CHOOSE YOUR OWN APOCALYPSE

The future is coming. So is the past.

For a certain kind of ’80s kid, Choose Your Own Adventure books were the original screen time. I devoured them in the way-back of our station wagon, at the gate during Eastern Airlines weather delays, and under the table at Passover seders that lasted longer than the actual Exodus. Every few pages, there was a choice to make: enter the haunted castle or get back in the boat? Trust the submarine captain or investigate that suspicious noise? Choose poorly and suddenly your situation was dire, but only briefly. One finger held your place so you could flip back and try the other option. The other hand held a Capri Sun

Now every morning I wake up and have to choose which end of the world to worry about. Option one: the future, in which the machines get smarter than us, which, based on a few of my group chats, is not a high bar. Option two: the past, courtesy of a growing number of fanatics on both sides of the aisle, and the Atlantic, who would like to take modern civilization down to the studs. Some mornings I worry about both. That’s called multitasking. It’s also called 4 a.m.

Let’s start with the future, because it’s closer. Supposedly. The experts are divided. Half say AI will cure cancer and thr other half say AI will decide we’re the problem. Either way, it’s already finishing my texts, and not the way I would.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the news app, the past is staging a comeback tour. Extremists in all shapes and sizes are trying to drag us back into the past. Not the fun past. Not Studio 54. The one where women are told what to wear and disobedience is punished in public. They’d like to dismantle modern civilization, though presumably someone will need to keep the Wi-Fi working.

So that’s the menu. The future wants to upload my consciousness; the past wants to send me back several centuries, and I just want to get my highlights done. Surely there’s a civilization available where I can retain both my civil liberties and a human customer-service representative. I don’t need utopia. I just need an actual woman named Denise who can reverse the charge.

What unnerves me almost as much is how normal everything stays. I see a woman every day sauntering down Lexington carrying a single Sweetgreen bag like the world isn’t ending in two directions at once. The dry cleaner is open. The Mimi's line is around the block in the rain. And college essays are still due November first. The apocalypse, it turns out, is not an extenuating circumstance.

I’ve prepared, in my own way, for both scenarios. My go-bag contains a flashlight, a portable charger, cash, a copy of my passport, and a Dyson. Whoever inherits the earth, I shall not go down with frizz. I have no idea where I’ll be fleeing, but a revealing amount of my survival plan depends on there being an outlet.

Everyone says to be present. Be in the moment. Breathe. I would love to, but the future and the past are both making very strong cases for my immediate attention, and the present keeps asking me to accept cookies.

As a last resort, I downloaded a mindfulness app. It’s powered by AI, naturally. I am now paying the future $12.99 a month to help me cope with the future. It reminds me to put down my phone, which I pick up my phone to read, then congratulates me for taking a moment for myself. Apparently I’m doing beautifully!

What I want more than answers is just a moment nesled back in that station wagon. One finger holding my place, a Capri Sun between my knees, and the comforting knowledge that whatever happened in the haunted castle, I could reconsider. I wasn’t asking to control the universe. Just to try the boat

I asked the AI if it could help me find those old books for my kids.

“Absolutely,” it said. “I can write you a new one.”

Of course it can. I’d like to speak to Denise.