Malcolm Steadman will buy a gun in 77 days.

Malcolm cannot help but compare the silent news anchor spelling nuclear doom on the television to the aggressively loud one at the psych ward playing Air Wolf. He does not know which one gives him more anxiety. A mad, and terribly delayed closed caption box ticks off the alarmist rantings of the anchor man, and the Homeless population of McDonald’s reads them simultaneously. The message is this: not since the cold war has nuclear annihilation been so close. We are all going to die.

Malcolm sips his coffee.

Any moment now the man-child in charge of one country could lob mega tons of human extinction at the country of another man-child. The world would end before the pale horse had a chance to leave his pen.

Malcolm’s coffee really tastes better than it has any right to.

We are all going to die. Cut to commercial.

Malcolm Steadman has not had a good week, but then it is hard to say exactly what a good week looks like for the homeless. The lack of a full night’s rest has burdened him, and the cold nights and unhealthy living has taken a toll. Malcolm has a cold, and he spent the night huddled in a blanket that he found feverish and miserable. His boss has taken notice of Malcolm’s declining health, hygiene and attitude. Malcolm is extremely worried that he will lose his job, and he is afraid that if he calls in sick that would be the final straw.

He needs a warm bed, he needs a shower, he needs to eat something nutritious and he needs the soft caring touch of another human being. What he has is this: a backpack with a week’s worth of work clothing, a blanket, his phone and a charger, his replacement debit card, and a flask for liquor that is increasingly more empty than full.

Malcolm is almost finished with his coffee, and it is the only thing he thinks will settle in his stomach. The fear of being asked to leave once he is done with his coffee is present like a hangover, but the dread of working in his condition is more oppressive. His homeless peers are starting to recognize him.

…The United States has over 7000 viable nuclear warheads each capable of leveling a city and leaving an even larger area’s soil infertile for… the closed caption marquee declares silently to an audience of homeless people who are as bored as they are scared.

As Malcolm finishes his coffee, and secretly suspects that the management somehow telepathically knows that his cup is empty, a sinister thought worms into his mind and for a very brief moment makes him terribly happy. It, like most thoughts, no matter how well-formed or intricately complete lasts for a very small amount of time, yet its small lifespan was just enough for Malcolm to react to it honestly. If the bombs fell tomorrow, there would be little change in my life. All it would do is make everybody else homeless as well, and that would be the new normal. I would be normal. The edge of his mouth crept upward a flash of a second before his humanity could catch up to the complete concept, and shame washed over him. Shame, yes, and then terror.

Malcolm was now in the throes of his first panic attack inside of a McDonald’s.

Millions, if not billions of individual lives would be annihilated in nuclear fire, and many more would die slowly and painfully of radiation poisoning, starvation, or cancer. It would be the largest moment of suffering in human existence that would be unparalleled in its already brutal history. Each one of those deaths was a person, easily lost in the gigantic numbers of it, but each one an individual with dreams, aspirations, fears, bias and compassion. All of that could come to a sudden end in a way that was totally incomprehensible to Malcolm. It is possible that it would even be an end to history itself, and Malcolm’s guttural reaction to this was to smile because he would be normal.

If god wasn’t already dead, that thought might have killed him now.

What’s more, what terrifies Malcolm about the string of thought now viciously pulling him back into the familiar territory of his philosophical agonies was that life probably wouldn’t change much for the homeless. How much different would life be for Malcolm if the social contract was burned in fusion? Would it reassemble itself, was humankind at its very heart an animal who’s natural equilibrium was society, or was humanity at its very heart that one of darkness? Was the position that Malcolm was in now, that of being homeless, a social construct and was it actually the natural default of humanity? If society rebuilt itself, and into something more primitive, would Malcolm be considered a “pilgrim” instead of a “bum”?

Would McDonald’s in any fashion survive the atomic cannibalization of human history?

His palms sweaty, and his breath thin, Malcolm reached for his coffee for a comforting sip, forgetting that the cup was empty.

Nuclear war would make me normal.

No one would own a shelter, no one would have a job. Everyone without exception would have to be in a permanent survival mode, and all of them would care less for society’s current hierarchy. The homeless man might be the only one with an edge, having lived this life already.

And all of this, for the briefest of moments, made Malcolm Steadman smile.

When early archeologist discovered any ruined building that looked important they always came to the conclusion that it had to be a temple. Malcolm had no doubt that if archeologist of the future sifted through the nuclear hell scape left behind that they would conclude without a doubt that McDonald’s was indeed a temple of worship.

The television in front him was now depicting a picture of a mushroom cloud with a question mark held in static above the news anchor’s head. The caption read …tensions are high as tempers shorten, the rhetoric has never been this… and Malcolm stops reading to clear off his table and head to work. Dread of working is now replaced by a a sense of privilege, and Malcolm looks forward to the heated building that he will spend his next eight hours in.

They will likely be the most comfortable hours of his day.

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