The Awards

My silent alarm alerts me to the time and I get up to leave. Mabel sees me and says, "Work's not finished."

I know her game all too well. She works slow and then wants me to work over to help her finish, bur company policy gives me an out. "Records show I finished my last assignment for today with less than sixty seconds to spare. You have to finish your own work. I have to go."

I secure my oxygen tank and clip the feed over my mouth and nose before I go out the door. The first has barely sealed on the small oxygen preservation room before I am out the second. I do not want to be late for the big event. It will never come again.

Only because Seattle no longer has crowded streets do I make it to the bar with a little time to spare. The place is packed, for the new paradigm, with more than half the seats filled and the bar by the big screen, one of the twelve screens authorized in the city, packed to capacity. I tell the barkeep, "Single malt scotch, neat. Make it a double. Tonight is a special occasion."

Everyone concurs. The screen shows the countdown clock, spinning too fast to see the last few digits as they blur. One moment it is two followed by zeros and a blur, the next a one with nines and blur. The earth now has under two billion remaining people. Our population is lower than any time since 1927. With the catastrophic ecological collapse brought by overpopulation, our species fall has been even more meteoric than its rise.

I raise my glass and call the traditional toast, which is repeated by the crowd, "To Darwin."