Priceless

Priceless

“Not much here,” I said dejectedly.

“No,” agreed Professor Lee, “not much anywhere.” She sighed audibly leaning on her shovel for support before she walked away without further comment, her head down and shoulders sagging.

My brother Peter came and stood next to me while the others in our small group just kept digging, pulling small insignificant artifacts out of the rubble. “She’s lost hope,” he whispered in my ear.

“Leave her be,” I said quietly. “We’re all lost in this giant dead zone with no connections to anyone or anything anymore.”

“We may as well give up then,” Allison muttered as she pulled a small canister of blue capsules out of her pocket.

“NO!” I shouted, “That is not an option. We all agreed.”

Now everyone who was listening turned to me for answers. Professor Lee was our indomitable leader and we all loved her but she was pulling away and we all knew it. No one wanted to voice our biggest fears.

We had worked together for a period of years designing and building the kind of shelter that could withstand any conceivable worldwide disaster whether natural or manmade. What we had forgotten to consider was the importance of books. Ironically our various degrees in human history and anthropology and math, medicine and engineering were of little use now. Survival depended on a different kind of education which we lacked. Our unsolvable problems had been made solvable by artificial intelligence, so arcane studies of human history were swept into the giant trash bin in the sky in a locked file labeled ‘Never to be Repeated Atrocities’. No one bothered looking at them again.

Now, our dependence on technological advances was all too evident in a world with no electrical power. We could no longer click on our computers to find the answers. When the missiles flew, all the power grids were destroyed first. Left to fend entirely for ourselves, we felt helpless.

Our project of designing an indestructible “bomb shelter” (as we laughingly dubbed it) was ostensibly an effort to defy human nature. Professor Lee made it her mission in life to open the doors to study history freely in order to gain a better understanding of human frailties but she was considered a fringe academic, not to be taken seriously. The slate had to be wiped clean, not dirtied by the past. So she started an underground group on the campus for like-minded people who were optimistic but cautious, determined to better themselves even if no one else was interested. Intrigued by her passion I enlisted my brother who thrived on risk taking and we joined her growing circle together.

Other people in the group had their own reasons for signing on but I suspect we all enjoyed the freedom of actually being able to express our secret thoughts. The general populace adhered to the directive to do all writing including personal correspondence, essays, school assignments, novels and basically, anything you thought about, on your computer where it was recorded for all to see on the ubiquitous cloud. Paper and pens were practically non-existent. It seemed to me that keeping all thoughts public kept people from being people. I had an inkling I was not alone in my rebellious thinking but I never knew for sure until I met Professor Lee. She was our link to that which made us truly human which was, of course, our original thoughts.

Professor Lee returned to us now with a peculiar look on her face. “I want to show you something,” she said. We followed her even though we had already come farther than we ever had before and it was getting late. We trekked over a small hill to find an untouched apple orchard standing before us bathed in the evening rays of sunlight. Apples still hung on the branches glistening in their ripeness and beyond that a field of what looked like corn, and another of wheat perhaps?

“Too bad none of us know anything about farming,” said Ryan. We all laughed uneasily.

“I didn’t think there were any farms left,” said Nicole. “I thought they were banned or something like everything else.”

“Where do you think the food came from, you know, in the supermarkets?” sneered Albert.

“I mean small farms, Albert. I know there were big corporate farming businesses or whatever but no one was supposed to go out on their own.”

“Well, maybe there were some people left who didn’t trust …like us” ventured Peter.

“Do you think they are still alive?”

“Who?”

“The farmers,” I said impatiently.

Professor Lee took out her binoculars which she always had with her. “I see little to suggest they are. I doubt they could have survived the chaos if they weren’t prepared. I wish we had known them.” Her voice was wistful.

“Shouldn’t we be getting back?” asked Allison timidly.

Professor Lee smiled at her. “Yes, we should,” she said, “but I want to explore a bit more if you don’t mind. I don’t think we have anything to fear.”

Allison looked uncertain, but most of us wanted to stay. There was fresh food to be picked and eaten so she acquiesced. We each picked an apple to nibble on as we made our way through the orchard to stand at the edge of the wheat field.

“Stand by the roads and look, and follow the ancient paths, where the good way is. Walk in it. There you will find rest for your souls.” Professor Lee’s voice echoed eerily over the stalks of corn. We moved across the field slowly not wanting to trample any of the grain. We found an old farm house amid a cluster of trees. It looked as if it had been there for centuries, but there was no sign of life.

“Do you think they took the pills then?” squeaked out Allison.

“If there are no bodies, I think we could assume they took the pills,” said Albert.

