Page 34 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

Desynthesis

“Like most people in this area, things around me suddenly began
melting, crumbling, collapsing. I got out of the building in time.
Others weren’t as lucky.”
“Then what did you do?”
“My first impulse, as a public official, was to notify the proper
authorities that some sort of disaster had occurred. I was unable to
do so, of course: all the telephone equipment had fallen apart, and
the street was filled with crashed vehicles. No tires, no brakes, no
seatbelts, no door locks, no window gaskets. It was ugly. That was
when I realized something systemic was going on.”
“What do you mean by that? Court reporter, can you spell that
word? Good.”
“Well, my training included some epidemiological studies, and I
deduced that all these different materials couldn’t be disintegrating at
the same time unless some airborne agent had attacked them
simultaneously.”
“Very good. Let the record show that Mr. Finch is a trained
professional, with competence in the matters at hand. What did you
do next?
“Actually, I had to go into a clothing store and replace several
articles of clothing which had desynthesized. I found some good
cotton and wool items in a shop which was already being looted. My
wallet had gotten lost in the process, so I was unable to pay, in any
event. Then I decided to climb up to the top of the Washington
Monument in order to get some perspective on the situation. It was
built of stone and steel—perfectly safe, as far as I could tell.”
“Go on.”
“As I went up those hundreds of steps my mind was racing. My
first thought was chemical warfare, and I wondered if the missile silos
had been targeted: there are several out there beyond the Beltway,
you know. Maybe it was a sort of reverse neutron bomb: leave all the
people alone but cripple the infrastructure. Finally I reached the
observation platform where I could see for miles in all directions. It
was a clear day, with slight gusts of wind blowing in no particular
direction. Wherever desynthesis was occurring, the landscape had a
distinct grayish cast, caused, I now realize, by the release of massive
amounts of chemical compounds previously bound in large
hydrocarbon molecules.”

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