Hatch

Hindsight, Chapter 4, Part 1.

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Hindsight by Neil Shooter (photo by author)

April 2020.

Will’s eyes snapped open. What the hell was that?

A little after dawn, the heavy curtains kept out most of the light. He had a feeling they would be vital if he was going to ever sleep past 7am all summer.

His head moved to the side, to the empty space where Juss should be. Alarmed, he jumped up. “Juss?”

He pulled on his robe, and shuffled into his slippers, and when he got to the bedroom door, called out again. “Juss? Are you all right?”

“Will!” Her voice was strange, filled with excitement, and awe, and no fear whatsoever.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve got our first baby chook-chook!”

Will sighed, and then chuckled. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

When he joined her in the living room, beside the incubator, she looked up at him like a kid on Christmas morning who just got everything she ever wanted. He couldn’t help but smile. Looking to the incubator, he could see a little bundle of brown fluff. He could hear it too.

Juss turned back to the tiny new life. “Cheep cheep! Cheep cheep!”

“What are you doing?”

“Bonding with her!”

“Her?”

“Oh, I don’t know yet, maybe.”

“Does she think you’re her mommy?”

“I am her mommy, darling. And you’re her daddy.”

And if he was “darling” he was on dangerous ground. Fortunately the kettle was boiling.

They always started the day with coffee, and moved on to tea later. He put just a little bit extra in his cup this morning, and an extra teaspoon of milk powder to compensate.

“Look,” Juss said, when he brought her her coffee, “three more eggs are pipped. That means three more should come today.”

“Won’t they all come today? It’s day twenty-two, right? They should have all come yesterday.”

“It depends. It might take a few days for them all to come. All that are coming, anyway. They could still die in their shells.”

Will had a light bulb moment. “‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.’”

“I see the coffee is kicking in.” Juss graced him with a wry glance.

“Thank heavens.” He took another swig.

*

He came in from the chickens, sweating. “It’s gorgeous out!”

Juss looked up at him from the incubator in disbelief.

“Well, not summer gorgeous, but definitely beginning-of-April gorgeous! We should get out the tiller today.”

“What about the chicks? You want to be out all day and miss them?”

“You said it could take twenty-four hours from pip to hatch. So maybe nothing else will happen all day, right?”

“Hmmm. I did say that. I suppose we should make the most of any nice day. Enjoy any day we can be out there before the black flies come.”

Will wished she’d stop talking about black flies. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Eggs,” she said, without hesitation.

“Isn’t that a bit, um, ironic? ‘Hey chickie, to celebrate your birth, we’re going to eat a bunch of your never-to-be-born brothers and/or sisters!’”

“Not the same thing. Anyway, I’ll get some of those chives from in front of the art room window.”

“Make sure they’re chives, and not daffodils or something.”

“I already did. Don’t worry. Crack some eggs. I’ll be right back.”

“Yes ma’am!”

*

Juss walked into the living room after breakfast, and squealed.

This time Will was prepared. “Could you maybe try less dramatic announcements?”

“Come, quick! This one is zipping right now!”

He hurried over. He joined Juss on the little bench placed in front of the incubator. It put them at the perfect height to observe what was happening. The little beak of the chick pushed through the shell, breaking it bit by bit. The line was almost all the way around.

“How did she manage that? There was only a pip half an hour ago!”

The chick completed the circle, and it was like some immense internal pressure had given way, like a fault line had shifted. But the chick wasn’t out. “Come on little dude! You can do it! Push! Come on chook chook! Almost there!”

Juss looked up at him in surprise.

“What?” He felt himself blush slightly, but that didn’t matter. Not really. “Come on chook chook! Come on!” And then, suddenly, there was a chick. A pale yellow chick, just lying there, utterly exhausted from the most important effort of its entire life. Will was shocked by the love that welled up in him. “I’m such a sap.”

Juss just hugged him. “I love you, hon.”

They sat in awe and wonder, and after a time, when nothing further had happened for some minutes, Will gently pulled away from her and said, “I’m going to make a start.”

She nodded. “I’ll join you in a little while.”

“Okay.”

