It’s out there somewhere, you know:
that last pack of Cool Cucumber Juul Pods.
Collecting dust in a storage unit — if it even can get dusty in one of those things — after being found in the bedside drawer of some boy who was certain that if he could just manage to stay conscious long enough to get the belt off from around his neck in that cherry-sweet split second after he finished, he would see the face of god.
But he couldn’t, and his roommate found him, and after he figured out what had happened, he closed the bedroom door & had a beer, even though they weren’t all that close, he still liked the boy well enough to toast to his commitment to trying to come juuust right.
He wasn’t sure if he should call the cops or the boy’s parents first, so he had another beer, then flipped a coin.
After the funeral, they packed up the boy’s things. His folks moved it all into a storage facility, because who knows, he might be back someday & wonder what happened to all his shit.
Just the thought of this was, to them, enough to justify the monthly expense.
And so, in that unit, a box.
And in that box, the Pods.
The Pods which, after the oceans surge & surge, until it’s all just one big ocean again;
or after the dead rise, to demand accountability;
or after the Old Gods return, finally bored with their eons of indifference & ready for playtime;
after the space sorcerer vaporizes our blood;
after President Robot harvests us for nutritional goo;
after the Great Bird Reckoning;
after the bombs, which have already started, I mean, just look;
after a million & one apocalypses great and small play out, just like they’ve been doing, you know it, you’ve seen them yourself,
then finally, some future historian will discover that last pack of Cool Cucumber Juul Pods in the Eternal Storage Unit, gaze upon them with dewy-eyed wonder, and begin the process of trying to comprehend how a civilization that created such a miracle could ever have been brought so low.