The Greenery
     I don’t remember anything of what happened back then.  My parents distantly recall a flash in the sky.  Most people around their age do, the end of an era the first memory of an entire generation.  My grandparents’ generation was nearly wiped out by the one that proceeded them.  They were young people then, progenitors of new families, university students, travelers, artists… Newly minted adults with the rest of their lives as full-fledged people in front of them.  Then everything changed in a heartbeat.  Unstable molecules, light turned corrupted and filthy, sinister clouds, panic, destruction, irradiated soil, burns, cancer, radiation sickness.  And so, their dreams of being scientists, mothers, fathers, filmmakers, writers, astronauts, reporters, and every other job under the blotted-out sun were given up and replaced by an endless search for water and canned food.  Instead of changing the world, these people now had to rebuild it from the ground up, a shantytown civilization with small villages set up wherever it was safe to live for more than a few weeks.  But this isn’t a story about that.  This is a story about the world as it was fifty years later.  This story belongs to me and my sister.
     For the most part, the world is a calmer place now.  Radiation isn’t as much of an issue as it was even when my parents were growing up, and our little cities of sundered office buildings, abandoned stores, and lashed-together structures made from tarps and corrugated metal are now more like smaller and messier versions of their former selves.  We have our own stunted versions of law, education, and industry.  Our society is the like the first new shoot in a burned forest.  The first step back to normalcy in a ruined world.  However, in spite of small progresses made, full-scale nuclear war isn’t something easily shrugged off by a planet.  Especially, we have learned, by its plants.  Due to the high levels of radiation, the sudden lack of human interference, or both, the flora of Earth has changed drastically since the bombs fell.  The plants of today are fast-growing, pervasive, and for the most part, noxious.  Most citied are separated by a dangerous trek through lung-burning fumes, grasses that slice your flesh, and vines and thickets that make finding your way impossible without a compass.  Or in some cases, an abandoned GPS system, its satellite still signaling faithfully even after the virtual destruction of cars and roads.  And humans.
     Humans…  We’re different now, too.  The older members of my parent’s generation are generally fine.  Sometimes, a younger person managed to get through intact.  But for the most part, people born post-war are completely infertile.  The youngest people in our particular settlement are myself, my twin sister, and a friend of ours.  The rest of the population consists of barren adults.  I’ve heard most places are like that nowadays.  This is where me and my sister come in.  When a child, male or female, has passed through the majority of puberty, tests are performed to see if they will be able to have children.  Even in near death, a species has the almost comic need to continue itself.  And so, me and my sister were tested.  Our results?  Perfect.  Able to continue the human species.  Almost unheard of in people our age.  My sister was excited at first, and proclaimed that she would marry our friend, Geiger, an energetic and rather odd boy who’s parents had named him out of a sense of black humor.  She had shared a special bond with him even before we were tested.  But in only six hours, like those of my grandparents, my sister’s ideas for her life when she became an adult were destroyed.  Geiger was like most people.  End of the line.  There was no one to have children with here.  At the age of fourteen, my sister and I were like obsolete technology.  Fully functional, but they didn’t make the parts or software for us anymore.
     We resigned ourselves to this.  Myself, Anther, my sister, Arche, and our friend, Geiger, would outlive everyone in our settlement until we were the only ones left.  But, a month after we had gotten this news, a second bit of information was uncovered.  Beyond the poisonous and tangled forest, there was a city where most everyone was still fertile.  People had children and raised families just like they had before the collapse.  It was almost too good to be true.  And it was decided that me and my sister were going there.  After this decision, we were given one day to pack and say goodbye to the people and places we grew up with.  We, a pair of apocalypse kids who got lucky, were being sent on a mission that might kill us.  Or might be a step in rebuilding the human race.  I sat and stared at the two streams that cut through the ground here, the clean one that sustained us and the dangerous one we were warned not to go swimming in when we were younger.  Arche and Geiger shared their first kiss-their kiss goodbye-behind a pile of ruined cars in an empty lot.  That evening, we sat with our parents in silence.  We knew that we might be parting forever, but they believed in us.  They were so assured in the fact that we would begin a line of humans that would rebuild the world.  And so, my twin and I spent the hours before sleep whispering across the gap between our air mattresses about poisonous plants and forests where it was impossible to find where to go.  Curled up facing one another, knowing that we’d soon have to leave this sheltering world behind and fend for ourselves.  Just like in the womb before our lives began.
