Crocodile Eye

C. and I were walking through a museum that might have been Versailles or the Vatican in the year 3000. Baroque galleries. White cubes. Abstract paintings at precise intervals. Screens in the walls adjusted themselves as we passed. We agreed, quietly and with some pride, that we were lucky to live in a society that could build such a place.She went to find a bathroom. I waited near the entrance to a gallery. It was one of those finger-wagging exhibits that tells you exactly what to feel, but she was gone a while so I drifted in.A live satellite feed covered an entire wall, displaying a continent I did not recognize. Along its southern tip, a smear of smoke rose from what had once been cities. The nation above it was pushing downward, pressing these people into the sea. The place had reverted to something older than history.Further in, there was footage of people hunting animals. Hunting each other. A woman in a lab coat stood at a stainless steel table, consulting a page of…