In a giant, empty, decaying building which had once housed thousands, a single TV set yammered into an empty room.

This ownerless ruin had, before World War Terminus, been well-maintained. It was in the suburbs of San Francisco, just a train ride away from downtown. It once had been filled with the noise and bustle and opinions of thousands of people. Now it lay nearly empty, most of the previous inhabitants had long since died or emigrated. Mostly the former, as the war had taken a bigger toll than the Pentagon had first predicted.

The initial bombs dropped killed millions in several major cities across the world almost instantaneously. With most of the people who were directly involved in starting the war taken out in that set of explosions, the rest of the world didn't focus on who started the war or whether anyone had won. No one had predicted the blanket of deadly dust that settled over the entire planet. First, the owls had died. It seemed almost comical, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets. Coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive, the birds had escaped notice. Midieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the form of many dead rats. This plague, however, descended from above.

After the owls, of course, the other birds followed, and the very old, very young, and very weakest of people. But by then the mystery had been grasped and understood. A meager colonization program had been underway before the war, but now that the sun had ceased to shine on Earth the colonization Entered an entirely new phase. In connection with this a weapon of war, the Synthetic Freedom Fighter, had been modified. Able to function on an alien world the humanoid robot – strictly speaking, the organic android – had become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program. Under U.N. law, each emigrant automatically received an android subtype of his choice, and, by 2079, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.

That had been the ultimate incentive of emigration. The android servant as carrot, the radioactive fallout as stick. The U.N. had made it easy to emigrate, difficult if not impossible to stay. Loitering on Earth potentially meant finding oneself abruptly classed as biologically unacceptable, a menace to the pristine heredity of the race. Once pegged as special, a citizen, even if accepting sterilization, dropped out of history. And yet, people here and there declined to migrate. Logically, every regular should have emigrated already. Perhaps, deformed as it was, Earth remained familiar, to be clung to. Or perhaps those who stayed held onto a hope that someday the dust would lift. In any case, thousands remained, most clustered in urban centers where they could physically see each other and take heart at their mutual presence. Those appeared to be the relatively sane ones. And, in dubious addition to them, occasional peculiar entities remained in the virtually abandoned suburbs.

Brittany S. Pierce, being yammered at by the television in her living room while she shaved her legs in the bathroom, was one of those. She hadn't always lived in this part of the country. San Francisco and its suburbs were nearly free of dust just a few years ago, and Brittany had moved here with a large group of people who wandered from one region to the next, avoiding the clouds of dust as they moved. When the dust had reached San Francisco, most of the group had either died, emigrated, or moved away. For some reason, Brittany had stayed.

The TV set shouted, “Either as body servants or tireless field hands, the custom-tailored humanoid robot, designed especially for your unique needs, for you and you alone – given to you on your arrival absolutely free, equipped fully, as specified by you before your departure from Earth; this loyal, trouble –free companion in the greatest, boldest adventure contrived by humankind in modern history will provide – “ It continued on and on.

In the bathroom, Brittany perched with one foot on the edge of the sink and continued to scrape at her leg. Startled by a pattering noise behind her, she stopped her hand just in time before nicking herself and turned toward the open door. “Oh, Lord Tubbington, it's just you. What did I tell you about not sneaking up on me when I'm shaving?”

Lord Tubbington nearly filled the width of the doorway with his large frame. He was easily three times the size of a normal cat and Brittany could feel the floor vibrate beneath her feet with his purring.

“Am I late for work?” she asked, studying the oversized tabby carefully as it blinked its eyes slowly three times. “Oh, good. I'm glad I still have a few minutes. And yes, I know. I need to replace that television. I get sick of only being able to get the government channel, too.”

“Let's hear from Ms. Marley Rose,” the TV announcer suggested from the living room. “A recent immigrant to mars, Ms. Rose in an interview taped live in New New York had this to say. Ms. Rose, how would you compare your life back on contaminated Earth with your new life here in a world rich with every imaginable possibility?”

A pause, and then a high, sweet female voice said, “I think what I noticed most was the dignity.”

“The dignity, Ms. Rose?” the announcer asked.

