Sonya took her seat, placed her water bottle beside her keyboard, and rubbed her hands with moisturizer. Outside, sunlight reflected off the morning frost. Stout, gray buildings squatted in feet of snow—the pathways still not cleared. She looked out to the towering mountains that enclosed the valley and then turned her attention to the blinking wall behind her.

“Good morning class,” she said to no one. “I hope we’re all ready for today’s lesson.”

As usual, there was no answer.

She imagined the eyes of her students on her, readying their clarinets, twisting together their trombones and trumpets. Sonya had never been a teacher. Before all this, she had been a post-grad from MIT with a fresh degree in software engineering. Now she was here. If this were a real classroom, she imagined it could fit twenty desks. To her luck, she didn’t need to worry about that. She had no idea how to deal with children.

“Any questions before we begin today’s lesson?”

Again, no answer.

She nodded to herself as her hands hovered above her keyboard. With thin fingers, she began to type. She struck at the keys slow at first, as if a pianist finding her rhythm, but increased her speed as the seconds passed. Each letter gave a satisfying click that she followed up with the clunk of hitting enter. Click, click, click—clunk! A melody of information strung out in lines of code in front of her.

Class had begun.

She entered thousands of words into the database—hundreds of lessons uploaded to the server deep below the Academy. She navigated the database with ease. Every line of code she entered with precision, without a single syntax error or contradiction. Her architecture was exquisite, clean, and all her own. She had complete autonomy with her daily lessons. Of course, the Academy’s Board of Educators dictated specific topics that needed covering for the project, but in what way and in what order was up to her.

Most of her colleagues chose to upload concrete mathematical formulas or detailed scientific information to the database. All of this information fed to the same place: the great computer at the heart of the Academy, its humming machinery linked to thousands of young minds sleeping across the frozen globe. This morning Sonya would feed those slumbering minds with music.

Sonya understood her colleague’s approach. Coming off years of endless lab hours, she had almost fallen into that same trap. It was easy to cram the database with refined teachings. She had no doubt the next generation would be of a brilliant pedigree, but what good what it be if their knowledge was devoid of color? What good would all of these teachings be if the children did not learn of Beethoven, or listen to Janacek’s Sinfonietta, or wiggle their bodies to The Beatles?

As a child, Sonya used to sing. She didn’t sing anymore, of course—stopping long before her twenties and the climate crisis. And her dad had loved to sing with her. They’d get together in her backyard back where Massachusetts once was, while her mom cooked chicken fajitas, staging a small family concert. He’d play his favorite music from the likes of the Guns N’ Roses or AC/DC, and she’d put on her personal favorites like Britney Spears or NSYNC.

For her lesson today, Sonya had brought a speaker system. She plugged it into the outlet at the base of her desk and turned on her custom playlist that began with “L.A. Woman” by the Doors. Just like years before, she imagined the big empty room as her backyard, her dad at her side and her mom cheering them on from the open window while she cooked chicken fajitas. To this day, Sonya still couldn’t get “Dirty Water” by the Standells out of her head after her dad’s constant playing of the song—Boston sure had been her home.

Sonya made sure these sleeping minds would listen to the entire musical palate, just as she had. She hoped once her lesson was over, favorites would be forming inside those dormant minds. A smile touched her lips as she imagined these children singing along to “We Built This City” by Starship as they constructed their first settlement. 

At the start of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” she began the uploading process. As the music streamed from her speakers, she typed along with the orchestra’s rising tempo. She could almost smell the roasting peppers wafting in from her mom’s cooking. The music filled the large empty room, fast and loud. She did not doubt that her colleagues would find her lesson disruptive, but so did her neighbors back in Boston, and that never stopped her and her dad. These were her lessons, her songs, her concert for these children. Maybe they will love to sing just as much as she had when she was young. Maybe they can all sing along to Billy Joel, knowing damn well that we in fact had started the fire.

Sonya continued. Each key press returned that satisfying click. Each click chained together like a song of its own. Her keys were her drums, guitar, bass, and vocals, all performing for the frozen world. While the Backstreet Boys announced who exactly was back (the Backstreet Boys were back), Sonya dove into artists, albums, their backgrounds, their historical influences, and their impact on the artistic and cultural environment. She pulled information from databanks and from memories of long talks with her dad during those summer home concerts. She sampled new songs and old; her data-spread as organized and exact as her dad’s old record collection.

