First Me, Then Us

Back in 2079, a big shift happened in the outlining of our states in this country. Since hardly anyone lived around family anymore, it didn’t make sense to live near people who didn’t agree with you in your basic philosophies of life. The idea of keeping civil peace became so important that where you called home became a crystal-clear indicator of the beliefs your dearly-held beliefs. Gun advocates lived in states with other gun lovers, anti-abortionists lived among their believers while Jesus followers gladly called each other neighbor.

It was a good idea in the beginning. Everyone was behind it as it seemed like a long-needed step in the maturation of our country. I can honestly say that I didn’t mind the idea of not living around the hippie family nor the alcoholic couple who lived across the street. It never occurred to me that I was not alone. Apparently, everyone was wondering to themselves, ‘Why do I have to live here?’.

In a bid to give the people what they wanted, the government made people name their desires and then accept what was given them. It was simple, really, just a form to fill out about your lifestyle, what was important to you. It took the average person only a few minutes to type up their answers but we were  given four weeks to be sure our decisions were final. If you were an older person who didn’t mind being on the eleventh floor of a building but simply could not abide living near a gun owner, but had no problem with abortion or capital punishment, there was an apartment building somewhere with a spot for you. But if you believed you had to live in oneness with nature as much as possible, that that you couldn’t stomach driving on the Interstate every day or sitting in traffic, there was a little house out in the country which had your name on it. It turned out that very few people really loved where they lived.

Whether the population of our country had been dumbed down, on purpose or by accident, was not really debatable. We all knew it had been. All it took was a generation and a half of pure socialism to create the world we have now, where no one sees any need to try to create anything as it seems pointless to try. No one wants new creations, no one pays for the growth wrought by challenges to mental limitations, no one cares about art anymore. The once inventive nature of the average citizen was easily bred out of him in a short amount of time.

When the first people to settle our country arrived, they didn’t bring much other than their families, their strong backs and their skilled hands. Money was not something that most had come from nor where they saw themselves headed. Success meant children who thrived, a wife who was happy and land that teemed with life. This ethic had been instilled in people for many generations, that one ought to want a family, an income and a place to call home and that was all. There was no real need for massive amounts of money when a working farm could be handed down from father to son until the end of time, as far as anyone was concerned. Soon, we had a county full of civic-minded, hard working people who didn’t seek to hoard all the money there was to have.

Fast forward 200 years, when the check I got deposited in my bank account the other day was the exact same amount as last month. I got paid by the government for doing nothing but being alive and it was a lot of money. I didn’t have to pay for the house I lived in as I had filled out the government’s questionnaire and they had given me my house. My food was the same each month and I wasn’t even sure where it came from. It was the same order I had seen my mother receive every month for my entire childhood. I wondered, when I was young, who was sending us the food but stopped asking when I saw the look on my mother’s face that showed she had no idea and it was better to not ask.

I hardly ever spent the monthly stipend as the there isn’t much to spend it on. I have over 3 million dollars saved up. It doesn’t matter, though, the money just keeps coming. Most days, I just watch tv, like everyone else, eat, exercise and that’s about it. I read books sometimes but find it exhausting trying to decipher the trajectory of this country from inventors to tv watchers, from explorers to dependents, from free thinkers to non-thinkers. It is depressing and so I try not to focus on the past too much. It brings up too many unanswerable questions.

My point is that one’s relationship with money is largely, subconsciously based on what your parents thought about money and how their parents taught them to think about money. If money is evil or blessed to you, if you want a lot of money or think you don’t deserve to even have enough money, it all comes from programming given you by your ancestors, through years and years of trial and error, by back-breaking work and stress. But no matter what you thought about money, when the government took control of it and doled it out in rather generous amounts, it didn’t take long for all the struggle and wisdom wrought from hard work to wither away on the vine of human evolution. With no financial struggle against which to rail, people took it easy. They relaxed. They weren’t worried all the time and didn’t want war anymore. They wrote poetry and hung out with old folks and little kids whenever they wanted. They read books and talked.