     The day of our departure had come.  Our parents wished us well and bid us good luck.  Like what I heard people used to do back when there were airports.  Our father spoke.
     “Do you know why we named you Arche and Anther?”
     “Short for male and female parts of moss, right?”
Our father was the closest thing there was to a scientist in these times.  He was the one who identified things, checked for radiation, and built small devices that made our hard lives that much more livable.
     “Yes, that’s right, but there’s a reason we chose those namesakes.”
     “Hrm?”
     “Your mother and I had hoped that the two of you could reproduce.  That you could be the ones to spread the spores of humankind and make the world new again.”
Arche piped up.
     “Archegonia and antheridia.  The parts of the moss plant that reproduce.  If the human race was moss, that would be us, wouldn’t it?”
     “Yes, exactly.”
A sigh.
     “My brother and I are metaphors for what is going to happen next.”
My sister always had a strange way of thinking, like she wasn’t all there.  The rest of her was up dreaming with the stars and clouds and satellites.  Above the radiation, above the toxic plants, above the contaminated water and sterile humans.  As her brother, her partner in gestation, and genetic near-double, people always said I was exactly the same way.  I wouldn’t doubt it.
     And so, we were given oxygen tanks, fitted with respirators, and handed packs filled with various supplies.  At the edge of the forest, our mother looked long at both of us, and eventually spoke.
     “The two of you will go forth and make the world the way it used to be.  You’ll live in the city, fall in love, and have families that will eventually have families of their own.  This will restart the world.  I love you two.”
     The four of us embrace one last time.  Geiger comes running at us from somewhere in the background.
     “Have fun in the forest!  It’s like the explorers in the old days!”
     “Only we have to wear masks or die bleeding from the lungs.”
     “You know what I mean.  It’s like when people went to the other side of the planet and called it the New World.”
I laughed in spite of the situation.
     “I’ll miss the strange things you say…”
We all said goodbye one last time.  Arche watched Geiger run off back into town.  It’s a shame for both their sakes that they couldn’t have children together.  The two of us walked into the forest together, two small, weak human children passing through the plants’ territory.  To the New World.
     An hour later, the two of us were completely engulfed in the forest.  Thick vines, giant trees, green-yellow haze, razor-sharp grasses.  Both of us had been cut several times.  I had a hole in my shirt and an agonizing chemical burn on my shoulder from where a caustic secretion dropped onto me from some plant yards above me.  But luckily, our respirators weren’t failing us.  Yet.  They were old and possibly unreliable, but serving us well.  A tube fed oxygen into our lungs and our throats, mouths, and eyes were protected from irritation by a mask.  The irony struck me.  In the beginning, it was plants that provided oxygen.  Now, we were hooked to oxygen tanks because we needed protection from the plants.  Humans had messed up the world so bad that things just didn’t work the way they used to.  But we were going to change that.  The destruction of prior society had given the human race a second chance, and we were going to be doing our part to make it a reality.  Calling me from a few feet away…
     “Anther!”
     “Yeah?”
     “Look. It’s us…”
I looked at where my sister was pointing.  A small patch of moss on a tree root.  I smiled to myself.
     “You’re right, it is.”
In more ways than one.  This little green island was exactly like us.  Its tiny plants frail and young life forms lost in a poisonous forest.  Huddled together.  Like twins in the womb.  I wanted to take these plants somewhere cool and clear and green.  But…  They seemed to be doing fine.  Fending for themselves in something vast and harsh and toxic.  Was this how my grandparents felt?  What about people in the old societies?  Did they feel this way about the world they lived in?  Did my parents’ contemporaries feel this way, about their infertility and futile lives?  The moss is the Earth.  A little green, living island floating in a great and tangled vastness.  So quiet but so full of energy.  Living things wandering on the planet like chloroplasts in the cells of a plant.
     “Anther, are you alright?”
     “Just thinking.”
