One day, generations from now, after nuke-spread, terrorism, war, plague, collapse, famine, barbarism, and a slow stabilization into a medieval society...

One day, in the ruins of an American city whose name has been lost...

One day I meet a ringman, having his lunch under an oak.

We talk a bit. The ringman's guild specializes in mining precious metals. They train ground-squirrels to dig down into our ruins, find the bones of our dead, and like a trained cormorant bringing up fish, gnaw the wedding rings off our lost fingers, and bring them up to sell.

The idea fills me with a slow horror; but to him it's just a way of life, that of his whole guild's.

He knows it can't go on forever, but so what? There are millions of us down there, and only a handful of ringmen. Our dead won't run out in his time, or his grandchildren's.

That many of us; that few grandchildren.

And after all, it's not his fault. It's ours.

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