Despite taking early retirement from the post office ten years earlier, Gene still treated Sunday as his day off. He was dating a woman who lived in the Bowery. She had no kids but was raising her nephew. Gene was fuzzy on the particulars, only that the kid was at an age when his two favorite things were professional wrestling and the lock on his bedroom door. Exactly what age that constituted, Gene was again unclear. To say he was “dating” this woman risked overstatement. They had gone out twice, most recently for dinner the night before, and had soft plans to see each other the following weekend, which would mark Gene’s first third date with the same woman since his divorce.

He liked the woman, respected her even. How nonchalantly she mentioned taking in her sister’s son without divulging any gritty, humiliating details. Other people’s dignity was forfeited easier than loose change in bodega take-a-penny, leave-a-penny trays, and he appreciated that she valued the reputation of a sister Gene might never meet. The woman herself suffered from a chronic digestive issue that she gracefully alluded to when the subject of dining preferences arose, and he could tell she devoted tremendous energy to navigating her body’s mutinies.

How much easier it would be to disclose his chronic anxiety—which had forced him to quit delivering mail because of the crippling guilt he experienced at the prospect of eviction notices and crushing medical bills he was slipping like pipe bombs into people’s mailboxes—to someone who lived in perpetual fear of shitting herself.

But the nephew. The woman mentioned wanting to take the kid to the new Children’s Museum uptown that was generating so much buzz. Twice already she had praised museums Gene hadn’t heard of, let alone visited. Fearing she’d write him off as lowbrow, he manufactured familiarity with this latest museum. She was clearly impressed, which compelled him to draw out the performance, stressing his impassioned (if vague) review of the museum.She then intimated that Gene take her and her nephew on a tour, which made it sound less like a date—as it would center on a child—but also, potentially, more like a date, in that she trusted him around this impressionable life form for whom she was responsible.

Determined to alchemize his lie into truth, he visited The Children’s Museum to familiarize himself with its offerings. On the subway over, while scarfing down a fried egg sandwich, he scanned testimonials proclaiming the museum as “unforgettable” and “mind-blowing” and “a singularly transformative experience for children and adults.”

He entered the museum through a gift shop, which seemed downright predatory. He wondered if he’d have to get the nephew a souvenir. As a child, his son Dylan would cry if he didn’t get a souvenir. It didn’t matter where they were—museum, street fair, farmer’s market—if the boy didn’t have some token of remembrance, it was as if the visit never happened.

Gene noticed a rack of shiny GPS compasses, cartoon faces emblazoned along the vials. Beside them were solar-powered flashlights and checkered gauze decorated with cut-out dinosaurs. What the hell was a city kid going to do with this crap? Shirts hanging by the register read You Got to Have H.E.A.R.T. The price was forty dollars.

Atthe admission desk, his heart palpitated at the ticket fees posted in variegated, childlike scrawl. There were, shockingly, no reduced prices for seniors or the disabled.

A lanky man with a persnickety mustache, the upkeep of which must have been a part-time job, asked how many tickets Gene wanted.

“One ticket,” he said.

“One adult ticket,” the man said, poking his tablet. “And how many children’s tickets?”

“None.”

The ticket man looked perplexed. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“I don’t have children.” Gene paused. “I mean, I have a son; he’s just not here.”

“Where is he?” the ticket man asked.

“I have no idea.” This was true, to an extent. Dylan was a chef outside Boston, living with his sommelier boyfriend and three corgis with French names that Gene always mispronounced and therefore resented. Father and son spoke by phone on birthdays (more or less) and major holidays (more or less), with sporadic emails filling the gaps. Last December, they had what Gene considered a pleasant visit, the first in two years, when Dylan came to the city for a friend’s restaurant opening, and they roamed Central Park. Circling the reservoir, Dylan shared that he and his boyfriend were approved to adopt a child from Vietnam. Surprised, Gene blurted out the first thought to enter his mind: Aren’t you worried that no one’s going to think he’s your real kid? Dylan fumed. You’re unbelievable. I don’t know why I try. Gene attempted to clarify his sentiment. I just mean it’ll be obvious he isn’t your biological son, and that could be uncomfortable for everyone. All that sorting out and apologizing and tension when someone says the wrong thing, which they will—probably a lot. Gene then insisted that it didn’t bother him, of course; he’d be supportive and teach his new grandchild (more or less) every state abbreviation and postal code. He just wanted to make sure Dylan was prepared to explain—endlessly, exasperatingly—who the Vietnamese kid was. I told Mom you’d be a prick about this, but she said to give you a chance. Dylan stomped away, Gene left sheepish and agitated by rubbernecking passersby who had observed his son’s abrupt departure.

The two had not spoken since.

“What’s it matter where my son is?” Gene said, briefly distracted by a mob of families charging for the exit. The children, all wearing forty-dollar H.E.A.R.T. shirts, were crying. Several parents appeared pale and aghast.

