Apocalypse Soonish

Read previous entries:
Day 1
Day 2

22

Day 3

Dear Journal,

I awake in a damp, dark room. Possibly a cell. I shake my head free of sleep and a likely concussion and try to remember the salient events that led me here.

• I was frozen in 2017 but have been prematurely thawed
• The world as I knew it has been destroyed
• I have befriended a well-spoken possum named Virginia
• We were captured by a band of apes capable of speech, albeit monosyllabic
• We were lead back to their den and encountered their seeming leader, an enormous white comedian chicken
• I have been separated from Virginia and find myself imprisoned in the den

I must learn what happened to cause this destruction and madness. Then I must try to undo it. I remember that Virginia was on the verge of describing these events when she was clobbered into unconsciousness. Maybe if I find her, I can …

Hold on, Journal. Don’t make a noise. Someone or something approaches my cell —

23

A window high above me opens, sending in a blinding shaft of light. Three objects clunk to the hard floor. The window closes again.

I blindly reach for these mysterious objects and discover that they are —

24

A bottle of fetid but welcome water
An enchilada wrapped in foil (even more welcome)
A box containing a beer koozy, three ethernet cables, a t-shirt, and what seems to be a clip-on light or lamp of some kind, and a patch or badge emblazoned with a single “V”

I contemplate this strange assortment of goods while wolfing down my enchilada. With no power supply I cannot use the light. And the other products seem absolutely … worthless.

Are they gifts from a benevolent stranger? Or some kind of strange joke courtesy of my insane primate captors?

I have little time to contemplate, for as I write this more footsteps approach. I hurry to hide my “goods” in a corner just in time before —

25

A door swings open, sending more light into my dismal cell. I see it is shaped like a large well — circular with high stone walls leading up into darkness. And somewhere up there a grated window from which my “gifts” fell.

I have little time for contemplation, however, as I am seized (for the umpteenth time) by two large primate guards and forced into the lit hallway.

We pass a row of cell doors much like mine and I strain my neck to see into the open ones, hoping to catch a sight of Virginia. But to no avail. I fear I shall never behold her sweet, mangled visage again, Journal.

At the end of the hallway I am thrust onto what seems to be a forklift and driven up and up through the subterranean den until we reach the light of the outdoors, where I am deposited like so much cargo on —

26

The banks of a river.

An especially large and brutish ape waddles over to me. It looks at me, grunts, and whips my back.

“Get up, man,” it says, and to my surprise hands me a stumpy steel knife. “Use it to get an orb.”

I can make nothing of this whatsoever, Journal. This barbaric baboon leads me to a group of apes huddled over the water. I see that they are wielding the same short knife.

Then I realize something about these apes —

27

They aren’t apes at all — they’re human! They are so ill-kempt and covered in filth I mistook them for more mad apes.

I am overjoyed at the sight of my own species. I will tell you now, Journal, that I had harbored secret fears that I was the last Homo sapien to have survived into the “Blasted Days.” I begin speaking to them in a confused way.

“My God, I thought I was alone! What are you doing? How did you get here? Tell me what happened!”

They look at me with a mixture of shock and opprobrium. A woman close to me shakes her head and tries to shush me, but it’s too late for shushing as I find when—

28

The guard’s whip cracks on my back again.

“You no say in man-way, man,” the cruel guardsman (guardsape?) says. ""Say in mad ape den way. Now —“ he kicks me into the river. “Get the orb.”

I crawl back on shore with the other humans and, terrified of further punishment, try to mimic their behavior. I see that these human workers are retrieving rocks from the river bed and jamming their short knives with them.

I begin to do same when I realize these aren’t rocks at all. They’re —

29

Oysters!

Of course — “get the orb”! They — we — are being forced to harvest freshwater pearls for our ape masters.

I try my hand at the task, stabbing my knife ineffectually into the oyster’s shell. The woman next to me — the shusher — again shakes her head at my ineptitude, inches toward me along the shore, and demonstrates. In goes the knife. A twist. A turn. Out comes the oyster with its pearl, both of which she dumps into a pail at her side.

I try again but fail.

“I don’t know how to —“ I begin, but she shushes me for a third time.

“No say the man way,” she says in a terrified whisper and retreats back to her eddy.

Do the humans speak this strange tongue as well, Journal? Have they been utterly broken by their mad ape masters? As I write this another bedraggled human hops near me and answers my question in a most extraordinary way —

30

“Purple?” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Excuse me?” I am happy to know the English language still includes multiple syllables, but confused. He looks over his shoulder furtively and asks again.

“Purple??”

“I don’t know what you’re —“

He shakes his head in frustration and hops downriver. A third human — gender ambiguous through their matted hair and torn clothing — comes near.

“Don’t mind him,” they say, less furtively than the others. “He wants to know if you came from the resistance.”

“Resistance?”

“Shhh. Don’t you know they have Wi-Fi security cameras set up everywhere? Look down towards the water so they can’t see your mouth moving.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m — a friend.” She doesn’t trust me with her name.

“Hi, Friend. Was it you who dropped those gifts in my cell?""

“What gifts?""

“Food. Water. Some random crap in a bag — “

She looks at me, surprised. “On your first day? You got a F—“

31

Her words are cut short by an announcement that shrieks from many hidden speaker docks.

You got the orb in the tub. Now put in the big tub.

Out is forklifted a hot-tub-sized container and in we dump our oysters and pearls as we trudge back into our prison. What were these pearls for? Who on Earth could possibly want so many? The guardsape stands at the entrance to the den collecting the steel oyster shuckers. I hand mine over ruefully.

So far I had many questions and was beginning to wonder if I would ever find the answers. I’m sure you agree, Journal.