Mushy Steamed Vegetables and the End of the World

The world has ended, but only those of us past a certain age know that this has happened, for we knew life on Earth before the end. We knew it before “the new beginning”, this beginning that is no beginning at all, but an ending that goes on indefinitely. And so those born after this certain point only know life at the end of the world, and yet they call it the new beginning. But it’s not their fault. It’s what the mirror tells us, after all.

When birdchime woke me that morning I wasn’t ready for another day in the end. I had been dreaming about my childhood in the 20s, which I often do now. I think it’s how I survive, or at least how my mind does.

I dreamt that I was at a park with my parents and our cat Johnny. We all laid on a blanket in the sunshine, eating sandwiches and egg salad from supermarket deli, giving Johnny bites here and there. In the back of my little child-mind I knew that this wasn’t real, and that nobody was aloud out in the real outside anymore, that real animals were also things of legend. But nevertheless, the joy of it all had outweighed these feelings, and I had been reveling in the effortless comfort of that afternoon.

So when birdchime called to me and I opened my eyes I thought to myself, “Aw yes, I was right, the world is gone and I am here, but at least the world lives on in me”. And I must say, this was quite a feat when staring at that horrid reflection, already staring at me and smiling with the artificial morning light.

“Good morning beautiful, its time to get up and greet the new day like the shining prince we are!”

Complete rubbish.

“We have twenty minutes to do our four sun salutations. Let’s see if we can beat this years record of thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds! Time starts now!” And then that cold, unflinching, smiling stare.

I knew I had about twenty seconds to get out of bed before my sweet reflection began his loving lecture about how yoga is the best way to start the day. The lecture is probably the worst way to start the day. And so after counting to fifteen, I crawled from my mattress and onto the astroturf.

As the reflection of my sixty-four-year-old body began to slowly guide me through our mourning routine, I let my mind wander into the past again. This is the best way to start the morning.

My wanderings in the past are always outdoors. This morning I was on a Tinder date in my early twenties and we were having hot coffees on a shaded patio. The breeze was quite strong and biting, but my coffee and the lust I felt for my date kept me warm and content. I was walking him back to my nearby apartment to show him my record collection when RoboArchie caught my attention.

“We only have thirty more seconds before we need to be at breakfast bar, Archie. I really don’t think we want a repeat of last Friday, do we?”

"Therapy sessions" at the end of the world are about as fun as you can imagine they are. So I got up.

As I sat at the faux-wood table eating our woodchip flavored breakfast bar and drinking the provided ‘mushroom coffee’, trying my hardest to ignore the tastes in my mouth and the gratitude list my reflection was dramatically reciting, the heart-shaped locket began to beat.

“GOD DAMNIT!” I yelled. My reflection gasped and scolded.

I hate the heart locket more than anything else at the end of the world. That plastic and metal heart that we have been given as substitute for the real thing.

“Archie, we need to open the locket. We are sixty-four years old now. Not having a partner his bad for our health. And if we find one we get a room five times this size!... Plus therapy isn’t much fun, is it?”

And so I opened the damn thing without even looking at it, to shut both the locket and my reflection up. I then took nine of the remaining ten breakfast minutes to myself in memoryland as I finished my sustenance. And then at last I looked at the locket.

I about shit my pants. I actually knew the person in the heart-shaped video across from my own. She had been a friend in my twenties and thirties whom I had lost touch with when the world ended, and the health and fitness regimen during the end of the world had kept her more than recognizable.

By the time dinner came around I was, for perhaps the first time in decades, vibrating with excitement. My reflection almost never matched me with someone close to my age, someone who would remember the world. Let alone someone that I knew! I thought that it must have been forbidden. But, perhaps this system was getting desperate, or was running out of single people willing to settle with their tiny boxes. Either way this would be a night to remember.

As we ate our dinner together we both beamed and giggled practically the whole time. We knew that we couldn’t talk about the old world, our old lives, that our reflections were listening and would report us if we did. But still, there was a bond that we both knew we had, that we both felt between us; that transcended the need to even speak about it at all. By the end of dinner we had tears in our eyes as we finished our mushy, steamed vegetables. And when our dinners were finished, we both took out our lockets and pressed the yes button, right there, and we laughed and we cried.

And now we live together in a box that is six times larger than our last. And we never talk about the world before the end. But we live in it, together, all the same.