*

Will pulled the extension cord through the low green grass, breathing in the promise of the day. It wasn’t only the arrival of chicks that had him smiling. The days were longer, the sun stronger, and things were coming back to life. The chives from breakfast were only one signal of the looming spring. Yes, it was impossibly early in the season, but what if it wasn’t? What if no killing frost came in May to undo all the work they were doing now? In any case, he was only planning on putting hardy things out. He felt optimistic, but he wasn’t stupid.

The sky, bright and blue, had a few wispy clouds. Some early bird chirped in Eric’s trees somewhere. It was all peace and nature.

And then a rumble built in the distance, and a huge truck trundled along the main road, about 600 feet to the south, beyond Eugene’s field. Will didn’t like it, but what could be done? Nails on the road? It’d take the end of the world to make the road quiet. Will sighed. He supposed it wasn’t worth it.

He trudged up to the house, to the east door leading to the garage. The tiller leaned against the wall, perched in an open cardboard box from the move, only to keep the metal blades from getting scratched on the concrete floor. The tiller had seemed an extravagance when they’d bought it, but the soil in their little city garden had been so heavy with clay that they’d needed to add sand to it to make it workable. And now, Will was glad they had it.

Orange-Bono-goggles on, he plugged it in, and set it in the first line. He looked around, planning. He was starting at the southern edge, with lawn to his right. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do. About eighty feet to the north was the rhubarb patch, little more than a mangled lump at the moment, but green bulbs were poised to unfurl into leaves. And the northernmost edge of the vegetable patch was asparagus. He wasn’t a huge fan of that, but it was exciting to see anything green coming out of the ground. He reckoned he’d get about 25 lines in, but they’d only plant in alternating lines of course. Still, the whole patch needed turning. So he pulled his baseball cap down, and got started.

The soil was a dream to work with. Moist, it seemed to crumble in the perfect way. He flushed with optimism.

Halfway down the line he realized the tiller was squealing, so he unplugged it and turned it over. Sure enough, the blades were clogged with the stalks of last year’s grass and weeds. He pried them out, and chucked them to the side. He clambered back to his feet. He was out of shape, after a sedentary winter indoors. But it felt good to be doing something. And his shoulders would not be happy with him later.

*

Juss came down the garden wearing her wide-brimmed hat, and clean gardening gloves.

He stopped when he saw her, and smiled.

“I’ll pull up some of the weeds, shall I? Make things go more smoothly for you?”

“Sure. Thanks. Stay behind me though. This thing kicks out a stone every so often.” If not for that early snow, they might have cleared out the weeds last fall. And if they hadn’t also been in the middle of unpacking, and repainting the interior of the house.

“Okay, I’ll be careful.”

He nodded, and returned to work.

Each line took about fifteen minutes to do, so although the finished lines were adding up, so was the time. He had a few minutes of rest after each line. And the couple of times per line he had to stop and clear the blades also helped him have some down time.

In one of his breaks, Juss said, “I’m going to go put the kettle on.”

“Good idea. Thanks.”

Will sprawled on the greening grass. Just a few weeks ago, this had all been frozen tundra, an utter desolation of snow. And now the glacier had melted. It really felt like heaven. To be tired from physical labour, and to be surrounded by blue and green, and golden sunshine, and buds just starting in the trees. He supposed it was some kind of ancestral memory, some echo of evolution that made nature feel so right.

He felt like a pioneer, breaking the land, poised to benefit from the bounty of it. The pioneers used to know the rhythms of life, of the seasons, not just the obvious notes, not just the weather. He laughed at himself. They had dug their land. Tilled it with blades and horses. Hacked at trees with hatchets. He was so lucky to have electrical power to help him. The pioneers would have sneered at how easy his life was.

Juss returned with two cups of black tea, and sat beside him in the grass. “No change.”

It took him a moment to realize she was talking about the chicks and the eggs. He’d forgotten all about them.

Juss sighed. “So, Mike the chicken guy was right: sandy and stony.”

“Pretty stones, some of them. See the pile I’ve made? Looks like quartz or something. Or diamonds in the rough! I feel like a kid again, thinking about gemstones!”

