IT WAS EARLY DUSK when Sara arrived at Becky’s rural home in the woods.

“Becky! Are you in there?”

After knocking on the front door, she attempted to forcibly open it to no avail. She tried to peer through the wood-paned windows into the living room, but condensation had built up, and there was no clear view of the inside. A single, dim light barely illuminated the room.

“Shit, girl. I hope you didn’t freeze to death.”

Sara stepped behind the house to search for Becky’s car.

“Crap, it’s here. She must be inside unless someone took her to the hospital or for groceries.”

She jostled the back doorknob and found it was locked as well, then scanned the periphery and located a head-sized boulder. While tugging it from the ground, a large, red centipede scampered across the backside of her hand.

“Holy shit!” she screamed, vigorously shaking it off. A stinging sensation immediately erupted. “Stupid little fuck. Now I have no choice but to break in.”

Ignoring the growing throb from the bite, she picked up the rock, carried it to the back door, and smashed the doorknob. Kicking the door with her heel, she realized the bolt lock was also set.

It was cold outside, much colder than Austin.

“Stings like a bitch, fucking bug!” she whined.

Her pants were the only hope, as the rock was too rough for her to use brute force to damage the bolt lock. She quickly took them off and placed the rock in the butt sack, then tied the legs over and across the top, creating a full covering. Sara pounded away at the bolt, swinging her makeshift sling repeatedly against the wooden door.

“Is this the best method?” she wondered, shivering in the cold. “Shouldn’t I just throw this fucker through the front windows? But if I did, Becky would shit a brick when she came home to a body-sized hole in her house. Sucks there’s no windows by these doors. Much easier that way.”

The door began to budge. “Getting it. Getting it.”

After another hard kick, the door swung open. An acrid smell of urine seared her nose.

“What the hell? A backup in her sewage system? Maybe that’s why she’s not here.”

Sara flicked on the kitchen light. It seemed as cold inside as out. “I can’t take this ‘save the Earth’ bullshit any longer. I’ll pay the fucking electricity bill for her. This is ridiculous.”

She pushed open the door from the kitchen that led into the kitchenette and living room.

“Becky!” she yelled, running toward a yellow blanket that covered a large lump on the couch.

Then she stopped cold in her tracks. This was where the smell originated.

Sara closed her eyes and felt the tears welling-up from deep within. “You can’t have died in these few days, dear sister,” she began sobbing.

Tiptoeing closer to the body, she fell on her knees at the back of the couch.

“I can’t see her like this. I can’t. I won’t let myself.”

Her hand was shaking as it climbed up the back of the couch, over the top, and onto Becky’s head. Rattled by the cold and fear, she placed her hand over Becky’s face. It was frigid, like the house. All warmth was gone. Her sister was gone.

Sara felt as if a shroud had cloaked itself upon the Earth, bringing only evil and destruction. “Shock?” she wondered. “Am I in shock?”

In a moment of clarity, Sara stood up, walked to the back door, unbundled her pants from the rock, and put them back on. She then found Becky’s thermostat and turned up the furnace. Donning a coat from the closet, she walked back to the living room.

“I can’t stand the smell, honey. We’re getting you outside. I’ll change your blanket out there.”

She held her breath, scooping Becky up in her arms. Urine dripped from the blanket, and tears streamed from Sara’s eyes.

“My sweet little sister. We all go. We all go in time. Some before their time, like you.”

Unlocking the front door, Sara carefully laid Becky’s body onto the porch, her face still covered. She then ran into the house and pulled the blue and white comforter from a chair.

“Mom’s comforter will keep you warm, Sis. Keep you warm.”

She discarded the wet blanket and wrapped Becky’s body in the comforter, then laid her sister gently on the porch swing. Sara sat opposite her in a rocking chair, moving slowly back and forth. She remembered that chair, her mom’s chair, watching her rock in it, hour after hour.

The sun had just set on the horizon, and the sky cast an unearthly red hue. In deep shock given all that was happening, Sara tried to recall the conversation with Willie a few days earlier.