As her music switched from Andrea Bocelli’s “Por ti Volare” to Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland,” Sonya jumped from her chair and began to dance. It had been years since she had danced like this. The world made little room for dance anymore—not that she was much of a dancer during her years as an undergrad. She suddenly wasn’t inside the cold walls of the Academy, trapped in a valley of snow. The flooding, the freezing, the great machine she had been typing words into for the last eight months were all gone. She was dancing with her dad. Water bottle in hand, she stood in front of the window and pointed out over the snow-trapped settlement belting the chorus of “Take on Me” by A-ha. She sang like she did when she was eight—meaning loud and not very well. But she sang, and she hoped those sleeping minds enjoyed every musical note just as much as she did.

The next day, as she expected, complaints were made against her previous in-work concert. The Board of Educators called her in to discuss her behavior. Several on the Board claimed her use of music was disruptive and counterproductive to the Academy’s goal. Some didn’t seem to mind. One even complimented her music choice—”L.A. Woman” had been their mother’s favorite song. Sonya didn’t care about their criticism. She knew she was in no threat of removal. The world was frozen dead, and the next generation was being pumped full of drugs and information. Her work was too important for termination. It was just difficult for them to remember the good everyone used to have.

The others weren’t interested in teaching the next generation the “Cupid Shuffle” or “Cotton Eye Joe.” They wanted to type Pythagoras’ Theorem ten thousand times and teach them how many cells there are inside the human body. Not to say that these things aren’t important, but they are colorless. Just because the next generation needed to be ready for the monumental task of rebuilding society after this ice age, their world didn’t need to be as gray and dull as the frozen wastes surrounding them.

It reminded her of her elementary teacher, Mrs. Crawshaw. Sonya had brought her dad’s Walkman to class to pass around to all of her friends. Of course, school was no place for “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads, especially not during fourth-grade math class, but it was one of her dad’s favorite songs. Now she had shared the Talking Heads with both her classmates and the children sleeping through the worst period in human history. And those in charge were just as unhappy about it as Mrs. Crawshaw.

Sonya understood what the music reminded them of. She could hear it in the halls after she met with the Board of Educators. It came as a subtle, distant humming to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believing”—Sonya hadn’t even played Journey’s timeless piece the other day. The others were letting themselves remember their favorite songs. They were allowing themselves the joy of a short whistle or a quiet hum even though their memories hurt. Sonya couldn’t’ go back to Boston and sing about how much she loved that dirty water with her dad. Her colleagues couldn’t go back to their homes and listen to their music with their friends and families. There were no more festivals to flock to with tote bags full of weed and beer. There were no more concerts or live bands down at the pizza joint between Willow and Cross street. There was just snow and ice and dead buildings. All anyone had was the Academy, filled with depressed educators teaching equations to ever-sleeping children.

Sonya turned up her speaker and grabbed some extra water bottles for all the singing she’d be doing over the next few hours. She never thought she’d sing again. Not after her dad tried to sing with her in front of all her friends on her thirteenth birthday, not after finalizing her software degree, and especially not now. She was singing for the end of the world. She was singing for the start of a new world. She was singing so those around her could learn to smile for just a little bit longer.

She played “American Idiot” by Green Day, which she found especially entertaining, “TiK ToK” by Ke$ha, and a hundred more songs she had once listened to when the radio still aired and they still sold iPods. Maybe some of the songs weren’t the most appropriate to upload into the brains of sleeping children, but they needed a place to be remembered. And Sonya couldn’t help but find some humor playing Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “The Next Episode.”

Hold up.

The Board of Educators soon realized there was little harm in her musical endeavors, not that Sonya planned on stopping. Over the next week, the Academy began to echo with the sound of music. The other educators kept to their dry information and their historical texts, but Sonya heard them. The Academy may have been one of the last centers for human knowledge, but it didn’t have to be dismal. Everyone had spent so many months in these cold, silent halls that it was difficult to imagine this place as anything but depressing. Yet, right at that moment, Sonya could hear the muffled sounds of “Party in the USA” even though there had been no parties and no more “USA” for quite some time—this fact didn’t stop Miley from belting her heart out.

Yes, they were at the end of the world, trapped in a snow-clogged valley in a forgotten corner of the Himalayas. Their homes were gone, flooded, and frozen. Every single one of the artists they listened to was long dead. But that didn’t need to be the end. They were teaching the sleeping generation that the world before wasn’t just formulas, building plans, and war. It was a place they all wanted to remember, even though it hurt.

While the world sat in silent death, Sonya danced until her sweat mixed with her tears. Tears she didn’t realize she was crying. In the last moments of another dead day, she wasn’t one of the Academy’s educators. She was an eight-year-old girl back in Boston, Massachusetts, dancing with her dad in their backyard on a July afternoon during summer break. He was playing “Electric Avenue,” and they were both screaming “Oi!” frightening the neighbor’s dog into a barking fit while her mom made chicken fajitas cheering them on.