     “Ok…  Remember that you need to say something if you get dizzy or your throat starts hurting.”
     “I would.”
     “How’s your shoulder?”
I unconsciously put my hand over the injured area.
     “Not…  Not good.  The stuff in the air makes it burn more.  I’m sure it’ll get treated when we reach the city.”
     “Alright, just tell me if something goes wrong.”
     “Remember that you need to do the same.”
After more agonizing hours, it was finally time for us to rest.  One day of walking down, two to go.  We set up a small camp and made a bed out of our tent floor.  We took care of our injuries, and Arche bandaged my shoulder to protect it from the air.  I already felt better.  We both seemed to have survived the forest intact, for at least today.  We still had to take care of the risky business of eating, however.  Our masks included a tube used for drinking, but we had to take our masks off to eat.  We set a timer for the amount of time you can be exposed to the forest air with minimal effects.  For those ten minutes, we ate out of our cans in silence.  My throat burned, my eyes watered, and my head hurt.  With much relief, we replaced our masks to get ready for sleep.
     “Love you.”
     “Love you, too.”
We turned over and the world went black.
     I am floating in Earth’s orbit.  I’m not wearing a space suit, but I can breathe and I don’t seem to need any protection from the cold or near-vacuum. My hair and clothing are swaying with my motions.  It’s just like being deep in still water.  Calm and surreal.   I look to the side, and I see stars and a blue-green curve wrapped in a shimmering, translucent barrier.  The final level of the atmosphere, where Earth becomes universe.  My neck straining, I look directly down.  And there’s home.  I see water.  Water is blue and green and grey.  I see soil.  Soil is red or brown.  Following the soil, I see…  Green.  It’s the deepest, brightest, most amazing green I’ve ever seen.  No trace of brown or yellow.  These are plants that are pure.  Not like the ones in the forest.  They do so exist, but I never thought there were such large uninterrupted patches of them.  I want to be down there, in the cool, wet green.  I push myself towards the planet and the plants.  I feel air rushing against my face.  I heat up.  I’m going to burn up on reentry.
     I wake in the tent, exhausted and dry-mouthed.  I hurt.  Arche walks in from outside, where she was exploring.
     “Good, you’re awake…”
     “What’s wrong with me?”
     “You have a slight fever from inhaling the air last night.  I did too when I woke up.  Just walk around a little and you’ll be fine once the poison works out of your system.”
She reaches her hand out to me and I take it.  With her help, I pull my stiff, aching body up from the floor of the tent.  I already feel better.  We pack up and start walking.  Another day walking through Hell.  We’re trying to make it to Heaven.
     “I hear there are regular plants there.  Like there used to be.”
A flash of my dream.
     “Really?  That’s great!  I really do like plants, like the ones that grew in town.  There weren’t many of those, though.  Just flowers and grass…”
     “…And moss.”
My sister had become unusually alert to any connection to our names lately.
     “Yeah, there was a lot of moss there.  No wonder our parents picked those names for us.”
     “Remember what dad told us about moss?”
I remembered all different things that he said about moss.  And other plants, and animals and stars and the things that make up atoms.
     “What do you mean?”
     “That after an area is swept of life, moss is one of the first things that moves in and makes the place alive again.”
     “Hey, that’s pretty clever.”
My twin and I, moss children.  Moving through the ravaged world to make it live again.  Fresh and alive in a place full of death.  After walking, I felt like a living thing again.  We continued our journey through the vines and toxic fog.  The compass in her hand showed us where to go.  Our respirators hissed in the silence.  Nothing but the plants themselves could live here.  Plants and weird bacteria and two small humans in gasmasks.  We walk through more thick, cutting grass.  It slices through our pants and the skin on our legs.  The air burns open flesh like salt.  Poor creatures, us and them.  Confused plants with over evolved defenses and their victims.  War is cruel and awful.  Generations later, it still hurts people.  Cells gone insane and confused. Inhalation of gas put out by plants that felt the dire need to defend themselves from some unseen foe.  Infertility.  Hopelessness.  All because some people a few generations ago had such stunted communication skills that they had to solve their problems by throwing unstable elements around.  Good to know that you value your pride more than you do the people who aren’t yet born.  Who will actually have to live in your mess.
