Apocalypse for Beginners Read Online Free PDF

invention of spray paint to vandalize public spaces. Hope got up and started wandering around the basement while she rummaged in the bag of pretzels. She paused to look at the picture of my aunt Ida and the cement trucks, and then planted herself in front of my sci-fi novels.
    “Have you read all of them?”
    I nodded. She wiped her hands on her jeans, pulled out an Isaac Asimov title and leafed through it.
    “Where do you buy them?”
    “At Youri’s. It’s a bookstore on Lafontaine Street.”
    She examined the bookshelves from top to bottom until she was kneeling in front of the archaeology section at floor level. Predictably, the contrast made her smile. For Hope, as for most of my peers, it was difficult to recognize the natural connection between science fiction and archaeology.
    The report on Pompeii was finishing and Hope immediately insisted on watching the news. I switched channels just in time to catch veteran anchorman Bernard Derome announcing the top stories. Keywords: devastating, typhoon, Thailand.
    Gay was the most powerful typhoon to hit the Malaysian peninsula in decades. There were winds approaching 200 kilometres an hour, and we watched a little house get blown out to sea like a cardboard box. It was enough to send shivers up your spine. Would our bungalow have fared any better?
    “Interesting question,” Hope murmured.
    She looked around the basement and stated that, when you thought about it, the North American bungalow shared certain characteristics with a bunker. It was one of theonly modern dwellings where fifty per cent of the living space was located
below
ground level.
    “Previously, houses had cellars, crypts, underground rooms, crawl spaces or secret vaults for storing Kalashnikovs. But the basement of a North American bungalow is different. It’s insulated, heated, furnished, equipped with beds, freezers, cold-storage rooms, a television, a telephone and board games.”
    “Not to mention the angora rug!”
    “Not to mention the angora rug … In other words, it’s perfectly livable for extended periods.”
    As she spoke, Hope fished out a stray pretzel from between two sofa cushions.
    “The modern basement appeared during the Cold War. It’s the product of a civilization obsessed with its future. But when you think about it, you have to go back to the Stone Age to find so many
Homo sapiens
living underground.”
    She tossed the pretzel into the air. It described a perfect parabola before landing between her teeth. Crunch.
    “In conclusion, modernity is a fairly relative concept.”
    Hope—wow.
    She fell asleep during the weather report, head thrown back, muttering incomprehensibly. I turned down the TV, spread a blanket over her legs and watched her sleep for a moment.
    The human brain is said to consume one-fifth of the energy produced by the body, but Hope’s brain clearly burned up much more. She was breathing quietly. I shut my eyes and imagined her cortex silently splitting pellets of uranium-235.

12. TERMITES
    We caught the last rays of the autumn sun as we sat shivering in the bleachers of the municipal stadium. We were already wearing tuques and coats as protection against the icy wind rising from the river. With such cold weather in early November, the threat of a new ice age could not be shrugged off. I had rifled through my brother’s dresser and dug up an old down parka that was just slightly too big. Bundled up in the bulky red jacket, Hope looked like a little girl, but she didn’t seem to mind.
    For weeks she had been demanding a General History of the Bauermann Family—including both fact and lore—so with chattering teeth I was now about to indulge her curiosity.
    My forebears left the Netherlands in the middle of the nineteenth century and settled in New Jersey, where they worked as masons, becoming gradually more specialized in cement and concrete. Their success was such that onthe eve of the Second World War they ran one of the region’s largest cement