The End Is Now

I’m only sixteen. I’m too young to die! Dorothy’s panicked thoughts raced, sobering her intentions. Whenever she’d imagined dying she thought about her parents who were conscripted as dredgers and now were buried somewhere beneath Mount Rainier along with four hundred other mixed-breed workers who’d struggled for tailings in a played out silver mine. Now all she had left was her Nai Nai, and an assortment of calabash cousins that she knew of but never saw, like Darwin Chinn Qi, who worked as a servant at the Sorrento Hotel. She hadn’t seen him in years. Not since she’d spurned him when they were ten years old and a matchmaker’s I-Ching machine predicted that they would witness an important event and then eventually wed. Dorothy thought that meant they’d get pregnant and later married. So she ran away only to be caught by British colonials. The same company that later sold her entire village to a subsidiary in the Northwest where the children had been forbidden to marry, ever, and breeding would only be allowed for the purpose of replacing themselves in the servants’ lottery.

So much for predictions,

Dorothy thought as she crawled over warm bodies while the earthquake subsided and spreading orange flames licked at the walls.

She struggled to her feet in the entryway where two guards were dead but their bodies still warm, the moneychanger as well, his quad-abacus shattered, beads scattered everywhere along with dirty wads of folding money. Dorothy lifted the hem of her dress and gathered her petticoats, stuffing handfuls of cash into her underwear along with a packet of opium. Then she climbed another tall set of smoke-filled stairs, sliding back the bolt and opening the heavy door. She savored a rush of semi-fresh air.

Inside the chamber she found another doorman, his face swollen, mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. There was another, a middle-aged man, finely dressed—

a Caucasian, with bluish skin, probably from comet pills, the preferred drug of the rich and powerful, slumped in a chair. She recognized him as one of the club and casino owners, by the familiar cleft in his chin that was now filled with a rivulet of blood from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the forehead.

Most had ignored the prudent warnings of the Royal Hydrographic Office. They celebrated with comet parties, she thought. Science to the rich was like the

I Ching to the poor—only believed when favorable. Meanwhile others surrendered to their fears.

When Dorothy finally reached the alleyway entrance, the door was open, jammed with fallen bodies. Half-naked men in silken robes and women in skin-tight cheongsam dresses made of brushed silver lamé, patinaed in jade, were clumped together and those who’d escaped to the alley didn’t travel far. Dorothy stepped over their swollen bodies scattered like leaves, arms and legs akimbo. She sniffed the cool breeze, which smelled like almonds, chloroform, and seaweed, then covered her nose and mouth with a scarf.

When she stumbled out onto South Jackson, the street was a frieze of cadaverous statuary. More men, women, and children dead on the stoops of collapsed apartment buildings, seafood restaurants, and the headquarters of the Chong Wa Benevolent Association. Others perished at the wheel of their motorcars and roadsters, steam turbines still turned, spitting jets of water vapor into the air. An electric trolley had jumped the track, crushed a jinricksha, and careened though a storefront and into the Manila Dance Hall. The passengers slumped out of their seats; others lay strewn among the broken glass and smoking rubble. Dorothy noticed a team of draft horses, still in harness, pitched on their sides. Pools of froth leaked from their nostrils. The half-dozen cloned beasts had fallen in the same direction, their markings and brands lined up perfectly, their legs jutting out as orderly as a book of matches. Scores of lifeless gulls and carrier pigeons were sprinkled among the ruin as well and feathers slowly rained like confetti. Dorothy stared at the red paper messages still tied to the legs of the many pigeons. She didn’t have to read them to know they were farewells and goodbyes, frenzied words hastily sent from the dying to their loved ones, who in all likelihood, where dead as well.

As she walked, Dorothy heard the sounds of buildings settling, fires raging, and the hissing of gaslights that had been shattered, their flames extinguished, and the babbling of an old Japanese man. She found the gent with light bluish skin as he leaned against a leaking fire hydrant. His head was bleeding and he was only wearing one shoe.

“We’re alive, child. Yokatta mada Ikiteru! We’re alive! The silver saved us.”