Why Visit America

by Matthew Baker

  Before our people lived in the state of Rhode Island, different people lived here—people with darker skin and darker hair—but even they had not lived here forever.

  Why the fuck did they have to come to our planet? my friend said, peeking with me through the window at the stray cats inside the shed. My dad used to be happy.

  But I had thought, Why wouldn’t they?

  The strays had not yet been fighting. Not until they got hungry, I told my friend.

  He had not wanted to wait. He had begun pounding on the walls of the shed, trying to get the strays to fight.

  It had been good to have a friend.

  The bigger I had gotten, the fewer I had had.

  Understand that I know why my grandfather and I need to deport the Unwanted, if law enforcement will not do it. In school I am in chess club. I understand that two pieces cannot share the same space—that they cannot occupy the same borders. When they do, one must kill the other.

  I believe in what we are doing as much as my grandfather. We have a cause, and that has brought us together in a way that many families I know have never been brought. Few Unwanted live within our town limits anymore—we have taken that many of them away. In another year, or maybe two, my grandfather thinks, we will have driven away even the stragglers.

  My grandfather’s hands are trembling where he holds the steering wheel. It makes him upset to have to do what we have to do.

  The border agent waves us through again.

  Outside, the stars in their various constellations.

  My heart skips a beat.

  Goosebumps spread across my skin.

  I say my grandfather’s name.

  What, my grandfather says, and then he sees them too—in the fields along the road, the shapes of people moving.

  Then we see them, not along the road, but stepping into it.

  * * *

  No, my grandfather whispers.

  He brakes the sedan, taking it from thirty to fifteen to five mph.

  And then our car is stopped.

  Our headlights cast cones of yellow onto the road. Beyond our headlights, people with transparent skin and white hair are coming from the fields. They are crossing the road in couples, in clusters of eight or nine. Some of them have veins so dark that the veins are almost purple. They are rubbing their arms, trying to warm themselves. Some of them have mud on their feet. Some of them have cuts on their feet. All of them are naked.

  My grandfather says, I don’t—

  I do not say a thing.

  Through our rear windshield, I see more of them crossing the road behind us, lit red by the lights of our brakes.

  Is this what it looked like before? I say.

  My grandfather does not speak. He only nods his head, and even then just once.

  All of our work, he says. For nothing.

  I do not remember the Appearance thirteen years ago, but I know this Appearance I will not forget.

  This is where I was, I think. This is what I was doing.

  A woman carrying a baby stops in the road. A man as fat as me stops there with her, and then another woman. They look toward the lights of our town beyond the fields, and then toward the lights that are closer to them—the lights of our sedan.

  Trying to choose.

  Then they are walking toward us.

  My grandfather’s hands are trembling as he locks the doors. The Unwanted are walking toward our sedan, reaching for our headlights, stepping into our headlights, as the baby cries and cries. My grandfather is shouting at them through the windshield to move, shouting because they are blocking our car. If we drive away, we will have to drive straight through them. They are standing at our headlights, and my grandfather is shouting move, and I am still sweating, but I am not afraid. I am not afraid, because our sedan has borders that cannot be crossed, doors that cannot be opened, doors locked from the inside. In here, inside of it, I feel almost as if we were in our own little world.

  Lost Souls

  Praise be to Yahweh, and to Allah, and to Buddha, and to Vishnu, and to Shiva, and to Brahma, and to Amaterasu, and to Jesus, and whoever else might hear our plea!