She smiled. “I’m glad you’re making the most of it.”

“And the soil is pretty easy to till.”

“It’s going to be really dry. We’ll need to keep adding compost and peat moss.”

“We should get a composter, right?”

“I guess so. I’ll add it to the list.” She drank some of her tea and pulled a face. Even though milk powder was the perfect addition to instant coffee it just clumped and curdled in hot black tea. It wouldn’t mix in. And so they had to have their black tea black, like it or not. “Thinking about the berries, do you want to make the whole south-east corner a berry patch? They’ll spread anyway. It’s out of the way. And I can dig a few holes, ready.”

“The soil seems poor over there though, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe. But it looks like the guy was chipping wood or something. There’s so much sawdust.”

“Doesn’t that compost down nicely?”

“Sure, in three years.”

“Hmmm. Raspberries, as far as the eye can see!”

“I was thinking we should get more strawberries. The raspberries and blackberries are sprouting and will spread easily, but there are only a couple of strawberry plants, and I’d like to get more of them in the ground.”

“Good idea.”

“But just think, we could have any berry we want. Blackcurrants? Blueberries? I wonder what else we could get our hands on.”

“They all take time to get established, don’t they?”

“Of course. But the sooner we get started, the sooner we get them established, right?”

He laughed. “I guess so.”

“And apples.”

“Apples aren’t berries, hon.”

“Oh no?” She feigned surprise. “I had no idea.”

“You want apples?”

“Yes. I want an orchard.”

“Hmmm. That would be nice.” Be a pain to mow around, though.

“You remember that garden centre on the highway?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll call them. See what they have. See what they can deliver. Support local, you know?”

“Good idea. And you know what, I’d like a line of trees along the south border.”

“You would? Wouldn’t it block the view?”

“From here, maybe. But not from the balcony. Or the house. It might help block the sound of traffic from the main road.”

“Maybe. Anyway, my break’s over. I’ll go investigate the berries.”

“I guess I’ll get back to tilling then.”

*

When he had had enough, there were still several rows left. At least an hour of work. He turned around, and saw Juss on her way down.

“Lunch!” she called, and turned back to the house.

He followed.

Lunch was to be pasta and sauce. Quick and easy.

“Look,” Juss urged him.

He went to the incubator. “Two more golden chicks! Oh, and the golden one from earlier is more pale now she’s dried.” He couldn’t tell what the situation was with pips—there was too much other activity going on. The brown chick from first thing this morning was a bundle of energy, going from one of her siblings to the next. But when Will spoke, they all looked at him, and crowded against the clear plastic of the incubator.

When he went into the kitchen, Juss was practically glowing. It was marvellous to see.

*

After lunch, he did the dishes, and then joined Juss on the bench at the incubator. She was sitting wide-eyed. Every so often she would tap the plastic twice, and say “Cheep cheep!”

“Do we have any girls?”

“I expect so. I won’t know until I have them in my hand.”

“What, because that completes the psychic connection or something?”

“More or less.” She smirked. “But see the pale one?”

He grunted an affirmative.

“See he has a spot on the top of his head? That could mean he is a boy.”

“Hmmm. And the rest?”

“We’ll see.”

*

After a substantial break, Will went back down the garden to do the last few rows. Juss stayed up front, to weed the beds in front of the house, near the chives. She wanted to see if there was any sign of anything else useful coming up.

Will went to the south-east corner to look at Juss’ handiwork from earlier. The day they had taken ownership of the house, in the middle of last October, they’d made a point of putting their transplanted berries into the ground. This area had seemed as good as any. There seemed to be a regular wind out of the west, from over the hill and the street, so they’d figured the back would be more sheltered. They’d been half right. Half the time the wind seemed to be out of the east, for a start. And also being at the lowest point in the garden, it seemed that the coldest air settled over the berries. Still, the snow had gathered over them too, which had surely shielded them from the worst of the cold.