     “Anther…”
Her voice is raspy.  Even with the mask, her breath sounds harsh.  I put my arms around her.
     “What’s wrong?”
     “My throat hurts…”
My mind races.  Panic.  I pull some strong tape from my bag of supplies and seal every seam in her mask and the one where the tube meets the tank.  Then I wrap the entire tube from end to end.  I do this with shaking hands.  I can’t lose her.  The one who I’ve known since before the two of us were even born.  I make sure everything is tightly sealed.
     “That should be better.”
     “Yeah, I’m sure it should work…  Hey, look…”
I look around.  The entire floor of the forest is covered in moss.  Come to think of it, I’d been seeing increasing amounts of it all day.  Life returning to the world of the dead.  Normal plants were making a comeback.  Soon, everything will be normal and full of life again.  The return of Earth as people think of it.  We continue walking through the forest.  Soon, it is dark and time to rest again.  We set up camp and eat again.  Our throats burn again, hers a little worse from earlier exposure.  I’m sure she’ll be fine.  She has to be fine.  We lie down for a night of sleep.  She seems anxious.
     “Anther, will you sleep next to me tonight?”
     “Of course I will.”
I lie up against her and place an arm around her.  She reaches up and puts an arm around me.  We’re huddled up together in silence.  Just like before our lives began.  Before we knew about anything.  About radiation or war or toxins or infertility or pain.  Before we knew anything about the time we were going to be born into.  Would we have still been born if we had known then?  I think about this.  My answer is yes.  I wouldn’t have missed life for anything.  Even though we were born in a time when the human race was hanging by a thread, there is still so much I’m glad I got to see and do.  Shapes in the clouds, the stars, swimming in the good stream, running, jumping, stories, jokes, books, learning, Geiger, my parents and sister…  But what does Arche think?  Would she have wanted to be born as well?
     “Arche?’
     “Hm?”
     “If you had known…”
     “Know what?”
     “If you had known about everything…  About the war and the radiation and these messed-up plants…  Would you have still wanted to be born?”
     “…Yes, Anther.”
     “How come?”
     “Because the sensation of being alive is the best one a person can possibly feel.”
Everything I had thought in one simple phrase.  I smile.
     “Good answer.”
     “Anther, I love you so much.”
     “I love you so much, too.”
     “I’m scared.”
     “I know.” I pause.  “Me too.”
We cling tighter to each other and drift off to sleep.
     No dreams tonight.  Just blackness and then wakefulness.  Another day to go and we’ll be out.
     Arche is still in my arms.  I move to wake her.  But something seems…  Wrong.  Her chest isn’t moving up and down.  She was so warm last night, but now…  Cold.
     “Come on Arche, breathe!”
No response.  She’s not going to breathe again.  She did that for the last time at some point during the night.  In her sleep and in my arms.  Comfortable and unafraid.  She had gone out in the way I would have chosen for her if I absolutely had to.  And so, Arche’s life ended the way it began: next to her brother in the quiet world of her dreams.  Her soul had gone back to the source.  She was gone.
     I sat there for more than an hour, immobilized.  Then finally, I stood up, my joints cracking and unlocking.  I lifted my sister from the floor of the tent and abandoned our camp.  No point in packing up.  I would either spend the night in the city or remove my mask and let whatever happened happen.  The two of us embarked on our final day of walking.  We are going to save the world and make things right for the whole stupid human race.  Arche, who I had grown up with, who I had already known for nine months before we began living, had to die to continue the species that had ruined the Earth, the plants, and the people.  Good work, humanity.  I keep walking.  My lungs burn.  Good, now my mask is leaking, too.  It’s for the best…  No, this is a different burning.  Lack of oxygen, my tank running out.  I switch mine for hers and keep going, tossing my old one a few yards away, into the toxins and moss.  The tube on Arche’s mask hangs uselessly downward, attached to nothing, like the dead power lines we grew up with.  Since she doesn’t need it anymore, I remove her mask and let it drop as I walk.  I look at her expression and find her unchanged.  If her soul is floating around somewhere, I wonder if it is still sleeping, and when it will wake up.
