Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

I believe in Beatles.

Waking... waking... awake. I open my eyes to the crack of light invading the darkness of my room. All is quiet. I can't remember what day it is, how old I am, or what my current circumstances are. I'm in one of those odd, freaky moments when all of your memories and experiences that make up your entire being are condensed into one soupy timeless sea: morning.

But what's different about this morning from other mornings, is that this is the morning after the apocalypse. Well, that's not entirely true.

The apocalypse -- World War III -- happened some time ago. I'm not exactly sure how long it's been, because it's hard to keep track of days when you're in and out of sleep and your waking moments are spent reeling and replaying the moment it all came crashing down.

All I know is that this morning, it feels like have finally woke up. Today I will get out of bed and go have a look outside.

I'm not really sure what I expect to find. I don't imagine many of us survived. I remember seeing humans vaporize before my eyes as I watched from the cracks in the rubble - the building that collapsed on top of me became my protective barrier from that soundless, invisible wave. When the terror finally passed, I found that nothing in me felt physically broken, and I managed to wriggle my way out of the debris and find my way home, standing upright and untouched, waiting for me like always.

As I step outside onto the front porch, things look much as they did... before. Just lonelier.

I begin walking in the direction of downtown. It'll take me all day to get there on foot, but I have all day. I am irked by the surreal quiet of once-busy neighbourhoods, with not even the song of a bird or the chatter of a squirrel to break the silence.

The closer I get to downtown, the more the damage from the war begins to appear. Now I'm seeing the bombed out buildings, melted, twisted metal, jagged shards of glass, brick pulverized nearly to dust. Thank goodness the wave took all the bodies.

It's a mild winter day, with the sun beaming cheerfully in the blue sky, unaware that it's warming what might now be a lost world. Kicking a crumbling piece of brick as I continue my walk to the centre of it all, I begin to wonder if there is any kind of cosmic reason I was spared. By the end of the war, every last sect of every religion had a stake in it. Fight fire with fire, was the thinking.

Even the Athiests got organized and fought their battles in the name of peace and a world free from religion. The pacifists refused to go down fighting, and now they're gone too. Where does that leave me? Am I still here because I'm lucky? Or am I here because the only thing I ever believed in was the Beatles?

I'm starting to fear that it may be impossible for me to find any other survivors. My desire to commune with them, whoever and wherever they are, is strong. What pulled me downtown today, I'm not quite sure. The scene here is how I left it, all those days, weeks, months ago. But perhaps someone else managed to elude the wave, trapped in the rubble. Maybe someone else got out too. But if they did, they wouldn't have stayed here, would they?

Hello? Is there anyone here?

Loneliness. I haven't given myself a proper chance to feel it until now. When that feeling would arise, I would simply pull the covers over my head and settle in to another long sleep session. But I can't sleep forever.

There is no point to staying downtown. There is nothing here. I have to move on. My feet begin to carry me away from the gut-wrenching demolition scene, while my heart and mind find their way to the memory of him. I didn't see the wave get him. He was out of my view. While I didn't see it get him, I know that it did, because he never came home. For a brief second, I entertain the thought  that he somehow managed to escape the wave as I did, but instead of going home, went somewhere else. Maybe he's out there. If only I knew for sure. If only I had some little piece of him to help me keep him alive.

Amusingly, my feet have taken me to the train station. My brain was too busy wishing and wondering to tell my ragged feet that no trains will be running today. I laugh to myself for being so automatic. Before turning to head home, I take one last walk onto the platform and look into the distance down the railway, where translucent trains seem to flicker in and out of view. They are only the ghosts of trains. As I turn to leave, a train miraculously pulls up to me, its aged operator hanging out the window. These hallucinations are starting to get scarily vivid.

The operator stops suddenly upon seeing me and thanks the heavens that he has finally found another living person. His repeated praises to a higher power tell me that I was wrong... I'm not here because of a lack of faith. I am just lucky after all. I guess.

The old man introduces himself as Malcolm, and like me, he's been looking for other survivors. He woke up much sooner than I did, in fact he's counted 35 days since he woke. But now he's given up on The City and has decided to head north, since that's where the majority of the evacuees were heading. He also thinks that the damage may be less severe up there. I confirm that I just came from the north and while the damage is indeed less severe, there is not a soul in sight.

Despite having just come from that direction, I gladly hop onto Malcolm's train. It's great to have found another survivor, even if he's a retired train operator with rotten teeth, a loogie problem and residual Christian leanings -- the very faith that got us into this mess, some would argue (if some were still here). But under the circumstances, I'm not going to be too picky about making new friends.

We make our first stop at the amusement park on the very north end of The City. We disembark from the train and agree to meet back here in one hour to report on our findings, hopefully with more survivors to take with us on our journey.

