Trying not to think about it, she looked back down at the day’s headlines. It wasn’t encouraging. Of course, the news hadn’t been positive even before masses of children, all of which were completely shut off from the world, began being born on every part of the globe. The one consistent thing in life, both before the impending human extinction was announced and after it, was that the newspapers and 24/7 news shows covered nothing but corruption, suffering, and death.
Al Flannigan, one of the Math teachers, slammed his fist against the coffee table and said, “You know what really gets me?”
Flannigan looked like he was in his late sixties but acted as if he were a thousand years old. Everything made him grumpy. Everything was an excuse to complain.
For some reason, Harry Rousner went out of his way to ensure Al’s mood never improved. A while back, the day after scientists announced a supposed cure for the Blocks was just another dead-end, Harry had asked Flannigan if he still remembered the previous mass extinction from thousands of years earlier. The Math teacher had looked over at Harry for a moment, his eyebrows tilting in toward his nose. Then, once he was sure that what he thought he had heard was actually what Harry had said, Flannigan took a swing at the much younger teacher. After that, Harry had needed to sign a paper declaring he would refrain from any more jokes if he wanted to keep teaching Biology.
Not even Harry bothered to guess what was bothering Al this day. It could have been anything. Maybe it was due to the news that the first round of middle schools had been shut down. Like the elementary schools a few years earlier, the middle schools would become factories to provide the remaining population with the vital supplies they would need as the infrastructure disappeared around them. Power generators. Food processors. Those types of things. Or maybe Flannigan was upset at the news that the Olympic Committee was getting ready to announce there would never be another round of the international games. It even could have been that Ms. Flannigan, whatever her first name was, had left Al in the middle of the night, choosing to head south by herself rather than spend her remaining time listening to her miserable husband complain about the miserable roads they would be driving on in order to get to the even more miserable city they would be relocating to. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to head south in pursuit of warmer weather, larger populations, and a semblance of normality.
“What really gets me,” Al Flannigan said, “is that I’ve been teaching here for forty-two years. Forty-two years!” He banged his fist on the coffee table again. “And how many times do you think I’ve gotten to eat lunch during Fifth Period? Not a single damn time! So, you’d think that now that there are barely any students left, I might get my first choice and get to eat lunch when I want to, right? But no! I still get stuck with my second choice. Maybe when there isn’t a single kid left and I have the entire building to myself, I can finally eat lunch when I want to. Right, Wachowski?”
He was looking directly at Barbara Wachowski, the principal and the person who determined when each teacher would get to eat their lunch. Barbara shrugged and looked down at her feet, which only made the Math teacher throw his hands in the air again.
“It’s all politics,” he said. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back. Right, Barbara?”
Again, the principal only shrugged.
“That’s really weird,” Harry Rousner said, winking at Wachowski. “I get to eat lunch during Fifth Period every year and I don’t even like eating lunch then. It probably doesn’t have to do with the bottle of wine I get her each summer.”
“It’s all politics!” Flannigan yelled again, then stormed out of the room.
After Al was gone, Harry looked up from the magazine he was reading and said, “I thought for sure he was going to say he was upset because the mathematicians around the world were at as much of a loss as the scientists in trying to figure out why the Great De-evolution is happening.” When no one else said anything, he added, “I would have lost five bucks if any of you had the guts to bet me.”
“Try not to antagonize him, Harry,” the principal said. “He’s dealing with everything as best as he can.”
All Harry could say to that was, “Hmppff.”
Third Warning
“Who can tell me what Chopin was trying to say at the end of The Awakening?”
Farah Fran, who was quickly establishing herself as Ray’s best student, raised her hand. “That it’s better to die on your own terms than live the way society wants you to live?”
“Very good, Farah,” Ray said, and the girl smiled. “But don’t think of it as the main character killing herself. Chopin is careful not to say what happens to her, even though we all assume the same thing.”
Every year, Ray had her class read the story about a woman who, on the final page, walks into the ocean until the water is over her head, and every year the students tried to turn the moral into a cliché that some rock band would sing about.
“Do you think it could have been Chopin’s way of providing an escape?” she asked her class.
Without raising his hand, Eric Tates said, “Maybe she knew it was a matter of time until the Blocks appeared and everyone would die anyways.”
Half the students laughed. The other half groaned.
There were two types of class clowns: the ones who became quiet once you ignored them, and the type who quieted down once you acknowledged how smart or clever or funny they were, depending on whatever type of inadequacy they needed soothed. Ray had quickly learned that Eric was the first variety. So, instead of telling him to stay on topic, she acknowledged the comment with a smile and asked the class what they thought about the book’s ending. Was it a tragedy or, in an odd way, was it a happy ending?
Eric said, “Maybe a whale ended up eating her and it was supposed to be a tragedy, but then she wasn’t dead at all, was just sitting in the whale’s stomach. And she doesn’t get out until everyone else in the world has died. So she has a kid, the human population starts growing again, and it’s a happy ending.”
Ray offered a polite grin. “Probably not.”
But before she could keep the rest of the class on topic, a boy said, “How would she get pregnant if everyone else was dead, you moron?”
A girl said, “She’d of been two hundred years old by the time she got out of the whale’s stomach, idiot.”
The class clown held his hands in the air as if he were surrendering to police. “Hey, don’t shoot me for thinking outside the box.”
“Okay, everyone, settle down.” Then, “So what do you think of the ending? Keep in mind, this was written by a woman in a time when women didn’t have many rights.”
Christy Neal raised her hand, then said, “Wouldn’t she have been better served trying to change the system than run away from it?”
Candace Nieler raised her hand and said, “Why not move somewhere else, somewhere with a friendlier society toward women?”
“She wouldn’t have had a problem if she’d just stayed in the kitchen,” Eric said.
The boys laughed. The girls rolled their eyes.
“Quiet, Eric,” Ray said.
But the class clown added, “My dad said another body washed ashore last night. Probably another Block that some family threw in the water to get rid of it.”
“Eric, be quiet. That’s your third warning.”
“If Chopin had been around today, she could have written an ending where the main character wants to go out into the water but then she’s grossed out by all the dead Blocks floating around. So instead, she—”
“Eric, out! To the principal’s office. Now!”