Reindeer looked up at the sound of laughter, and the friendly banter that floated out of the homestead. The sun was low on the horizon, and lights could be seen in the distance as the night shift was starting in Verkhoyansk.

“No way, grandfather!” exclaimed Svetlana.

“Yes way!” Laughed Anton.

Svetlana did not look convinced.

“Okay okay, I will start at the beginning again.” said Anton. “First, you go to school for about 12 years, and you try and do very well. After you go to school for this time, you hope that your grades—”

“What are those again?” asked Svetlana.

“Hah… they are the evaluations that you received in the classes that you took, about how well you learned the content in that class.”

“And how were they given to you? I mean, your peers gave these to you?”

Anton rocked with laughter. “If only. No, the instructor who was nominally an expert in the material would give you these grades. You hoped that you received good grades, so that you could continue going to school.”

Svetlana was shaking her head.

“Now I know this seems very strange to you,” said Anton, now more earnestly. “But you must understand that everything has truly changed, and the absence of any sort of system now is very strange to me. So — the next stage was called university or college. And this is where you would learn what you would be trying to do for your job, and you—”

“This is where the whole thing just falls apart. Your job? We have many jobs… don’t we?” asked Svetlana.

“Indeed,” said Anton. “The wisdom of the present time is very clear in this regard. And what is true now, was similarly true in the past, in that your job or jobs often did not reflect what you did at college or university.”

“This doesn’t make any sense!” said Svetlana, holding her face in her hands. “But please continue — so what did you do in all of this? Did you really go to college or university?” said Svetlana trying to keep her incredulity out of her voice.

“Oh yes.” said Anton. “I studied extreme environment robotics in Vladivostok, among other things.”

“Don’t let him trick you!” shouted Yegor, from the other room. “He studied drinking and chasing girls!”

“What do you know, Yegor?” shouted a smiling Anton.

Yegor peaked his head around the corner. “Well, Papa, I can tell you that from the sound of it, your way was much more fun. But, what I know is very different“ said Yegor, who turned toward his daughter, “In 2041, about when I was in 3rd grade, the Florida Flu emerged — and that pandemic lasted 5 years.” Yegor looked into the distance.

“What does that mean?” asked Svetlana.

“It means” interjected Anton, “that for five years, governments around the world struggled to contain a deadly virus. Even though society had learned much from the COVID19 pandemic way back in 2020, they had apparently not learned enough.”

“Indeed”, said Yegor. “The start and stop of governments trying to kickstart the global economy, well, it eventually led to economic hardship—”

“That’s a word for it…” said Anton. “I would call it collapse!”

“We are still here” chided Yegor, with eyebrows raised. “But yes, things broke down. One thing was the massive increase in machine intelligence and automation during this time, while governments, companies, everyone scrambled to try and make things work without infecting one another.”

“Yes.” said Anton. “This led to fewer and fewer jobs. People stopped going to expensive universities. Why would you? No jobs! Then…. In the midst of this, KhanU emerged as a way to learn specific things, for specific jobs, and they kept your credentials in a blockchain.”

“Ah,” said Svetlana, “I know the chain.”

“Yes you do,” said Yegor proudly. “But I interrupted your grandfather telling you his tale first. Papa, please continue” said Yegor with a bow to Anton.

“Pah.” Anton smiled at Yegor as he waved him away with his hands. “Where was I… Ah, yes. Robotics in Vladivostok. This experience took me to North America, to a small town called Dawson in Canada. This was before the Florida Flu, before all of that. In fact — this is way back when we really thought that we could do something to stop the climate from changing. And so, enormous effort was being poured into almost any strategy that promised to help reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.” Anton paused, looked outside at the stunted, tundra forest.

“I was in Dawson,” said Anton, “working for a company that was trying to harvest carbon from the atmosphere, and then sequester this carbon underground. The company needed roboticists to help transport the carbon solids into abandoned mines. Anyway… this is just history now, and it didn’t work anyway.”

“In the midst of this, I met your grandmother, Katya.” Anton smiled. “Shortly thereafter, we met this thorn in my paw” Anton smiled, and patted Yegor’s shoulder. “And as Yegor has already explained, many things changed so we came back to Siberia. To home.”

“So — you came back here, and started herding reindeer” said Svetlana, “I can’t believe a robotics expert would become a herder…”

“It is a good profession!” said Anton. “But you know I never stopped, Sveta.” Anton winked. “The Shepherds do their work, and I maintain the Shepherds.” Anton looked out the window proudly, at the hulking multi-legged robots, now resting on their plastic and metal haunches as the reindeer milled peacefully around them.

“And here we have lasted for many years. Me working odd jobs and tending the homestead.” said Yegor.

“Papa — “ said Svetlana, turning to Yegor. “When did Mama fit into this?”

“Ah, my sunshine.” said Yegor, smiling, but sad. “Your mama was a wonderful, brilliant woman. And we were a happy family. But, you know, the Flu came back…” Yegor stopped, eyes suddenly moist.

“Yes,” said Anton. “The second wave of the Florida Flu took too many. My Katya, Yegor’s Galina.” said Anton. “But —” he whispered, as he scooped up Yegor’s and Svetlana’s hands, “We are still here.” Anton said, squeezing their hands gently.

Yegor smiled, with streaked cheeks, and Svetlana smiled, too.

“And you are here doing amazing things!” said Anton looking happily at Svetlana. “Can you believe it, that when I was in school only a small number of people could work as effortlessly with computers as you do?”

Svetlana frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense, everyone needs to know how to code.”

Yegor chuckled. “Of course you are right, now. But back then, when your grandfather was a boy, very few people knew how to code. In fact, it was a very highly valued skill. One of the best jobs that you could have would be to work for a company and to write their computer programs.”

Svetlana bursts out laughing. “Now you are certainly trying to make fun of me.” she said smiling.

“I know this is impossible to grasp,” said Yegor, “but what you did this morning, checking the predictive solar array and diagnosing the errors in the protein synthesizer – are two skills that would each have required a University education!”

“Well, then,” Svetlana said, “may I have two degrees, please?”

“You can have any degree that you want,” said Anton, smiling back.

They all laughed, and the reindeer herd looked up again at the sounds, then returned to wandering in their pens among the dwarf oak and slumped shepherds, as the sunset turned to dusk.