“This is The Children’s Museum,” the ticket man said, “and you’ve come here without children.”

“Last month, I went to the National Sausage Expo. Guess how many nations and sausages I brought with me?” People nearby were staring. The family behind Gene eased back. He curbed his tone. “This place is advertised as fun for the entire family.”

“The fun for adults is seeing how much fun their children are having.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You don’t enjoy seeing your son, wherever in the world he is, have fun?”

“Of course I do,” Gene said, groping for a memory of the last time he witnessed Dylan’s enjoyment, his adult son getting younger and younger in his mind, without tattoos or facial hair or an arsenal of grievances. “I can also enjoy something without my son.”

“At The Children’s Museum?” The ticket man winced.

“A pretty penny of this museum was funded with taxpayer money, not by proceeds from lemonade stands. I have as much a right to be here without children as any person with children.”

The men locked eyes. The admissions line was growing, the audience to this confrontation steadily multiplying, antsy children beginning to whine.

“If you insist.” The ticket man opened a drawer. “But you must wear this around your neck at all times.” He handed Gene a double-laminated sign roped with lanyard. The sign read: I Am Here Alone.

Gene was stunned.“You’re pulling my chain.”

“It’s a security precaution,” the ticket man explained. “Children are vulnerable, and we must make every reasonable accommodation to ensure their safety. The sign contains a geolocation sensor. Any attempt to remove it will result in ejection and a lifetime ban from The Children’s Museum.”

“You LoJack a sign? Who runs this museum, the CIA?”

“I understand your frustration, sir. If you take issue with the sign, or any of our child safety protocols, you can come back another time. With your son.”

“My son’s thirty-two.”

“The Children’s Museum welcomes children of all ages.”

Gene wondered if any of the proximate children had witnessed genuine violence, and what effect throttling the ticket man would have on their malleable, jelly-like psyches. But he could muster rage for only so long. As his indignation-fueled adrenaline dissipated, his body tingled with apprehension. The gazes of entire families hammered at his back. His first instinct was to flee, but then what would he say to the woman he was dating? He’d never be able to give her a tour, to impress her by impressing her nephew.

He took a deep breath, then another. What was the worst that could happen if he wandered around The Children’s Museum with a humiliating sign around his neck? People could point at him and whisper. Seize their wide-eyed, cossetted offspring at his approach. A child could have a nightmare about the ogre with the sign, though that wasn’t Gene’s problem. He was already here, already the object of curious distrust among a sea of gawkers, and he’d be damned if he backed down now.

Gene lowered the sign around his neck.

“By the way,” he asked the ticket man, “are you here with any children?”

“I work here.”

“But you’re in the museum without any kids of your own. Every day, no less. Why would any man need access to so many kids? It’s suspicious, if not straight-up demented.”

Perturbed, the ticket man provided Gene a receipt and directed him toward the exhibitions.

Plodding forward, Gene glanced at the sign and shuddered. I Am Here Alone.

To imply that he was a danger to children was offensive. Gene had raised a child. (Two children if he could count raising himself, what with his mother working three jobs after his parents’ divorce, his father stealing away to San Diego, never to be heard from again.) Gene made Dylan invite his entire class to his birthday party each year, even the kids Dylan didn’t like, just so no one felt left out. He even chaperoned all of Dylan’s school dances, policing the intimacy of adolescent contortions in a manner that doubtless prevented numerous pregnancies and STIs. And, oh yeah, he’d nearly been kidnapped as a child—in the 1970s no less, the heyday of abduction when kidnapped children were blamed for being too available. Gene wanted to march back to the admission desk and tell that ticket man and his pet mustache that they didn’t know the first thing about child endangerment.

But he wouldn’t do that. His body still tingled, and he focused on avoiding the sea of eyes trained on him, assuring himself that he was fine just as he was.

Gene rarely spoke of his near-kidnapping, largely due to a deep-seated anxiety that it was the most interesting thing to ever happen to him, and that he could have been any latchkey kid outside the Stuart Avenue deli. The would-be kidnapper attempted to lure Gene into a white van with the promise of a Mr. Goodbar. When Gene hesitated (really, he was surveying the block lest one of his mother’s friends witness him taking a candy bar), the man attempted to snatch him. But the kidnapper had failed to appreciate his target’s full dimensions or surly temperament; Gene flailed and yelped, the kidnapper crumpling beneath him with an anguished groan. Gene snatched the Mr. Goodbar and consumed it in three bites.

When the police arrived, Gene lied, alleging that the kidnapper had made him eat the chocolate bar. The officers then discovered a vial of tranquilizers in the kidnapper’s coat. One officer asked if the kidnapper tried to force him to take the pills too, and Gene said yes because it was obviously what the nice officer wanted to hear. The kidnapper, despite swearing the pills were for his nerves, got an extra seven years tacked onto his sentence for a slew of child endangerment charges.Gene and his mother attended the sentencing. The kidnapper, before being led from the courtroom, regarded Gene with chilling, puppy-eyed disappointment.