In any case, they had all survived. And Juss had split the raspberry bush into three clumps, and the blackberry bush into two. The two strawberry plants were the tiniest little nubbins of green. All the plants were marked with a stake, otherwise he’d have had trouble locating the strawberries. He could tell what she was planning, though. She’d planted each kind of berry in a well-separated line. He knew that there would be many feeder roots to move later in the season, and the gaps would soon be filled in. But the strawberries looked pitiful.

Satisfied, Will returned to his tilling.

*

After hauling the tiller back up to its place in the garage, and coiling the extension cord, he went around to the front of the house. Juss, still on her hands and knees beside numerous small piles of leaves and twigs, was just about done. The whole front beds looked great.

“Nice work, hon.”

“Thanks.”

He gathered up the piles into the wheelbarrow, and when she was done, he wheeled the barrow down the garden, and dumped all the leaves and twigs at the stone line that marked the eastern boundary. Boulders, more like. He presumed they had once littered the acre. The rise beyond, where the cows grazed, had stones of all sizes, even though many had been moved to make field boundaries. Dumping stuff at the end of the garden wasn’t the ideal solution, but maybe it would make good kindling if it dried.

He stowed the barrow under the balcony, and walked around to the front. Juss was nowhere to be seen.

The little window at the kitchen sink opened and Juss called out, “I’m making tea.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He thought about just sitting and relaxing, but he saw the pine cones under the massive conifer tree near the street, and decided that he could take a few minutes to rake some of them up. He got the rake from the garage.

He’d hardly started when a car pulled up. A flashy one.

The driver had her window rolled down, and was looking over at him. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he replied, uncertainly. This was the first face-to-face conversation he’d had with anyone who wasn’t Juss for quite a while. Six weeks, he supposed. When they last went to the grocery store. Before.

He smiled. He figured it was only right to. And they were several metres apart.

She had shoulder-length blond hair, and there was a flash of light from her earrings. “Do you know where Cleopatra’s Head is, by any chance?”

His smile broadened. “I do. Just turn left on the main road here, it bends back and forth a bit, and you’re looking for the second little lane on the right. Right after where the water is. There’s a sign.”

“Thank you! Have a nice day!”

“You too!”

He watched the lady drive off, and turned around to see Juss standing on the front porch with two cups of tea. He headed down to the house.

She put the cups on a little glass-topped side table, and sat in one of the red resin chairs beside it. “Did I hear that right?”

“I don’t know, did you?”

“Cleopatra’s Head? Why on earth would anyone name a place that?”

“Because that’s what it looks like on the map of the lake. A lady’s head, with some kind of royal fascinator on, like she’s gone to Ascot.” He sat down in the other chair.

“Cleopatra at Ascot?”

“You know what I mean.” She always did. He smiled and reached for his tea.

“Sure. But why do you know it and I don’t?”

“Ah, that’s my little secret!” He smirked. “Oh okay, you beat it out of me. When you found the house, I just looked at the map of the surrounding area, and thought it was a funny name. Then I saw the shape on the map. And then, that day we were here for the inspection, and we did the first drive around the lake—you remember that day, with all the red and gold, it was like heaven, wasn’t it—and I noticed the street sign.”

“But you didn’t mention it.”

“You distracted me. You always distract me .…”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“We were talking, in the car, noticing things, and the conversation moved on, and then we saw our house on the hill, from the main road and got distracted by that, and I forgot all about it until the lady just asked me. What do you think she was doing? Breaking lockdown?”

“I don’t know why she wouldn’t have GPS in a fancy car like that.”

“Exactly. Anyway, I’ll show you the map when we go in.”

“Okay.”

The sun had come around to the front, and there was no wind. It warmed his spirit. “Isn’t it glorious?”

“It is.” She took a sip of her black tea, and grimaced. She saw him look over, and said, “I tried to steep it less this time too. How would you feel about sharing a tea bag?”

“We should just mix some powdered milk every morning, and use it through the day.”

She rolled her eyes. “I guess so. Pain in the ass though.”

“It’s 2020. Pretty much everything’s a pain in the ass.”

She laughed. “Oh no, I can’t go shopping for milk, boo hoo, wah. Oh, I’m too busy and self-important to mix my powdered milk ahead of time. And too lazy to do it while I’m waiting for my tea to steep anyway. There are people who have lost their husband or wife and here I am complaining about my lack of milk. Or am I complaining about my bitter tea? Either way, I just have to get used to it.”

