But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.

That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.

They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.

Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.

Sarah: "Not bad. You look almost human." Lena: "Thanks." Sarah: "I said almost." Lena: "Well, then, almost thanks.