  * * *

  Naomi was working at the hospital the day that the empty bodies began being born. She was a nurse in the neonatal unit. The rookie. She had graduated only just the year before. Wildfires were raging in the mountains beyond the valley, and dark clouds of smoke had blown into the city, casting a spooky haze over the resorts and the casinos. Naomi had just clocked in for the day when the first infant was rushed into the neonatal unit. A pudgy pink-skinned newborn with bright blue eyes. The child hadn’t been born prematurely. The child technically wasn’t even ill. Its pulse was good, its respiration was normal, its temperature was fine. And yet something was clearly wrong. Its automated processes were working—its heart was beating, its lungs were breathing, its fingertips jerked in response to a prick, its pupils dilated in response to a flashlight—and yet the child didn’t show any signs of consciousness. It wasn’t moving its head. It wasn’t moving its arms. It wasn’t moving its legs. It wasn’t crying. It wasn’t squealing. It wasn’t cooing. It wasn’t moving its body or making any noises at all. Just gazing silently at the ceiling with an eerily blank stare. The physician on duty tried rubbing its back, tried spanking it, tried tickling it, and the baby still didn’t respond. And then while the physician was standing there troubleshooting, the baby died. Just like that. It was just there and then it was gone, no pulse, no respiration, beyond resuscitation. Its eyes didn’t glaze over. Its eyes didn’t even close. Almost like sudden infant death syndrome, Naomi thought, except the baby hadn’t been asleep. She was still looking at the dead newborn in confusion when another infant was rushed into the neonatal unit with that same blank stare. Then another. And another. The neonatal unit was chaos. A graveyard. Over half of the children born at the hospital that day exhibited the same symptoms. An utter lack of consciousness. Sudden death. Initially the staff assumed the phenomenon was restricted to that single hospital, but then word began to spread that empty bodies were being born all over Las Vegas. All over Nevada. All over the United States. All over Earth.

  Naomi drove home in a state of shock.

  “These aren’t stillbirths that we’re talking about. These are babies that were born alive. Physically all of the babies were perfectly fine. Just empty. Completely unresponsive. Like there was nothing inside,” said a gruff voice on the radio.

  “And all of the babies died within minutes?”

  “I want to be clear that we’re not talking about an extinction scenario. There’s no reason to panic. Normal, healthy babies were born today, all over the world. Whatever this is, not all newborns seem to be affected.”

  “But what if the disease spreads?”

  “We still don’t know enough about the phenomenon to refer to it as a disease.”

  “Then what else could it be?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Is it going to keep happening?”

  “We just don’t know.”

  Naomi had found out that she was pregnant the week before.

  Ravens were circling in the sky above the entrance to her neighborhood. The street was empty. The sidewalks were deserted. An abandoned tricycle lay upended in a yard, the wheels still spinning. Tad was waiting for her in the driveway of the condo, wearing slippers and a bathrobe that was billowing in the wind.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” Tad said, wrapping her in a hug.

  “I watched thirteen babies die today,” Naomi said, and then he led her into the condo, where she got into the bathtub and wept.

  Later she sat in a bath towel on the sofa with wet hair and a smoothie and watched the newscasters on every channel try not to have a nervous breakdown on live television.

  “I could use a fucking drink,” Naomi said.

  “I’m sorry,” Tad said.

  “I just want to get drunk,” Naomi said.

  “Me too,” Tad said.
/>
  “You’re not pregnant,” Naomi said, almost upset.

  “I know.”

  “We still have that bottle of sake in the freezer.”

  “I know.”

  “At least one of us should be drunk for this.”

  “I’m not going to drink if you can’t,” Tad said, staring straight ahead at the screen, and he was so serious and earnest and simple that she felt the anger fade. She could never manage to get mad at him. She wished that she could have gotten mad at him sometimes. She would have liked to be mad at him. But it would have been like getting mad at a bandage. All he ever wanted to do was help. A baffled public health official in a checkered dress shirt was being interviewed on the television. Rama, the kitten, came wandering into the living room with a mischievous look, and then the whole family was there, Naomi and her husband and her cat and the baby growing in her womb, the baby that now was maybe going to be born only an empty body after all.

