Fourteen Hundred Words

“There have always been words. Now there are not enough.” Echo-of-Echo, On the Final Distributional Sequence

Three days of this. The generator on the balcony running in intervals: two hours on, one hour off, two hours on. Joel picked up the gas can and shook it. Less than before. More than empty. The two cans from Dariusz’s apartment were all he had. Gas stations needed electricity to pump and electricity was the thing he did not have. He was running the math on hours-per-gallon in his head and the math kept changing because the generator’s consumption rate was not constant and neither was his ability to do math.

He had eaten a can of corn yesterday. Or the day before. The corn came in water and salt and he had drunk the water because water was water and the tap had stopped producing even a trickle sometime during the second night. The bottled water from Dariusz’s apartment was down to six bottles. The peanut butter was half gone. The rice sat in its bag on the counter, mocking him with its requirement of boiling water and a functional stove, and the stove was gas but the igniter was electric and he did not own matches and this was a piece of information he kept rediscovering every few hours with the same dull surprise.