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Show Motherlunge a novel 128 19. On the Apocalypse In college in Supernal we had a nuclear clock. I don't mean an atomic clock; this was a painted clock, red, on a sign outside the Humanities building. The short hand was always on twelve, and the long hand was always some minutes away from twelve. The clock was counting the seconds until nuclear midnight, when all the world would be ablated, aborted, abjured. We had seen the simulations, how one missile-or one erroneous report of same-would trigger a retaliatory missile, and back and forth etc. until the warheads crisscrossed in the air, canceling each other like two typed keys-first the letter X and then the backspace key-taking stupid turns. Thus, according to the model, the world would be destroyed ten times over. Now you'd maybe say, you wish. You wish it would be that sudden and complete, or that you could imagine the world times ten (even negated)-ten perfectly punched holes in the fabric of the galaxy. Because now the data are in and we know: the apocalypse happens slowly and is never quite complete. It's global warming and polluted water and genetically modified weeds. It's drug-resistant strains of this and that, more gated communities, more glue-sniffing street kids, more people who want to have a baby and can't because of endocrine-disrupting plastics. Worst of all, it's the knowledge that |