Naked, he went to the window. The air was still. The mountains continued to burn. The slanted light of dawn played through the leaves of the elm and collapsed through the window in golds.

“At least,” he said, “there is day.”

The hummingbird feeder dangled from the elm. Below the feeder a garden of red penstemon, bee balm, day lilies, and lupines sprawled to the fence. There were no birds.

“Where are the bird people?” he asked.

He gathered his sleeping bag from the floor, shook himself of the night, and poured water from the kettle through the coffee and the chunk of T-shirt he used as a filter. He opened a can of beans. He fried the last egg and fed the chickens with the end of the scraps. He watered the garden against the heat of the day and sat in his chair, waiting.

In the evening he curled into his sleeping bag. He watched the atmosphere scatter the blues and violets. Reds and oranges fell in contours through the blinds, and onto the floor. The day unwound itself.

 “I am the reason the birds are missing,” she’d said. “We owe the earth an apology.” The garden. The trees. The birds. Re-wilding their square of the planet was a way to make amends. “What kind of ancestors do we want to be?” Along the edge of their property, they planted flowers to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. They planted junipers, piñon, elderberry, and currants.

She blasted music over the speakers when she cooked. She made pictures of her food and scattered them across social media. Then she couldn’t breathe. Then her arms didn’t work. Then she couldn’t walk. The hospitals were full.

“Fall in love again,” she’d told him.

“I only love you.”

“Make sure she feeds the birds.”

“What do you want?”

“Live to be an old man.”

Naked, he went to the window. The light crashed through in warmth that burrowed into his bones. The air was still. The mountains continued to burn. There were no hummingbirds. Thinking of his despair only despaired him further. 

“What kind of ancestor do I want to be?” he said.

Next to the road, a pack of loud shirtless children played King of the Hill. The sun was oppressive. The children battled for control of a pyramid of solar panels overgrown with bindweed. The vine flowered in white. Except for the bits of trash caught up in the bindweed, the pile appeared to be a hill of snow. The children waved. He returned the wave, pulled his hat low, and smiled.

“It’s been too long,” he said.

The road had deteriorated to the point where the town had covered the asphalt in gravel. Tall, purple-headed thistle moved in, squeezing the road to a maze of footpaths. His road ran up against a larger street that still saw the occasional car. It was strewn with tiny plastic liquor bottles and virus masks. Most of the houses were abandoned, their shingles gone, windows busted. Gashes along the interior walls marked where the copper had been ripped out. Squatters moved in. The trees had been cut or starved of water. Lawns melted to sage. Recliners and door-less refrigerators littered the yards. A Tesla sat on blocks. They were big houses, mostly faux-adobe built by urbanites escaping the virus. He was the last original homeowner in the neighborhood.

He looked at the mountains. For a moment, the smoke lifted, streaming east on a sucking jet stream.

At the corner, a murder of crows picked at a dumpster. They were fat with beaks the size of fists. One of the crows ripped into a box. A pizza spilled onto the ground. Another tossed out a latex glove. Magpies bounced among the sage.

“Why not?” he said to the corvids. “Food doesn’t come easy these days. Everyone has to eat.”

The magpies ignored him. The crows spoke in hoarse and grating voices. They hooted and rattled and clicked. He spoke back to the bird people in their own sounds. They looked at him, confused.

“I don’t know the right words,” he told them. “I haven’t learned your language.”

He pulled his notebook from his pocket and wrote Daily Count on the first sheet of paper. Then he noted the corvids. He saw a solitary house finch and noted that too. He saw seven vultures circling in an updraft. He saw one female goldfinch. “Crows. Magpies. Vultures. Finches.” He looked down. “Where is everybody else?”

At the Walmart Mini he masked up and stood in line. Most of the shelves were empty. He bought frozen meat, a bag of pasta, and carrots and onions. He paid with his ration card and placed the food in his backpack.

“Did you notice? There aren’t so many birds around,” he said to a man outside the store.

The man shrugged. “Never were.”

