We all live together now. My two sons and my daughter, my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren, plus my present wife and my two former wives. Yes, we live together in this suburban house outside Austin, Texas.

The living room has become a sleeping area with rubber mats on the floor. My wife and I sleep in one bedroom, the former wives share one bedroom, and our last bedroom is where we store our weapons and ammunition.

We are a modern clan and we are never lonely, but we have forgotten solitude. Our house is surrounded by a seven-foot chain link fence. Sandbags are piled high along the fence on the inside.

We call our house “the fort” sometimes and the “castle” sometimes. We think of ourselves as settlers defending our land.

The elders, me and my wife and the two formers, are in charge of this show and there are few arguments. We are the ones who get money from our retirement plans. The rest are dependent on us. We do have a garden the wife women and great grandchildren maintain, but we still must get much of our food delivered in war wagons from the big HEB supermarket.

Feminists might like our arrangement. It’s three elder women and just me, the older male. I am often outvoted in decisions, but these women are smart and that’s alright.

My two sons and the oldest two male grandkids stand guard and watch the world through small peepholes high up in the sandbags with our rifles aimed in all directions. Have we had to shoot and kill anyone? Yes, sadly. But only four. The dead bodies on the ground stand as a testimony and help prevent further attacks.

We males do the killing and that stains our souls. The women, the main caregivers, well, the children know they are not killers and that matters.

I record this information for the future, for when order is again restored in the country. I want those in the future to know how we lived so they don’t themselves drift into this disorder. I’ve written it all with a pencil on paper and hid it where those of the future can discover it. Only the elders here know how to write script and print.

So many out there roam the streets hungry. We call them the wolves. They lost their jobs when AI became powerful and pervasive. Men, women, and children, thin and desperate, needing to find food are searching day and night. All the households around me look like ours and we settlers help each other out in the defense of our forts. The economy is in bad shape. AI does a lot of the work, but with so many out of jobs no one buys much except food and food is expensive.

The billionaires live in huge remote compounds in the former national parks of this land. They own the government and its employees.

I hear rumors that there are people who roam the land cutting off the power to data centers, but the billionaires seem to get them back up and running quickly. I don’t know if it is true or not. We still have
television, and we can stream lots of shows from the internet. The billionaires have arranged to pay the costs of that.

At least we have that to entertain us when we can find some free time. Luckily, robot AI soldiers work to maintain electrical power and we get an allotment of water and gas every day.

I like the closeness of family we have. I try to look to the positives of this life. We all help and that keeps us going. There’s seriousness even in the younger great grandchildren in the way they play in the
areas where grass remains.