The Mourning

  Liza: Test… Test… Let's go through the check list, wifi off, all computer suggestions off, grumpy old man....

  Hank: Urghh....

  Liza: Check, Ok looks good. It’s January 23rd, 40… Stupid. Alright Dad, come here... come here. Stop it. Sit down.

  (Rustling sound like someone is being forced into a chair.)

  Just sit here, here is your tea, start with something simple that you can tell me about…

  Hank: No.

  Liza: Can you describe one of the last days in your life before -

  Hank: No.

  Liza: That’s not even a real response to my question… are you even listening to me?

  Hank: No.

  Liza: What was on the radio? What was Mom like?

  Hank: Strong and beautiful. Just like you. I don’t want to talk about this right now. Let’s talk later. Let’s go for a ride, to the edge of the field and look at the ocean while the sun sets. Your mother, she would have loved that.

  Liza: Please Dad. I think that Mom would have wanted me to hear her story.

  Hank: Hush! You don’t know. If I have my way, I take it to the grave. It was horrible, it was a horrible time where people did horrible things to each other in the name of survival. I never thought I’d live through something like that… yet here I am. Come on, the horses need a good stretch, it’s been raining for two days and the sun has just peeked out. Lets go before dusk hits.

  Liza: Just one short story and then we can go for a ride. I’d like that very much.

  Hank: Alright. I’ll try and speak to the beginning, it feels like 4 lifetimes ago.

  Liza: Great, that’s great.

  Hank: I remember, I always listened to the news in the morning. National Public Radio. The news was getting more and more shocking everyday. More protests. More violence. Every major city including ours was seeing protesters jailed, tear gassed or even shot because the police would lose control. There we rumors that they were believed to be armed vigilantes, paid agitators. Nobody believed that. Growing distrust in the government AI lead to the run on the banks. It felt like all it took was one man to realized his money wasn’t safe, furious that the bank didn’t have enough cash for him to pull out all his money. That’s when it all hit the fan.

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  Liza: Run on banks? What are you talking about?

  Hank: Right, I forgot, yeah, banks were not the locked boxes your thinking of. We used to put our money into these organizations called banks. When I was young you would go there to deposit money and get cash when you needed it. When I was older and money was mostly digital the banks were online and my paycheck was directly deposited into my account that I could access online or with a card that was linked to it. Everyone did it, you had to if you wanted to get paid. Often times your employer would tell you that they only paid through direct deposit which means you needed a bank account just to get you paycheck.

  Liza: So at some point you never even saw the money that you earned? Some account on some website told you how much money you had? That seems crazy.

  Hank: Wait, it gets better, and this is the part that I dont totally understand but Ill do my best to explain it becuase its the reason why things got ugly so quickly.When you put your money into the bank, and you saved up enough, the bank would then use your money to invest in things like the stock market.So if at any point in time a Millionaire wanted their money, like all of their money, the bank would have a hard time giving it to them, because not all the fat cats money was sitting in the bank, portions of it went to pay for different investments that bank was making.The fat cat would then get a small percentage of those investment that the bank earned credited back into his account.

  Liza: Im not sure I understand.Im sure glad we just get our money and put it in the locked box.

  Hank: The point is this, not everyone but a lot of people decided that they wanted their money out of the banks all at the same time, that is called a run. The morning after the nationwide run on the major banks, that’s when the financial system went haywire. The stock market went into an uncontrolled freefall as financial institutions ran out of money to trade with and values on all the major markets plummeted. The protest tripled in size overnight because everyone was mad or scared and the police had no sense of control anywhere in the country.

  That morning – I’ll never forget – that cool, crisp winter morning the voices on the news were different. You could hear how scared they were, and it was scary. Through all of this, as the goverment was switched over to the AI, as my job was upended by "steamlined efficiency", as the protests mounted and violence started to spread... They, those newscasters, had been my steady voice of calm and reason. Now something was different. We were all terrified. We didn’t know it, but we were all on the edge of the great abyss. We were all on the cliffs edge and we, without knowing it, had just misplaced our step… we had just begun “The Fall”.

  One morning we woke up and the distant violence that was always happening 'somewhere else' found its was to our doorstep.I was startled awake by the sounds of shouts and screams, then the sickening crack of shots being fired just outside our house, ending in the cresendo of a car peeling out and speeding down the street. Then silence. I looked out my window and the street was clear and still as if nothing had happened.I went into your room, I remember hugging you and holding you close, you asking "What was that?" Not wanting to tell you that it was gun fire but also not wanting to ignore it and pretend like it didn't happen, you said "It sounded like really loud popcorn." I smiled, not that it was the right responce but you were just so cute in that moment, so pure, innocent.

  That is when we decided that we need to get to my parents.