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A TRANSCRIPT OF AN INTERVIEW conducted by François Diallo, librarian of the town of New Petoskey, publisher and editor of the New Petoskey News, twenty- six years after Miranda and Arthur’s last dinner party in Los Angeles and fifteen years after the Georgia Flu:
FRANÇOIS DIALLO: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
KIRSTEN RAYMONDE: My pleasure. What are you writing?
DIALLO: It’s my own private shorthand. I made it up.
RAYMONDE: Is it faster?
DIALLO: Very much so. I can transcribe an interview in real time, and then write it out later. Now, I appreciate you talking to me this afternoon. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve just started a newspaper, and I’ve been interviewing everyone who comes through New Petoskey.
RAYMONDE: I’m not sure I have much news to tell you.
DIALLO: If you were to talk about the other towns you’ve passed through, that would count as news to us. The world’s become so local, hasn’t it? We hear stories from traders, of course, but most people don’t leave their towns anymore.
I think my readers will be interested in hearing from people who’ve been to
other places since the collapse.
RAYMONDE: Okay.
DIALLO: And more than that, well, publishing the newspaper has been an invigorating project, but then I thought, Why stop with a newspaper? Why not create an oral history of this time we live in, and an oral history of the collapse?
With your permission, I’ll publish excerpts from this interview in the next edition, and I’ll keep the entirety of the interview for my archives.
RAYMONDE: That’s fine. It’s an interesting project. I know you’re supposed to be interviewing me, but could I ask you a question first?
DIALLO: Of course.
RAYMONDE: You’ve been a librarian for a long time— DIALLO: Since Year Four.
RAYMONDE: Those comics I showed you just now, with the space station. Have you ever seen them before, or others in the series?
DIALLO: Never, no, they’re not part of any comic-book series I’ve ever come across. You said someone gave them to you as a gift?
RAYMONDE: Arthur Leander gave them to me. That actor I told you about.