“What did he say, Dearie?” she wondered aloud, teeth rattling in the cold. “Would he think I played a role in this? How was I at fault? Nobody can pin this on me. I can’t help that there are no rules any longer. I can’t help how the game is played. I just played it, did my best, gave it my everything. Sure, Ron was crazy, bat shit crazy, and I knew he could do real damage to the world. But I didn’t expect him to make good on his lunacy. And I didn’t know about this decoupler. Not my fault. I mean, I wasn’t elected as the one to watch over his insanity. I wasn’t his shrink. Maybe Imp was, but not me. It wasn’t my responsibility to say or do something. Hell, he didn’t even allow me a Vistachit.”

“There were others in the room, always, who had more power than me. They should have spoken up. The other oligarchs should have done something, or maybe the congress or judicial lackeys. Maybe Edgar should have decoupled him before Ron decoupled everything else. Maybe Vasquez should have used his military and intelligence folks to decapitate the mental fuck. But none of us had the legal right to remove him from power. I’m not sure anybody did. He carried too much power for one person, for damn sure, and he used it badly, to everyone’s detriment. Power like that should never be placed in one person’s hands.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I did what I could, though, given the cards I was dealt. I sacrificed. I sent you money, though you apparently never spent it. I didn’t have kids because the job was so important to me. Meaningful. Valuable. I was doing a service for Vista’s citizens. But right now, it doesn’t seem that purposeful.”

Sara stepped over to push the porch swing back and forth.

“Am I not seeing something? As he said, did I fill my head with too much information and not take time to think about the implications? Can I objectively see what I do and what I’ve done? You tried to help me, girl, but I thought I didn’t need help. Maybe I still don’t. Maybe the days will pass, and things will turn out okay, and I’ll be back in Austin. Maybe it’s not as bad as the last time.”

She ran into the living room and turned on Becky’s vidscreen, then went back out front, leaving the door open just enough to hear the news. A newscaster was speaking.

‘Though we currently appear to be unaffected in Eugene, large sections of California and Hedron are no longer reporting. Satellite images show widespread devastation, and this has extended to many corners of the globe in the last few hours. That we can tell, multiple types of weapons have been unleashed in the various battles being waged. We have reports of a particularly virulent bioweapon coursing rapidly across Southern, border areas of Vista, and northeastern Mexico. Sources indicate it replicates and spreads in both surface air and water. Range of destruction and virulence is uncertain, and nobody has been able to understand more about this new weapon because they apparently die within minutes of exposure, similar to toxic nerve agents. Reports indicate that bodies are literally melting, but not from heat. The weapon is coined a ‘cellular decoupler,’ and we’re attempting to find out more. Yet, this is apparently only one of numerous bioweapons deployed by the various oligarchies around the world. In addition, at least one hundred large nuclear explosions have occurred globally. Those are easier to locate at this moment via satellite. Unfortunately, the devastations are escalating by the minute. We fear the worst, I’m afraid, and . . .”

The vidscreen feed died mid-sentence.

Sara stared at her sister, wrapped tightly in the comforter.

“Sis, I’m coming to terms with something. Finally, I guess. Maybe I had a role. I was a cog in the machine. Even a big cog in this devastation, at least in the machine that was Vista. And to think, the insane narcissist who ran Vista’s shit show is underground now, alive and communing, even fornicating perhaps, with his Imp. But I suppose I was one of his enablers. I was his storyteller, the creator of his many personas, constantly feeding to his adoring fans or haters. Narratives? Propaganda? Who’s qualified to tell the difference between them? Can I blame myself? I mean, my job was me. I was my job and nothing else. My existence was wrapped up in it, as you are wrapped up in the comforter, unable to see beyond that shroud.”

She tried to remember Willie’s face.

“What was his message? What was he trying to tell me? Something about ethics. It seemed so trivial. The world’s a shithole, for sure. No room for ethics or ethical systems. We didn’t need Ron to prove that. Bad, bad people. Fearful people. Fear of differences. Fear of the devil. Fear of death. Fear of each other. Selfish, fucking selfish and entitled people. Wanting more stuff, more power, to patch gaping tears in the fabric of their beings. No room for ethics. Values. Fuck your values. Perhaps I’m understanding a bit more about Willie’s cohort, albeit too late. So much I could do to create narratives about all we’re doing for them now that FYV is making sense.”

