Outside the city again, back with the others in the dust field, I start walking in a circle for no reason. I plant one foot in the dirt and pivot on it, around and around, kicking up clouds of dust. Before, when I was alive, I could never have done this. I remember stress. I remember bills and deadlines, Asset Retention Reports. I remember being so occupied, so always everywhere all the time occupied. Now I'm just standing in a wide-open field of dust, walking in a circle. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy.

After a few days of this, I stop walking, and I stand still, swaying back and forth and groaning a little. I don't know why I groan. I'm not in pain, and I'm not sad. I think it's just air being squeezed in and out of my lungs. When my lungs decompose, it will probably stop. And now, while swaying and groaning, I notice a dead woman standing a few feet away from me, facing the distant mountains. She doesn't sway or groan, her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her, that she doesn't sway or groan. I walk over and stand beside her. I wheeze some kind of greeting, and she responds with a lurch of her shoulder.

I like her. I reach out and touch her hair. She has not been dead very long. Her skin is grey and her eyes slightly sunken, but she has no exposed bones or organs. Her death outfit is a black skirt and a snug white button-up. I suspect she used to be a waitress.

Pinned to her chest is a silver nametag.

I can read her name. She has a name.

Her name is Emily.

I point to her chest. Slowly, with great effort, I say, "Em..ily." The word rolls off what's left of my tongue like honey. What a good name. I feel warm saying it.

Emily's cloudy eyes widen at the sound, and she smiles. I also smile, and then maybe I'm a little nervous, because my tibia snaps, and I fall backwards into the dust. Emily just laughs, and it's a choked, raw, lovely sound. She reaches down and helps me to my feet.

Emily and I have fallen in love.

I'm not sure how this happens. I remember what love was like before, and this is different. This is simpler. Before, there were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had long checklists and elaborate tests to be passed. We looked at hairstyles and careers and breast sizes. And sex was there, in everything, confusing everyone, like hunger. It created longing, it created ambition, competition, it drove people to leave their houses and invent automobiles, space craft, and atom bombs when they could instead just sit on the couch until they died. Animal cravings. Subconscious urges. Sex made the world go ‘round.

This is all gone now. Sex, once a force as universal as gravity, is now irrelevant. Ambition and longing have left the equation. My penis fell off two weeks ago.

So the equation is deleted, the blackboard erased, and things are different now. Our actions have no ulterior motives. We shuffle around in the dust and occasionally have lumbering, grunted exchanges with our peers. No one argues. There are no fights, ever.

And Emily is not a complicated process. I just see her, and walk over to her, and for no reason, really, I decide I want to be with her for a long time. So now we shuffle around in the dust together instead of alone. For whatever reason, we enjoy each other's company. When we have to go into town to eat people, we do it at separate times, because it's unpleasant, and we don't want to share that. But we share everything else, and it's nice.

We decide to walk to the mountains. It takes us three days, but now we are standing on a cliff looking up at a fat white moon. At our backs, the night sky is red from distant cities burning, but we don't care about that. I clumsily grab Emily's hand, and we stare at the moon.

There's no real reason for any of this, but like I said, the world has been distilled. Love has been distilled. Everything is easy now. Yesterday my leg broke off, and I don't even mind.