Nature's End by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka

Author:Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka [Strieber, Whitley & Kunetka, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: post-apocalyptic
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2016-06-13T07:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

FOOD

So soft, the fall of wheat on the floor,

each grain tumbling in sunlight,

bouncing on cool linoleum,

being licked up by a frantic dog.

—G-Shaw Shang, “Kitchen Talk,” 2024

Down the Halls of Web

While my advancing age was settling on me like dead air, our life was speeding toward catastrophe.

This tax affair was terribly serious. Insane, but serious. None of us knew quite how to deal with it. Even Stratigen was helpless: it had no data on erasing and replacing things like gerontology and tax records. There wasn’t supposed to be any way to do it.

Nothing in our outer lives had changed—the apartment, the city, all were the same. But inside we were burning and we couldn’t put out the fire.

Mandy Cross was not only a waste of time, she was emotionally exhausting. A typical Roach choice. Speaking of whom, the night before our tax disaster Scott had gone through the list of a hundred and fifty-eight doctors, worldwide, that he had given us. For one reason or another, every name failed to meet some key part of the profile we had developed. Stratigen was right: Gupta Singh had not abandoned his old ider ity, but only added the new one.

When we got home my old body found the act of sinking into a chair blissful. Despite everything, I slept. I dreamed in music, loud, dissonant crashes that would jar me half awake. By evening my brain was echoing, my clothes wet with sweat. The place was as quiet as a sepulcher. I wanted light and life. Then the long, drumming blows of reality banged down.

I feel this way because I am getting old. We are in terrible trouble.

This is why this house is so quiet.

People are suspended in a web of technology. Cut its strands and we start falling. We fall and fall—and where does it end, locked in tax prison and so loaded with moodies we will think we’ve passed the gates of heaven?

I panicked, grabbing for my computer.

When I tried to access our personal bank account I received the last transaction record, and then the screen froze. The computer couldn’t even respond. I had to do a cold boot, turning it off and then on again to get the programs reset. “What does this mean?” I asked Stratigen.

“The Tax Police have laid a digital trap at your account address. They’re recording your access attempts.”

Scott came out of the dining room. “The cancer’s spreading. Now we can’t even touch the accounts, let alone the money.”

Night was coming down, the shadows pouring into our apartment. I felt the chill of rising wind. Through the hours of afternoon clouds had been building. The week of rain predicted since last month had finally arrived, and slow drops had begun to fall from the thick gray sky. Perhaps this year we would have a little winter.

Scott watched me work. “You won’t get anything out of the account files. We tried with Stratigen and Bob both, all afternoon.”

“No kidding.” I closed the computer.

“Taxpayer prison is a nasty place,” Bell added.

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