"If you have to take a break to pee, I understand," she said.

I just blinked at her.

"It was a joke. A quart is a lot."

"Ah yeah, I guess it is," I laughed awkwardly, but she laughed too, so it was okay, I guess.

"I'm gonna put on a movie, if that's okay. I really don't feel like watching the news right now, and that's pretty much all that's on."

"Sure."

I was very little help in picking anything out, even though she asked me a few times. I was honestly fine with anything she wanted, but that apparently wasn't a very good answer. Finally she sat back down next to me with some romantic comedy on where an uniquely klutzy adorable new girl is hired to be the secretary of the company's most savage, heartless, cutthroat, successful salesman, and the two inexplicably find passion in each other's differences.

I couldn't help but to laugh. It was so trite and nonsensical and contrived. As I sat in this gardener's living room in my button-up shirt surrounded by plant clippings.

So I began to identify with the characters a little, I guess. It wasn't a problem until they were getting hot and heavy all over each other once they realized their lives were incomplete without the other, and each had which the other had been missing. I kept stealing glances at Ash but she was just absorbed in the movie.

After the satisfying happy ending, she finally leaned back and sighed contentedly. "I love that movie," she said. "What did you think?"

"I guess it was okay," I said, not knowing why I was being negative.

"Yeah, I guess it probably wouldn't be that great for a guy. Total chick flick. I'm sorry."

"No, it was fine. I actually liked it."

"Oh, now you're just humoring me."

"No seriously. When he went back to the same coffee shop to get her the exact same drink she got at the beginning, I felt like, that's a guy who deserves to get the girl. Like he was listening the whole time."

"Deserves her, huh?"

"You know what I mean."

"I do," she laughed. "But I still don't see why she would fall for him like that. I mean, the man literally robbed an orphanage."

"He didn't give money to an orphanage."

"Same thing."

"I'm pretty sure the point was she couldn't love him while he was that guy. That's why he decided to change and become less of a prick."

"So he changes who he is just so he can get in her pants? That's even worse."

"He changed who he was because she made him realize he wanted to change."

"Still sounds totally unrealistic."

"I thought you said you liked this movie."

She laughed. "Just playing devil's advocate a little."

We talked and laughed for a while longer before she headed to bed. She let me know if I needed anything I could wake her, and put an alarm on the holo on in the living room to wake me for my meds. We said our goodnights, and then I laid there on my side in the dark, in my massacred work outfit, on her couch, surrounded by plants and laughter.

And the more I laid there and thought, the more I thought I had to do right by that girl, that she deserved the best life had to offer. I didn't know what that meant, if it was even right for me to ask her out after everything she'd already done for me, even if I knew already that was what I wanted to do. But even if that didn't work out, I wanted to be her friend, keep her in my life, cherish and protect her always.

I closed my eyes and heard her laugh apologetically with me at my misfortune another time before I dropped off to sleep.