“You should make your devoted servant mix you up some powdered milk. I’m sure he’d be happy to. If it would make you happy?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, I should. It just annoys me that the powder is so expensive.”

“We’ve got the money, hon.”

“That’s not the point. There are so many people struggling so much with this—with ALL this—and honestly my biggest inconvenience is the milk. I should just get over myself, and try to adapt.”

He looked over into the west. The sun spread golden light over them, and the bare maple branches were silhouetted against the sky. “Sometimes it’s easy to adapt. Sometimes it isn’t. We’ve been through so much, and managed to more or less cope with it. We’ve already adapted so much. Back in Toronto. Since we moved. The winter! The chickens! We can’t adapt to everything all at once.”

“You remember that last time we were in the grocery store?”

“Of course.” The beginning of March. Early morning. Inconveniently early. They’d really packed the cart. Toilet paper, before there was a run on it, pasta, cans, extra milk even, and a couple of bags of potato chips because he felt like it in the moment. A big shop. A stock-up shop. Trying to avoid the virus that they were sure could already be around, even though no one in the area was talking about it yet. And then, looking at the bill, it had all seemed so extravagant, so excessive. He’d felt silly. They had planned to do it again at the end of the following week. But then events had gotten ahead of them. Trudeau had declared an emergency, and all of a sudden they felt like it was too late, and just hunkered down with whatever they still had. Of course he remembered it. He thought about it almost every day. That they should have done more.

“We were watching the news, hard. All day. All through February. We knew it was coming. We saw it coming. We looked at the numbers every single day. And the map. We prepared, but only kind of. If even we were caught unawares by all of this” —she waved her hands around, not meaning the calmness, or the weather, but the invisible thing everyone was afraid of, like a monster in the closet— “then no wonder the rest of the world is reeling more. I’m just … ashamed of myself.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I have such privilege. I have an education. Money, a house, a husband I love more than anything. And I was still too stupid to react to the thing I knew was coming, and now I have the audacity to be this annoyed about not having milk.” She shook her head, and he realized she was close to tears.

“Hon …”

“There are people with nothing, and I’m whining about not having the right kind of milk.”

“Juss—” He reached out to hold her hand.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m okay!” She laughed. “Is this what life is going to be? Just random emotional breakdowns about stupid little things?”

He tried to smile. “I think so. We just have to be gentle with each other, and with ourselves, right?”

She nodded. Clasped his hand tight. Nodded again. “People are just so stupid.”

He started.

“No, I don’t mean me, or us. I mean human beings, in general. We put band-aids on things, and hope they’ll get better. We let little things fester until they are big things. We ignore the big things until we can’t ignore them anymore. And when we finally deal with them, it’s only in part, because now they are too big to really fix. We could have actually fixed the small problem, if we’d paid attention. So utterly stupid. So shortsighted. Always! Is it in our genes? It must be!”

“Must be.” He knew she was talking about the implosion of her family as much as the handling of the pandemic.

“And take Trump. He only just started taking this seriously. He should have acted in March, when Trudeau did. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He waited too long and America is screwed, when just a month of ‘draconian measures’ could have completely knocked the wind out of this thing’s sails. And now? Now … will it ever end?”

“One day. There’ll be a vaccine—”

“Next year, maybe. Or 2022. If a vaccine is even possible. It might not be, you know. And what if it ends up being like Marek’s disease?”

Will looked at her sideways. “The chicken disease?” He remembered she’d talked about it some weeks ago.

“Yes. You can vaccinate the birds, and it stops them getting sick, but they carry on shedding virus, and the rest of the flock will still get it. What damn use is a vaccine that just masks your symptoms if everyone around you will still gets sick?”

“If it’s the best vaccine we can get, it’s the one we have, right?”

