The Long Look

“So what’s that Gramps?”

“That’s a picture of an ocean, Jimmy.  All that is water.  See those little things on that green thing?  Those are trees on an island.”

“What are trees, Grampa?  What happened to all the water?”

Well, trees are distant cousins of the algae we grow for food, and they used to pop out of the ground and grow taller than ten men standing on each other’s shoulders, and food would grow on the trees.  All you had to do was wait until the fruit was ripe and it would fall off and you could just pick it up and eat it, and…”

“Grampa, that’s crazy.  Haha.  Nobody spins them like you Grampy.   Food growing on trees, haha.”

“Other trees would grow five times bigger, and as wide as three men standing next to each other with their arms out, and we would cut these trees down and make houses out of them.  Houses were places to live outside, like every man had his own nice clean dry little cave, and some dogs even had houses, haha.  Houses were real good against the weather, then.” 

Grampa laughed softly, but it was a funny laughter, somehow it wouldn’t share.

“Caves outside, haha, Grampa, that doesn’t even make sense!  ‘Specially for dogs, haha, dogs is food!” 

“The Sarah had only been president for six hours” Grampa said to the air, “Six hours.”

“C’mon Grampa, you have the Long Look in your eyes.  Tell me about the water!  Haha!”

“The water?  The New Moon drank it!  The Last War!  The Higgs Boson Bomb!  There was water, more water than land!  Filled with fish!  All manner of fish to eat!  They just grew in the water!”

“Haha!  Where could you put all that water with all those ‘houses’ everywhere?  And wouldn’t the fish just drown and ruin the water?  Or did they poop in the houses?  Haha.  You had food to eat everywhere didn’t you?  Haha.  That’s funny!”