by Lily Markova
“I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“Emotions?” said Whale indignantly. “Now?”
“This isn’t about emotions.” Julius looked back at him coolly and pressed the upper right button, which stood out dauntingly red against the otherwise black keyboard. “This is about rules.”
Whale rested his head against the door frame and shut his eyes. He didn’t need to be a computer genius to understand that Julius had just erased every bit of information he’d had about the changed Joy, thus wiping out their chances of stopping the new kind.
“Why don’t you turn on the radio?”
Whale shifted his head to stare hopelessly at Joy, his forehead still propped against the frame. She gave her phone another brief check and tucked it away again, her face lit up.
“It’ll jazz you up,” she said, with a friendly smile.
“This is Radio Jupiter,” sang her cheerful voice out of the receiver a few moments later. “Music that changes you, music that blows your mind. The next song is dedicated to you, my lonely Whale.”
Whale turned the volume control knob to make it louder, rounded the folding screen, and went back to the center of the room. He felt oddly detached from reality again, like the time he had become convinced that his family was never coming back for him. As soon as the loudspeakers issued the first sounds of the loneliest whale’s song, he knew exactly what was coming, just as he knew it wasn’t in his power to prevent or delay the catastrophe in any way. Whale decided to resort to the single way of handling unexpected situations that made his kind feel in their element: watching and not interfering.
“For some reason,” said Joy, “this certain sequence of sounds, this certain audio frequency breaks your connection, should you happen to be close enough to the source—the way wind or traffic or even footfall can cause a bridge to oscillate and, eventually, collapse.
“As you may have guessed, we call ourselves the Jupiter. There are one hundred million of us—no more, no fewer than is required: At this exact moment, each one of us is standing next to an assigned Phaeton. Granted, it took us a while to organize this—it’s not that easy to operate millions of bodies when you’ve only got one mind—but right now, this song is playing on every TV channel, every radio station, every cell phone.”
“She’s right,” said Julius, turning one of the screens so Whale could see it. There was a map of the world, where every bit of land and even some parts of the oceans were thickly littered with twinkling, rippling blue spots. “It’s everywhere.”
As if in support of his words, Joy’s phone began to sing in her pocket, and then Julius’s phone vibrated on the desk and joined in.
“You can’t hack into it,” he said with assurance, which was pretty unconvincing in the given circumstances. Vainly, Julius attempted to turn off his cell phone; in the meantime, the speakers beside the monitors issued crackling noises and also started lamenting.
“Listen,” Whale heard Joy’s rapt voice as if through a pillow.
Joy wrenched open the balcony window and leaned halfway out, holding firmly on to the metal railing. The ashy fog was still whirling outside, indecisively, as if mulling over the invitation, but the cool evening air did not hesitate to stream in. Nor did the chilling song from the depths of the ocean. The pulsating howl swelled until it was as loud and clear as if it were playing inside Whale’s skull. The song was everywhere, enveloping Earth like a running wave. The walls of the balcony shuddered.
“The entire planet can hear it,” said Joy. Her voice quivered with awe, and Whale could see the goose bumps rising on her forearms. “Maybe that lonely whale can hear it too. Maybe in some deep black waters, it’s raising its head now, hopeful that there is someone else.” Her excited expression faded into a frown of concern. “But. . .there isn’t. What it’s hearing is its own call. Is it a good thing to give it hope?”
“Joy,” Whale called out, trying to sound calm. It was not easy, considering that his lungeyeart was freezing and writhing, which was only partly due to his lack of energy—his kind was being torn apart, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. But he couldn’t afford to grieve; he had to concentrate on what was about to happen right here, right now. No, he couldn’t go global. But he could save one small, ordinary life, unimportant in the grand scheme of things. He was not going to silently watch from afar, not this time. He couldn’t let this horrible thing happen.
“Joy, you need to get back into the room. Now.”
“Why?”
