The sound of disconnection was heard, and the station disappeared as it always did when he turned it off to conserve its power.
“That was positive,” Robert said. “He usually never does anything positive. I’m quite surprised.”
“I’m not,” Lois said. “Even he can’t keep up his negativity forever. There’s a piece of gold inside every turd on this planet. You just have to inspect it long enough to find it. That’s what my daddy told me.”
Robert smiled at her.
“We aren’t going to last,” he said. “We are already eating next to nothing.”
“We’ll last, Robert,” Lois said. “We are a tough crew here. That’s why we are still kicking and so many of our friends aren’t. Who knows? Maybe we are the ones who are immune now. Someone out there is. Why not the two of us? The fact we are alive makes it logical that we have developed the means to resist this stuff. Otherwise, we’d already be goners. You and I might be the hope of lots of people.”
“Who is to say?”
“All I can tell you, Robert, is that people don’t survive this long if they don’t have a good chance of developing immunity to it.”
“We’d have to deliberately infect ourselves to prove that. Are you ready to do that?” Robert asked.
“Certainly not. I may be super positive at this moment, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve gone totally nuts!” Lois said.
“I didn’t think so.”
“It’s time for my nap,” Lois said.
“All right. I’ll read a book until you wake up,” Robert told her. He had hundreds of them that he checked out of the library. Which meant that he walked in and took them. However, he filled out a note telling the library the names of the books he was taking and promised he would bring them back after he read them if he was still alive at that time. At least, on account of Robert, they were still circulating their books. The librarians might be long gone, but their work went on. If he lived long enough, he’d return them as promised and stack them right back where they belonged and check out another box load.