A Beginning at the End

by Mike Chen

  People weren’t going to like headlines about flu deaths. Was it providing facts or feeding paranoia? Rob opted for the former, hitting the Approve button despite his initial hesitation.

  Protests explode outside CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. Valid news but maybe too much? The directive in the months since the Greenwood Incident was to lay off anything that might induce fear or trigger symptoms of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder. While PodStar maintained the region’s spotty network, that also meant culling the news for public consumption due to limited public bandwidth—which meant Rob became the filter for the San Francisco Metro to the world.

  Looter gang raids government trucks leaving distribution center. Violence involved with that one, so pass.

  Father offers reward for missing pre–End of the World pop star MoJo. MoJo? That pop star that his wife, Elena, had loved before quarantine? Rob shuddered as one of her songs instantly got stuck in his head. Elena would have laughed at him for that—and the fact that their daughter, Sunny, still listened to MoJo, even without her mom.

  Still, pop culture fluff felt desperately needed in 2025, so sure, post it.

  Unrest grows as governments, Reclaimed Territory communes argue resources and access. Political, so nope.

  Major League Baseball announces new season, twelve reactivated teams starting next spring. Hell, he’d bookmark that one for himself. If only Elena were around for the news that baseball would be back.

  He clicked Approve, immediately posting those articles up for public consumption, then continued scrolling. Somehow, conspiracy-level rumormongering made it onto here as well—theories that rolling blackouts were a precursor to a new outbreak rather than shoddy infrastructure, or accusations that the regular Metro blood drives were really a secret international project to examine antibodies. Rob quickly swept those away and checked the source; apparently, the new flu outbreak in Florida brought out the paranoia in their local media.

  No thanks.

  His back pocket came to life with a sudden buzz. He hit the Silent button on his 2018-era smartphone, a relic of a different kind now that apps were essentially defunct, then moved back to the task at hand. The next headline seemed to sap his strength.

  New survey shows stability, not love, highest priority in marriages.

  One simple sentence. And yet, it struck Rob with the weight of death—not five billion deaths, but a single one. He blinked back his tears, the feel of Elena’s limp hand an ever-present shadow over his own. Stability instead of love. Before everything, romantics would have scoffed. These days, stability seemed like a luxury, if both were impossible.

  He clicked Approve without reading the article when the phone buzzed again. One look shook him out of his stupor.

  The school.

  A month ago, they’d called because Sunny “planned a trip out to Reclaimed to visit a recently departed classmate”; even without the general distrust of the Reclaimed communes, he’d gotten a lecture for not emphasizing the risks of going beyond Metro limits. And last week, it was when Sunny “went missing” by searching the different classrooms to get a Band-Aid for her scraped knee rather than simply asking for help. Both times, the day ultimately ended with Rob telling her to slow down and wait for the grown-ups, along with a hug and a heavy sigh.

  What did she do now?

  He clicked the green button to answer. “Mr. Donelly, this is Kavita Eswara.”

  “Oh. Right.” Sunny’s principal. “How are you?”

  “Fine, Mr. Donelly. But we need you to come into the school. Sunny got into an altercation.”

  “‘Altercation’?”

  “Well, you could call it a fight. We need to talk.”

  “Wait,” Rob said, rubbing his forehead, “my Sunny hit someone?”

  “That’s right. She’s in the office right now, but she’s a bit...wound up. Mr. Donelly, this is the third time I’ve called you this month. You need to come down.”

  “Wait—but, we always talk these things out. She’s never hit anyone before.”

  “Has Sunny started counseling?”

  The question lingered, taunting Rob with all the things he wanted to avoid. “Well, no. Not yet.”

  “I believe we agreed that would be sensible following her last outburst.”

  “I know, but I can’t really afford it right now. We’ve only got single Residence License coverage. It’s nowhere near as good as the married rates.” And counselors would poke around into things that aren’t their business.

  “Mr. Donelly, we should discuss this further when you pick her up. Can you come now?”

  “Is this about the students who moved out to the Reclaimed Territories? I explained—”

  “No, Mr. Donelly, it’s not about that. It’s not about PASD,” she said, using the colloquial pronunciation of passed.

  “We suspect it’s about her mother.”

  For a second, the only noise was the low murmurs and clacking keyboards of the office. “Her mother?”

  “Any mention of her mother gets Sunny in hysterics. And any physical violence requires me to file an immediate Family Stability Board hearing by the school. They may follow up with a social normalcy audit. So, we should talk. Come to the principal’s office. If you can bring a character witness, that would be helpful.” The Family Stability Board. Metros were empowered at state and federal levels to protect the world’s most important remaining resources: children. With growing neglect cases or worse, social normalcy audits marked the first step of intervention—a process that could end with kids rehomed in dorms.

  But that was for the messed-up cases. Not like Rob and Sunny. There was no Greenwood-style murder-suicide and cult, just some pent-up angst and emotional outbursts. That couldn’t be enough to actually take Sunny away.

  Could it?

