The EMP never reached the suburbs, the edges of the city. Any electronics which haven’t had lines problems, or fires at substations, or lapsed or had their connections decay continue to work. After a couple forays into the neighbour’s house for five minutes at a time, I return for half an hour, then an hour, then after ten days I’m empowered to tuck Hopey in and keep the lights off and trust nothing will go wrong while I head through the orchard and over the fence to the neighbour’s wooden radio shack and stay up late trying to talk to the world.
I feel tense and light, tiptoeing onto the neighbour’s property. I imagine people carry shotguns now. Anyone could be a deepfake. A drone passes overhead moving steadily through the sky. It can’t be moving more than a few miles per hour. Slow and
