And these, my children, were the last days of Atomland, though we knew it not. The oracles foresaw many wonders, as though the prophecies of Tom Swift the Younger would be fulfilled within the lifetime of the living. But verily, I tell you, no oracle–not the Popular Mechanics, neither the Life of Boys, nor even the great Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future–did foresee the Turning Away. Only the heretic Floyd wrote of these portents, of light changing to shadow, of the hearts of stone and the coldness inside. The air is still, and the darkness has been long. Still we wait, for sunrise, and its freshening breeze.