“Yes,” Ms. Rose of New New York, Mars, said. “It's a hard thing to explain. Having a servant you can depend on in these troubled times…I find it reassuring.”

Brittany toweled her legs dry, gently pushed Lord Tubbington out of the way and walked into the living room in time to catch the cheery announcer continue the interview. The announcer was a broad shouldered, brown haired man with a bland face. Ms. Rose, the interviewee, had long brown hair, clear skin and blue eyes. She was stunning. Brittany found herself lingering with her finger on the power switch, mesmerized.

“Back on earth, Ms. Rose, did you worry about finding yourself classified, ahem, as a special?”

“Oh, yes. I worried all the time. I was so nervous about losing my mental or reproductive abilities, I could barely eat. I even fainted a few times. Of course, once I emigrated that worry vanished forever.” Marley Rose smiled, showing a row of perfect, pearly teeth.

Brittany turned toward the large cat and gestured at the screen. “She's pretty, isn't she, Lord Tubbington? It's a good thing she saved her reproductive organs by moving to Mars. Think of all the gorgeous babies she could have.” She paused, head tilted as if listening to a response from the animal. “Thank you, Lord Tubbington. That's so sweet that you think I'm pretty, too. Of course, there's no way I'll be able to pass that along to anyone. Guess that worry the pretty lady on the television was talking about has gone away for me, too, hasn't it? And I didn't even have to emigrate.”

Brittany had been a special now for over a year, and not merely in regard to the distorted genes she carried. Worse still, she had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made her in popular parlance a chickenhead. Upon her the contempt of two planets descended. However, despite this, she survived. She had her job, driving a truck for a false-animal repair firm; the New Directions Pet Hospital and her musical dreamer of a boss, William Schuester, accepted her as human and this she appreciated. He sang a lot, and sometimes she joined him, even adding in some dance moves, which brought her a lot of joy. And if she sometimes said things that didn't make a lot of sense, he ignored it without comment. And there were chickenheads infinitely stupider than Brittany, who couldn't hold jobs at all. They remained in custodial institutions with quaint names like “Institute of Special Trade Skills of America,” the word “special” having to get in there somehow, as always.

She walked back toward the bathroom door, where the oversized cat still stood, tracking her with silent eyes. She stroked between its ears and scratched at its chin. “I don't think I'd like Mars, anyway,” she said defiantly. “I'm sure they wouldn't let me take you there. And you're my favorite person in the whole world, even though you're a cat.” Acquiring Lord Tubbington was another perk of the job at the New Directions Pet Hospital. He was meant to be a false animal replica for a family that lost their cat, but the manufacturer had gotten the specs all wrong. Mr. Schuester had laughed when he saw the animal – easily three feet tall and almost as wide, with at least two chins and several rolls of excess fat around the middle. The manufacturer agreed to make a new model and Mr. Schuester was ready to scavenge the first attempt for parts, but Brittany had cried and begged for the animal to be spared. Mr. Schuester gave the cat to her and Lord Tubbington had moved in with Brittany that very day.

“And your fiancée, Ms. Rose, felt no protection in wearing a clumsy radiation-proof lead codpiece?” the announcer continued.

“My fiancée,” Ms. Rose began, but Brittany pressed the button and the TV set faded to black.

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls. It smote her with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines that hadn't worked since before Brittany moved in. From the useless floor lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless decent of itself from the ceiling. The silence emerged from every object within her vision. She experienced it as something alive. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. It slipped over everything, seeking to strangle out every last living being and working machine until it's rule was absolute.

She wondered if the others who had remained on Earth experienced the void this way. Or was it perhaps peculiar to her own inept sensory apparatus, something only a special, damaged in the particular way she was, could experience? Interesting question, Brittany thought. But whom could she compare notes with? She could share her feelings with Lord Tubbington and while she did often feel that he could understand or even that he was responding in his own way, this was not a concept that his limited vocabulary of purrs and blinks could serve to discuss. It was at times like these that Brittany truly felt how alone she was in this deteriorating building of a thousand uninhabited apartments, which like all its counterparts, fell, day by day, into greater entropic ruin. Eventually everything within the building would merge, would be faceless and identical, mere pudding-like kipple piled to the ceiling of each apartment. And then, after that, the uncared-for building itself would settle into shapelessness, buried under the ubiquity of the dust. By then, naturally, she herself would be dead, another interesting event to anticipate as she stood here in her stricken living room alone with the lungless, all-penetrating, masterful silence.