It was forty years later when, amid his mail route, two teenagers barraged Gene with paintballs, Gene hyperventilating, crawling into a nearby Bath & Body Works for cover, that he realized kidnapping had triggered the kidnapper’s anxiety. The poor bastard relied on those tranquilizers to do his job. Gene felt bizarrely guilty about lying to the cops, a guilt that still lingered decades on. The kidnapper must have been released at some point, Gene figured. Maybe he’d gotten out and had a kid of his own. Maybe that kid was kidnapped, and the kidnapper regretted his entire life. Or maybe he was simply dead.

Eyes closed, Gene slowly counted to ten.

This was the last thing he wanted to think about. The thoughts he least wanted to entertain were always the hardest to expel. Rumination. He’d read about it on WebMD, which he trusted more than profiteering, Big Pharma–colluding doctors. It was a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. While no doctor had officially diagnosed Gene with the condition, several bona fide OCDers in an online OCD forum assured him he was one of them, and tasked him with maintaining a diary of thoughts on which he ruminated, with an increasing faction of forum members expressing concern over the diary’s ever-lengthening contents: that he wasn’t funny; that he couldn’t tame his potbelly; that no woman, even Tina, had ever complimented his kissing; that everyone thought he was poor because he worked at the post office; that his son was ashamed of him; that everyone thought he was either weak or malingering when he filed for disability; that his funeral would be poorly attended.

He opened his eyes.

Signs announced exhibitions in the first hall: Extreme Environments; DIY Clothing; Crisis Mindfulness. The last sign had an accompanying icon of a tiny stick figure seeming to hover-meditate above an open flame. Gene wandered on. Some parents ugly-eyed him. Others hurried past, children in tow, without acknowledging his sign.

Midway through the hall, beside a kiosk peddling snazzy Geiger counters and superhero-themed iodine tablets, a topographic world map spanned the wall. Inscribed across the equator was There’s No Place Like Home. Gene approached a computer console, one of dozens throughout the hall. A prompt asked him to input his address. A street-view image of his pre-war apartment building appeared; an instant later, it was replaced by a crater. A red frowny face materialized, and the computer informed him that, in the event of nuclear war, his home would be decimated in a first strike. He entered several more addresses—his favorite bakery, his old post office, his pharmacy; lastly, he checked Dylan’s address. It, too, was destroyed in a first strike. This surprised him, as he didn’t think anyone outside America had heard of, let alone cared about, Boston.

He considered calling Dylan to laugh about this ridiculous exhibit, but his son probably wouldn’t answer. Gene would be left babbling to the infernal voicemail, any careless thing he said recorded to be used against him forever.

A sign arching over two doors at the end of the hall read The Garden of Tomorrow. Animated children frolicked in a mound of desiccated leaves, calling to mind the woman Gene was dating. How many dates before he should get her flowers? Was there an accepted number? Or were flowers the mark of an unimaginative man? It was foolish to assume her digestive chaos would predispose her to sympathize with his social anxiety. If anything, maybe she’d look down on him. She was out in the world, caring for someone else’s kid no less, knowing full well her bowels could betray her at the drop of a hat.

Entering The Garden of Tomorrow, he was ambushed by a gagging, sulfuric odor. The room was airless, arid as a dust bowl. Gene could not discern his coughing fit from the glottal cacophony surrounding him. When his lungs finally compensated, he took in the exhibition: Bodies at various stages of decay were piled all around. Between them were wooden stakes with carvings of different vegetables—potatoes, mushrooms, peppers, spinach. A chirpy docent was addressing a clutch of mesmerized children.

“The collapse of civilization is no excuse not to eat your vegetables! You might be one of the lucky few who survive, so you’ll really need to take care of yourself. Let’s review: What vegetables can you grow in nuclear winter?” Shouts of “mushrooms” and “yams” and “tamarinds” filled the room. “Very good. What vegetables can you grow in 120 degrees Fahrenheit?” More shouts of “squash,” “pumpkin,” “okra.” The docent was elated. “I love good listeners. What you learn here today may very well save your life in twenty years or ten years or maybe tomorrow, who knows. You’ll have to grow your own food, likely while staying covered up to protect yourself from radiation or heatstroke or a lethal virus, who knows. Now who can tell me what to put in your soil to make it stronger?”

“Mommy and Daddy!” one child yelled.

“Mmmhmm. The soil will looooove Mommy and Daddy,” the docent said. “But only if they won’t wake up. Please don’t bury Mommy and Daddy without being super sure they’re not waking up from their nap.”

A gust of laughter issued from the cluster of parents.

“And remember, it’s not just your mommy and daddy. Anyone’s mommy and daddy would be super cool fertilizer. If you see dead mommies and daddies that no one is using, don’t let them go to waste.”

