Postcards From the Future

 A lot of the Greek and Roman statues had been knocked over and lay shattered on the floor. I walked back into the Rivera Court and picked up a piece of fresco about the size of a dinner plate. There was a hand holding a wrench painted on it. Maybe my grandmother would say that that hand means that we’ve got work to do, and she would have been right. I went to school and learned how to read and write. I got the basics down in math and algebra, and although calculus was hard, I passed. I enjoyed history and the humanities, but all that’s been wiped away. Christopher Columbus in 1492 doesn’t mean a goddamn thing today. It might as well have never happened because everyone who taught us these things is dead and turned to dust. It’s only us now – the post-Pollens, and what have we got to offer? What’s our contribution? How are we going to change the world? What will we build, and how will we do it? I look around at this old building, with its columns and arches, and vast spaces, with all this art and I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know what to think, and I have to ask myself, How did they do this? Then I looked at my chunk of fresco with the hand holding the wrench, and it dawned on me: There’s a library across the street. There are books in there.”