He crossed the main road. Someone on a bicycle called his name and waved. The rider rounded the corner, disappearing behind a screen of weeds. Ahead, where the sidewalk decayed into the road, he saw a lump. He lifted the tiny body. The metallic green feathers were singed. The tail had burned away. The hummingbird was thin. He looked at the burning mountains.

He lowered the blinds against the devil’s eye of the sun. The smoke from the fires blew over town, reddening the sky. He lifted the body of the hummingbird from the freezer and set it on the counter. It wasn’t the fire, he thought. It had starved.

“And there is all this food here in my garden,” he considered. He returned the bird to the freezer.

Later, he stood outside their bedroom. He hadn’t opened the door in years. He wanted the notebooks but he didn’t know if it was worth it seeing where she’d slept. He didn’t know if it was worth it, seeing her clothes. Her smell was in there. Yet, he was sure there used to be many birds in this town. He knew because he had counted them. But he wanted to be certain. Our minds adjust to the new and then we think it’s normal, even if it’s anything but. A world without birds was anything but normal, he thought.

He returned to the kitchen, took the bird from the freezer and opened the door to his son’s room. Dust exploded into the strips of light stretching through the blinds. The workbench held stacks of silent smart phones, pads with cracked screens, and several 3D printers. There were boxes of computer parts. The dishwasher-sized bio-organic printer sat, bolted to the wall. A desk lamp and magnifier sat to the left. A soldering iron to the right.

Before he’d left, his son had arranged his screwdrivers, wire cutters, wire strippers, pliers, glue guns, and tweezers by type and size into scrubbed drawers and washed yogurt containers. There were miniature solar cells, GPS units, motors, and gears. A tub of keratin powder sat in the corner. The Japanese had a word for boys like him. Otaku. He’d settled on robotics. This surprised his father, a biologist, a bird-watcher. It surprised his mother, a poet. He looked to the pile of electronics, thinking of all the ways in which we create our own dystopias. He looked to the bird.

“What kind of ancestor do I want to be?”

He returned the bird to the freezer, gathered several cloths and a bucket of water. He opened the blinds and passed the afternoon cleaning.

In the evening, he boiled pasta. He mixed in a can of green beans and slices of onion. He lifted a bottle of Reposado from the shelf. He rinsed the dust and poured a shot. He drank, and poured another. He sat and opened the computer. It took nearly ten minutes to connect. Once online, he downed the Reposado and made the call.

“Dad?”

“Hey,” he said.

“Dad? It’s you?” His son stared into the screen.

“Of course.”

“Bong!” His son shouted.

A woman appeared on screen, her face round and framed in a neat haircut, her smile infectious.

“Dad?” Bong called to her father-in-law. “Is that really you?” They had never met in person.

Tears tickled his cheeks and ran into the corners of his mouth.

“Dad. How are you?”

He nodded and wiped his eyes.

“You’re not infected, are you?”

He shook his head no.

“Dad. Will you come here? It will take a while. Paperwork. They don’t let many Americans in. But we’ve got money now. We can do it. You’ll live with us. The kids want it too.”

“How are they?” he managed.

“So good. At school now. They’ll be home soon. Soccer first.”

The apocalypse, he realized, doesn’t spread evenly.

“Dad? Will you come?”

He shook his head no.

“Dad,” said Bong, “Come to Korea. Life is good here.”

Again, he shook his head.

“Mom’s gone,” said his son. There’s nothing for you there. We can get you out.”

Bong smiled. “Come,” she said.

Again, he shook his head no. In order to save something, something must be sacrificed. “Listen. I need you to help me fix something.”

His son sat back. The smile fell from his face. “Of course, Dad. Anything.”

Naked, he went to the window. A Western scrub jay sat on the fence.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Shreep,” said the jay. 

He gathered his sleeping bag from the floor, shook himself of the night, and poured water from the kettle through the coffee and the chunk of T-shirt he used as a filter. He noted the jay then reviewed the list his son had sent. He didn’t have everything he would need.

