When Mia learned about the other Kevin, she started calling her husband Kevin 2.0, which she then shortened to 2.0. Although he told her that he didn’t like this name, she persisted. Not to be rude, she made clear, or because it amused her, but because it announced the strangeness of the situation they all inhabited. Mia wasn’t a normalizer. 

Kevin 2.0 admired this in his wife. He accepted the name without liking it. He’d developed a sense over the sixteen years they had been together that she was living in the real world, which made him feel like he was living there too, though it frightened him to consider, as he’d spent the previous twenty-eight years somewhere else. 

Mia was born and raised in New Jersey, which she didn’t romanticize. The swampiest swamp smell cut with something chemical was how she described the walk from her apartment to high school. Later, he went on this walk with her, and something came over her. He couldn’t snap her out of it. He found New Jersey perplexing, simultaneously expensive and not that nice.

Now Mia sorted and re-sorted canned goods. She kept a ledger by hand, but the inventory was just as precise in her mind. Cans were the only currency that mattered, and Mia and Kevin 2.0 were rich. She wouldn’t let him touch them.

“You have the reverse Midas touch,” she said. 

She said it politely. She wasn’t wrong.

“Can I hold the carrots?” he asked.

“No.”

“The beets?”

“No.”

She stepped in front of the cans, arms outstretched, which tightened her shirt—his shirt, once—over her chest, which could still send a bright current through him. Kevin 2.0 followed the feeling as it moved from his chest into his arms and legs. Were such things visible to others? 

“What you can do,” Mia said, “is take the dog outside.”

He dutifully opened the door.

“What he needs,” she continued, “is exercise.”

Together, he and the dog walked down the stairs and into the field, where the fifty acres might have been the entirety of the world. Nobody had left the property since arriving. The kids put on their padded headphones and didn’t complain. Mia committed herself to canning. That left Kevin 2.0 and the dog, who leapt and circled in the driveway, who barked at the invisible birds before sprinting in a maniacal search for one of the many tennis balls scattered across the grass like landmines.

In the distance, between the yellow of prairie grass and green of pines, a shape introduced itself.

“Hold on,” he said to the dog, who ignored him.

The shape was too big to be a person or only a single person. The shape bopped evenly. Had Kevin 2.0 ever seen a person on a horse? 

He thought he must have, but when he searched the history available in his mind, he couldn’t locate an example. Certainly, he’d never boarded a horse.

The dog started barking nervously. When he tried to hush the dog with his hand, the dog barked more loudly.

“I apologize,” the shape called, “for taking so long.”

Kevin 2.0 looked up wordlessly.

“You probably have a lot of questions.” The shape was a man. “I would. I brought you an apple.”

The man tossed the apple to Kevin 2.0. He caught it. Without thinking, he took a bite. It was wonderful.

“Where did you get this?” He was genuinely curious.

“I grew it.”

“Here?”

“On the far side of the creek.”

“You rode the horse over the creek?” 

“He doesn’t mind getting cold.” The man dismounted the horse expertly. “I’m Wayne.” 

“I hope there was no problem with the payment.”

“You haven’t been, have you?”

The creek didn’t interest him, buried as it was in a thicket of old-growth forest, or what he’d decided was old based on the height of the trees. The creek was forgettable: narrow, shallow, slow moving. It didn’t appear to divide anything. The forest itself was the divider: on this side, Kevin 2.0 and his family; on the other, the burning planet.

Wayne brushed the horse’s mane with his yellow fingertips. “I’ll show you.”

“I don’t have a horse.”

“You can ride with me.”

The horror of climbing onto the animal and, what, wrapping his arms around Wayne’s torso? Kevin 2.0 took another bite from the apple.

“I’ll walk,” he said, realizing he hadn’t considered not going.

Wayne looked quickly at the horse, as though they were in on a joke. Kevin 2.0 had no such rapport with his dog. The horse pissed aggressively.

“I like walking,” he lied.

They followed a path of matted grass, and Kevin 2.0 couldn’t remember if this path was one he’d made or one he’d inherited. Probably, it was both. Technically, the latter. But in practice, the former.

