A conversation around a campfire.

The sun was a blazing orange fire over the western horizon. Even at this late hour, the heat was oppressive, leaving you at once drenched and parched whether or not you were in shade. Shadows everywhere were lengthening, announcing the onset of another night. The sky was a clear bright blue, but it was possible to see the blue turning a darker shade as the sun continued to set. The ground was bare, brown and dusty; there had been no rain all season, but the rains would soon return; torrential, relentless, deadly. For now though, dryness and heat reigned.

In the middle distance, the city sparkled. A dead forest of metal, concrete and glass, but it looked beautiful bathed in the orange and pink sunset for all of that. She knew not to get closer – that beauty was not even skin-deep. Up close, the façade wouldn’t last a moment and the stench of death and decay would overwhelm. In that place, she would be prey. Better to stay out here, scratching for whatever she could find to survive with her family.

In spite of the heat, they worked together to get a fire going. Even at this late hour, it was possible to get badly burned by extended exposure to the sun, but when it finally fell behind the horizon the sky would darken quickly. The family gathered in the shade of an overhanging rock and shared the meagre provisions they had managed to gather, save and catch while avoiding the worst of the sun and other scavengers. They had a little food and some clean water, which was getting more difficult to find around here, now the supply of sealed plastic bottles was running low. They’d probably have to move on again soon. Too much running water would make you ill, as would the air, but what could you do? You had to drink. You had to breathe. Unless you didn’t.

But those were problems for another day. Tonight they would eat, drink and be together in each other’s company. Perhaps nana would tell them more stories about the old world. Sure enough, when the sun had gone and the food had been eaten, nana regaled them all.

“Oh what a world we had,” she would say. “Those towers over yonder? There weren’t no death around them, no rot.” She paused. “Well, not as much as there is now. We’d live in buildings all cosied up next to each other, and the really tall ones like that,” she said, pointing to the dark horizon where we knew the night hid those tall, dead towers, “we’d go to work.”

“What’s work?” the others dutifully replied, although they’d heard nana talk about this before, and expected it all to make as little sense this time as all the other times.

“Well, little ones, we used to spend all day in buildings doing things inside them. Working.” Nana looked down. “Keeping it all going,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“Was it fun?”

“Fun? No, it was work. We had to do it. Or at least we thought we did. Even those that didn’t think we had to had to because there were so many of us that did think we had to. We spent almost all of our time working in those buildings.”

“Because you didn’t have to look for food?”

“That was the beauty of it my darlings. We didn’t need to. Huge buildings full of all types of food. We always preferred the food that hurt us.” She shrugged at this seemingly nonsensical statement before continuing. “We were paid for the work we did. We used what they paid us to get our food. Then just threw away what we didn’t want. Let somebody else deal with it, that’s what we thought. That’s what we were brought up to think.” Nana was on a roll now. The story was familiar, so they settled back and allowed it to wash over them. She pulled a dead, useless black box from her pocket and caressed it. She would often do that when talking about the old days.

“My whole life was in this little box in those days,” she said wistfully, as she had done many times before. “Every single one of these little things that were made damaged the planet. But we all had one. It was worth it. At least I thought it was, back then. We all did. Even when we realised the damage we were doing, we carried right on doing it. The world was a small price to pay for one of these. There were other devices as well. Huge screens where we would watch stories unfold, shiny boxes that would allow us to play games with other people all over the world.”

“I can’t even imagine it, but it sounds wonderful,” the older kids would say.

“It should have been your world as well little ones. You should have inherited it from us. But the truth is, we refused to stop. We didn’t want to. Why leave a wonderful world behind for others, when we could just take it all ourselves? In hindsight, I guess we should’ve been more considerate, but by the time it had become clear to most of us, it was too late. But there were enough of us that knew in our hearts and didn’t care to stop even so. Every year we used the pay from our working to by new boxes, new screens, new things, even though the ones we already had worked fine. The new ones didn’t do a whole lot different, but there were enough little things that change with each new one that we just had to have it. For a device that takes your picture and puts little dog ears on you, we figured the world was a small price to pay.”

“Ah well nana. Maybe someday that world will come back.”

“I hope so little ones. I hope so.”

They all knew it wouldn’t, though. For what did they have left to build it with? Seas choked with discarded plastic? Rivers of poisoned water empty of life? No. Better to focus on what was real, not what was gone. They would survive while they could and adapt if they could.

Evening gave way to night and the sky darkened further, before coming alive again with stars. The night was full of them, with the Milky Way visible as a long strip of dust dissecting the sky, saturated with starlight. They were all mesmerised, like always on a clear night. As they stared to drift off to sleep under the sky, some of them heard nana speak softly to herself, tears in her eyes and clutching her dead phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said, over and over again, until she finally slept.