Prologue

Moving to the body of an event, we begin to see its form protracted through time, and thus have forced upon us the realisation that nothing in this world happens in an instant. For when we did in fact entertain the possibility of an end to things, we did not err in our measure of risks posed or conditions suffered, but in noticing the temporal dimensions of the apocalypse. That is to say, we humans, when conscious on that plane of the imagined, conjure an existence that is atemporal, and thus post-realisation. For this simple reason there forms that problematic relationship between a human being's immediate perceptive reality and the projected reality that being contemplates. Considering only the present and the future that is complete, the Mind does not assess the transitory stages of existence to a sufficient degree, indeed failing to observe them perceptually, that it might find itself in that valley between base reality and fantasy, and, thereby torn from the illusion of static existence, accept that eternity is present, and simply yet unfolding.

Thus did we fail to notice that the apocalypse was happening until it was complete, and the reality of the senses was the material replica of the post-apocalyptic wasteland that had dominated our cultural consciousness for decades. It was comparable to waking up from a dream, only discover that you had awoken into a nightmare.

As for myself, I threw my lot in with the gypsies. About a week into the riots, I copped a bike near the bridge and made a beeline for this caravan I'd run into maybe a month back. Even then you were starting to see burning cars some late nights under the B.Q.E., you know the really bare cement bloques down by the shipyards. Of course, later, once I was watching it all happen from a thousand miles away, the cars were everywhere. The whole city burned like hell long before the floods really started.

Anyway, the gypsies were some of the first to leave, of course. Having few Others, and only one I'd end up seeing again, I figured my best bet of getting a good start out of here would be to graft myself onto a caravan of nomads. So I came up on their camp deep on the Avenue, between trees whose roots were consuming the sidewalk like dry granola, and made a display of my beneficence. After negotiating with some of the more authoritative members, I convinced them that I would cook and play music for the group, as well as take part in any of those bouts of sudden cleaning of the expedition that sometimes spring up on travelers. I spent two nights sleeping on the ground in a teepee one of the Grandfathers had set up in front of his van using a plastic tarp and some spare wood, and, on further promise of contributing to the sustainability of the community, I was swept into the van between a sand-coloured dog and a red parrot in a cage that was held in the lap of my benefactor's second youngest child.

As Chance would have it, I didn't even make it over the George Washington Bridge.