Read The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution) for Free Online Page A

labor strikes over there? And that was before the Great De-evolution. Now that they know they’re the only ones who can do the job, they can make any demands they want. What would you do if you got there and then all the pilots went on strike, or worse, they never showed up to work again? How would you get back here?”
    Even as an impetuous teenager, she knew her mother was right. And, in fact, during the leg of her trip through the Southwest, she saw reports that there were massive labor strikes across France, Spain, and Italy as workers tried to squeeze whatever income they could out of their employers before their occupations became outdated. For months, there was no trash collection, no subway service, and no taxi drivers in much of Europe. At one of the many cyber-cafés along their trip, where Morgan and Anna checked their e-mail, Morgan’s mother included a link to a story covering the unrest in Europe, her way of saying “I told you so” without using those specific words.
    Friends, especially young friends, are meant to bicker and get on each other’s nerves. But for two months, Morgan and Anna got along fabulously. When they both had an opinion about the next place they should stop, it was always the same place. When either of them didn’t have a preference one way or the other, they happily deferred to their friend. They agreed on everything, from their route, to which city they slept in each night, to where they ate breakfast.
    They saw the Grand Canyon, the Alamo, and Niagara Falls. They saw Hoover Dam, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Cape Canaveral. For Morgan, though, nothing could match the Grand Canyon. As far as she could see, the earth was torn apart with rocks and caves. It was the power of nature. Something as simple as water had carved out a great portion of the land, leaving miles and miles of beautiful rock formations, crevices, and gorges. If water could do that to the land, what chance did she have of leaving her own mark on the world? She was only a girl—a young woman; she could never compete with simple forces like air and water and gravity.
    The most she could do was use a stone to scratch her initials into one of the rock formations. The rain would wash away her work within a week. It was a trivial reminder of how incidental her life was compared to the water, which had formed the canyons in the first place, and would continue to be on Earth millions of years after Morgan was gone. In front of her was proof that the entire world could be changed by the simplest of powers. But instead of making her life feel unimportant, the great rock formations, red under the sun, gave her a sense of awe. She felt lucky just to have a chance to live in this world where such sights could be seen. It took her breath away.
    Looking out at the stretch of orange and red canyon, Anna said something, but Morgan didn’t hear what the words had been.
    “What?”
    “I said it’s amazing, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    After offering the acknowledgment, Morgan went back to staring at the expanse of colored stone all around her. It was a place she could spend the rest of her life. She would be perfectly happy to set up a tent and wake up each day in front of those rocks.
    “Ready to go?” Anna asked.
    Without saying anything, Morgan stood up and brushed the dirt off her shorts.
    For the rest of the road trip, though, she found herself thinking of those rocks and that canyon. No matter what other monuments or landmarks they saw, she would envision the expanse of earth carved out by nothing more than water. Anna said her favorite part of the trip had been the great redwoods and sequoias in California, trees so gigantic that other trees resembled nothing more than grass under their giant uncles. But Morgan knew, even as Anna mentioned the colossuses, that they didn’t hold the same power over her friend that the Grand Canyon held over her. She was thinking of it when they passed through Dallas and Houston, and