     Two more hours of walking.  My arms ache and I don’t even care.  My mind is shot.  I can’t really feel anything.  I keep following that stupid compass that was supposed to lead us to some better future, where people could have children again and no one had wars or wrecked things.  There isn’t a possible happy outcome for the human race.  We’ve evolved so far that we went around the bend, ruining ourselves, our world, and everything we touch.  Keep walking.  Follow the compass home.  That’s right, just keep going.  And I do keep going.  Then I look to my left…  And I’ve never seen anything like what I see now.  About ten feet away, I see a clearing, no vines or trees or grass in sight, just a carpet of thick, green moss.  Soft and wet and colorful, like the world when it was still waiting for humans.  I walk into the center of this green bubble of a world.  It looks like the Earth as I saw it from above in my dream.  All plants blurring into one living carpet of green.  Archegonia and Antheridia.  Soft and new and alive.  Like my sister and I.  Like she was when she died in her dreams last night.  I know this is where it should end, and I lie Arche out on the soft green.  And for the first time since last night, I can feel.  I am a fourteen year old kid lost in a toxic forest who left his home, family, and friends behind to save a species that isn’t worth it.  I am all these things, and I just lost my twin sister.  I hold my knees and break down crying.  The moisture fogs my mask, turning the world pale and hazy.  Like the atmosphere of the Earth that I had been floating above just over a day ago.  The Earth in my dream was a green and immaculate place.  New as it was before the humans came.  I let out a scream that hurts the inside of my head.  Then I rip off my mask and fling it somewhere into the tangled forest.  Let this be the end of me and the whole human race.  Why did I ever want to save us, anyway?  It makes more sense to let us die and let the rest of creation dance on our collective grave.  We did this.  To ourselves, to the Earth, to the plants, to the dreams of my parents’ parents’.  Any species capable of doing this to itself and the world doesn’t deserve to exist.  Our ability to reproduce was taken away because we couldn’t be trusted.  But there are good people.  My sister was one of them.  I lie down beside her.  I close my eyes.  And I remember…
     We were too young to be discussing this stuff, but we were just the same.  We must have only been around ten or eleven.  I must have been subconsciously angry at humankind even then, because, from the opposite air mattress, in the middle of the night, I asked my sister a question.
     “Do you think we’re good or bad?”
She laughs.  “Well, I can’t speak for you…”
     “No, not us… Well, us… But I don’t mean us, I mean people.”
     “Why do you think people are bad?”
     “Because of…  Everything.  We learned all about atoms and what did we do?  We made weapons.  A lot of people were hurt when they were discovered.  Then we used that power to threaten people.  Eventually, almost everyone who had them just let fly and most of the people on the planet died or got hurt or sick.  Then most of the people who were hurt or sick died.  And the people who were left over had the lives they wanted taken from them and had to fight to survive and make the world livable again.  If we could do something like that…  Then humans must be bad.”  Five minutes of silence.  Her mind was working silently in the darkness.
     “No, I don’t think we’re bad.”
     “Are we good, then?  Can a good thing do terrible things?”
     “I never said we were good, Anther.  We just are.  We’re the newest animal on the planet and we have all this intelligence.  We have a lot to get used to and a lot to learn.  We’re confused and have still retained our animal instincts.  Only now we have too great of a power to fight with.  I think we’ll figure things out soon.”
     “I think you’re right.  I hope we live long enough to learn the right way to be human.”
We say goodnight and close our eyes.
     “What are you two talking about in there?  Be quiet and get some sleep.  ‘Night, kids!”
     My eyes shoot open.  A lot to figure out.  A lot to get used to and a lot to learn.  Live long enough to learn the right way of being human.  She wanted us to live.  We’re not bad creatures, just new and unique, but we can learn.  We are a young, intelligent species.  Everything will turn out fine, and I’ll make sure we last long enough to get there.  Thank you, my wonderful sister.  I kneel beside Arche and take her hand in mine.  “Thanks for everything.  I loved being your brother and your twin.  You made life wonderful, and I won’t let you down.  Goodbye, Arche.”  I let go of her hand, stand up, and go crashing through the forest, toward the city and the future.  I forget my discarded mask and ignore the pain.  I’ll get lost if I go back for it.  I can make it if I’m quick.  I keep running.
