“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.  I’m Vida.  You are Mr. Blithe?  Can I call you Mortimer?”
       “Your hair is so clean.”
       “Compared to who?”
       “No one… I mean… there was someone… before.”
       “What happened?”
       “I don’t know… it didn’t quite… can I ask you something?”
       “Sure.”
       “Have you ever been in love?  Or, did you know anyone who knew love, in the city, in the cycling apartments.  The whole time for me, the whole thing seemed… aspirational… even though I knew… I knew I wanted her.”
       “Your eyes are sad, but your face is strong; sadness and strength – that’s wisdom Mr. Blithe.”
       “Maybe.  Maybe now, after all of this.  But… have you… did you ever know anyone?”
       “I don’t look into the past the way some people do – my landscapes are flatter, blunter, there’s more foreground.  In the foreground there’s tension. Love is just gravity and glue.  In the universe, some things attract and some things repel.  A hurricane isn't magic, love isn't magic.  For every particle separated by a storm, collisions are inevitable.  I don’t know about the necessity of any of it, or the necessity of any two particles staying together, but there is a strong force; when two objects get smashed together real close by circumstance, they bind.”
       “Right.  Hey, I forgot to ask you, did you see anything last night… I mean were you awake when the apartments stopped moving?”  
       “Well, last night, when everyone was rushing around, I went for a walk through the rain, and when my apartment picked me up, I went straight to sleep – I just assumed whatever it was could wait until morning.  I dreamt about animals and grass and moths – but I often have life cycle dreams.”
       “I thought we didn’t dream anymore.”
       “You dream, don’t you, Mortimer?”   

Mortimer:  Oh no, it’s Leonard… of course it’s Leonard, where would he go?  Hurry Vida, he might need our help; he’s not exactly… self-sufficient.

Mortimer:  What are you doing here Leonard?  Why aren’t you underground, or out to see, or up in space? 
Leonard:  Don’t worry Morty, everything’s fine.  I overheard some Executioners talking at the office the other day, they said they’d be back to ‘return the world’ when they finished their work. I’m just waiting here so I can help them when they leave headquarters.”
Mortimer:  No Leonard, that’s not what they were saying.
Leonard:  What do you mean, how do you know?
Mortimer:  Because my parents are in there, they’ve started uploading… never mind.  They’re going to come back ‘when the world is returned.’
Leonard:  That’s what I said.
Vida:  No Leonard, they’re not coming back to fix it this time – they’re going to stay down there until it fixes itself.
Leonard:  Oh.   How long will that be?  Did they say how long they would be?
Mortimer:  No Leonard.  That’s the point; they don’t know this time… I mean no one knows this time. 
Leonard:  Oh.  Who’s she?
Mortimer:  This is Vida… she likes our books.
Leonard:  Oh.  That’s good.
Mortimer:  I’m sorry Leonard.  Where were you last night?  How come you didn’t leave with everyone else?
Leonard:  Well, no one told me to leave, and the emergency announcements just said to ‘stand by.’
Mortimer:  So you’re standing by.
Leonard:  Right.
Mortimer:  How did my judicial inquiry go anyway… what did the jury of my peers say?
Leonard:  The meeting was supposed to be today.
Mortimer:  Oh. 
Vida:  I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re going to need food and water pretty soon.  What do you two know about the layout of the city?
Mortimer:  She’s right Leonard, do you know if there are any food labs or ration centers close by?  Even an injection site would be useful.
Leonard:  All of the synthesizing labs are in bunkers under the old city.  They might have some water, but nothing we would call food.  They only store the raw materials: sugars, lipids, amino acids. It would take a professional to make anything edible out of their powders and pastes. 
Vida:  Well, we’ll have to become experts then.
Leonard:  Just be careful, I wouldn’t try anything that dangerous without doing some serious research.
Mortimer:  There’s no time for – never mind. 
Leonard:  Morty, what were you doing last night?  Why didn't you leave if you knew everyone else was going to?
Mortimer:  I was… I mean I didn't… I didn't really think about it, and I had somewhere to be.
Leonard:  Where?
Vida:  Yeah, where?
Mortimer:  I was at the central stacks, reading about the theaters we used to have in the old city.  It was actually a book my grandfather wrote; a book I needed to know if he wrote because everyone said he didn't… write it.
Leonard:  Sounds complicated.
Vida:  Your grandfather was a writer too?
Mortimer:  Actually, I wanted to ask you about the theaters Leonard.  I know there were lots in the old city… before there weren't any… but are there any left?
Leonard:  There's just one.  The Phoenix.  But then again it was the oldest so they never would have –
Mortimer:  Do you know where it is… I mean can you tell me how to get there?Leonard:  I think I might remember, but why do you want to find the Phoenix?

