The Last City of America

Начало книги

I was sixteen when they said it was harmless.

I was twenty-four when they said it could no longer be ignored.

By 2025, everybody knew the name Hephaestus—a virus which made conception difficult for a growing number of people. My wife and I had it; at least one of us did. So did a lot of people we knew. The birthrate had dropped by half, but the full effects of this were not yet realized.

By 2037, the majority of job openings had grown impossible to satisfy, and the first in a long chain of American corporations filed for bankruptcy in November and didn’t last the winter. Families weren’t being made, houses weren’t being sold, property value was plummeting. Shareholders across the mortgage industry dumped their stocks for pennies. Homeowners were forced off their property for sanitation problems in the empty houses that surrounded them. My wife and I were relocated to a complex that could be more easily maintained. Houses covered in boards surrounded us.

Читать дальше →