You had a dream on the plane that it was completely empty. There were no pilots, no flight attendants, not even yourself. The plane drifted of its own accord, light cold and blue around it. There was nothing for you to push against. The sun was a small speck in a distant sky that did not light on fire every dawn. It was like being underwater, the light flickering somewhere far away. You woke, and the plane was descending towards the city, dark buildings against a slightly lighter sky. It was early, and the airport was nigh on deserted.

You walked through the terminal, and the windows glowed with the strange unnatural light they had in order to simulate how the daylight used to be. You passed the shops, all of them closed, with shelf upon shelf of hydroponically grown fruit. You passed the news stands with the magazines, papers, and flyers, all warning of the day’s radiation forecast.

You had arranged to have a car waiting for you in the underground parking. It was unmarked, slate grey, darkly tinted windows. It was left running. You lifted the latch on the door, and it opened. There was no one in the driver’s seat. You got in and started driving.

You took the freeway towards the city, then the beltway around it. You gazed at the signs, memorizing them. They were written with letters that you did not understand. You drove on the beltway for hours just to kill time, turning gently to the left the entire time, orbiting the city in a holding pattern until it was time. You drove until the tank was nearly empty. When the gas light turned on, you took an exit. You stopped on the ramp and let the tank run itself dry.

The roads were still empty. Stark, clean, glowing yellow in the rising light. You took off your indoor clothes and pulled on your special tunic, slacks, your special gloves, your insulated shoes, your hood. You opened the door and walked inwards, towards the city, perpendicular to the concentric rings of streets and buildings.

The city appeared empty to you, but it wasn’t. Every building was filled with people hidden behind deeply tinted windows, leaving the streets blank. They had become benign organs of the city that had grown to live without them. You may have imagined yourself as a kind of space traveler, exploring a planet whose populace had long since died away. You may have been concentrating on the vibrations of the pavement under you, rumbling softly with a populace moving underneath the surface like magma.

You chose what used to be the busiest street in the city. You stood on the center island, nested between thirty different empty lanes of traffic. Every corner was lit up, glowing, wavering in the light. You took off your gloves, your tunic, shoes, slacks, while unseen eyes watched you. The silhouette of your body wavered as you took off your hood.

Your face was warm and bright for the first time as you bade us farewell.