The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Sweat was a body’s history, compressed into jewels, beaded on the brow, staining shirts with salt.

The storm was thickening even as she watched, the streetlights collapsing into blackness, leaving retina stains of imagined glows in their place.

“People only really live when they’re about to die,” he said. “Before then it’s all a waste. You don’t appreciate how good it is until you’re really in the shit.”

“If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely fucked ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around.”

But people will grab after whatever mirage they think will save them if they’re thirsty enough.

“You get worked up about what’s right and wrong, but that shit’s only in your head. Rules are what the big dogs say they are. The reason you pay tax is so they forget to kill you today. That’s what you buy with tax. You got it?”

“Yeah.” Toomie sighed. “I used to know this Indian guy. Skinny dude, came over from India. Didn’t have a wife or family anymore. Maybe they were back there in India, I can’t remember. Anyway, the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are alone here in America. They’re all alone. And they don’t trust anyone except themselves, and they don’t rely on anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn’t. Because here, no one knew their neighbors.” He laughed at that. “I can still remember his head wagging back and forth, ‘No one is knowing their neighbors.’ ”

“We’re just little gears in a big machine. I get it. Sometimes we just got to spin because that’s how the machine’s built.”