Paradise Made

Thirty: National News

Free time can be painful, if one has forgotten how to make use of it. After days upon days of action without barely any time to sleep, it was jarring to find ourselves with a day of absolutely nothing. Clay and I packed in the morning, not procrastinating on something for what was probably the first time in our lives.

There was no class, no explosions, the demon activity had settled on campus, and according to Lily the Templars where here in full force, leaving them without need for Clay or I. We found ourselves hanging out with June, as she was very much in the same boat as we were. In our dorm room we lounged, combing social media, wandering out to the common room to check the news.

It was barely two when we decided to get stoned. We were going on some righteous pilgrimage tomorrow, there would be no time for such mortal things. We might as well get rid of our stashes now. There was no worry of complaints or an angry RA. It was the end of the world after all. The three of us passed a massive joint around while watching a live-stream of the national news, which Clay had pulled up on his laptop.

The United Nations had established a council for international unity in the face of this great chaos. The man they had elected to lead it held a press conference, streamed to every news station all over the world. He was a British man, with warm blue eyes and what seemed to be a genuine intensity. He was trying. In the midst of all this he was trying his very hardest to hold everything together. Lucas Dejan was his name. It stuck with me, despite the state I'd been in when I'd learned it. He was a member of the British parliament but also the founder of some massive international charity. I'd recognized the name. He had been given a tremendous challenge, leading the comity tasked with overcoming years of bureaucracy between countries, enemies and allies, so collectively humanity could survive.

He really emphasized that, voice like silk, “humanity will prevail. Together we have overcome so much, as a species known for adapting, surviving. I am not one with the authority to speak on these matters, but be the origin of this threat natural, human, or other... It doesn't matter. Not to me. I will not let my people, billions upon billions of people, die. That is regardless of who or what commands it.”

Pen and he would get along, I decided. I liked him too. There was something about his face that made me want to trust him.

Dejan, who seemed to speak many languages, began to repeat his words in French. We changed over to Facebook then, scrolling through Clay's feed. June was on Tumblr on my computer, and I just sat watching, absorbing the information as best I could.

“People are sick all over,” said June. “It looks like, for what I'm reading, that half of LA is shut down and quarantined. I even read a post that says it spreads as far south as Central America.”

“Petulance,” I said, thought no one responded.

“There's an article here, from China,” said Clay. “Apparently massive amounts of food have gone rotten for no explicable reason. And there's mass crop failure. It's been reported in Japan too, and Thailand. They say Dejan's committee is already working on organizing international food aid, though.”

“Famine,” I said.

This time June responded. “Oh my god, Xavier, I get what you're doing.”