The nights grew chilly, the days hot and cloudless. The mountains burned. August passed without hummingbirds at the scarlet sage, the red columbines, or the penstemons. He took his pack and walked toward the center. Along the way, he counted birds and listed them.

“The world has cheapened,” he said.

He passed boarded-up storefronts. In one of them he used to get his hair cut. In another he’d buy burritos. One had been a café. Where the sidewalk ended, he crossed the road and walked past a complex of square, two-story apartments. People crowded the parking lot, sucking at vape pipes and beer. They listened to music. Someone yelled. A baby cried. Laundry hung in rows along the balconies. None of the cars worked. The trees had all been chopped down.

The gate to the high school football field had been removed, the bleachers gone. Several trucks were parked on the field. People carrying plastic sacks trickled in and out. Used virus masks mobbed a fourwing saltbush. Next to the gate, a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a thin floral mask sat on a bucket, reading. He bent to look at the cover of the book. It was a novel about American climate refugees.

 She turned the book outward for a better view.

“Is this now?” he said, pointing at the book.

“This ain’t dystopia. It’s just today.” She pointed a thumb at the field. “They’re trying to get a market running. But things are broken. Gas is expensive. Nobody wants to walk here for a few squash. They should have built more sidewalks.”

The recycle store had taken over an abandoned grocery. Outside, pickers prowled rows of cars. They paid a fee to the store to scrounge for parts. A girl in hospital scrubs whisked by on a skateboard. A line of customers, all in masks, some holding umbrellas against the sun, curled around the building, past the church to the pizzeria. A large man carrying three pies hustled from the restaurant and sped away on an ATV.

Inside, he gathered the filaments—carbon, PVA, PTEG—his son had suggested. He scoured the aisles for motors, gears, bio-vats, and wires. From the chem section he purchased a dish of pigment-producing melanosomes.

“How do you have things like this?” he asked the girl who ran his card. He could only see her eyes above the mask. She raised her eyebrows, tilted her head, then returned the card with a flick of the wrist.

At the Walmart Mini he used his ration card to purchase dry beans, chicos, and green chile powder. He bought a razor and a bar of soap. He stuffed it all into his pack and stood in the heat. A sagging pickup full of cut logs chugged by, scraping the pavement. Then he returned for an ice cream.

Naked, he went to the window. The air was still. The mountains burned. The chill of the nights knocked the flames, the fire smoldered through the forests. He pulled his pants from the floor and over his legs. The dawn light played through the coppery leaves of the elm. A single finch poked at the feeder. A boy waved from across the road. He returned the wave.

He sat in his son’s room. He drank coffee and re-watched the video instructions his son had posted. He heated the printers. The bio-organic printer groaned. He began with the feathers. He filled the printers with keratin and filament he’d grown from the melanosomes. He loaded the design into the printers with a thin SD card.

As the printers worked, the stench of the filaments drove him from the room. He returned and opened the window. It was stiff but he managed to push it wide. The fan cleared some of the stink but it never completely went away.

While the machines produced the feathers, he set to work on the body. Using the fat Prusa printer, he created the frame. Over weeks he pulled apart the smart phones, tablets, and screens, raiding them to create high-speed servomechs, motors, gears, and, eventually, a brain.

“The cerebral cortex of a bird is organized like the human cortex,” his son said. “Birds remember, make tools, learn languages, have a concept of self. But a brain is heavy. We can’t have a heavy brain.”

In the kitchen, he took a knife, ran it over the sharpener and sliced into his arm. He squeezed from his bicep to his wrist. The blood drained into steel bowls. He felt weak. He washed in the sink, taped the wound, and wrapped his arm in a towel. He added the separating solutions to the bowls. The ink took nearly a week to grow. He poured it into the bio-organic printer and added collagen for scaffolding. 

The musk thistle dried and curled. The garden yellowed then lay to dream. Brisk slices of wind lifted the leaves from the elms and scattered them along the road. The children threw a football into the air from atop the solar panels, then chased it down among the fragmented cars and melting homes.