But my feet are sore from today's monumental stroll to ground zero, and I don't feel much like exploring. I decide to sit in a tilt-a-whirl style car in the shape of a little spaceship for a few minutes' rest before exploring the rest of the park, which oddly looks frozen in time, like the rides could all just start running again with a snap of the fingers. 

Snap. The tilt-a-whirl begins to move, making rusty clanking sounds as it begins to gain speed.I fall into a joyful reverie about that time we came here a million years ago - our first date. The spaceship car swings and twirls randomly as we ride together through space. I don't remember the last time I smiled like this.

My reverie is suddenly broken by the sound of a woman's scratchy voice. I'm sitting alone and cold in a parked tilt-a-whirl car that isn't going anywhere, any time soon.

Hey! Hey you! Are you really there?! the voice screeches.

A woman in her 50's with beautiful black hair, greying at the temples, comes running up to me. She jumps onto the platform with wide oceanic eyes and a wild energy I was not expecting. She touches my arm and I tell her that I'm real. Demonstrating a serious lack of boundaries, she yanks me up from the car and takes me into her arms, sobbing like I'm her long lost something-or-other and she hasn't seen me in years.

I have to admit, it's nice to be held by someone... anyone.

Taking me by the arm, she leads me to a little trailer parked nearby, emblazoned with the words "Psychic Reader". There isn't much space inside the trailer, but it's cozy. She offers me some trail mix, and suddenly I realize I can't remember the last time I've eaten. I'm absolutely ravenous.

Crunching my way through her trail mix, all I can do is listen as Alice tells me she woke up about a week ago. She's decided to stay put, because her connection to the "other side" has gotten very strong since the apocalypse. Almost everyone is over there now. She's getting messages front, left, and centre, from souls who are searching for their loved ones on the other side but can't find them. That's how she knew that she wasn't the only survivor.

Suddenly, Alice takes my hands and she tells me that my people are... here. In the trailer? With us? I look around expecting to see translucent visions of my family and friends, but I see nothing. Alice insists that they're all here. They love me and they miss me. They tell me I'm going to be alright.

This is all feeling a bit hokey, and I think Alice is a bit out of her gourd. But then she tells me the story of that weird Christmas Eve when I was 8. That one where my sister and I had the chicken pox and we couldn't go visiting. The stove had broken that evening, and was emitting fumes that made my eyes burn and water. My grandfather came over to fix it, and made me a dancing snowman puppet out of a piece of cardboard and some string. Then my dad came over and was sad that he couldn't be there to watch us open our gifts in the morning, so he took us aside and told us what our gifts were. Finally in bed, my uncle came over and sang us the dirty Tarzan song while tucking us in and telling us we'd better fall asleep so that Santa could do his work.

There is no way Alice could know about that story, unless my family really was communicating with her.

I'm overwhelmed with emotion. Apparently I've been quite wrong about a lot of things. And it's comforting to know that in some way, everyone's still... around. Suddenly it occurs to me that I need to go and meet Malcolm. But before I leave, I ask Alice if she can ask my family a question for me.

Since our souls clearly continue to exist after our bodies are no more, does that mean there is a higher power?

Alice goes silent. She looks like she's concentrating hard. My knee is bouncing with anticipation and impatience. Then, Alice opens her eyes and with a weak smile tells me that no one over there knows the answer to that.  None of them have met any kind of deity. Even on the other side, people are fighting about whose god is the right god.

Alice's sadness is overwhelming. I've taken something away from her, I realize. I'm consumed with guilt at that realization, and also because I've eaten pretty much all of her trail mix.

I try to console Alice by telling her that here among the living, I know of one other survivor. He drives a train that works and we're heading north in search of others. I tell her that we would love to have her join us. But Alice declines. She's not sure that what's left of humanity is the best cross section with which to carry on. And it's not as if she doesn't have anyone to talk to.

I bid farewell to Alice and head back toward the train. I start thinking about her implication that what's left of humanity may not be the best and brightest that our kind has to offer. But how could she know that? I may not be a rocket scientist, but at this moment in time, that's not what we need. Well, fucked if I know what we need. First we need to find each other.

*****

This album is exactly what I needed right now. I know it took me to kind of a bleak place, and I'm a bit sorry about that, but it's not completely devoid of hope. This album expresses so many of my own current feelings. Now that I'm nearing "the end" of this project, I'm retrospectively amazed at the serendipitous way and the timing in which the albums have unfolded to me, with an accidental relevance pretty much throughout.

Needless to say, I think this is a fantastic album. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone is like healing medicine for my soul. It's a song that knows me - it knows where I've been and it even knows where I'm going, even if I don't. Listening to it makes me realize that some art exists specifically for the times when we're lost. It is made to help people see their way out of the dark. When someone who has never met you makes something that takes on special significance just for you, because of what you've experienced and how you see the world, you see how art can give life meaning. This is how music saves people.