《The Junkyard and Other Short Stories》Something Worth Preserving

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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.

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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.

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