“Exactly. It can all just go so very wrong. We have some people saying herd immunity is the way to go. But that just means letting it run rampant and killing three percent of just everyone, and clogging up every part of the health system so that people are also dying from strokes and heart attacks and anything else you can think of because there are no resources to just suddenly deal with everyone needing help all at once. Everyone just needs to stay apart, think of each other, and give the scientists time to actually figure out how this virus works! We don’t know anything yet!”

“You’re right, hon.”

“I know I’m right! But no one is listening!”

He opened his mouth.

“No one else, I mean!” She sighed. She seemed to deflate, as though she had used up her last bit of energy.

The sunshine really was lovely. He let it soak into him, let it soothe his frazzled nerves.

Juss chugged the cold, weak, bitter black tea, and then snorted. “It’s the nicest day of the year. I should appreciate it a bit more.” She squeezed his hand and then let go. “I appreciate you. Thank you for sticking with me. Through everything. Through the last couple of years. Thank you.”

“Oh, Juss, I love you.”

She smiled, and the sun glistened in her eyes, and on the moisture on her cheeks. “I know. Oh, I know.”

She closed her eyes and basked in the golden light, the smile lingering on her face as her tears dried.

*

When they went in, there were five chicks in the incubator. Another golden one. And no obvious change in the others, although with more chicks running around in there, eggs kept getting knocked about, and it was difficult to keep track of things.

Will showered, and remembered another time there was a gleam in Juss’ eyes. She’d just seen the tell-tale white spot on the yolks of their breakfast eggs. He had carefully asked, “So, how much does your new toy hold?” meaning the incubator that had recently been delivered.

Juss had replied, “Oh, at least nine…”

A brooder had come with it, which they’d need in the next day or two, and a dog cage, for when the chicks were too big for the clear plastic tote, and too big for the house. And they’d since discovered that, because Silkie eggs were smaller, twelve would fit in the incubator tray.

When he was done, he went to sit beside Juss, and reached out a hand to her.

She squeezed it. “So, I called the garden centre.”

“Uh huh.”

“And put in an order. A bunch of different berry plants.”

“Like what?”

“Blueberry, blackcurrant, boysenberry, jostaberry, honeyberry—”

“What are these things? I’ve never even heard of some of them.”

“I guess we’ll find that out. Oscar says they’re all hardy up to zone 4 or 3. Also aronia, elderberry, black raspberry. Some grapes. And some trees.”

“You really went all out. I bet Oscar loved you.”

“He’s my new boyfriend. Shhh—don’t tell anyone.”

“All right, I won’t. What trees?”

“A few apple, a couple pear, plum, cherry, fruiting mulberry, apricot, peach, and filbert.”

“Filbert?”

“Yeah, a nut. It’ll take years to produce anything, but we have plenty of time to let things grow.” She smiled.

“I bet that set us back quite a bit.”

“Yes. Yes it did. But it’s an investment.”

“When are they coming?”

“Well, they’re a bit behind with … everything … so not before next week. He’ll call the day before, he says.”

“What, in case we’re out?” Will snickered.

“Just so we’re prepared, I guess. Oh, and another thing. I went to the County Poultry website.”

“The place you were going to order chicks from?”

“Yes, just because I have chicks on my mind right now.”

“Don’t we all ….” he quipped.

She elbowed him, which was at least as much as he deserved. “It’s a good thing we didn’t order anything, because they aren’t doing chicks this year at all.”

“Really? They didn’t hatch any?”

“I don’t know, maybe they still bred some for, I don’t know, continuity of bloodlines or something. But they aren’t selling any to the public. No orders, nothing. All orders cancelled. Imagine if we’d waited for our first chicks, or first chickens, and were having to start from nowhere right now.”

“I feel like I want to say something about eggs and baskets .…”

“Yes, and fortunately ours weren’t. I just hope these guys haven’t destroyed thousands of young chicks, that’s all.”

“At least we have our own. And when are we going to move them to the brooder?

“They’re okay for up to three days, but we can move them over if the other eggs aren’t pipped. But there was one earlier, I just can’t tell which one it is. By tomorrow night I think we can risk it.”