Gene couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing and smelling. The rotting bodies, surely made from silicone or some space-age polymer, looked disturbingly authentic. Of course, they weren’t, couldn’t be. Gene turned to a stocky man beside him. “Is this guy for real?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” The stocky man looked askance.

“A little intense, don’t you think?”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those.” Repulsion corkscrewed the stocky man’s face. “Our kids are fucked. Least we can do is get them ready for what’s coming.”

Gene was thrown. “This is supposed to be a children’s museum.”

“It is. An interactive museum to prepare the children of today for the decimation of tomorrow. If an atomic blast or civil unrest or the next pandemic doesn’t kill my kid off the bat, I don’t want him to starve or get poisoned by jimson weed like some loser. I want him to survive for as long as possible. You want your kid to just give up?” the man asked.

Gene would very much want Dylan to give up, to embrace a relatively painless demise rather than endure the range of promised hellscapes the man had projected. But Dylan wouldn’t give up, probably because he knew it’s what Gene would want for him. Instead, he’d refurbish an underground bunker into a pop-up bistro where he’d whip up four-star meals with roadkill, canned soup, and looted drugstore wine. Sit around a campfire with his son on his hip and gripe to other plunderers about what a rotten father he had.

The stocky man turned around, glaring at the sign around Gene’s neck. “Why you here alone?”

Gene opted against telling this yahoo about the woman he was dating. “I wanted to see what everyone’s talking about.”

“This is a children’s museum. Honestly, pops, if you’re still alive when the world ends, you won’t make it a week. I can tell you don’t have what it takes.”

“What do you know about what it takes? Let me tell you something, buddy, I’ve eaten meals bigger than your runt kid.” Gene realized he had no clue which of these children this jackass had sired. “Come the end of the world, if it’s him and me, I’m going to bed with a full stomach.”

Jolted, the stocky man stepped away, toward a child in a hazmat suit whose hands were wrist-deep in the squish of, ostensibly, human remains.

Other parents stared at Gene, and though he was curious about the remainder of the exhibit—vibrant, bold instructional placards identifying non-radioactive plants and quizzes titled Dinner or Death?—his breathing grew jagged. Counting to ten and then back to one, he ambled past corpse mounds, toward a double door with a picture of two jovial children pumping their arms. An adjacent sign read: I’m a Survivor!

The space was colossal and mercifully devoid of rotting corpses. Hunks of stone debris and rebar littered the room. Two more docents with Build-a-Shelter logos on their shirts provided kids with materials and assembly instructions. One man was pudgy and short; the other slender and tall. They looked like they’d be the resentful sidekicks of a handsome sitcom heartthrob.

“What are the three most important rules of apocalypse real estate?” the fat docent said, and the skinny docent yelled, “Location, location, location!” A kaleidoscopic center display identified prime shelter construction terrain—areas shielded from wind shear and hurricanes, as well as accessible to water. Another screen detailed ideal insulation materials, ranging from snow to dried leaves to fibrous plants. “Those of you who die early will be the lucky ones,” the fat docent said. The skinny docent’s golf-ball Adam’s apple bobbed as he vigorously nodded. “That’s what we at The Children’s Museum call a hard truth. You survivors have your work cut out for you. There’ll be nothing to look forward to for a hundred years, minimum, when society starts to rebuild, maybe.”

The kids appeared wonderstruck but not terrified, as Gene wanted them to be. The docents segued into a presentation on how to, responsibly and respectfully, scavenge from abandoned homes. “Canned food, prescription pills, batteries, tools: these are treasures we never leave behind,” the docent intoned. Several parents, popeyed and slack-jawed, jotted notes.

How could they be taking this seriously? Well, yes, the world. But the world had been the world for a long time now, and it was still plugging along. And even if it was worse than ever, which maybe it was, there was no way any museum could impart the enormity of the coming challenges in a way children could grasp.

Still, rattled as he was, Gene had to admit he appreciated a museum that didn’t immediately feel like every other museum he’d visited. The dearth of fossils was a welcome relief. Bones felt lazy, meaningless. And really, did we need to do any more digging? Couldn’t all the archaeologists retire? At some point, mustn’t they run out of crap to excavate? Maybe that’s why there were no bones in this freak show of a museum; we’d finally exhausted the lost-and-found box that was ancient Earth, with nothing more to fetishize that formerly belonged to people who were screwing up the world long before we came along to screw it up worse. Gene cottoned to this thought, considered whether he was the first person who’d ever had it, and if that made him wiser than everyone else. Or dumber. Much dumber.

Either way, if these parents really wanted to convey “hard truths” far likelier than global apocalypse, they should take their kids to the Alimony Museum or—until such a vital institution was erected—family court. Gene would gladly surrender plumbing and indoor heat over monthly payments to a woman whose life he had financed for twenty years (despite hardly sleeping with her for the last ten years of their marriage).