“Dad. Each wing has to be driven by its own unique motor. That way we can program each individually.”

He built a device to serve as the pectoral muscles.

“The flapping wings create the thrust you need. That’s how it moves forward and generates lift.”

He integrated tiny, flexible ink-printed solar cells into the wings and attached each of the feather barbules.

Snow wasn’t something that happened anymore. Winter came on cold, regardless. He bundled into long underwear, a wool sweater, and a hat. He indulged a deep slug of the Reposado and passed the nights in his sleeping bag. Sometimes, he read. When he could connect, he watched a movie on his device.

The little bird on his workbench was metallic with a sea-green helmet, buffy sides, and spots along its throat. Its head was big relative to the body, the tail longer than that of most hummingbirds.

“Can you see it?” he held the bird.

“It’s beautiful,” Bong gasped. “Mythical.”

He smiled.

“It’s a tool, Bong,” his son said.

Bong slapped him. “No,” she laughed. “This is more. What will you do with it, Dad?” 

How we regard the land, how we regard the waters, how we regard the creatures of the world, creates us. Sometimes those values become actions and sometimes those actions ripple into the future like rings from a leaf collapsing on the still surface of a lake.

“I’m going to fix something, Bong,” he said.

“You can’t play God,” his son said.

“Someone has to.”

His son rolled his eyes and sighed. “Have you messed with the GPS yet?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good. Then we can connect the GPS with the eyes and the nervous system.”

“It looks alive,” said Bong.

“It is,” he said.

“Not really,” said his son.

“Can it know you?” asked Bong.

His son laughed and kissed her.

He stroked the feathers. “I think it can, Bong. It will.”

One morning when he woke, he couldn’t feel his toes. His breath condensed in the cold. “No heat? What’s next?” He gathered his sleeping bag from the floor, shook himself of the night, and poured water from the kettle through the coffee and the chunk of T-shirt he used as a filter. “This place is a mess.” He blew clouds into the air. A shiver unwound from his bones. He put on his coat, gloves, and boots. He went to the workshop, gathered up the bird, wrapped it in a clean plastic bag, and brought it to the kitchen. He set it on the counter, made another coffee, then held the bird into the threads of morning light.

The wings were delicate looking, but in fact they were strong. The chest muscles were solid but flexible. The solar panels blended effortlessly with the feathers. He could barely believe he had done the green spots along the throat so well. He activated the bird. The body heated. The LIDAR eyes opened and scanned the room.

“Hello,” he said.

The hummingbird righted itself in his palm. It turned its head, chirped, and stared into his eyes.

“Can you know me?”

The creature scanned his face.

“Can you know you?” he asked. “A hummingbird lives as a hummingbird. But it doesn’t know it is a hummingbird. Can you know what you are?” He paced the kitchen. “Mythical?” he said. “A tool?” He turned the bird off.

When it was dark, he pulled a pot from the cupboard and filled it with water. He set the pot on the stove, dropped a washcloth in, and waited for it to boil. He took his shot of Reposado and stripped naked. He pulled the washcloth from the steaming pot with a pair of tongs. He wrung out the cloth, rubbed in the soap, and bathed, standing in the kitchen.

He sat in the chair by the window. He wore his coat, hat, and gloves. A male house finch plucked seeds from the feeder. It tossed the millet and corn to the ground. Juncos bounced about, picking up the scraps. He thought about all the ways we categorize other beings: trees, shrubs, grasses, rhizomes, algae . . . but particularly animals. The way we consider an animal defines its meaning: a nothing we barely see, a nuisance, a pet, a pollinator, a spirit, a totem, a people. He counted the finches and juncos and listed them in his notepad. He thought of them as a nation.

In the afternoon, he opened the computer. While he waited for connection, he heated beans and corn. He’d lost weight over the winter. He considered eating the chickens. Then he activated his creation. She pressed into his hands and warmed. She stood, finding purchase gripping the folds of skin in his palm. She stared into his eyes. She recognized his face. He recognized her. 