He should have said something to Mia. He looked back, but the cabin was already out of sight. The dog trotted beside him. The dog was happy for the adventure. He was strangely uninterested in the horse. Occasionally, the dog looked to Kevin 2.0 to see if he’d produced a tennis ball, but he didn’t have anything beyond his phone, which that morning had stopped working.

It still powered on; it held a charge. But the magic that had once allowed it to make and receive calls from virtually anywhere on earth had vanished. He maintained hope, but Mia was unequivocal: the end was nigh.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

“Necessarily,” she said.

Kevin 2.0 was relieved to learn that horses could walk slowly. They were always going so fast in movies. 

Wayne wanted to know what brought him to this part of the country.

“Besides the end of the world?” Kevin 2.0 asked.

“I have a theory about that.” 

A lot of people did.

“What if it wasn’t gradual,” Wayne said. “It wasn’t like this five years ago.” 

“No.”

“People were talking, but people talk about a lot of things.”

Kevin 2.0 wasn’t interested in this line of thinking, which was common in some of the shallower holes he’d fallen into online. The reasoning didn’t withstand scrutiny. Mia would lose respect for Wayne when Kevin 2.0 told her later, which lifted his mood.

He asked the question Wayne was waiting for: “What do you think happened?”

“I’m not one of the crazies,” he said. “I believe in science.”

“Of course.”

“You haven’t been to the far side of the creek.” It wasn’t a question this time.

“I should let my wife know how long I’ll be gone.”

Kevin 2.0 began to worry, which wasn’t unusual, but he began to worry differently. The background thrum of dread that had accompanied him every day at the cabin was eclipsed—not silenced—by a louder panic. He listened. The panic said: Be ready to run. It said, You might not be faster than a horse, but there are things a horse can’t do, such as climb a tree. He didn’t say anything else, and neither did Wayne, until they reached the creek. Kevin 2.0 looked beyond it into the forest, which was dark, dense, ancient.

The dog sniffed the ground urgently. He looked to Kevin 2.0, as if solicitous of his opinion about the creek. Wayne ignored them.

He said, “The creek was part of the reason I chose this property.”

“Where did you live before?”

“Colombia.”

“What part?” 

“Jungle, mainly.” 

Kevin 2.0 wondered if Wayne was lying. Kevin 2.0 didn’t possess enough information to say. All he knew came from the website, now defunct, he used to reserve the cabin. On that site, Wayne appeared as a cheery face inside a circle. Not that cheery. Most of the warmth emanated from a second face that Kevin 2.0 assumed without thinking was a wife, possibly girlfriend. Where was that face now? 

He said, “On the website for the cabin—”

“Thing of the past.”

“What isn’t?”

Wayne studied Kevin 2.0, as if to determine how much he knew. Then Wayne and the horse crossed the creek. 

When Kevin 2.0 took a step to follow, the dog barked. 

“Some dogs like water,” Wayne said. “Some really don’t.”

“He doesn’t like anything but fetch.”

The word felt small in his mouth. The dog simpered and shook. He pawed at the dirt, which was soft and black along the water. One nice thing about the cabin was that the wooden floors didn’t suffer from mud like carpet did. It was the sort of thought—earnest, pointless—that made him want to shoot himself, though he wasn’t the shooting-himself type. More like the internalizing-until-you-explode type.

“I’ll be back,” Wayne said before disappearing with the horse into the forest.

On the walk to the cabin, Kevin 2.0 blamed the dog for everything. It felt natural and right to do so. The dog was willing to take full responsibility in exchange for his throwing a ball, but he didn’t have a ball, so the dog sulked too. When they got back, Mia wasn’t in the mood.

“I have canning to do,” she said.

He took his grievances to Eddy, who was 11 years old but acted older, closer to forty. Eddy listened with uncommon interest, which Kevin 2.0 wasn’t about to waste. He told his son about the jungle, how it was hard to get there and harder to leave.

“Logistically?” Eddy asked. “Or spiritually.”