Mortimer:  Will you give me a boost up to the window?
Vida:  Sure, okay.  Mortimer, what are we looking for?
Mortimer:  I don’t really know… I think I need to see this place before I can move on… you know?
Vida:  Yeah, okay, I understand.  Do you want me to come inside, or can you handle this?
Mortimer:  I think I better handle this myself.
Vida:  Okay.  I’ll give you an hour.

       “Hello… is anyone here?”
       “I’m over here Mortimer.  I can’t say I was worried about you finding the place, but it is nice that you’re finally here.”
       “Finally where?”
       “I think you know this old place, how else would you have found it?  But I should think you have better questions for me at this point.”
       “What are all these machines for… how did you get into this building… why are the lights working…”
       “First things first Mortimer; introductions.  My name is Celine, it’s ever so nice to meet you Mr. Blithe.”
       “In fact we have met, but not intimately like this I suppose.”
       “Come now Mortimer, has the collapse of your civilization robbed you of all manners?”
       “Hello Ms. Sirkus, it’s very nice to meet you as well.”
       “Thank you Mortimer, that wasn’t so hard was it.  I do hope you can relax a little, you seem very tense.”
       “Well I don’t understand Celine, what is this place, how did you know I would come here… where did you get all of this… equipment.”
       “It’s sad really.  A body of governance, such as the Executioners, comes to rule over the huddling masses and you people think that the Resistance is wiped out instantly; that all intelligent opposition just disappears.  Don’t be a fool Mortimer, don’t lump yourself with the mindless biomass of malleable incredulity that constitutes your fellow man.  There are always those at the margin, with the skill to survive and preserve their ways, but without the resources necessary for revolution.  It’s ours to hide a bit, and inherit a collapse we only sometimes help to bring about.”
       “…and the machinery…?”
       “This beautiful array, Mortimer, is nothing but a few Gorge-era supercomputers, two color printers, and a generator my dear grandmother left to me in her will disguised as suitcase.”
       “You mean Celestini… but what are you doing in here?  Have you seen the streets outside?  What will you eat, I mean, what about supplies?  What help is all of the equipment?”
       “Mortimer, you know that there are some things more important than survival, that’s why you came here first.  We need a storm, a spark, we need a new beginning; all of the survivalist ingenuity in the world won’t help us at all if we’ve no reason to live.”
       “We have no reason to live?  I mean, was it lost as well?
       “Well let’s take a moment to reflect on what has happened.  You yourself have witnessed an altogether uncalled for breakdown of civil society, brought on by as yet unseen forces.  What would you call it?  I think the dying mind, bereft of reasons to go on, looks up in a rainstorm and declares ‘the sky is falling.’  But enough eschatology, we ourselves, you and I my dear, we are not the dead; we are anything but. We, are the inheritors.”
       “Of what?”
       “Thank you for indulging me Mr. Blithe, I’m starting to think we’re going to get along quite well.  Our inheritance?  It’s called punctuated equilibrium Mortimer; it means that long stable periods of evolution are interrupted by brief periods of rapid change.  Change sweeps away all unsuited organisms leaving space and resources for the survivors, who flourish accordingly.  We are the survivors; the world is our inheritance.”
       “I still don’t understand why we need all this equipment?”
       “Because man, unlike others he shares the planet with, has a sensitive temperament.  His mind is a kaleidoscope of desire and fear, always spinning, displaying a theatrical dance of possibility.  And what happens when the mind games are interrupted by circumstance?  He gives in to despair; he feels himself robed of all strength and agency.  What is needed for the individual to survive is a story more powerful and comprehensive than individuality allows; a grander arc, a subsuming narrative; art.  And that, Mr. Blithe, is what this equipment is for.  I am creating the tale that will wag the next era of human thought.  In fact, I am finishing work that should have been finished a long time ago, work that was thwarted by your grandfather and that I will finish in the name of my dear grandmother.  What was to be the remedy for a dying age will be a spark and catalyst for a new one.  Would you like to see some of the copy?  It’s not finished, but there are final edits of some sections.”
       “It’s the book.  You’re trying to finish the book?  Still?  Why, I mean, how could this possibly help us now?”