Around the time Dylan turned ten, Gene and Tina’s sex life having entered an Ice Age, Tina began taking frequent trips with a friend she referred to as Scarlett, whom Gene knew was a man from her salsa class named Charlie. At first, Gene did not mind these trips. He enjoyed spending extra time with Dylan, cooking for him until Dylan wanted to cook together, the boy finding his flair and confidence in the kitchen. Eight years later, after Dylan left for college, Tina asked Gene for a divorce, and he assumed she was moving in with Charlie. But no. She revealed that the affair with Charlie ended years earlier, that in fact Scarlett was the moniker for numerous extramarital lovers. “I’m not leaving to be with anyone,” Tina told him. “I’m leaving to get away from your issues.”

Gene suddenly worried a poppyseed from his breakfast sandwich was wedged in his teeth. Before he could find a reflective surface, his attention was captured by the sight of a child caught in a mesh net swinging from the ceiling, two other children high-fiving. All around him, children were setting traps and being trapped. Cages, footholds, snares. Some children were passed out, half-eaten cookies on their laps, as if drugged.

A pigtailed girl, boning up on spooring, swept her tongue along the museum floor. Gene wanted to vomit. Which of these moron parents was responsible for this petri dish of a child? None seemed worried. On the contrary, they were engrossed, numerous parents openly discussing at-home survival courses they’d construct and how to responsibly simulate a drought. “We sell survival course kits in the gift shop,” a docent said. “Buy one, get one half-off.”

Gene felt superior to them as human beings and inferior to them as parents. At once, he recalled his litany of broken promises to Dylan: a KitchenAid mixer (too expensive); a weekend at the Jell-O Museum (an eight-hour drive! A hotel room!); a day trip to see the Cro-Magnon at the Museum of Natural History (Dylan could go only on weekends, when it was too crowded with annoying tourists).

Fumbling past lofty displays on celestial navigation and proper crossbow technique, Gene felt disoriented, uncertain which entrance he had come from. Hurrying through the nearest door, Gene encountered a blazing wall of fire, the magnitude almost toppling him.

A bow-tied cartoon flame appeared on an overhead screen. I’m your best friend, Roasty Toasty, the dapper flame announced. Without me, you’ll freeze or starve or be bitten by venomous snakes.

Throughout the room, docents demonstrated how to set fires with materials ranging from branches to cotton balls to petroleum jelly. Gene was amazed at the ease of conflagration, how anything could combust if you mastered the basics of pressure and friction. Further down the hall, Gene was waylaid by the unmistakable siren of crying children. Dumbstruck, he watched ribbons of blood stream from a child’s knee; another child, mouth purple and swollen, limped along, collecting baby teeth from the floor. Behind them, children were engaged in breakneck hand-to-hand combat and dueling with steel pipes. Docents frequently halted skirmishes to critique combat style. “Remember, a punch to the throat is worth two to the groin.”

Gene’s gaze fixed on a dazzling path of blood. Cautiously, he tracked it into the next room, where a white-coated docent was using mouthwash and Saran wrap to clean and dress a sprightly girl’s punctured shoulder. Along the walls, touchscreens provided instructions on how to fashion tourniquets from hundreds of household items. “Remember,” a docent said, “we have great medical training kits in the gift shop. Buy three, get one free.”

Appalled, though slightly intrigued, Gene kept moving. These children were not his problem—until, of course, one shanked him with a lollipop stick on the subway. When he entered what he thought was the hallway to the exit, the woodsy breath of pine needles slackened his pulse and his pace. He inhaled several deep, luscious breaths. The air tasted fresh and abundant. Gene yearned to breathe it all in, inhale the museum from joists to ceiling. He could have stayed like that forever, cloistered in that pocket of air. Opening his eyes, he wished he had.

Six hulking pine trees girded the exhibition hall, each with a stark-naked child roped to it. Crowds surrounded each tree, a docent lording over the bound children. In the far corner, a docent propped up a girl’s eyes with matchsticks. Opposite that tree, another docent clipped jumper cables to a boy’s big toes, the kid’s reedy frame violently convulsing every few seconds. 

A sign in the middle of the room read: The T in H.E.A.R.T. A gorgeous docent with sleek black hair and an equally lustrous snakeskin belt towered above a tied-up boy at the tree nearest Gene. The boy was round-faced and wan, like an anemic cherub. Gene was relieved the boy’s genitals were concealed by the rope, though the chafing must have been excruciating. “There are no friends in survival,” the docent said. “Some days you’ll have allies. Every day you’ll have enemies. Sadly, this morning’s ally can become this afternoon’s enemy.” The boy strained to look at the crowd. “Everyone say hello to Caleb.” The room gave Caleb a strident hello. The boy smiled. “Now, why is Caleb my enemy?” the docent asked. “Maybe he stole the pigeon I was going to cook for dinner. Maybe his carelessness made it easy for marauders to discover our campsite. Maybe I caught him peeping in the bushes when I was bathing in the pond. The point is, at the end of the world, everyone is a potential risk. So why do we tie him to a tree?”

