WEBVTT

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There had once been a
magnificence to these streets

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and the evidence of those times
was still there in the zone,

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in edifices to ideas
that had not lasted.

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How many days Kelly
saw the endurance

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of the beautiful, the
way the slow degradation

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of acid rain and
other weather can make

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the zone more lovely, not less.

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He entered churches
where painted

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crosses faded from the
walls, where wind howled

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some days through stolen stained
glass, while on other days

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birds flitted between the
iron braces left behind.

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The braces waiting for the
theft, the pews remaining

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but the organ pipes long gone,
dust and smatter everywhere.

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A city silt fallen,
unswept, a manifestation,

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the refuse of long ago prayers.

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The birds nesting
in the rafters.

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American gods, American
temples, all the evidence anyone

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needed to indict
the temporariness

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of American belief.

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He walked shredded schools
lacking students, but not piles

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of serviceable desks, ran his
hands along the spines of books

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left behind, the previous
fictions of history,

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stories no one wanted to steal.

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Bottles of printer's ink
lined glassless window sills,

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glowed in shafts of sunlight,
colored vacant offices

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blue and red and
black and super blue.

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Locker rooms lay unlocked,
the locker doors unremoved,

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the open wall spilling out
of gym floors made of century

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dead trees, the wax scuffed
with shoes and time, tagged

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with layers of spray paint.

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He wandered the rows of emptied
houses and overgrown yards,

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roamed grassy blocks beneath
bare socketed streetlights.

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In every structure
he entered he found

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some objects trashed,
and some he could sell,

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and also some rare and better
and less valuable objects.

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Objects abandoned by
accident, chances, castaways.

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Soon he lifted some new
bauble from nearly every site,

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folded a broken spine
paperback into his pocket,

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ripped a single pencil marred
Ava Maria from a hymnal,

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pocketed a child's
toy heavy as lead,

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a bent tined fork
kicked behind a counter.

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He brought home some
objects he planned to use,

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and some he wanted to look at.

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And in his apartment
he chose a cupboard

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meant for dishes to store
these more useless thefts.

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An exhibit of his
travels in the zone.

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Of what relics had
called out in the places

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he'd been, the bleak houses
of the blackout city.

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Kelly thought the world wasn't
full of special objects, only

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plain ones.

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Nothing was assembled special.

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Nothing and no one but
the plainest objects

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could be supercharged by
attention, made nuclear

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by suggestion.

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He could pick up the same
object in two different houses

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and in one sense a completely
different thrumming.

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What he wanted was
anything loved.

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When he couldn't
remember anymore

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where he had taken something
from, then he threw it out.

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Making emotion last wasn't
the object's first power,

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but it was the power
he wanted most.

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Anything he took from
someone else's life

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wouldn't work forever, but
if he kept acquiring more,

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maybe the feelings might remain,
transferred across the overlap.

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The fall sun shining on the
waving grass, the hardy scrub

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of trees spreading
across vacancies,

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everywhere he took
something he tried

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to leave something else behind.

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The unexpected juxtaposition
of nature and ruin.

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Metal for memories,
memories for metal.

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There was so much
he wanted gone.

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There was such a sprawling
untenanted city in which

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to dump it.

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And in the following
streets he discovered

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the great perseverance of
the people left behind.

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Their faces shined
in the light wherever

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he saw them, on porches
or in driveways,

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outside liquor stores and bars.

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He wasn't their neighbor,
but he saw their beauty.

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They looked crazy with
grief, the great glory

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of their sadness, the way
it would last and last.

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He needed to eat and
there wasn't any work,

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but what was he taking
from these people?

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Nothing, he told himself,
they had not already lost.

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To leave the edge of
the zone for its center

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was to abandon the
present for the future

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and wherever Kelly
went he thought

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he might be the last
person to see these sights.

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Others would come with
bulldozers and excavators,

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or else with arson and theft.

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But they wouldn't see how
he saw, moving carefully

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through these
rooms and hallways,

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staring out these
windows, marveling

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at the way you could see the lit
skyline of the inhabited city

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from the endless dusk of
its unlit neighborhoods.

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There were still some
progressions in play,

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but he saw how the zone
had moved beyond time.

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Or at least outside of the
time marked by digital clocks,

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smartphone calendars.

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Inside the zone events
moved along paths

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solar, lunar, seasonal,
new geological epochs

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marked by strata of waste.

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Areas identifiable
by the brand names

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left inside cupboards,
by the industrial design

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of unpowered appliances.

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A preview of what
the world might look

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like during its coming decline.

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Kelly pretended he carried the
last human gaze door to door,

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window to window, exploring
the first outpost of a culture

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pushed past repair.

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It could be destroyed,
but could it be fixed?

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All the better futures
might not arrive.

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He didn't think his was
the final generation,

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but perhaps the last
might already be born,

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and what did this mean
for him, the good man

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he had tried and failed to be?

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In some houses he found
handwritten notes.

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He found one taped
to the cracked

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plaster across from the house--

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I'm sorry-- He found
one taped to the cracked

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plaster across from
the house's front door.

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We're leaving in the morning.

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And then the date the last
inhabitants left, not so long

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ago.

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In the back of a
child's closet he

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found a scrawl of crayon
reading, I'll be back for you,

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written to the
house, to whatever

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the child thought a house was.

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Sometimes there was an
animal living there still.

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The animal was always a cat.

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What did these cats eat?

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Where did they sleep,
and piss, and shit?

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Sometimes it wasn't hard to
see, the skeletons of mice, shit

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in one quarter of a room,
the smell of piss everywhere,

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the cat following Kelly
from room to room,

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rubbing its body
against his boots.

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Names everywhere on the
houses, in the ashfall,

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carved into trees,
fences, doors.

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I love you house, one note read.

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I built this house with
my hands, said another.

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Goodbye.

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I'm sorry.

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We had to leave,
but this was home.

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