Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.

The fake moon, which has the advantage of being closer and not obscured by smog, is almost always brighter than the real one.

She’d settled into a wary stillness, the watchfulness of orphans.

“I’m talking about these people who’ve ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They’ve done what’s expected of them. They want to do something different but it’s impossible now, there’s a mortgage, kids, whatever, they’re trapped.

First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.

He found he was a man who repented almost everything, regrets crowding in around him like moths to a light. This was actually the main difference between twenty-one and fifty-one, he decided, the sheer volume of regret. He had done some things he wasn’t proud of.