This is Evan at the end of the world. Hope is alive. Stories recall better times. Mike says everything is going to be OK.

Evan is alive at the end of the world. These are his thoughts: Someone should feed the fish. Someone should clean their tank. What will happen to the toads and snakes and turtles? The gerbils and bunnies. Caged birds, the arrested birds.

Evan was going to lead a tie-dye workshop Tuesday night but nobody showed up because the grid failed. Somewhere in the vast lost virtual world a calendar reminded, TIE DYE, 7 pm, which through a series of translations eventually announced LINK MATRIX, leading Mike to Evan.

Hey Evan — Please tell me what we will do about tie dye and table tennis.

Hey Mike — Please tell me why it matters.

— If we give up hope we have nothing left to live for.

— What does that have to do with table tennis?

— If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you.

President Rick says not to worry. He is sending a spaceship to the Moon. It is all going to be fine. They found water on the moon. Or the promise of water. Or the illusion of water. Water signatures exist—this we know.

Evan is content to dream of the moon. He was lonely, so he opened up his veins and absorbed the moonlight. He dreamed of tiny bacterium colonizing his body, filling him with life. Planet Evan. 

His cuts too shallow, Evan lived. He didn't want to die after all. Just wanted to walk the line. Tiptoe to the edge. Peek over. Observe the abyss. Dangle his feet.    

Mike's going to Mexico; says it'll be better there. In Mexico, they know how to live, they are survivors. Too many people are trying to go to Mexico. Mike'll never get in. They've shut down the border and are shooting the Americans. Ameri-Can't.

Hey Evan — Why don't you come to Mexico?

Hey Mike — Why don't you go to the moon?

— The moon is closed.

— So is Mexico.

— Touché.

President Rick says they're colonizing the moon. President Rick says not to worry. We'll all have a home on the moon. The moon is our future.

Liquid water cannot persist on the surface of the moon. Solar radiation decomposes the water and it is lost to space. Volcanic lava beads containing small amounts of water were brought back to Earth. Drops of water inside lunar lava beads are of little comfort to Evan. Lunar habitation is not cost-effective. Lunar habitation is a story. Another story. A bedtime story.

Good night, little Evan. Sweet dreams.

We have always thought of ourselves as a story. To be found, saved, discovered. Look into our past and find that this world was populated before—our ancestors flew away in ships to discover other lands. If we dug deep enough we'd find a message, a clue.

Hey Mike — We killed the bees. We destroyed Polar Bears. Where is the restart button?

Hey Evan — We are the message.

Evan is hanging on at the end of the world. Work stopped on the new line. Everyone is out of a job. Somebody should mow the lawn. It is overgrown. It threatens to catch. When Evan's job was being a child, he made a fire with a magnifying glass. His mother was proud and his father showed him how to make it bigger.

President Rick, how goes it on the moon? Does the work progress? How is the colonization? Will we be there soon? It is getting hot down here. Hot and cold and hungry.

People are killing each other with their teeth. The water's drying up. The earth is cracking. The gas is gone. A computer calendar repeats TABLE TENNIS 4-6 pm every Friday into forever and Evan can't get it out of his head. Knows it's there, thinks it's hope. He doesn't want to be ripped apart by teeth, by God.

Hey Mike — Are they eating the meat?

No Evan — They are just crazed.

— Are they schizophrenic?

— Maybe. I bet their mothers didn't breastfeed them.

— Who cares?

— In case you haven't noticed, Evan-my-man, everybody cares.

President Rick plays old sitcoms for America to watch. Boy does it piss people off. At first. At first it does. Soon, the only way to sleep is with the laugh-tracks. Everyone is finally quiet, listening, watching, hardly laughing at all. So much. That is what they all think: so much. So much light. So much food. So much water. So much everything. It hurts. Watching the waste pile up.

We aren't doing so well down here, President Rick. We sure could use some everything.

Evan had this idea that he would get married, have kids, have a job. The American Dream, The Dream, Dreaming. He still wants something, but doesn't know what; still wants kids, but doesn't care if they are his; still wants a job, but not just any job. Everything changes. Everything stays the same.

Hey Mike — Hungry nights I remember a boy I used to know. We were pen pals. Do you remember pen pals, Mike? Did you have any?

Hey Evan — I think I had one once.

— I wonder where that boy is now. I told him things. Things I'd never told anyone else.

— I might have had one once.

— We sent each other pictures. I wish I had those pictures now.

— Are we pen pals, Evan?

— I can't keep us straight anymore. Who are you? Who am I?

— I'm lonely. So are you.

— We are disappearing, Mike.

Evan remembers listening to his parents fight. They fought about words, but also about bigger things: peak oil, collapse, extinction. The fights always ended with his mother slowly shaking her head, furrowing her brow, and collapsing against his father's chest. Evan would like to be either of them now. He'd be the hope and the fear. He'd be the future at their feet.


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Jenniey Tallman has work in or coming from Electric Literature, Gargoyle, DIAGRAM and others. She lives in Iowa City.

"Mike and Evan at the (Beginning) of the World" is a finalist for the Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction.

Read JT's postcard.

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