We had all talked about taking the pills ourselves, the day we opened the door to the outside and found the wreckage of our civilization. We surmised the first things to be targeted were the power plants and the satellites that connected us all to each other. Then the major cities themselves were demolished and everything and everyone in them. All people were issued the pills on a yearly basis, because in the unlikely event of catastrophe, they insured a quiet comfortable death after which the body disintegrated into ashes. Following a lengthy discussion, we concluded we had enough supplies to see us through six months so we should stay alive and try to figure things out. If at the end of those six months, we remained without hope we would have a ceremony and all take the pills together.

We entered the house cautiously treating it as a sacred place. The furniture was hand crafted, sturdy but old and comfortable. There was an ancient government issued computer on the desk in the corner. This one looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. The screen was cracked and the keyboard was pretty much keyless.

Heading outside we stumbled on the entrance to an old root cellar. “Maybe some potatoes,” said Peter eagerly. “Just imagine real mashed potatoes.”

“Open it carefully,” said Professor Lee.

I didn’t know what she expected to see so I ventured to say, “This is the stuff of yore where people hid during tornadoes and the like. Good enough to thwart nature but not the nature of man.”

Our flashlights beamed around the small enclosure. I was the first one to discover a sort of cupboard in the back corner with a heavy padlock guarding against intruders.

“Should we crack it?” asked Ryan.

“Oh, yes,” said Peter unable to hide his glee. He heaved an old axe lying nearby and broke the lock. Inside was a roll of bills. It had been a long time since anyone used paper money. He unrolled the wad of bills slowly counting them. “Nineteen, twenty. That’s twenty $1000 bills.” We all laughed, quietly at first and then uncontrollably.

“Twenty thousand dollars in cash. I wonder what they were saving it for,” I said.

“At least it was good paper,” said Peter. “It might be good for something.”

“Like what?” asked Albert.

“Like fueling a campfire.”

Professor Lee chortled while she aimed her flashlight back in the cupboard where something caught her eye. She reached in and pulled out a small black book. We grew quiet as she carefully brushed off the cover and opened to the first page. It was handwritten. What she was reading we didn’t know but her face spoke volumes.

“This is the treasure,” she whispered finally, “and it will save us all. It is our link to the past and our hope for the future.”

“How can a small black notebook save us?” Albert asked incredulously.

“It’s a journal,” said Professor Lee. “People used journals to record their thoughts and dreams but this one records even more. It seems to be a guide to everything we need to know about cultivating food including preserving seeds, when to plant, how to care for the plants and when to harvest. We can learn so much from those who went before. This is the key to our survival. We will live.”

The light in her eyes was contagious. For the first time since we ventured out, we had a sense of not only being, but a sense of well being. We would discover who we really were and we would carry on. There was a definite change in our demeanors as we ascended out of the root cellar to enjoy a spectacular sunset, and of all things, a cackling chicken scrounging around for seeds. And then another little black book discovered locked away in the henhouse.

“Everything you always wanted to know about raising chickens,” read Arthur.

That night, back at our own shelter which was filled with all the computers, tablets, phones and ipods you would ever want, we decided to make a bonfire. We ate apples and roasted corn, and dared to talk about the future again. Then we solemnly divided the money up, each of us taking one of the thousand dollar bills.

“Hmm,” mused my brother Peter, “I think I’ll invest mine in the stock market.” We all stared at him as he folded the worthless money into a paper airplane which he then threw casually into the flames. “Easy come, easy go.” Funny guy.

“I’ll pay down my school debt,” Nicole smirked. Another plane hurled into the fire.

“I’m saving for my retirement,” I said as I watched my measly IRA turn to ashes.

Allison grew very serious. “I’m giving mine to the church to help the poor,” she said. “Oh, wait, we’re the poor now I guess.”

“Let’s pool the rest and start a food pantry. I think we’re going to need that,” chimed in Albert.

“No way. I’m saving up to buy an environmentally safe electric car although I will need Ned to reinvent electricity first. Maybe I should invest in a kite.”

Even Professor Lee got in on the fun. “I thank whoever contributed this precious money to have the foresight to see our plans to build a biosphere on top of our underground shelter were totally sound. It was just a matter of too little, too late.” The last of the bills soared into the dying inferno.

Then we silently looked around at each other and felt grateful. We had our health, we had each other, we had unique skills AND we had those little black books from which we would learn so much more. Hope abounded.

“So you see,” said Professor Lee, summing it up as only she could. “What really matters is what people write down in their little black books. Written words are the only thing that will truly endure.”

We couldn’t wait for tomorrow.