Joy turned around, letting go of the railing. For a second, Whale felt as though his own heart had collapsed from a height of two hundred and fifty feet. He held out his hands in front of him to indicate that she should move carefully, though the gesture turned out to look more as if he himself needed to clutch something for support. He clenched his right hand into a fist, his index finger pointing at the balcony door. Its glass pane was rattling.
Joy shifted her gaze from the door back to Whale, her eyes widening, her mouth curling into a soundless “Oh.” She had remembered. She had understood. Whale’s connection to his family wasn’t the only thing that had been broken at the pier the day he’d met Joy and first heard the song.
“The lemonade bottle,” she merely said.
There were a tinkle and the sound of glass breaking, and Joy gave a little scream. Whale closed his eyes and exhaled through pursed lips, feeling as though some taut string had snapped in his chest. Just something in the kitchen.
“Joy, now.” He stretched out his arm toward her, as far as it would go without him having to step onto the balcony floor. “Slowly. . . .” He saw Joy hold her breath, and he realized he wasn’t breathing either, as if the weight of the tiniest whiff could become the very last straw for the vibrating glass.
Joy reached out. There was only an inch between their trembling fingertips. Her eyes started to water. She seemed to desperately want that gulp of air, but the fear was stronger, and she refused to inhale. Cautiously, very cautiously, she unglued her left foot from the floor and took a tiny step toward him. She bit her lower lip, still not daring to shift her weight forward.
Another ring, much louder, made Joy draw back and grasp the railing again. Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Whale’s outstretched arm twitched at every sound. Joy shut her eyes, but two tears still broke out from under her closed eyelids. Windows, screens, dishes, and mirrors burst and sprayed the apartment with splinters. Whale imagined, unwittingly, how everything made of glass was exploding across the whole planet. Terrible images flashed through his mind, all the consequences, all the victims, the ruins that humankind would wander among tomorrow, people and the Phaeton alike. . . .
He had to focus on what he could affect. The balcony glass was strong, but so was the whale song, which still hadn’t ceased.
“Joy,” he called, his tone almost begging, voice loud enough to outshout the apocalyptic howling and the sounds of the city falling apart. “Take my hand.”
She shook her head jerkily, her eyes still shut. Her entire body was quaking, except for her arms. Her arms seemed stiff, fingers paralyzed in their grip on the metal pipe. “I can’t—I can’t let go.”
“Joy, I can’t come closer to you. The glass might not hold both of us, so you have to take my hand and let me pull you—no, no, no, not now. . . .”
Whale felt as if the ground had given way beneath his feet, and then his legs gave under him too, and he fell heavily to the floor. In response to that thump, the balcony gave another great shudder. A zigzag crack ran all the way through the ceiling and down the wall and finally split the floor between Joy’s sneakers.
“JULES!”
Julius appeared in the doorway to the balcony, stepping over Whale, who was lying face down, soundly asleep and useless.
“My hero.” Julius poked at Whale’s unresponsive side with the toe of his sneaker.
The song was deafening now, rolling through Joy’s body and leaving it to shake uncontrollably. She knew, she simply knew that the moment she let go of t
he railing, the moment she pushed off the floor to jump to safety, would be the moment it all collapsed.
Julius’s face was covered in small cuts, and the glass dust sparkling in his ruffled hair reminded Joy of Christmas. Why was she thinking of Christmas, so foolishly, at such an inopportune time? Joy barely heard the booming sounds anymore; they had turned into distant shooting and thunder, had been drowned in the whale song. Someone was screaming for help on the street. Christmas. . . . Christmas was such a nice thing to think about, really.
She called him once more, this time in a broken whisper. The balcony cracked again, and again, and again. . . .
Julius looked at her at last. “Joy, jump,” he said, his robot-like voice calm and earnest.
The floor creaked under her foot; Joy raised her eyes to his and sank, vanishing amidst the large falling shards and the silvery cloud of glass powder.
“Joy?” Julius stepped closer to the edge, peering down and waving a hand in front of his face to disperse the dust.
When the cloud settled, he saw two orange blurs dangling in the fog. He looked up. Joy was hanging from the railing, her bleeding hands clenched around it, her legs swaying.
