Two Inventories
For three months that summer, Esme and her grandfather kept two notebooks.
The first notebook — Esme's — was titled *The Old World, by Theo, told to Esme.*
In it, Esme wrote down, every evening, what her grandfather had told her. Small specific things, mostly, because her grandfather was not a man for big general statements.
*He says: there used to be machines that, if you put your dirty plates in them and pressed a button, would wash them while you slept. He says: the noise of them — a soft humming — was something he misses. He says: he found it, very quietly, comforting that a machine was working in the kitchen at night while the rest of the house slept.*
*He says: there used to be a small device he kept in his pocket that, if he wanted to know the answer to almost any question, would tell him. He says: this was the most powerful thing humans had ever invented. He says: he is, now, fourteen years on, not sure it was a good thing. He says: the device was not, in the end, the problem; the way humans used the device was. He says: his daughter, my mother, was probably the last generation to grow up with the device fully working. After that — the children grew up with phones that were partial, and with networks that were patchy, and without the constant pulse. He says: in some ways, that was a kind of relief. In other ways, it was a sorrow.*
*He says: there were trains that