Because I travel far and often there are some things that I forget. I hate being the one who decides what is worth remembering but I know there needs to be someone who will.

That is not to say that there are not any people left, just no one who cares to preserve. Often enough I find lonely strangers in their shelters keeping technology and hope for the next generation but when I offer them a song from the old world or a love letter I found lost on the ground they only respond with confusion or laughter. Despite the indifference I still find something in the old world is worth preserving.

Today I found myself in the fossil of a world I no longer fully remember, a situation I am used to by now. I can wander for days on end passing houses and buildings that used to house people when suddenly I will pass by something innocuous and fall to the ground in a desperate attempt at memory.

Today I was walking down a road in what used to be a warm neighborhood. I saw a discarded bicycle on the side of the road. It was overturned near the shell of a house. Grass and flowers grew over its skeletal frame when I heard it. Just for an instant, the sounds of nature healing faded to the background and I could hear someone riding the bike. A young boy maybe, maybe laughing with friends. There was a consistent whir of the chain and the tires as he raced his friends down the road. In the not-quite-a-memory I could hear the distant rumble of cars, maybe an adult yelling something about being late to school or home by dinner or some other place he needed to be. I could see the cars around me without the faded paint and growing rust, the houses without the broken windows and overgrown yards, a sky not yet discolored with poison dust shone bright over me.

As soon as it had begun the memory left me. The colors faded to as they were and the sounds returned to nature. I do not know why I remembered what I did but the sharp blue sky and the whirring of the chain seemed like something worth preserving.

I used to think that the only memory I had was the end of the old world. A sharp siren pierced the air and my father grabbed me and pulled me to a shelter. Some time passed and I never left the underground. I was young and for a time it was all I knew. When time passed and I found myself alone underground something compelled me to open the door and climb out. What I climbed into was a house and I was struck by my first real memory. It was then I decided that there was something in the old world worth preserving.