To: The Apocalypse

From: A Representative of the Last Generation

Re: Timing

05 • 22 • 06

Dear Apocalypse:

Where are you? We're all here. Waiting around. I wouldn't say we're upset that you're late, exactly, but you know how waiting is. It's hard to start on something else--really put your shoulder to it--when you keep thinking you might be interrupted.

You might say that it's fussy of us to make such a big deal about you when the world is so full of endings anyway. There is always death, after all. It's not as though anyone's in danger of being cut out of that bargain. It's not as though we require your guarantee that a handful of us won't accidentally live on Sybil-like among the mountains and the abandoned strip malls, applying moisturizer and wondering who screwed up. No, we know we'll all perish anyway. So why do we scan the horizon so intently? What do we think you have that we can't get from plain old incremental death? It's fair of you to wonder.

For some of us, the answer is straightforward. A certain proportion of us believe you offer bonus features that give you an edge over ordinary death. They expect that when you come you will bring divine justice, heaven on earth, and other high-end hostess gifts. If indeed you are a bodice-ripping, hell-harrowing, holy land-gilding sort, it's not hard to see why these people might think you're a cut above the plodding reaper. And it's nice, after all, to be undressed.

But one doesn't have to believe you will come bearing gifts to be drawn to you. The rest of us wonder about you too. Our imaginations tend to favour versions of you that feature fewer horses, more randomness (Whoa! Huge rock from space!), more guilt (Forgive us, o bleeding piece of earth), and more extravagant human folly (Jim, that is one gorgeous bomb). Whether we gleefully slip into elastic-waist pants each morning, thinking "This could be it," or shake our heads numbly over the morning paper thinking the same, we cannot seem to keep you from our thoughts. The world, teeming though it is with death, dreams of you: the big one.

Part of the problem, I think, is that although we all get a death, our personal ration of mortality comes with no guarantee of an ending. A real, old-fashioned ending--the kind that tells us where the hell the beginning and the middle were. With a simple, solitary death we just depart early, like secondary characters, never joining Hercule Poirot for that final Cognac to hear why on earth we found our throats closing from poison in the dining car or whose ends that piercing shot from the pearl-handled revolver had served.

Even if we perish from a wasting disease--granted more time for reflection than those to whom aneurisms and industrial accidents are meted out--what heuristic advantage have we gained? What do we have at the end of our lives that we didn't have at the beginning? Motor control, book-learning, memories, friends. But as to the form of the whole thing, we're in the same dark that blinded us in the womb, muscled away from the world's shaggy dog story without even hearing the stupid punch line.

And don't think a heavenly afterlife would help. Even if we imagine, as Emily Dickinson did wryly, that "Christ will explain each separate anguish/In the fair schoolroom of the sky - " what help is it if the answer key arrives only after we have "ceased to wonder why"? No, to the extent that we are fascinated with you, Apocalypse, it is not for the possibility that you will yield perfect, divine insight. It is for the possibility that you might make a grandiose and illuminating entrance into this world. That we, not our serene celestial post-selves, but we--with these creaking bodies and these benighted brains--might see you coming. Fire. Water. Bombs. Meteors. Aliens. A dead sun. Bang. Whimper. Whatever. This is the way the world ends. And then, just before our obliteration and The End of the World, in those last anarchic moments, we could at last close the loop in our own feeble minds: Once upon a time there was a species that was very violent. Once upon a time there was a species that was very wasteful. Once upon a time there was a species that didn't know its own strength. Once upon a time there was a species that found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Oh, Apocalypse, I'm sure you chuckle as you read this. And you're right: it's all vanity. We, the living, want it to be us. As you know, we assume a certain condescension toward the naive dead, who never saw how it turned out, never saw today. If they were to appear among us suddenly we would explain it all to them in patient, didactic tones: the European Union, the mangy-looking Amazon, post-it notes, peak oil. Leaving out anything too jarring or complex, we would tell them gently what we--stronger, luckier, fresh and fashionable in this season's cuts and colours--have been up to. The idea that we who are so clever should ever become such quaint, childlike spectres is insupportably galling.

Oh, we make out our wills. We teach children to tell time. We recycle. But really--how could it go on without us? Surely there can be no new shoes, no wars, no sex, no inventions, no great novels after us. No, Apocalypse, we sense that you will choose us. In a lethal whisper, you will tell us how it ends. We will be the ones, finally, finally, to see the credits roll.

But I just wanted to send you a quick note about the timing. Because you're on our minds and everything, but I didn't want you to think that you necessarily had to hurry. Like if you're in the middle of something, by all means finish up. Don't rush on our account. Because while we relish the thought of being released from our blinkered ignorance and gaining a retrospective glimpse of the full sweep of world history, perfect and whole for the briefest instant before our annihilation, we do have plans for this weekend. And a number of projects on the go. And some of us are only babies. And most of us are not quite ready. So, you know, it's not that the invitation doesn't stand. But maybe you could just give us a call before you come. Because we're not sure exactly when you're planning to arrive. And whenever it is--you know, depending on a bunch of things--it might not be the best time.

Kind of busy,

A Representative of the Last Generation