Fine Structure

by qntm

It's 2111, the very start of the era that'll eventually come to be known as "post-environment". Anne Poole is fully clothed, but that's more of a concession to the legacy she represents than it is a concession to decency, or protection from the skin-searing, sand-blasting elements of the aftermath of the Hot War and the catastrophic Drop. When you are time's most remote outpost of humanity, everything you carry with you is significant. She wears clothes because humans wore clothes back when they existed. It's conceivable that a million years from now another intelligent species will arise on Earth and Anne will be responsible for communicating to them the fact that We Were Here. That's all a sentient species can really hope to achieve, after all: to make a mark on the universe big enough to prove that there was a moment in history when there was a sentient species, in this vicinity, with the power to make that big of a mark. All that's left of the human race right now is Anne Poole, a network of fried, shellshocked cities gradually eroding down to stubs in the unstoppable sun-driven sandstorms and nitric acid rain, and some footprints on the Moon. It'll take time to erase all of it, but geology is a patient entity and astronomy ten times more so. Anne Poole has a lot of time on her hands.