“Mortimer, would you like to see some pages?”
       “Yeah… I guess… what’s it called anyway.”

       “I don’t understand, what is this.”
       “It’s my story; it’s our gift to the future.”
       “Let me see something else.”

       “What have you done?  Is it all stolen like this?  This isn’t a book, it’s my life.  You’re not an artist you’re a thief.”
       “That’s what it is?  ‘Your life?’  It never belonged to you Mr. Blithe, and in any event, I’m sure that when you read the story in its entirety you will agree that I have rendered you considerably more life-like.  A life, as such, is a few vignettes and a lot of talk; it’s not a story.  A story needs a craftsman to make the frame, to explain the muddled mind of character, to drive the action and break a man from the groove of habit.  A story needs a craftsman to return at the end when the plot has come to nothing, to give it meaning, and make it conclusive.”
       “It was you at the library too wasn’t it?’
       “Well of course it was.  How could I know for sure that you were truly dedicated to the cause?”
       “The cause?  What cause: the cause of breathing, the cause of survival, the cause of trying to resist everyone’s opinion that I’m loosing my mind?”
       “Precisely the cause.  You have to survive first to create a second.  You know Mortimer, it might sound odd, but not everyone is up to the challenge of elevating life to art.  Can you imagine, then, how many the great many fewer there are who are willing to view it as well?”
       “It doesn’t make it more.  I mean, there’s nothing that you could add to make it more.  Real life has texture and ambiguity; art robs the world of dimension.  It puts puppets and vignettes where there were only people and places – nothing can be said about the world as it is.  My life is not a story, it doesn’t need a narrator.”
       “But of course it does, Mortimer, and of course it is.  Think back.  Who did you think was interjecting and informing, who did you think was relating the dates and times of your comings and goings, offering modestly insightful descriptions of your modern contortions?  Do you yourself, aside from the odd grunt, offer italics?  Surely you didn’t know at any of those moments where or when you were existing.”
       “No, not at all I didn’t, that’s the point.  What would be the difference for me between having you steal and subtitle my life and it remaining limp but lived in?
       “What do you mean?”
       “There’s no possible difference, Celine, it’s still just me, my life, stumbling around tying to make sense.  All the effort in my world and you can’t even say you changed anything?”
       “But obviously that’s not true.  Look around you Mortimer; my telling brought you here.  I’ve even finished this scene if you’d like to look at it.
       “I don’t want to see it… can I ask you something Celine…?”
       “Of course Mortimer, that’s what this is for.”
       “How will it inspire them, what will this inlayed cartoon of my life mean to anyone?  You do realize that people will ask where you got the story, don’t you… what will you tell them… what will you tell them was your ‘inspiration’… what could give you the right –”
       “The right, Mortimer?  Assuredly you forget yourself.  Who could ever take such a thing away from me, and anyway you’ve got it all backwards.  How would anyone have known about our world here; how could they have known about centrifugal truth, about Art?  And for that matter how could we let them proceed without the benefit of our experience; how could we be to them so lacking in subtlety that we could not live and record our experience… was it so hard for us?”
       “For us, what are you even talking about?  You’re the steam rising off a boiling pot, how can you claim any participation?”
       “Because I’m also the flame beneath the pot.  How can you, Mortimer, how can you claim the experience for yourself?  You’re just the raw material.  I’m also the pot, too, if we’re going to take this thing all the way to the end.”  
       “Isn’t it enough… a life by itself, without all the architecture.”
       “Listen Mortimer, the world is not a prison house of reality in which man has been given, by some miracle, a honey cell of pleasure.  You and the people living in this ‘System’ have known only a kind of depressed hopefulness and pleasure, not the full-throated enjoyment of one who paints the world, not as it is, but as they wish it to be.  You want negotiation; you want conversation, with the world?  How about the commands that change it entirely; that make it whatever world you want it to be?”