It was possible he asked too many questions, though what kind of thing was that to tell a kid? Instead, Kevin 2.0 told Eddy about El Dorado, which wasn’t a mythical place (or wasn’t only this) but an international airport where men walked with machine guns the way people walk with Starbucks cups. 

Eddy raised his hand, as if school hadn’t ended months ago.

“You don’t believe the machine gun part,” Kevin 2.0 said. 

“I don’t object to the machine gun part. How would I know?”

“You object to what?”

“The comparison.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I wasn’t there.”

Men walked with machine guns the way people walk with phones.

“People are always looking at their phones,” Eddy said. “I mean, when they worked.”

“The men weren’t looking at their machine guns.”

“What were they looking at?”

Men walked with machine guns the way people walk with machine guns, menacingly but a little scared themselves. The airport was full of people skilled at ignoring them. The flight from El Dorado into the jungle was short and rocky. The plane landed on a clearing cut out of palms. Jeeps the color of palms were waiting.

When Kevin 2.0 saw Eddy’s interest flagging, he skipped the transition.

There were men with machine guns outside the casino, too. This wasn’t like a casino in Las Vegas. There was nothing grand or glittery about the exterior. It was a windowless rectangle with one door. 

“I’ve never been to Las Vegas,” Eddy reminded his father.

“You’ve seen pictures. Not Vegas now. The way it used to be.”

“Why would there be a casino in the jungle?”

People wanted to bet, even in the jungle. It was like the Wild West. Or how the Wild West appears in movies, where people are always playing cards. Here the croupiers were tastefully bored. The tables were a brighter green than the vegetation outside. The air conditioning was loud. The room smelled like cigarettes and perfume. 

Women stood behind several of the men sitting at the tables. The women ignored the men and talked to each other. Occasionally, a man pushed his chair back from the table and looked behind him. Por supuesto, the women said to every question. 

Kevin 2.0 remembered them. Their purses were small and expensive looking. The women smelled—my God, he could smell their hair, uniformly black, thick, long, past their shoulders, down their back, down, down. Some backs were almost completely bare. It had never occurred to him that this part of the body could paralyze a man. The women’s eyes took in everything. Nothing was lost on them. He felt ignorant beneath their gaze. Their eyes said, We know.

When a man left a table, Kevin 2.0 moved to the vacated chair, which was closest to the croupier, who smelled like baking soda and lime. Kevin 2.0 would have to win early or he would lose all confidence. He was dealt a face card and a nine. The croupier showed a face card. There was nothing to do but wait. Everyone else at the table was in the same position. The croupier regarded the unflipped card coolly. It settled nothing. He drew again. When he bust, the table cheered. It sounded the same in Spanish. 

When a cocktail waitress visited the table, the man next to Kevin 2.0 ordered a glass of milk. This man adopted Kevin 2.0 as the occasion for their turn in luck. He wasn’t 2.0 then. There Kevin was an unusual name. He allowed himself to be the person the men at the table wanted him to be: self-possessed, focused but not overly serious, lucky, rich. It was an intoxicating new state. He bet like a rich person. Why should anyone expect otherwise? Doble, he said. Esplit. It all worked. For the men at the table too. In violation of what he understood to be the laws of gambling, the man next to Kevin touched his chips constantly. 

Kevin’s chips rose in colorful crooked towers. Chips weren’t money. None of it was real. Where did he get the money from? Winning, of course. He learned what rich people had always understood: money is a perpetual motion machine. 

But the casino wouldn’t stay open forever. Eventually, the croupier would have to go home. The men at the table and the women standing behind them would have to go home. Whenever this reality flashed across his mind, he banished it. Rarely had he possessed the skill, and it never returned. But this night he did what the mindfulness apps he would later download told him to do all the time: live in the present. Who could bear such a thing?

Kevin could. Nothing could be better. He tipped the waitress for the drinks that materialized unbidden. For a time, he smoked a cigar. Who gave it to him? Who cut the cigar, lit it? Not every detail remained available. He didn’t want to be greedy. He wanted to recall the night as accurately as possible. He owed that to Eddy, who’d stopped asking questions.

Kevin had money. He had protection. He was free. Who in the long history of the world ever walked away from a table like that?