8
" The room was large and airy. Shelves lined the walls on three sides, shelves that stretched way above his head, bending under the weight of the hundreds of books stored there. The fourth wall was covered in old newspaper, yellowed and faded but still readable. The room had become a shrine of sorts, he supposed. The books he had saved before the last days. He ran his finger along the spines: Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, the ancients, all there alongside books from the last century. Nothing wasted, nothing lost. His private collection. He would find it difficult to let them go when the time came, but he would let them go. He couldn’t risk them being found at a later date. There were few incidents where people managed to decode words after Nicene, very few. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t take that chance. They would be destroyed along with everything the wordsmith had managed to salvage. For a second, images of the wordsmith filled his head, but he pushed them away. He turned his back on the books and walked across to the wall of newsprint. Here was a potted history of the past hundred years. The warnings. The signs. Global warming. Water levels rising. It was incomprehensible even now that man had just ignored it all. Young people talked about the Melting as if it were a single event, but it hadn’t been like that. The earth had been heating up for years. His finger touched one of the news sheets. Scientists were warning of an alarming acceleration in the melting of the polar ice caps. They predicted a dramatic rise in sea levels. That was back in the twenty-first century! He shook his head. He chose another article from around the same time. The writer was warning about the disappearing ice caps. “Until recently, the Arctic ice cap covered two percent of the earth’s surface. Enormous amounts of solar energy are bounced back into space from those luminous white ice fields. Replacing that mass of ice with dark open ocean will induce a catastrophic tipping point in the balance of planetary energy.” Torrents of words had followed. Words from politicians assuring people there was no such thing as global warming. Words from industrialists who justified their emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words… He drew back his hand and punched the wall, hurting his knuckles and leaving a trail of blood on the yellowing paper. "
― Patricia Forde , The List
11
" John Noa moved slowly toward the window. Old age had not been kind to him, and though he could still sit a horse, his rigid joints grew more painful by the day. Looking down from his lofty vantage point, he could see the town below on the cusp of waking. A lone wolf stood in the square, his head tilted to one side. The old man smiled. He had always loved animals and none more than the gray wolf. Before the Melting, they had been almost eradicated, hunted to extinction. Extinction: the saddest word of all. Using science and with great care and attention, they had bred five pairs of wolves in captivity, producing fifteen new cubs, and then released them into the wild. Since then, the wolves had thrived. Amid all the destruction, it had seemed like a miracle to him. He loved the view from the high window at this time of day. The workers not yet awake and only the comforting sound of the water bubbling in the great tank. He sighed. Sadly, he couldn’t stay. He had work to do. Work! Always work. Problems to be solved, plans to be made. He had never expected it to be this difficult. On his bad days, he wondered if it had been worth it at all. Another glance at the wolf brought a smile to his lips. Yes. It was all worth it. He firmly believed that it was his passion for Ark that had kept him alive when so many had been lost. The images of death and destruction were always with him. Floods, earthquakes, famine, as livid in daylight as they were in his nightmares. Images of the past. But there were nightmares in the present too. Bandits. Desecrators. Tintown. People intent on destroying what he had built. People intent on going their own way regardless of the price. He felt the old rage stir in his heart. They would be dealt with. In the end, they would find "
― Patricia Forde , The List