“Because we have H.E.A.R.T.,” Caleb, voice parched, mumbled. The docent’s exhale was prideful.

“Very good, Caleb.” She faced the audience of kids and parents. “And what does H.E.A.R.T. stand for?”

“Hunger!” the kids yelled. “Endurance! Audacity!Resourcefulness!Torture!”

“Boiling pet turtles and constructing shacks from exhumed caskets will get you only so far,” the docent warned. “Sometimes you’ll need to hurt people. And sometimes hurting them won’t be enough. You’ll need to torture them. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”

The boy offered a pasty smile. The docent seized Caleb’s hand, positioning his stout index finger inside her fist and contorting it in a single, wicked motion. The boy shrieked.

“I said, isn’t that right, Caleb?”

“Yes yes yes.”

The docent patted his head. “Never compromise with your victim. I asked Caleb a question. I wanted an answer, not a smile. So I reminded him who’s in control.”

Gene was floored. He scanned the room for Caleb’s asshole parents. What type of oblivious monsters subjected their kid to a stunt like this? And this poor, pathetic fuck of a child. How much Caleb’s parents must hate him. They had to. Gene would. The hardest he ever hit Dylan—two cold smacks across his face—was when the boy, at fourteen, got caught holding a pack of cigarettes for some sixteen-year-olds who were smoking in the school bathroom. At least he wasn’t smoking, Tina said, speechless when Gene made it clear that he’d prefer his son had a three-pack-a-day habit and an iron lung than be the stooge the bad kids walked all over.

Gene noticed a couple staring at him, then another couple, all gaping and whispering to one another. He remembered his sign: I Am Here Alone.

“Now, as you may have noticed, Caleb is naked. This is to amplify his feeling of vulnerability and humiliation—not that he should be the least bit ashamed of his body.”

Gene wanted to rope each parent to a tree and set them aflame, starting with the growing horde eyeing him. How could this be acceptable? Sure, some of these skills were worthwhile, arguably essential. But torture? Even if, theoretically, they’d need to know how to extract information from a potential threat. Even if potential threats would multiply exponentially as community networks decayed (a decay that Gene conceded was already in full swing), wouldn’t it be more responsible, not to mention effective, to impart those skills at a more appropriate age?

“But what if you’re the one tied up?” the docent said. “What if you’re being unfairly tortured? What if Caleb didn’t steal my pigeon? What if I ate it and forgot because all I can remember are the voices of my dying family? Well, Caleb need not be a passive victim. He can project himself into the future. It’s like time travel for the mind. Caleb, close your eyes and pretend you’re in your favorite place in the world, with all your friends, except the dead ones because then it couldn’t be the future.”

The children formed a semicircle around Caleb. The parents formed a second semicircle behind the children, everyone silent and rapt. “Caleb can also imagine torturing me,” the docent said. “That’ll really take the sting out of the agony I’m inflicting. Have you ever really hated someone? Like, whenever they’re near you, you picture a steamroller flattening them at your feet?” Several parents exchanged wry nods. Gene’s former supervisor Helen came to the fore of his mind. How she used to tease him about his anxiety, calling him “fragile,” comparing his panic attacks to her jittery, incontinent chihuahua.He’d pay good money to see Helen tied to a tree. “You need to learn how to hate someone now, when things aren’t nearly as bad as they’re going to get. Think of it as ‘blue-skies hatred.’ That way, when society goes all Humpty Dumpty, your ‘gray-skies hatred’ won’t feel like starting from scratch.”

This point stopped Gene cold. While he thought this woman, like most beautiful women, was manipulative and borderline sociopathic, he did recognize the wisdom of teaching your children, if not hatred per se, overwhelming disappointment. He learned this from his mother, who, being a single mother with three minimum-wage jobs, believed the most important lesson she could instill was “No.” For every time she said yes to one of his requests, she denied at least his next three. In retrospect, he was grateful for this. There was no better way to prepare your child for the world to come than handing him a shiny platter brimming with noes, because that’s what life was: a howling parade of noes sporadically interrupted by a piteous yes. Gene had sought to pass this lesson on to Dylan, but was frequently thwarted by Tina, who thought “yes” equaled “I love you.” He’d bet his last dime that people forced to cope with “no” in youth would enjoy a dramatically higher survival rate in the apocalypse, and if Dylan died fast and miserably, died at the hands of one of these barbaric children, it was entirely his mother’s fault.

The docent rubbed Caleb’s head and addressed the room. “Any questions before we separate into groups and practice our new skills?”