Her eyes fixed on her barely visible sneakers, Joy wondered for how much longer she would be able to hold on. She inched her hand along the railing. If she could move this way to the end of the pipe, which was welded to the wall. . .that would be pointless. It would be still too far for her to reach the doorway. She could call for help. . .pointlessly. Everything must be screaming now. . . . She suddenly realized it was very quiet. The song was over. People were slowly coming to their senses. The continuing noise was just her own eardrums droning.
The fog concealed the city below, and somehow to Joy, it almost made the idea of falling no longer scary, as if there were no hard bottom beneath this gray cloud, as if the fall would be soft and endless. . . .
“If I give you my hand,” said Julius, “you will try to change me back. And that will most likely kill me.”
That wasn’t a question; Julius was simply reasoning out loud, so Joy did not answer.
“If I don’t give you my hand,” Julius continued, pacing back and forth along Whale’s body, “you will crash. If you are the brain, what will happen to the rest of the Jupiter when you shut down?”
Joy remained silent. Her fingers were already numb, and her arm muscles felt as if they were tearing.
“You know what I think?” Julius came to a halt in front of her. “I think it’s pretty sad.”
Joy burst out laughing and crying at the same time. Her head spun, and her left hand almost slipped. “Yeah,” she said, sniffling, and she broke into laughter again. She was sure her laughter had never sounded so happy before. It was so weird. . . .
“Come on.”
Julius held out his arm, and it proved convincing enough for Joy. A moment later, she was hanging from his neck, her tears soaking his shoulder, her nails clawing into his hoodie as if she were a mad-scared cat.
“Don’t feel anything yet,” Julius reported, waggling his head to disentangle his nose from Joy’s hair. “Have you initiated my conversion?”
“I’m so very, very sorry,” sobbed Joy.
“I know.” Julius’s palm flattened uncertainly against her shuddering back. “It’s okay. I know you can’t help it.”
“No, I’m sorry.” She pulled away a little and looked him in the eye, her face red and crumpled with tears. “The Phaeton chose me—not because I just happened to be at hand. It was because I tried to change you back, told you those stupid stories. Whale saw it; he saw that, just as he did, I thought what had happened to you wasn’t right. Wasn’t natural. So they chose me, and they gave me this ability to return you to the way you used to be.”
“Well.” Julius took a step back, and his hand hung in the air, waiting for Joy to take it. “Do what you have to.”
Joy’s face crumpled even more and she let out something between a bitter laugh and a cry of pain. She reached out slowly, shakily, and enfolded his hand in hers.
“I hadn’t really gotten to know him, the old Julius. It was just for a week.”
“It’s okay,” Julius repeated.
Joy shook her head. “With you, we’ve had years. I just want you to know, I don’t think Julius is gone and you’re a stranger in his body. I think you’re a brilliant version of him.”
Julius smiled—only to please her, she knew, only because he had probably guessed that it was the reaction she wanted.
“I would never,” she said, hugging him again.
And Julius hugged her back, almost as if he meant it. “I know.”
“I would never, ever, rewrite you.”
The crisp wind was whistling and marauding unchecked around the wrecked apartment. Whale gave a small shiver and stirred experimentally—still half adream, he was oblivious to his surroundings. The scrunch of the disturbed glass crumbs under his body brought him back to a most surreal reality. The first thing Whale saw upon opening his eyes was the back of Julius, who stood with his head drooped, apparently mourning the broken monitors.
“No, you haven’t missed anything newsworthy,” Julius said, unearthing his cell phone from under the pile of debris on his desk. He raised it triumphantly as though it was a winner’s cup. “Plastic screen!”
Whale sat up, grunting and wincing as splinters dug into his palms. “Julius! You’re alive!”
“Even better than that: By the frequency of your pulse I can tell you’re not faking your relief about it.”
“So the Jupiter hasn’t changed you?” In an instant, Whale’s relief mutated into horror. His heart rate must have skyrocketed. If the Jupiter had failed to carry out their mission— “What about the others?” What about Joy? Had she—?