  “Right. Okay, then.” What could Sunny have said? He’d made her promise to never, ever talk about Elena to anyone. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  Rob and Elena had read plenty of parenting books when Sunny was born, but there was no manual on the psychological toll of global death and a continuous fear of any hint of another pandemic. The list of what-ifs swirled around, speeding up until one thought broke through and repeated.

  What if someone told Sunny that Elena was actually dead?

  Rob stood, keys jangling in hand, and they rattled as he marched through the cubicle farm toward the fourteenth-floor elevator. Each step felt heavier than the last, the weight of his dying wife’s final words and his daughter’s violent outburst propelling him forward. He hit the call button and stepped inside as soon as the doors slid open.

  As the elevator descended to the parking levels, Rob tried searching on his phone for ways to pass a social normalcy audit. He vaguely heard the elevator ding, and he knew that someone else stepped in, but his focus remained on keeping Sunny out of the government’s hands.

  Then the lights died and the floor dropped out from beneath his feet.

  Chapter Two

  Moira

  “I think I want to cancel the wedding,” Moira Gorman said to her wedding planner.

  Krista Deal, an impeccable combination of professionalism laced with sass, was speechless, perhaps for the first time since Moira and Frank hired her. Her gray eyes went wide. Then she inhaled sharply. Then little creases of concern formed around her mouth, the dim freckles on her cheeks freezing. Krista’s lack of response was disquieting, forcing Moira to look all around the small cafe—at the empty tables around them, at the baristas who brewed drinks and served pastries from behind silicone breathing masks, through the window at occasional passersby. Her eyes darted back to Krista, who still seemed lost in thought after a second, and averted her gaze, instead counting the floors up at the skyscraper across the street, all the way to the PodStar Technologies office where she worked.

  The door opened behind Moira, bring
ing in a gust of wind. Footsteps followed, then a woman’s muffled voice. “Where are your masks?”

  Krista’s gaze broke, focus sharpening then trailing upward. Moira looked behind her to see an older woman, face hidden behind a disposable mask.

  “It’s hard to drink tea with a mask on. But we’ll just be a few more minutes,” Krista said, all proper enunciation and tone, like she dealt with this all the time. Which she probably did, bouncing from place to place to constantly meet people, pick up things, shake hands while she planned events. Most people limited their contact with other human beings these days, but Krista seemed to seek it out. In a different world, Moira would have loved to peer into her brain to see what made her tick. Maybe Krista loved people? Maybe she felt invincible? Maybe she just didn’t care?

  The older woman reached into her backpack and pulled out two more disposable masks, then tossed them between Moira and Krista before heading to the cafe’s counter, an audible “You’re putting us all at risk” under her breath.

  Moira adjusted in her seat before pushing the short locks of black hair back behind her ear and looking back at Krista, who seemed grounded again. “So like I was saying, I think I want to cancel the wedding. It’s for the best. It really is,” Moira said. “I just... I like Frank. A lot. He’s a wonderful guy, really. His family is great. I’m just not in love with him.”

  Moira expected words of sympathy. Of understanding. This was, after all, what Krista did. Surely it had to happen from time to time, especially in the era of PASD. And Krista did all types of events—she’d once called herself “the gopher for people afraid of going outside.” Talking with the managers at the King Hotel, going to City Hall to get paperwork for newlywed tax credit applications, even driving around to various stores for the white running shoes for Moira’s wedding outfit; the to-do list meant encountering so many different immune and respiratory systems that even the biggest contagion skeptic would do a double take.

  Moira had asked her to do all those and more, and Krista always accepted without a flinch. Yet Krista’s reaction here seemed like the worst news in the world next to another viral outbreak.

  “Well,” Moira finally said, “after I tell Frank, you can cancel the—”

  “There’s a cancellation penalty.” Krista’s tone was unusually tense, and the words came out in a tight, clipped fashion, mouth pursed over her dimpled chin.

  “What?”

  “A cancellation penalty,” Krista repeated, though some of her normal cadence had returned. “It’s in the contract. Either fifty percent of the retainer monthly until the originally scheduled date or a forty-percent lump sum of the balance.”

  “Oh. Well, of course. I mean, we wouldn’t leave you in a lurch.”

  “But think about it.” Now she was smooth, professional, almost soothing in her voice. “Plenty of couples get cold feet. We’re five months out. It happens around this time. The paperwork, the selections, the logistics. It makes it real. So while I understand that you may be feeling this way, it’s totally natural. You just don’t want to do anything rash, that might be harder to undo.”

  “Maybe you misunderstood me,” Moira said after several seconds. “I don’t love Frank. I never have.”

  “Listen,” Krista said. She pulled out her phone, a flip phone manufactured several years before the End of the World. It opened with a flick of her thumb, and Moira wondered why Krista would use such a device. Smartphones couldn’t download apps or stream videos anymore with the world’s shoddy infrastructure, but taking photos seemed important for her job. “I think it’s—Oh. Oh, look.”

  “What’s that?”