A chinless man raised his hand. “I’m uncomfortable with my child being tortured in front of a man who is here without children.” Then, as if remembering he hadn’t asked a question, the chinless man added, “Does he need to be here?” He turned to Gene.

“I’m so glad you said something,” a woman with ears like kites added. “The children are so vulnerable. It’s inappropriate.”

“He’s been making me uncomfortable this entire time,” another parent, possibly the husband of the kite-eared woman, said. “But I didn’t want to come off as insensitive.”

The gorgeous docent regarded Gene, clearly for the first time, her eyes squarely on the declaration around his neck. “Sir, what is your intention today at The Children’s Museum?”

Gene felt dazed. “I wanted to see the museum. I’m thinking about bringing my girlfriend and her kid here.”

“How old is her child?” the docent asked.

Gene paused. “I’m not sure exactly.”

“You don’t know how old your girlfriend’s kid is?” asked someone Gene couldn’t see.

“He’s not really her kid,” Gene said, and immediately regretted it. “He’s a nephew. Broken home. Real ugly stuff.” A thorny heat prickled his forehead.

“I’m even more uncomfortable now than when I saw his sign,” said another disembodied voice.

They were all eyeing him, the entire callous flock of helicopter parents. “My sign makes you uncomfortable?!” he shouted toward the direction of the last voice.“What about the naked, roped kids? How’s that sitting with your comfort levels?”

The docent remained even-keeled. “You must understand, sir, to leave your home to watch other people’s children being tortured, even for purposes of training and personal development, is rather peculiar.”

“I left my home to check out the fucking Children’s Museum because I wanted to bring someone’s fucking kid here!” 

“Language!” The docent snapped.

“No surprise he’s here alone,” another parent said. “I don’t want him near my child.”

“Please, any one of these kids would be lucky if I grabbed ’em and made a break for it. Got them as far away from you psychos as possible.” Gene felt adrenaline leaking from his eyeballs. He would capitalize on every damn drop before it plummeted and he wanted to hole up in the corner and die of embarrassment. “Which of you monsters are Caleb’s parents? Raise your hand if you thought it was a good idea to make your kid play Guantanamo Bay on a Sunday afternoon.”

Flummoxed stares broke across the parents’ faces, like a wave in the stands of a baseball stadium. The docent’s expression morphed from amiable to somber. She knelt over Caleb, stroking his cheek, the protective gesture amplifying her beauty. “Caleb’s parents aren’t here. They loved him so much they donated him to us. He, like all of these children”—she motioned to the pallid, tree-bound figures—“are members of our Permanent Display Kids collection.”

Gene felt a hollowing in his chest. “Permanent? Like they live here?”

The docent looked like she wanted to slap him.“Some children are the future; other children, like Caleb, are the present for the children of the future.”

“What does that mean?” Gene asked.

“You really need everything spelled out for you, huh?” the kite-eared woman said. “It means Caleb, delicious marshmallow that he is, allergic to everything from peanuts to pet hair, wouldn’t survive a weekend camping trip, let alone the end of civilization. At least here, he has a purpose.”

“Caleb is a hero today so other kids can be heroes when the time comes,” the docent said, bending down and embracing the boy in a quasi-hug. “Isn’t our Caleb a hero?” she said to the other parents and children.

Applause boomed through the exhibition, a grating cacophony identical to the applause Gene received from his elementary school class the day after the local news covered his attempted kidnapping. How popular he was, how beloved . . . for two weeks, until Teddy Dabrowski got a handjob from Valerie Callaghan during remedial reading club, stealing his thunder and shipping him back to loserville. Wherever those two were today, Gene prayed they were still illiterate.

Caleb’s demeanor brightened. If Gene did not know why the kid was here, if he heard only the applause and saw Caleb’s joyful face, he might be moved by the demonstration.

Fighting to raise his neck, Caleb met the crowd’s adoring stares.“The best part’s gonna be when the world’s done being over and then restarts, like a video game, and no one needs to sleep-deprive their enemies to find out who ate the last trout, then kids of the future will come here to the museum and they’ll learn about me and see how I helped them before they ever needed help. They’ll think I’m so cool, and there won’t be anyone alive to tell them different.”

His certainty was daunting. Gene wanted to untie him and abscond from the museum, drop him off with the cops or one of those hospitals that run cheery commercials about treating terminal kids at no cost to the parents. Surely, they’d have a bed for him. Maybe being around actual death would give the kid perspective.

A unique, familiar anxiety rooted through Gene. The betrayed mien of his kidnapper captured his sightline. Countless times over the years he’d ruminated on where the kidnapper planned to take him and for what purpose. But never had Gene considered that he might have been better off. Had he survived an actual kidnapping, maybe he’d never have lived in a state of panic about another thing—his wife’s sexual satisfaction, his son’s respect, strangers’ medical debt or Dear John letters tucked away in his mailbag. Or maybe he’d be even worse. Maybe he wouldn’t have survived it at all. Maybe none of these kids would survive what was to come. Or possibly a few would, all thanks to Caleb. Maybe the world was already over, and Gene was merely the last to realize it.

