“I don’t think what the prepheads were doing ended up mattering, when the end of the world came. The guns didn’t matter much. Different sort of end to the world, they might have, but not here. The food helped in the early weeks, but what really ended up mattering most was having the right mindset. When the end of the world actually came it was a pretty heavy emotional blow.”

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“The people who seemed to do best weren’t always the preppers. It was the people who could get back up after being hit that hard, and the ones with an idea of what to do when they’d been left with nothing. It was better to have the right skills than the right things. Having drive. Preparing for the end of civilization… less so. So long as there’s more than five people around, we’re going to have something like civilization.”

“I think you’re right,” the wife said. “I think it’s true for a lot of people who I’ve made friends with recently. My sister wasn’t a prephead or anything, but she worried a lot about the Endbringers, and she spent all her money traveling to try to get away from where they might attack. When everything finally fell apart, so did she.”

Jonathan nodded.

“She made it. That’s what counts. Hopefully— I’m hoping she figures out how to push forward, like you said. There’s a world out there.”

“I’m not trying to give you the sales patter, because that’s really not me,” Jonathan said. “But if you’re prepared to sell something as important as Lenny…”

He let the sentence hang a moment.

“I am,” the husband said.

“Then it’s good. This stuff…”

He indicated his shop. The cartoons and figurines, the board games and video games. Some things had a secondhand look to them, because they were very much secondhand.

“…it’s not so important when we’re trying to put it all back together again. Save it for when you’re secure, when you have everything you need.”

“That’s the plan,” the husband of the couple said.

Jonathan stroked the baby’s head. “I could give you three hundred in trading dollars. What do you think?”

He could see the flicker of surprise on the man’s face.

“The place we’re looking to buy an apartment in is using N.D.”

“Then it translates to four hundred new dollars,” Jonathan said. “It’s dying currency, be careful. The value drops every day.”

The husband fidgeted as he stared at the little life-size figure. Jonathan couldn’t tell if he was doing it because he was about to break and try to find another way, or if he was trying to etch the figure’s details into his mind’s eye because he was about to give it up.