A Modern Tragedy

     "There's no internet today."

    "What! No internet?" She claps her hand to her face. "Oh, no, whatever shall we do?"

    "Well, really. Come on. This is serious."

    "We could go for a walk . . . "

    "At 5 below?"

    "Read a book . . . "

    "I just told you, there's no internet today."

    "We have a bookcase full of books. Also magazines. You know, the printed word on paper still exists."

    "Well, not the original printed word. That was probably a line drawn in the sand."

    "Or in clay soil, so it would last, so it could be read by others."

    "But who would read it? Who would know how to read it?" He paused, thinking. 

    She waited, silently of course, to see what would come from this ridiculous conversation. He had once admitted that the pointless conversation was his favorite form of sparring, the contest was to see how long you could keep an almost rational conversation about nothing alive. She had liked that thought, that idea, liked it then anyway, when they were just getting to know each other, but 30 years later she did not want to encourage the aimless supposition and inevitable word play that emerged effortlessly from him.

    "But," he was saying, "if no one could read it . . . no problem! The fact that it existed, that somebody was caught up in the possibility, of saving, of recording, real words, thoughts, phrases, ideas, the beginning of literacy. It would be another sign of the superiority of the human animal . . . " and he was off, rhapsodizing on the brilliance of the written word, the ability to record, to document, to preserve, preserve (a word he shouted twice).

    She smiled and let him go on. And on. And on. By the time he wound down, the internet would have rebooted itself, or whatever it needed to do, she would thank him for the diversion, and get on with her day.