I never liked him, she said. But if he’s really as tormented as he sounds, I am sorry for him. How sad to be wishing your own grandchildren had never been born. Though to be honest, I’m glad I don’t have any grandchildren of my own to worry about.

Perhaps another thing the dystopian future might bring: People suing their parents for having given them birth. Pointing as evidence to the abundance of scientific studies and warnings their parents had been given. What did you assholes think two minutes to midnight meant?

Sometimes, without my asking, without my saying a word, my friend answered the very question that was on my mind. She would turn her gaze back from the window, through which she’d been watching birds at the feeding pole that we filled twice a day, or she’d look up from the book she’d been trying—usually unsuccessfully—to read, and she would speak.

I miss childhood, she said. I was a happy kid, and I’m grateful for that, because so many people I’ve known had a hard time growing up. But I see myself walking home from the bus stop, swinging my little brown leather book bag, one of my favorite possessions ever, how I wish I had kept it—how I wish I could touch it now—and singing one of the songs we’d learned that week. I loved music hour! The teacher would put on a record and we’d listen and then she’d teach us the song and we’d sing it at the top of our lungs, the gifted and the tone-deaf all cheerfully together. It makes a particular kind of sound, if you’ve ever noticed, that mix of unequal voices, no doubt unpleasant to many ears, but all my life it’s given me goose bumps to hear the sound of children singing, especially when they do it badly. When they do it well, when it’s a serious performance, something they’ve rehearsed, they sound like angels, she said, but they don’t sound as free or as happy to me, they’re not having as much fun.