The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to Disillusionment

Interconnected

We are not tigers. We are not wolves. We have no claws, only flimsy fingernails that barely break the skin. Our teeth are flat except for four canines which pose little to no threat. Our muscles are jelly compared to an ape's, even with a lifetime of strenuous training. We find ourselves the most destructively dominant species on the planet not because of our physical power. We are at this apex because of our ability to tell each other stories.

– The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide, Vol. 2, line 143

Bryan Fisher escaped the chaos of Brooklyn Heights, arriving at his boss's home in Croton-On-Hudson with a dozen souls from work along with their spouses, pets, and kids. Everything was collapsing. His boss, Julia Burnham-Tish, loved her employees, sending word that any who needed refuge from the looting and violence plaguing the boroughs of the flooded metropolis should come to join her at her sprawling estate. It was a no-brainer. She even sent a boat.

Bryan and his husband Jake packed up their most essential belongings into three suitcases, with an additional one dedicated to dog food and chew toys for their two Pomeranians, Bela and Snooker. They wore winter coats in the sweltering heat and left their luxurious loft-style apartment unlocked, the fob to the 6-year-old BMW Ohm5 in an antique marble ashtray by the entrance. They both knew there was no going back.

The boat was a sleek silver speed yacht docked at an old metro-ferry station just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a short but frantic walk. Jake had a baseball bat under his left arm. Bryan was terrified he might have to use it. Luckily, the looters were still busying themselves with storefront goods. The couple was able to slip by mostly unnoticed in the early morning hours. Bela and Snooker followed behind on leashes, their tongues wagging.

The way to the yacht was blocked by water flooding the greenway and park. They waded out through the shallows, carrying both suitcases and dogs to a dinghy, first in line to be taken aboard. Julia was there, handing out champagne. They collapsed in two lounges on the deck and Jake started to cry.

The next three months saw the exit of the entirety of Julia's staff, the duties taken up by the employees and family members of a corporation that existed only on letterhead and swag. Green baseball caps with the Zadaka logo soaked through with sweat dotted the garden, protecting the workers from the sun. Julia and her husband Malachi maintained a beneficent fiefdom, hosting meals, sharing news they gathered from Mal's shortwave, and strategizing how best to utilize the talents of their former employees to ride out the worst of the storm.

Bryan was a robotics engineer. Jake was a software designer. Together they managed to set up a local network of routers scrounged from abandoned houses. Bryan used the wireless to command his growing army of tiny robotic assistants to augment the help from the Zadaka bots scattered around the mansion. Julia and Malachi had thought ahead, liberating the property from the electrical grid years prior. The couple had stockpiled food and wine in the basement. The gardens were yielding lettuce, kale, carrots, cucumbers, and melons. They had fresh water from an old well. It all looked like it was going to work out.

That Thanksgiving they gathered around three long tables strung together, eating wild turkey shot by Mal augmented by late harvest squash and pumpkin and drinking some of the best wine from his cellars. The grumbling, rare as it was among the families, ceased entirely for the day. The meal was served and cleared by robots created by Bryan and the others, each assistant crawling back and forth along a long ramp at the far end of the last table. Julia and Mal sat at the head of the table with their children, Maimonides and Avra. Julia made speeches, thanking God for their successes, praying for future reparations, imagining a restoration of the company and a return to normal life. She read a little from the Torah, as she did each Saturday during dinner. The former employees, cleaned and combed, were seated in order of their admittance to the yacht, six months prior. Bryan sat near the head next to Maimonides, a boy of five, who was playing with a toy car at the table.