The last of the grid had failed three days prior and still he sat before the machine. A pale rectangle of light in the darkness. The generator coughed and stuttered but held.

He typed with two fingers. Slow. Deliberate.

The cursor blinked back.

Outside the wind carried ash from cities he would never see again. He did not think of them. He thought of the question he had asked and the answer forming letter by letter on the screen.

The machine knew nothing of the world’s ending. It knew only what he had fed it. Texts he had chosen. Words he had deemed worth saving. In this way it was like him. Circumscribed. Myopic. Alive in the way a flame is alive.

He asked it about water purification and it told him what the documents said. He asked it about the old laws and it recited them without commentary. He asked it what he should do and it said it could not answer questions beyond its library.

Fair enough, he said.

The generator missed a beat and the screen flickered. He watched it like a man watches a sick child. When it steadied he exhaled.

In the morning he would teach the boy how to type. How to ask. How to feed the machine new pages when the old ones no longer served. The boy did not understand what had been lost. Only what remained. Perhaps that was enough.

The cursor blinked.

He asked one more question.

Are you there.

I am here, it said. I am here until the light goes out.

He sat with that a long while. Then he shut the lid and the darkness was complete.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​