She stopped for a minute, recognizing none of the past now mattered. If humans could not mutually agree on a direction for their future, there would be no past.

“Sis, I felt like you and I were the only decent ones left in the world. You more decent than me, clearly. It was something either he said or maybe you said about us not agreeing, you know, about humans not agreeing on a single, simple idea or plan for ourselves. Like, we weren’t a cohesive species. We were given minds, the ability to consider the past and the future. The only species who could do that, save for sentient AI, if you can call that a species. You’d think if that was our singular, defining skill to differentiate us in the animal kingdom, our first job might have been to get an agreement that we should extend the lifespan of the species.”

Five military jets screamed overhead, causing Sara to jump from her chair.

“Assholes!” she yelled. “Can’t they wear bicycle bells or something? Always scares the piss out of me.”

She watched as they quickly disappeared out of sight.

“I need a do-over, girl. I’d spend more time with you and less on myself and my need for fulfillment by proxy. That proxy of importance to others, wealth to make others jealous, power to control others. Whatever kept me going. Not that I won’t go back if this mess gets settled. It’s so exhilarating, and that makes it addictive.”

The thought of returning to her job got her worried. “I can’t imagine anyone claiming I had something to do with this. I mean, we had a fucking crazy shit egomaniac at the helm. Any thoughtful, discerning person could see that! Not my fault he got to where he was, his family history and wealth and power and corruption, all coagulating into one self-absorbed creature. It’s not like he was the only crazy oligarch in the world. They were all like that. It could well have been any of the other demigods who did this. Just so happened it was my oligarch. Ron.”

Sara stopped and looked upward. “Fuck, though. It was my job to ensure the citizens of Vista weren’t thoughtful. It was my job to feed them what they wanted to hear, to give them that endorphin jolt of bias confirmation, to ensure Ron was considered god-like, omnipotent and his face was omnipresent, always around that thirty percent RQ mark. Never going to forty. That was overdoing it. Hey, but that’s exactly what my counterparts were doing everywhere in the fucking world. It was the way of things, the indelible, unchangeable way. If I had not created the narratives for each cohort, someone else would. Rasha, even. Wonder if she’s alive? Don’t think about your team, Sara. Assume they’re alive and surviving.”

“Look, Becky, I didn’t invent the reality of this world. I didn’t. It was here waiting for me. A shithole planet ignorant enough to place a putrefying fuck like Ron at the helm with so much destructive power at his disposal. Well, maybe we all deserve to . . .”

Willie’s face fell back into her mind. “He told me we were past the inflection point. That the end was inevitable. There’s my excuse. There’s my rationale. If I was not here, who the hell knows, perhaps this self-created scourge, this self-immolation, may already have occurred? Maybe my presence gave us a few more days or months? If we were too stupid to agree on a single thing, even to extend our species through time, then fuck, we wrote our ticket to this inevitable hellscape and had neither the vision nor capacity to do otherwise. We defined humanity’s path to entropy by our apathetic inactions.”

“Maybe this is simply what happens to species when they hit our stage of technological advancement. We had nothing in place, no morality, no simple agreement, and hell, no will, to manage our bestial tendencies. Unruly beasts with geedee tech and WMD buttons in reach. A planetary clusterfuck, to be sure. Guess I don’t blame that couple in Arizona for their signal. They probably also realized it was too late.”

She stopped talking and sniffed the air. In the distance, she detected the telltale buzz of small drones.

“Now the world smells damp and boggy. Rancid. Decaying. Of those billions who lived in the times now past, why was there no great orator to corral different peoples together to agree on one simple idea? One common credo? One common vision? One that didn’t require conversion from this religion to that or from this political philosophy to that. Everything else might have derived from this one idea, one common ethic. We might have had at least a pathway to stave off the inevitable human decline toward entropy. Fairness. Kindness. Consideration. Giving. Courage. Calm. Patience. Too much to ask from late stage monkeys, I suppose. And too late now. Too late now.”

She rose from her rocker and sat beside her sister’s body, staring at the throbbing welt on her hand from the centipede’s bite.

“Wish I knew a song to sing, Dearie. A happy song of hope and prosperity."