ovided more grime than years of neglect could ever hope to
equal. No, it would take Manhattan longer to go back than Long Island.
Perhaps that too would not happen during his lifetime.

Yet, after all, when he reached Fifth Avenue he found that Central Park
had burst its boundaries. Fifty-ninth Street was already half jungle,
and the lush growth spilled down the avenues and spread raggedly out
into the side streets, pushing its way up through the cracks it had made
in the surface of the roads. Although the Plaza fountain had not flowed
for centuries, water had collected in the leaf-choked basin from the
last rain, and a group of grey squirrels were gathered around it,
shrilly disputing possession with some starlings.

Except for the occasional cry of a cat in the distance, these voices
were all that he heard ... the only sound. Not even the sudden blast of
a jet regaining power ... he would never hear that again; never hear the
stridor of a human voice piercing with anger; the cacophony of a hundred
television sets, each playing a different program; the hoot of a horn;
off-key singing; the thin, uncertain notes of an amateur musician ...
these would never be heard on Earth again.

He sent the car gliding slowly ... no more traffic rules ... down Fifth
Avenue. The buildings here also were well-built; they were many
centuries old and would probably last as many more. The shop windows
were empty, except for tangles of dust ... an occasional broken,
discarded mannequin.... In some instances the glass had already cracked
or fallen out. Since there were no children to throw stones, however,
others might last indefinitely, carefully glassing in nothingness. Doors
stood open and he could see rows of empty counters and barren shelves
fuzzed high with the dust of the years since a customer had approached
them.

Cats sedately walked up and down the avenue or sat genteelly with tails
tucked in on the steps of the cathedral--as if the place had been theirs
all along.

Dusk was falling. Tonight, for the first time in centuries, the street
lamps would not go on. Undoubtedly when it grew dark he would see
ghosts, but they would be the ghosts of the past and he had made his
peace with the past long since; it was the present and the future with
which he had not come to terms. And now there would be no present, no
past, no future--but all merged into one and he was the only one.

At Forty-second Street pigeons fluttered thickly arou