Sometimes, me and my buddies get on our bikes and ride out to the old office park. Something about all those huge, abandoned buildings really stirs the imagination. Even though all the copper was stolen long before we were even born, it feels like it's just one light switch away from all coming back to life again.
My favourite is the old banking ziggurat. Nobody knows why they designed it so weird and lumpen, and all the glass that used to make up the top couple of floors is long gone, but Zenethor found a little scale model of the place up in the attic storage. They showed it to us. We had never seen anything like it before. It used to be so beautiful. I especially liked the tall pointy green things around the base of it, and the big boxy things that people were inside, all laid out in the big grey field in front. The elders called them "cars."
We decided then that this relic of the old world had to be protected. It was a piece of another life. Couldn't just leave the model around, for the raiders to get. To smash. Even though there's obviously no food up there, they might try to drink some of the rainwater puddles through the shattered glass and come across it. Took us the better part of two days to carry it back down the stairs, pausing every time we thought we heard an approaching BMX gang.
Back home, the elders surrounded it with awe. They were just children themselves when the great machine stopped. Even so, they knew what all the things were. Excited chatter of "heat exchangers," and "office chairs." One little plastic person was wearing a millimeters-tall green jumper. It reminded Elder Moira of her mother, and she began to cry.
