Birds circled overhead. I told my grandson they were foraging for insects. I knew better, though, and it was only a matter of time before he knew it, too: Birds aren’t real.

They once were, ages ago. A virus had spread in the populations that had wiped them out by millions, and the government had "euthanized" the rest to prevent the virus mutating into the human variant. Not a lot of people knew this latter part and thought the bird populations had recovered. What actually happened was that they had been replaced over time. Well-masked robotics served as placebos for humans who had certain expectations of seeing them as part of nature. Most humans did not question anymore; they were entertained by ideas as everything being “just because” and “as such” followed by professional-sounding language that, if they simply thought more critically, would fall apart under the weight of its own nonsense, faulty logic, and omissions of facts. Most did not look any further, listen any deeply, or think beyond the superficial, however. A sort-of invisible force field stood in the way of this true work, and people preferred placation, with staying as worry-free as possible as the goal. Some mastered the professional-sounding language and took great pride and power in using it on their fellow constituents; the admiration of others was outweighed only by their own egos.

Presently, I turned my attention back to our walk around the abandoned baseball field. I had played softball here as a child, with my own grandfather cheering me from the bleachers on the opposite side of the field. Was I supposed to call those the "good ol' days"? Some were, like days with softball games, and some weren’t. The bleachers' metal framework was busted now at a forty-five degree angle on one side. I took in this view, sitting carefully on the weather-worn wood bench behind the chain-link backstop.

Maybe this was the day, and I caught myself mumbling as much. "Eggs." Maybe that was a good place to start. He needed to know before he heard it on the street, or worse, from the government. I stared hard at the broken side of the bleachers across the way.

"Jimmy, have you ever thought much about the price of eggs?"

Either my grandson didn’t hear me or thought I was doddering in thought again, because with the matter-of-factness of a nine-year-old drawing conclusions, he said, "This place feels like we’re the only people left on Earth."

"Why they’re so very, very cheap?" I tried again. Jimmy made a cheep-cheeping noise, which I took as an opening, but he went on.

"It's like we’re in some safety bubble out here, all by ourselves. My teacher at school says we’ve never been safer since, um, the whole Bye Buy-Out World Deal, so really, for reals, the safety bubble is huge!"

He was mostly wrong, of course, but trying to find the in-road again to the truth was closing quickly as I sorted through whether he was mature enough to handle bubbles being burst. The swarm of birds screeched and moved as a single entity far above our heads, twisting and turning together in erratic patterns. I kept my voice low. "None of us have been alone since I was your age."

Jimmy glanced at me, incomprehension registering over his features. My window with him was nearing its close. He just smiled at me, in a fashion of "sweet grandson thinking his grandpa missed a beat," and changed the subject.

“How tall you reckon this old fence is, Grandpa? Twenty feet?"

My gaze shifted upward, and just then, a blackbird–not a crow, but similar and smaller–flew to perch on the fenceline. Did Jimmy notice that the bird, in its landing, approached backwards as a person would sit on a sofa? From the intent look on his face regarding the fence, it seemed that he missed the bird's behavior altogether. I, however, did not. I stood up and kept my own expression neutral and amiable. Amiable or amicable? Ha, don't they mean just about the same now. The blackbird cocked its head toward us.

"Oh, probably two of me and one of you," I answered, using silly math reasoning. The bird's metallic eye glinted in the sunlight as the head tilted from us to its flock. "Standing on each other’s shoulders."

Jimmy liked my answer. "Let’s keep walking, Grandpa."