     I run until I can’t.  My lungs burn and I hurt all over.  I still press forward.  I come to a hill.  I know the climb could be too much for my raw lungs and weakened body.  But the city is on the other side.  Just make the climb and everything will be ok.  I drag myself upward.  I slip on mud and lose my footing on rocks.  Every movement hurts.  I keep moving.  Almost at the top.  My legs give out under me.  I kneel on the ground and lean forward.  My breathing is painful and raspy.  Weird taste in the back of my throat.  I start coughing, loudly and without sign of stopping.  That’s when I notice that I’m bleeding.  My lungs are damaged now.  Painful and partly filled with blood.  Hard to breathe.  I sit doubled over and shivering for several minutes.  Then I drag myself up from the ground and stand.  Time for the last few feet of the climb.  I stagger light-headedly upwards.  I’m at the top.  I take a few steps, and I’ve passed the forest.  I stand in the light of the setting sun, on the apex of the hill.  It is covered with normal grass, and it smells nice.  Fresh and clean and alive.  I look out at the city, at my future.  I almost feel victorious.  But then I look closer, and I can’t believe what I see.  No…
     The city lies in a small valley, and within and surrounding that hole in the Earth…  Normal plants, all normal.  But they seem to grow just as fast as the poisonous plants.  Because they’ve swallowed the entire city.  All of the buildings are wrapped top to bottom in lively, green vines.  No activity.  No life.  But there was…  No humans, sure, but the place was humming with the quiet energy of plants.  I walk a little closer to the city.  And I can’t believe it.  Frozen in place, walking, standing, sitting, sleeping, working behind one of the few visible scraps of office window…  Were the people.  Or the places where people once were.  The people had been swallowed up by vines, head to toe.  So where there once was a city, there was an eerie world of nothing but plants.  Right next to me was the form of a woman sitting on the hill, legs up to her chest, staring out at the overgrown city.  She was now made out of living vines.  I walk to the side and give her some peace.  I lie down under a tree.  I sputter slightly and some blood drips from the side of my mouth.  I halfheartedly wipe it off, and return to staring at the scene, at the silent lives of the plant people.  Plant people.  A million images rush into my mind, and I finally understand.
     I look around at the valley and the hills.  Covered with trees.  I remember being told that trees were the lungs of the world, that it was plants that allowed life to make a home on land.  Without trees, the oxygen that we needed, to be carried through our blood to bring life to our bodies, to allow our unique brains to function, would all be used up in just over a decade.  It was by the grace of these trees…  Of these Plant People…  That humans could spring up and create.  It was their world, and then it was ours.  Now they are taking it back, and I understand.  We had proved ourselves to be too wild and violent for this peaceful world.  Humans are not like trees.  We had thought that was a good thing, but maybe it wasn’t.  Trees don’t fight or start wars.  Trees go about the process of living in a calm, but vital fashion.  Still waters run deep.  Humans became more and more frantic as time went on.  Then the bombs came.  And so, the plants poisoned us, grew quickly, and took their world back.  Now they were returning to normal again.  The world was starting over, in the hands of the plants once more.  We weren’t good enough.  But the plants, ancient and quiet, living on land while the rest of life was drifting soundlessly in the ocean, were suited to the role as masters of the planet.  A rustle.  Two seed pods drop from a branch above me.  The two of you will go forth and make the world the way it used to be.  Well, mother, it wasn’t the way you thought, but things are still going to be ok.  Better than ok, even.  Back to zero for planet Earth.  I feel something brushing my leg.  A quick-moving vine is going to engulf me like it did the city and the people living there.  It’s squeezing me, but it’s not unpleasant.  It’s like being embraced.  My sister is somewhere back in the forest, sleeping on a pad of moss.  I’m about to go rejoin her, I can feel it.  I know I’m dying.  I am calm about this.  The vines have reached my chest now.  I am…  Happy.  The Plant People are taking me back, welcoming me into their silent, living world.  Before I close my eyes for the final time, I look out over the valley and hills.  Nothing but plants as far as the eye can see.  Earth, back to zero.  The world the way it used to be.  Greenery.