Six years back, I put my brain to thinking about what the world would really

be like at the end.

I called the short story, “A Plague of Doubt.”

Today, I would rename it “Social Distancing Fail.”

At the time, my son — one of my most trusted readers — thought it too contrived. I put i

Here’s how it started:

John Forenow did what he did because he could.

For the third time this year, and it was only May, he planned to stuff himself into his isolation suit, seal himself into his car and drive off to the grocery store with the car’s autopilot disengaged!

It was completely reckless behavior on so many levels.

But that’s how humans behaved if they could—as if the new rules of daily life did not apply. In what some would consider his declining years, John felt the acute need of a survivor to experience life to the fullest and to push boundaries beyond the safe and secure. He lived while so many of those around him died.

Redemption is hard, and may not be what we imagined.

Here’s the whole story (about 6,300 words) in a PDF file: Plague of Doubt-Social Distancing Fail_Final