       “I think you’re over estimating us.  It won’t help, now that we’ve gone for so long with so little.  You’re trying to bring back fantasy for people that have been living without even basic human emotion; they’ll get disoriented.  I don’t think the ways to help them are higher and higher flights of fancy.”
       “Again, backwards Mr. Blithe.  The right thing must be done before the right thought can come into being.  Sometimes art is the violence done to the world to show people how ugly it really is; what needs changing.  Sometimes, after the violence is over, people need the sentimentality of film or fiction to paint in imagination the loves they cannot experience in real life.”
       “We’ve tried that, it doesn’t work.  You’re talking about using art to bridge the gap between what you want from the world and what it wants to give you… that’s how we got here… a long childhood… it might be time to grown up.”
       “You still don’t understand.  We need this.  They need this.  People live every day of their small little lives believing they're finite, separate, completely alone.  All of their attention is concentrated on their petty desires and fears.  Think of your family, Mortimer, or your friends.  An unending parade of selfish wanting and mild distraction dancing through their minds.  It's only when the parade is temporarily halted, by a painting, a song, or a movie, that any of them get any peace.”
       “Or by a circus.  This time, over underestimation.  There has to be a more permanent way to make the hopeless, selfish, banal distraction of personal life you're talking about stop.  Is it God?  Is it Bananas Fosters?  Is it flesh sex?  Is it knowing that you’re more than just a parade of desires and fears?  There must be something foundational… more basic… you can't just use pretty pictures or surprising sentences to make reality real… there's got to be a more permanent way.”
       “More permanent?  Come now Mortimer, life is not a question that can be answered once and for all.  Life is rocky seas, and the only floatation available is imagination; imagination and passion are the only things between us and the watery depths of challenge and fear.”
       “What if, every time you had a problem, you devoted the same energy you devote to recreation... to acceptance.  Then you'd always be prepared for the world as it is, and not always scrambling to assimilate new and horrible circumstances into your fantasy.  What about accepting the twists of love without wasting yourself singing about them?”
       “Your ignorance asserts itself Mr. Blithe.  The point of life?  Men are so quick with solutions and methods even where none are needed.  This floating watery world knows no time and no lines; any attempt to draw it with such features is illusion and fantasy.  Don’t you see Mortimer, you’re just choosing between fantasies, but fantasies all choices remain.  I say, if it is all illusion, why not something beautiful, something poetic, something delicately crafted.”
       “No.  We should aim to perfect ourselves, not waste energy on maps and models of perfection – on art.  The ideal man should be the ideal of man.  You’ve let the colors and textures beguile you Ms. Sirkus – there is real work to be done.”
       “Well that, at least, we can agree on.  This great project that I have invested so much in is coming to its conclusion.  You know, I used to be mad at you, at your grandfather for leaving, but I’ve come to see a greater character arc for me; a longer windier road that brings us together.  And now we’re her, together, the last man and women on earth, not lovers, but not friends either; architects, visionaries, creators of the new world.  This broken city, and its broken dreams, this is our inheritance.  More than kings, less than gods; pure human inspiration for all those to come.  I am so happy to see you Mr. Blithe.”
       “And if I’m being honest, I’m very happy to have discovered you as well.  Your riddles distracted me just long enough for the paranoia around me to subside – for that I’m grateful.”
       “Thank you Mortimer, I thought you would feel that way at the end, or should I say beginning, of it all.”
       “But you’re wrong.  We’re not the last man and women on earth, and this isn’t the beginning or the end of anything – it’s just another day, flat and obvious.  The only difference is that today food and water are going to be harder to find that they were yesterday.  But who knows, other things might be easier.  Bye Celine.”
       “You can’t just leave.  I’ve finished this scene already; this isn’t how it ends.”
       “Of course I can; this is a life, not a story.  I have to find something to eat; thank you for everything.”