"zxkzxkzxkzxkxz discovered a way xkhz decimate pollution by binding zdkxzhkzk acid neutralization can kzhzkhkzx solve the world's probl- zdkzdjzkdjzhdzkhzzhdhzptttt"
Tadi unplugged the radio and held his head. The government had approved it. One more week to enjoy the world as it was. He cinched his gas mask and stiffly walked through the pneumatically sealed door to the outside. He did everything stiffly now, since like everyone else his joints had hardened and lived with elbows and knees eternally bent akimbo. It was nothing compared to the super-asthma in the murky air, yellowed like ancient newspaper after the last War when the Power had inundated the planet with killing gas and plutonium.
Something stirred on the horizon. Tadi instinctively turned his head in hopes of catching a glimpse of one of the dragonflies that in his childhood thronged the pond, now dry and crusted. It was just another roach feeding on a decayed gosling.
The sunsets were beautiful, though. He watched the sun sink until his eyes burned and left the world a little darker than it had been before. Tadi knew he could only bear a few dozen more before the world turned black completely. At least he had already finished university, the only place books were still used. His heart pattered with joy at seeing such glory.
He shuffled back inside, casting a final hopeful glance to the inky heavens. He remembered there used to be light peppered across the sky. He recalled it being beautiful, and his father used to point out shapes to him. What were they called? Consolations?
Tadi’s father had died when he was caught outside in a snowfall. The poison had eaten through seventy-five percent of his skin before he managed to crawl into a shelter, and he was gone an hour later, just a heap of maw and bile at a bus stop.
All that was going to change, it seemed. All that was familiar and comfortable for Tadi was about to be destroyed, or so they claimed. Kids would play outside again. Adults would return to sin, secure that the world was safe again. Tadi would be left alone. Tadi fingered his gas mask. It was another night as quiet as outer space. The only sound was that of his heart beating. One, two, three, four, counting down, running out. It was easy to tighten, easy to loosen. So easy.
The next morning the landlord rapped twice on the door. There was no answer; there never was.
As he moved on to the next room he had no way of knowing that behind the door lay a heart in a pool of gray flesh, still counting the seconds until the deployment of the Salvation. The landlord never found it until the day it stopped and the air, clean enough to breathe, revealed the stench of the world's errors.