“The world’s not over, not yet,” Gene said. “Kid, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” He couldn’t believe the words out of his mouth. “I mean, of course there is, a lot, more than you’ll ever know, but doing this won’t make it any better.” Caleb averted his eyes. “Caleb, are you sure you want to be here? I’ll call someone.” The boy wouldn’t answer. “Can you hear me?”

“He knows not to talk to strangers,” the docent said. “All the children do.”

A security guard appeared. “Sir, you need to come with me.” He placed his hand on Gene’s arm. Gene half-expected another boom of applause. “Don’t make a scene,” the guard cautioned. “You don’t want to make this any worse for the children than it already is.”

Which was true, Gene didn’t want to make it worse. The guard escorted him toward a sign that read: Welcome to the Children’s Museum. At first Gene thought he was back at the entrance. Instead, he beheld the most palatial exhibit hall yet. Multiple floors boasted wall-to-wall display cases. The majority of displays were bare, though dozens contained lolling children behind the pristine glass. The displays were decorated with toys, posters of athletes and superheroes, photographs of horseback riding and family vacations. Like home bedrooms.

Nameplates and biographical placards identified each child: Thomas Haynes; Melissa Perez;Antonio Nguyen; Kassidy Francis. A museum staffer was filming a bird-boned girl with auburn hair and oval eyes. What was your favorite thing in the world? he asked. What about the end scares you most? he asked. What’s your message for the children of the future?

On this last question she hesitated. “Please come back to see me again.”

At the rear service door, the guard asked Gene to remove the sign. Gene took it off but did not hand it over. “I can’t be the only person to ever come here alone.”

The guard shook his head. “You’re the first to hang out in the torture exhibition. That kid was naked and tied to a tree, man, and you’re just watching. That’s messed up.”

“More messed up than torturing him?”

“That’s different. It’s educational. Nothing for you to learn here. You won’t be around.”

“When? Tomorrow? Next year? Ten years? When does everything go to shit?”

“Whenever it is, you got nothing to worry about. You lived your life. Should be grateful you never had problems like what’s to come. That’s how I feel since working here. Not a care in the world.” The guard reclaimed the sign and held open the door. “I hope I don’t have to tell you not to come back.”

“What if I bring my kid?”

The guard shook his head. “Have his mother bring him.”

Back on the street, Gene walked for miles, until his bad knee clicked and his plantar fasciitis flared. Every few blocks, he felt someone staring at him, as if the sign were still around his neck. Part of him wished it was, just so more people could stare and he could test how long it didn’t bother him. The world was not ending tomorrow, no more so than usual, but he also accepted that the guard was right; if he awoke to the end, he’d have nothing to worry about. If he blundered his way to survival, foolishly enduring long enough to witness the end of childhood and imaginary anxieties, he would not build a fire or construct a lean-to from wreckage. He would not butcher squirrels or staunch wounds, his or anyone else’s. He would not deprive anyone of food or sleep or sensory stimulation. He would not phone Dylan or Tina, praying that they answered so that he might insist on his love for them one last time, only to absorb the disappointment of their silence.

If and when this end came, he’d treat it like all the other ends that had preceded it—savoring its bitterness, tallying his regrets, panning circumstances for glimmers of righteousness. Though, on the bright side, if it was as cataclysmic as advertised, this ending would be swifter than its predecessors.

He considered that Caleb’s parents weren’t monsters, that this really was the most the kid could hope to achieve. A hero 1,000 years from now because he was a crash-test dummy today.

An odd, bone-deep comfort blindsided Gene at this thought. The certainty that no one would think about him again. That at some point down the line—a generation, two at most—there would be no accounts of his failures and shortcomings.

Unless he didn’t get off that easily.

Say, 10,000 years from now, they find him in the bowels of the earth. Excavate him along with his collection of state quarters, his polypropylene plastic USPS mailbag, his mother’s ashes, and a framed newspaper clipping about a chubby boy who foiled his own kidnapping. They display him (likely in a hallway with poor foot traffic), noting that he was a creature of the twenty-first century who transported messages across a large, forgotten city. A man with bad teeth and conventionally homely features, discovered completely alone. Visitors would stare and nod. Snap photographs (or whatever image-preserving technology was in vogue) of his humped, bulbous skeleton, feeling as distant a relation from Gene as Gene had felt from the Cro-Magnon he never took Dylan to see as a child.

Fuck the future. Fuck everything those people, if they were still people, would say and think about him. He could still take his son to see the Cro-Magnon. His son and his son’s son and his girlfriend’s nephew, who was, presumably, someone’s son. It was too late for so much, but not everything. Not yet.

The fall afternoon was unseasonably warm. The coming week promised T-shirt weather. Gene walked all the way home. ■

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