“The Jupiter was created in the image of the Phaeton,” Joy said in a small voice.
Whale wheeled his head around, and it spun with what seemed like an overdose of relief. Joy stood with her hands crossed on her chest, like a corpse, but she was alive, unharmed, uncrashed. She was overlooking the concrete cliff where the balcony had been, and although keeping at a safe distance from the edge, she still was trembling, which probably had little to do with the wind.
“Except for lungeyearts,” she said, “we were built just like you, and I didn’t think that through, did I? The song tore the Phaeton apart, but it tore us apart, too. Oh, Whale, now I know how it hurts. Anyway, I lost them, the Jupiter, before I could give them the order to start ‘dealing with the mess.’ ” She emphasized the last words bitterly.
Whale knew her regret wasn’t on account of her being unable to make those converted ordinary again; it was for the way she had talked about them when she hadn’t been ordinary herself. This was the Joy who had forgone her trip to India to babysit an injured stranger at the pier, and this was the Joy who had made him his first-ever breakfast, and this was the Joy who would never speak as cruelly as the Jupiter in her had.
“Everyone the Phaeton has ever touched is still out there,” said Joy. “I guess that means people are still in danger, but to be honest, I’m glad I don’t have to be the one to take care of that.” For the first time since he’d woken up, she turned to look at him. “Whale, I’m so sorry.”
“So am I, Joy,” he said, not sure what more there was to say.
“Oh my God, I made a hundred million humans homeless.” Joy hid her face in her hands. “I thought my head was supposed to be lighter and quieter without all those voices, but it only got worse. I feel like I’m having a hangover.”
Whale grinned faintly, getting to his feet. “Ordinary again, then?”
For a moment, it seemed that Joy was going to begin crying once more, but she let out a strange chuckle. “Pretty much ordinary, yeah. What about you? What are you going to do now?”
“Uh. . . .” Whale hadn’t had the chance to give it much thought lately, so after some intense massaging of his forehead, he decided to go with the obvious idea that was the first to spring to
mind. “I’m going to find them. My family. I’ll start with my son, and. . .her. They’re on their own now, they must be terrified. Maybe together we can find a way to revive our collective consciousness.”
Joy lowered her eyes, nodding.
“Sooner or later, they’re bound to discover Twitter,” muttered Julius.
“Even if we don’t,” Whale continued to think out loud, in the dark about what Julius had meant, “I guess this world could use some interference on my part.” He paused, and added quietly, not entirely certain himself whether he was accusing or simply stating the obvious. “You’ve ruined my kind.”
Joy pointed her index finger at him. “You’ve been ruining mine for centuries.”
Both of them dropped their eyes to the floor shimmering with glass dust, then looked up at each other timidly, and in a moment, they were hugging and laughing.
“You’re going to be okay,” said Whale, brushing a glass chip off Joy’s hair. He let go of her, and turned to Julius to give him a hug too, but Julius dodged away, saying, “Nope, don’t think so.”
“Hang on.” Joy squinted suspiciously at Whale and passed her hand over the top of her head, repeating his gesture. “Did you just change me?”
Whale forced his face to remain unreadable. “I’m not sure I can still do that, I told you.”
“Whale, what have you done to me?”
“You’d better figure it out, and quickly.”
She vouchsafed him a look expressing such a gamut of indignation, disbelief, and disappointment at his dastardly treachery that Whale felt compelled to back farther away from the giant hole in the wall, just in case.
“Stabbed me in the. . .head,” gasped Joy, and she stormed past him toward the bathroom. It appeared as though she had been about to shoulder Whale on the way but thought better of it and made sure to skirt him in a wide berth. Whale smiled to himself.
“Revenge? That’s low,” remarked Julius casually.
“I’ll be giving this street an occasional check for freezes,” said Whale, “and trust me, it’s in your best interest that people don’t linger here too long contemplating what kind of coffee to kick-start their day with.”