  Krista held up her phone, the screen’s blocky text only capturing a few words. “New headlines on the Metronet.” Moira took it in her gloved hand, the headline New survey shows stability, not love, highest priority in marriages seemingly tailored by fate for the moment. The article loaded line by line until she could finally scroll down, skimming details about how PASD and Metro life and the general sense of unease that naturally arrived after surviving a pandemic that wiped out five billion people turned stability into the most desirable trait in a partner—not passion, not attraction, not job prospects.

  Simply knowing that the other person would be there.

  “Did you plant this?” Moira asked with a laugh.

  “Nope. It just popped up on Metronet. I was going to pull up a text from an old client who also had cold feet.” She smiled, a precise move of curled lips, soft eyes, and raised cheeks framed by neat blond hair, dimpled chin, and a relaxed posture. “What you’re feeling is totally natural. Both from a wedding perspective and this,” she pointed around them, “this world. Do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just think about it. Don’t make a decision one way or the other for a few days. Take a walk, sleep on it, whatever you need to think it through. And,” she laughed, “don’t talk to Frank about it. Deal?”

  It’d been a year since Moira had met Frank at a speed-dating event, and four months since he’d surprised her with a ring after they ran a charity marathon together, one of the Metro’s annual benefits for reconstruction funds. A few more days couldn’t hurt.

  “Sure,” she said with a sigh.

  Krista’s knees banged into the table as she stood, and she shook her head with a laugh. “Oh, yeah. How could I forget? The retainer—in cash. Do you have it?”

  “Oh, of course.” Moira reached into her bag and handed over a small envelope. It disappeared into Krista’s purse, and Moira watched as she quietly left the cafe, only offering a quick wave, her hair getting tossed by Bay Area wind. Krista disappeared into the lobby of the skyscraper, and though Moira probably should have also gone in and returned to PodStar on the fourteenth floor, she didn’t.

  Instead, she left the cafe, the autumn breeze chilling her ears, and walked. First past the block of still-boarded-up storefronts, then past the untouched newspaper stand with a yellowed pre-quarantine newspaper, then past the converted hotel that was now government housing for those who couldn’t afford Residence Licenses, the only passersby a pair of citizen patrol volunteers in their familiar red vests. At the corner, she stood, loading up the Metronet to read that article again when another headline stole any thoughts of Frank, weddings, or life in San Francisco.

  Father offers reward for missing pre–End of the World pop star MoJo.

  Six years ago, she’d sprinted out of Madison Square Garden, away from life as a celebrity and away from the father who controlled her every move. Instead she ran to the people that would become her family in a cross-country caravan of sun-beaten cars, surviving on limited fuel and even less food.

  They’d protected her then as a band of overland survivors. But they couldn’t protect her now, not while she lived in the San Francisco Metro and they stayed in their Reclaimed commune.

  Moira reread the headline three full times before the phone slipped out of her trembling fingers. She bent down to pick it up, though she was interrupted by the sound of screeching tires and clanging metal. When she looked up, steam came out of one car T-boned into another, and around them, stoplights and window signs had all gone dark.

  Chapter Three

  Krista

  Seconds of panic suffocated Krista as she pushed through the revolving door of the big corporate building, one of the few reopened skyscrapers in San Francisco dedicated to office space and businesses. One breath in, one breath out, and though she didn’t have the space or attire to go through her usual nerve-soothing yoga routine, the breathing was enough.

  After all, it had only taken her about a minute to get over the End of the World and step into her new life. So facing the loss of her business, her Residence License, and everything else she’d fought and clawed for since quarantine ended—hell, since she left her terrible mother and deadbeat uncle long before the MGS pandemic—she wasn’t going quietly into
the night.

  She just needed a plan.

  In an alcove of the lobby, by a water fountain with a sign stating No longer in service, Krista stepped aside and reached into her purse, feeling past a pair of knitting needles and her business card holder to get to Moira’s envelope. Moira had been so calm minutes ago, no sense of urgency or panic or anything else that might bring a flush to her olive-toned cheeks, despite the loaded weapon of her words. Krista’s fingers jammed through the bills, counting and recounting the total until her hunch proved true.

  There wasn’t enough. She knelt down, doing the math in her head, but the numbers weren’t there. Of course this would happen. It’s not like she was karmically due for a cash counting error in her favor or anything.

  What remained unpaid was a Residence License bill, one with smarmy red ink stating it was due for renewal at City Hall by the end of next week. Fail to pay it and her whole life unraveled, the entire foundation of independence she’d built for herself since leaving for college. No Residence License, no home of her own, no vehicle of her own. She’d even have to give up her cat—and she was not bailing on Mick even though he was a crotchety old feline these days. They’d survived the outbreak and quarantine together, they could survive this.

  Somehow.

  That didn’t even include the issue of Moira almost breaking her contract—but that would have to wait. Krista considered the small stack of reserves hidden in a small safe in her bedroom closet, the reboot-your-life money she always kept on hand in case she just needed to pick up and go.

  She vowed never to touch her safety net. But maybe she’d need to, just to make it through this hump.

  And almost on cue, Krista’s phone buzzed.