False Stability

Everything in this town is still working. The lights are on, the water is running, and the internet—mostly—functions. That’s the real problem. When systems fail completely, you can see the collapse and you can try to fix it. But when they limp along, when they adapt to a state of permanent error, you just learn to live with the rot. You adapt forever. You stop noticing that the water tastes like iron or that the streets are dark for two minutes every hour. You just keep moving. We are living in the ruins of a society that refuses to admit it’s dead. It’s a very clean, very functional kind of apocalypse.