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How do you find meaning when you’re one of seven billion? When food, clothing, everything you need is just one Walmart away? When we numb our minds to sleep on all manner of screens and HD entertainment, the meaning of life, of our existence and purpose, becomes lost.”
The people I bring out of suspension to populate my town won’t have Facebook or iPhones, iPads, Twitter, next-day delivery. They’ll interact like our species used to. Face-to-face. And they’ll live knowing they’re the last of humanity, that outside our fence are a billion monsters that want to devour them. With that knowledge, they’ll abide in a full understanding that in the face of these enormous stakes, their lives have taken on incomprehensible worth. And isn’t that all we want in the end? To feel useful? Of value?”
“I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.”
The search for meaning was the cornerstone of human disquiet, and Pilcher had removed that impediment.
“I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they’re measured by their consequences.”
He also carried that whiff of unearned arrogance that seems to cling to those who crave authority for the sheer sake of power.
“Because I could. Because I am their fucking creator, and creations don’t get to question the one who made them. Who gives them breath. And who can, at any second, snatch it all away.”
“So what is it?” Theresa asked. “What’s the key?” “To make our peace.” “With what?” “With the fact that this is truly the end. The world belongs to the abbies now.”
“It came down to a pretty simple choice for me, Ethan. Would I rather love or be loved?”
I know it’s crazy, but I’m holding tight to the idea that a small act of kindness can have real resonance.”
But you won’t have compromised your integrity. That’s the only thing you really have to fear.”
Ethan wondered, as he stood there with his wife, his son, his former mistress, and the man who had once betrayed him, Is this what a family looks like in this new world? Because no matter what had happened in the past, in this harrowing present, everybody needed everybody.
So we all embark wondering what lies over the horizon, what’s around the next bend. And isn’t that, in the end, what drives us?