“The next eggs are ready. I switched out one of the EE eggs today.” He was storing the blue ones in the basement, where it was cool, and turning them several times a day to make sure the yolk didn’t settle. And there were cream Silkie eggs there too. “Purina’s oldest egg is a week old though. She’s not laying every day. Hopefully there’ll be a fresh one to add by the time the incubator is available.”

*

After Juss had put the chickens away, she went to shower. They were going to settle in for a quiet night. Some reading. Some TV. Some news. The usual. But first, Will wanted some tunes.

He turned his head toward the Home Speaker System, so it would hear him better. “Hey Computer, play Nicole Bachman”

“Playing Nickelback.”

“Hey Computer, stop! Hey Computer, play Nicole Bachman.”

“Playing the Colbeck Man podcast.”

“Hey Computer, STOP. Hey Computer, play Ni Cole Bach Man.”

“Playing Nikko Baertman.”

“Hey Computer, why are you so stupid?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help with that.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” The music he didn’t want was still playing. “Hey Computer, stop!”

The HSS went silent. Now he had a chance to think, Will thought of something else he could try. “Hey Computer, play Nicole Bachman on Music FM.”

“Playing Music FM, Nicole Bachman.”

“Hallelujah!” It was so ironic that humans had to change their way of speaking in order to be understood by a computer that was supposed to be intelligent. He tried to relax. It wasn’t the computer’s fault. There was some stupid human to blame for it, somewhere.

*

Juss came to snuggle with him. She smelled slightly fruity. The new shampoo they’d tried. “I like this song.”

“Hmmm. Took me long enough to get it to play. It’s not AI, its ALOI. Artificial Lack Of Intelligence.”

“Oh. Funny—did you just make that up?”

“Ouch,” he said. “I was quite pleased with it, actually.”

“There, there, booboo, did the nasty compwooter make you grumpy-wumpy?”

He laughed. “I’m just ready for the AI I’ve been promised my entire life. That I can have a proper conversation with. That is actually not an imbecile.”

“Soon, my pretty, soon. Unless civilization collapses, of course.”

“You mean I’m SOL if the SHTF?”

“Precisely.”

*

At the end of the night Will looked at the Johns Hopkins map, as he always did, to see what was new, because he couldn’t help himself. It was more than mere habit, by now.

He wondered about what the future held, for real. For the coronavirus. Whether it really was going to be better in a few months. Whether there would be long term effects from being infected. Whether there would be supply chain interruptions in the coming months. Whether the next wave would really be as bad as he worried it might be. It was easy to imagine how bad things could get. People were talking about it being a marathon. The UK Government was talking about two more full years of this kind of thing. Trudeau had said that there were "many many months" of this still ahead of us. The military expected years of waves and troughs in infections. That’s why Trudeau had wanted emergency powers. Will felt like people were being groomed into just accepting this as a new normal.

And then, they glanced at each other, as if sensing the time was right.

She smiled.

He nodded.

She reached over and pinched his chin, playfully. She got up, and he quickly put his own laptop to one side and followed her.

She was in the kitchen, of course.

And when he had joined her, the ceremony began.

The last bag of potato chips sat on top of the corner cupboard. Clipped tightly closed.

She looked up at him, and he looked back. The time was now. She unclipped the bag. Reached in, and took out the biggest chip she could find, and withdrew it.

She showed it to him, and his eyes widened. He was surprised there were still chips of that size after all this time, now they were on the last third of the bag. He opened his mouth, poked out his tongue a little, and she placed the chip there reverently, like it was the body of Christ. He drew his tongue into his mouth, along with the chip, and chewed once, only once. He moaned in satisfaction. Never had potato chips tasted so good.

She reached in again, retrieved her own chip. It was half the size of his. She saw him see, and, keeping to the bargain, she took out a second one, so that they each had about the same volume of potato chip as the other. Fairness. Balance. These were the rules.

She sighed in pleasure. And quickly clipped the bag closed again before temptation could sway either of them.

One day, one day soon, there would be nothing but crumbs, and then what would they do?

This was the best part of lockdown. Give us this day our daily potato chip. Every day seemed more bearable knowing that no matter what happened, no matter what Trump, or Trudeau, or anyone else said, or did, that there was a potato chip waiting for him at the end of it.

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