Soon, it wasn’t that big of a deal for no one in your household to have a job. There was no shame in agreeing to the terms the government offered- here’s your money, be quiet and go watch tv. If it was best for the country, it was good enough for you, right?  This environment quickly degenerated into the creatively barren wasteland that now passes for our country. There is no inventive competition anymore as everything is owned by the government, no frontier spirit of seeing what happens when you believe in yourself, no gold calling from deep within. No, just the sound of government money dropping into bank accounts and satisfied citizens who don’t really care why they got paid as long as they got paid.

That’s why I took my dog and some supplies, a gun and a water purifier and went camping for four months. I should’ve stayed longer. I didn’t see one human the whole time I lived in the woods. When I cleaned up the area I had been living in and started the hike back to the civilized world, I could tell something was different the closer I got to the world. Everything was a mess, a big, disgusting mess. The shrubbery at the end of the hiking trail was so overgrown, I almost couldn’t leave the backcountry. I should’ve taken that as a sign and turned around but instead I persevered.

As I walked into the parking lot adjacent to the head of the trail I had hiked in, there were cars that looked like they had been there for months. They were covered in dirt, pollen and leaves. As I kept walking, I realized how quiet it was, that there was no incessant growl from the highway, no shouting kids or sirens. There was no one around. Everyone was gone and I was alone.

As I walked into town , I didn’t see anyone. It was scary and truly bizarre to be, what looked like, the only survivor of some unknown plague. I had my gun, knife and dog but I wasn’t sure who or what I needed protecting from as there weren’t any people, anywhere. I went into a gas station and grabbed a bag of chips, alone. I walked by houses and looked inside their front windows, alone. As I made my way back to my apartment, I started to no longer filled with fear but almost kind of special, rather chosen.

There was no cell phone reception, no tv, no radio, no nothing. Just four months of back mail and not a person in sight. I sat in my apartment for a while and when the sun went down, I decided to get a little sleep, to formulate my plan in the morning. The next day, I decided to skip the whole societal collapse thing and go back to the woods. What was the point of lamenting a thing so far twisted and unhelpful as society? I wasn’t going to repopulate the planet on my own, so I was off the hook in that department. All I had to do was worry about myself.

I went to the camping store and took one of everything. I fashioned a buggy that I could attach to my backpack and be my own mule, pulling supplies behind me. I had books, matches, clothes for the cold, for the heat, maps- I was ready. I walked back to where I had left it all behind once before and while making sure my dog was ready, I saw him.

He was young and packed with gear and was as surprised to see me as me to see him. He was smiling while trying to look tough. I waved and called out and he could tell I was the decent sort.

“Hi! Wow, I can’t believe it, another person, I am Stephen, how are you?” he asked, running up to me, looking like he wanted to hug me.

“Do you want to hug me?” I asked. He nodded his head vigorously and I let him give me a tiny hug.

“I am…” I started to say, then realized I would never have the chance to reinvent myself like this again. “Star. I’m Star, it’s nice to meet you, Stephen.”

Stephen had been in his parents’ fallout shelter when the asteroid hit that killed humanity. He had fallen asleep in the bunker and the blast from the contact had slammed the door shut. He had to wait a full three months before it automatically reopened, during which time, he was fine. He was fed, entertained and remerged from the shelter feeling great. His high hopes for life were dampened by the disappearance of every person he had every known or loved. It was like they were all evaporated and had disappeared. Turns out, Stephen had the same idea I did.

Once he realized how far he was from being able to affect any kind of real change in the desolate landscape which had been the world, he, too, decided to go live in the forest. Being the only person in the world makes decision making easy. It was pretty clear there was nothing left in civilization for us. We will go it together and maybe we will repopulate the planet, who knows? For now, we are just glad to be alive and not alone.