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couldn’t even sell drugs. Really, all they did was sit in rooms, all dressed in the same color clothing, doing nothing at all. Needless to say, aging gang members didn’t want to be babysitters; the contest ended a month after it started, and the newly indoctrinated members were all returned to the Block shelters from which they had been stolen.
    Aging populations still needed their drugs, but the dealers were having as hard a time as everyone else when it came to adjusting to the changing world. When paper money became useless, a little baggie of pot that would have sold for twenty bucks would now cost whatever jewelry the buyer was wearing. After they realized jewelry meant as little as money, dealers started trading their drugs for the few things that still had some sort of value: real seafood instead of the food processor’s version, spare batteries instead of the bulky power generators everyone was issued. If you wanted a lifetime supply of coke, it was going to cost you your beachfront property at one of the final settlements. The user, who used to be able to wake up each day to a view of the waves crashing, would relocate to a condo further in town, but they would be too stoned to care.
    Katherine was still looking at the blank television screen. “I hate that you always turn the TV off. I feel like we might get left behind if we don’t keep up on the news each night.”
    “That wasn’t the news. It was something that gets off on pretending to be the news. Don’t let them scare you.”
    Upstairs, Galen was already in his version of sleep. Katherine snuggled closer to her husband. Every day he told her not to worry, and every day he knew she was more concerned than the previous day.
    “The guys on TV always say the same thing,” he told her for the hundredth time. “And they’re only on TV at all because they’re good at making everything seem so incredibly urgent.”
    Her grip relaxed, but she still stared at the black box with glassy eyes that didn’t really see anything. “How many other families are going to leave before we go too?” she said. “I hate feeling like we’re going to wake up one morning and be the last people here.”
    The corner of his shirt was damp from where her face had rested on his shoulder.
    “Honey“—he stroked her hair while he spoke—“we aren’t being left behind. The Donaldsons and the Carters are gone, but—“
    Her face came back into light when she spoke: “And the Lees, and the McCarthys, and the Sosas.”
    In her face, he saw thirty years of memories with her, saw their lives together in the sparkle of her eyes. Tiny wrinkles were starting to appear at the corners of her cheeks where the skin had once been smooth. Her hair had the tiniest hint of grey mixed in with the blonde.
    “Look at everyone who’s still here,” he said, “not the people who have left. The Cunninghams are still here. So are the Crenches and the Kramers. If we leave in the middle of the night, we’re no better than anyone else who’s already gone. Wouldn’t you rather go down with the caravan?” Before she had a chance to respond, he added, “We’ll be fine.”
    A couple of minutes went by without either of them saying anything. When he looked down again she was asleep. Her eyes were twitching and she gave a light groan as if receiving bad news, but it was sleep nonetheless.
    He still remembered the early days, back when Galen was a baby. The news reported on a mother who had drowned her four-year old child in the bathtub. The baby, who had been born before the first signs of the Great De-evolution, had wailed at the hospital like any other normal baby, but then the mother killed it and threw it in the forest. When asked why she did it, she told the police her baby had turned into a Block. No one, especially the police, believed her; she was arrested and sent to prison for the rest of her life. But when the story was told on the evening news, instead of mentioning her mile-long