Better, perhaps to turn the TV back on. But the ads, directed at the remaining regulars, angered her. They reminded her in a countless procession of ways that she, a special, wasn't wanted. Had no use. Could not, even if she wanted to, emigrate. So why listen to that? “Fuck them and their colonization,” she blurted defiantly to Lord Tubbington, startling him out of the beginnings of a nap. “I hope a war gets started there and everybody who emigrated turns out to be special.”

She strode quickly to the bedroom and finished getting dressed. Ready at last for work, she reached for the doorknob that opened into the unlit hall, then shrank back as she glimpsed the vacuity of the rest of the building. It lay in wait for her, out hear, the force which she had felt busily penetrating her apartment. God, she thought, and reshut the door. Needing something to steel herself before facing the echo of herself ascending the staircase through the empty building to the empty roof above, she crossed the living room to the black empathy box.

When she turned it on, the usual faint smell of negative ions surged from the power supply. She breathed in eagerly, already buoyed up. The screen glowed and a display in the upper right hand corner informed her that 23,215 people were currently logged in to the empathy site at this moment. She nearly sagged in relief as she grasped the handles. All at once she could hear the chatter of thousands of voices and feel the rush of dozens of different emotions, high and low, happy and sad, pensive and exuberant. The screen glowed and soon the familiar landscape appeared – a rocky, fir-tree-lined mountain path. She stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, making her way up the steep incline as the voices chattered in her head. They, and she, cared about one thing; the need to ascend. Step by step they moved forward as one. Higher, she thought as stones rattled downward under her feet. Today we are higher than yesterday. And tomorrow – she glanced up to view the ascent ahead. Impossible to make out the end. Too far. But it would come.

A rock, hurled at her, struck her arm She felt the pain. She half-turned and another rock sailed past her, missing her. It collided with the earth and the sound startled her. Who? she wondered, peering to see her tormentor. The old antagonists, manifesting themselves at the periphery of her vision; it, or they, had followed her up the hill. She rubbed the cut on her arm that the stone had left. In what way is this fair? Why am I up here alone like this, being tormented by something I can't even see? And then, within her, the mutual babble of everyone else in fusion broke the illusion of aloneness.

You felt it too, she thought. Yes, the voices answered. We got hit, on the left arm. It hurts like hell. Okay, she said. We better get started moving again. She resumed walking, and all of them accompanied her immediately.

Brittany stood, holding the two handles, experiencing herself as encompassing every other living thing, and then, reluctantly, she let go. It had to end, as always, and anyhow her arm ached and bled where the rock had struck it.

Releasing the handles she examined her arm, then made her way unsteadily to the bathroom of her apartment to wash the cut off. This was not the first wound she had received while in fusion practicing Mercerism. It probably would not be the last. But she knew she'd take the risk. She always had before. Feeling part of a whole was worth it.

Using a towel, she dried her damaged arm. And heard, muffled and far off, a TV set.

It's someone else in the building, she thought wildly, unable to believe it. Not my TV; that's off, and I can feel the floor vibrating. It's below, on another level entirely!

I'm not alone here anymore, she realized. Another resident ha moved in, taken one of the abandoned apartments. “Lord Tubbington,” she called softly to the cat, “what do you do when a new resident moves in? Drop by and borrow something?” It didn't sound quite right, but she could not remember. This had not happened to her before, here or anywhere else she had lived. People moved out, people emigrated, but nobody ever moved in. The cat blinked twice slowly. “Yes, you're right,” Brittany said brightly. “You don't borrow something. You bring them something. Like milk or flour or an egg – or specifically, their ersatz substitutes.”

Looking in her refrigerator, she found a dubious cube of margarine. And with it, set off excitedly, her heart laboring, for the level below. I have to keep calm, she realized. Not let him know I'm a chickenhead. If he finds out I'm a chickenhead he won't talk to me; that's almost always the way it is for some reason. I wonder why?

She hurried down the hall.