St George seeing the holes in his false reality

George imagined pictures of him and Karen Quilt with provocative captions showing up in magazines between shots of pop stars and hot actors.
Then he realized he couldn’t picture a single actor or actress who was considered the new big thing. He couldn’t name a new song or the person who sang it.
There was a plague. It broke out in the spring of 2009 and wiped out most of the world.
“What’s the last new song you heard?”
The phone spun and collapsed in her hand like a quick-draw artist with a pistol. “I thought I had made it clear I follow very few popular—”
“Anything,” he interrupted. “Anything at all. Can you name one song that’s come out in the past couple of years?”
She shook her head.
“Movies? Books?”
Her head moved side to side again. “I cannot.”
“No new phones,” he said. “No music, no books. Do you see any new cars?”
Karen scanned the street. “All the models I can identify are 2009 or earlier. With the economic downturn, this is not an impossible occurrence.”
“In this part of town? At this hotel?”

Excerpt From Ex-Purgatory, pg 232-233
Peter Clines
https://books.apple.com/us/book/ex-purgatory/id676938479