“Is it ready, Dad?” his son asked.

He had flown the bird up and down the road. The children had mobbed him. “Never seen something like that,” said one of the boys.

“It’s a bird,” he said.

“A bird?” one of the boys asked.

“A bird.”

“Can I touch it?”

“Look with your eyes, not your hands,” he told them, thinking how bird lovers once shot birds from the sky to see them.

“Where are the birds?” asked the boy. “Grandpa said there used to be lots of birds.”

“Millions.”

“And now?”

“Well,” he said, “I am the reason the birds are missing. We. We are the reason.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “Let’s see what she can do.”

The female broad-tailed hummingbird could learn. She could remember. He presented her with new locations, altered food sources, predators. The autonomous dive control worked. “Back flips, rolls, controlled glides,” he told his son. “I put her through the works.” He smiled.

“Tight turns?”

“She drew the perfect wheel across the air. She landed in the elm with the finches and sparrows. The bird people didn’t mind.”

“Dad, don’t anthropomorphize.”

“Don’t deny consciousness.”

His son shrugged. “I sent the GPS coordinates. We’ll stick with the Chinese and Indian satellites. More reliable.”

“Sounds right.”

Sunset was crisp. The air nailed to his bones. He set her on a branch in the elm. She clung with her printed feet and tilted her head, assessing him. He could see himself in those eyes.

In the morning, she was gone.

He went to the window. The sun had crept far enough north to rim the branches of the elms. Hoarfrost blazed white. An arrow of crocus tipped the soil in the garden. Finches and sparrows winged about the feeders. He counted only seven.

He gathered his sleeping bag from the floor, shook himself of the night, and poured water from the kettle through the coffee and the chunk of T-shirt he used as a filter. He killed all the chickens. He scalded and plucked, removed the feet and guts, and rinsed them with a hose. He packaged them into the freezer. Later, on the road, the wind scraped his face. He pulled a wagon. It rattled over the gravel and broken cement.

Where the sidewalk ended, he crossed and walked past the apartments. People tucked into coats stood in the parking lot sucking at vape pipes. Some of them sprawled out on the broken cars, soaking in the spring sun. A baby cried. A man yelled. A woman hung laundry between two balconies. The wind stood the laundry on end.

At the Walmart Mini he used his ration card to purchase sunflower seeds and thistle. He placed them into the wagon and walked home. He filled the feeders and searched the garden for signs of spring. As he returned to the house, he noticed a lump in the dirt. The hummingbird’s eyes were closed. It was fluffed like cotton. He dropped to his knees. It breathed but was terribly thin. He encased the bird in his palms in case it woke and struggled. He took a towel and rolled it into a nest. He placed the nest and the bird into a cardboard box.

He took the box into the workshop and switched the printers on to heat. He placed the box between the printers and returned to the kitchen to boil water for nectar. He allowed the nectar to cool and returned to the bird. Its feathers had slickened from the heat and its eyes were open.

“Did she send you?” he asked.

The bird people breathed its chest full, closed its eyes, and died.

He turned off the printers, took the body from the box, and set it near the window. A fresh breeze ghosted the cracked glass. The air was fragrant with thaw: chilly with the liminal scent of ice and pine. Then smoke. He looked to the mountains. A rim of flame lit the crest. Spring had arrived.

On a winter’s day he went to the window. Ice had formed on the inside. He wore long johns, thick socks, and a wool hat. He took his ration card and scraped at the ice. Wind bent the elm. The feeders had fallen. Seeds lay scattered in the dirt. There were no birds.

He gathered his sleeping bag from the floor, shook himself of the night, and poured water from the kettle through the coffee and the chunk of T-shirt he used as a filter.

He sat in his chair and dozed. Late in the morning, he woke to a tapping. A hummingbird dressed in pale green clung to the remnants of the window screen. She had a strong metallic tail and probing eyes.

“Hello,” he said.

She tapped again at the window.

“Where are the bird people?”

She tapped again.