  And though she would have preferred not to think about the possibility that there was an empty body growing in her womb, she was confronted with the possibility constantly, every moment that she was at work. Empty bodies continued to be born at the hospital that next day and the day after and the rest of the month, and each of the babies was rushed straight into the neonatal unit, and she had to stand there watching each of the babies die. Medications for catatonia had no effect. Electroshock therapy treatments had no effect. Out of desperation, in total secrecy, and despite that the symptoms that the affected babies exhibited weren’t truly those of a trance state, the hospital brought in a professional hypnotist, who failed to induce any form of consciousness in the empty bodies. The halls of the maternity ward were filled with the wails of grieving parents. Meanwhile, back out on the streets, in forums on the internet, various parties were busy assigning blame for the epidemic. The environmentalists were convinced that the phenomenon was somehow related to widespread consumption of genetically modified foods, despite a lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever, while the puritans were convinced that the phenomenon was caused by widespread consumption of birth control pills, despite a lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever, and the prohibitionists were convinced that the phenomenon was thanks to widespread consumption of marijuana, despite a lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever, and the fact that humans had been getting blazed for millennia. Naomi wasn’t an environmentalist. Naomi wasn’t a puritan. Naomi wasn’t a prohibitionist. Naomi was a scientist. She believed in logic. She believed in data. And for that reason the phenomenon horrified her. She had never before lived through an epidemic that modern medicine couldn’t explain. Most researchers were pursuing studies that assumed that the phenomenon was caused by an infection, perhaps by a novel virus or a mutant bacterium, and yet even the scientists promoting these theories admitted that the theories were flawed, as the affected babies didn’t display any of the classic symptoms of a viral or a bacterial infection, not to mention the fact that a virus or a bacterium would have had an origin, would have had to spread, while the phenomenon had appeared simultaneously across the globe. The utter lack of consciousness that the affected newborns exhibited seemed to suggest that the problem was neurological, or perhaps lay with the sensory organs, and yet autopsies showed no abnormalities in the brain tissue of the affected newborns, nor in the eyes nor the ears nor the nerves of the skin. The autopsies showed no abnormalities whatsoever. Science couldn’t explain what was happening. The epidemic was claiming hundreds of thousands of lives a day, claimed millions of lives over the course of that first month, and still the best procedure that the medical community had developed for dealing with the phenomenon was just to catalog the deaths. To sit back and watch the babies die. Naomi had never dreaded going to work before, not ever, but the blank stares of the empty bodies terrified her. And yet the most frightening aspect of the phenomenon wasn’t the empty bodies. The most frightening aspect of the phenomenon was its numerical precision. In Arizona, just across the border, only a state away, a famous gynecologist at a university medical center thought to turn to statistics. Examining the available data, the gynecologist discovered that the number of empty bodies being born per day was strangely consistent. The number didn’t spike or drop the way that mortality rates would during a typical epidemic. The number did slightly fluctuate from day to day, but overall the number was constant. Almost as if the number was being regulated by a sentient force. That alone would have been eerie, but then the gynecologist thought to subtract the total number of empty bodies born each day from the total number of babies who were born daily, thereby obtaining the average number of babies born each day who were healthy and conscious. Then she compared that number, the adjusted global birth rate, with the global death rate. And the rates were equal. The number of humans being born each day now appeared to be approximately equivalent to the number of humans who were dying, stabilizing the global population at just over thirteen billion. Naomi felt a shiver of dread and awe, reading the paper that the gynecologist had published online. A Kabbalist, the gynecologist suggested that the phenomenon might somehow be related to the cycle of reincarnation. It was as if, the gynecologist said, the exploding global population had exceeded the total number of available human souls. The bodies seemed empty because the bodies were empty, just meaty shells, born without souls. Other scientists were quick to point out that correlation didn’t imply causation, and that there wasn’t necessarily a connection between the birth rate and the death rate. Yet in the absence of any viable alternative explanation, the theory was compellingly logical. It explained the symptoms. It explained the numbers. Within hours the theory had spread across the internet, being hailed as a breakthrough on the news, being discussed as a fact on the forums, becoming the prevalent explanation for the phenomenon worldwide. The Phoenix Hypothesis, the theory soon came to be called, named both for the city where the gynecologist practiced and for the mythological creature of cyclical reincarnation.

  And yet to say that the theory was prevalent was not the same as to say that the theory was popular. The scientific community was upset by the implication that there was a spiritual realm, an invisible domain that couldn’t possibly fit into the modern understanding of physical cosmology, unless human souls were composed of an as-yet-unobserved material, like dark energy or dark matter. The physics conferences that autumn were sober affairs. Beloved colleagues avoided even speaking to each other. Scuffles broke out between researchers who refused to give the theory serious consideration and researchers attempting to reconcile the theory with quantum fields. And the religious community wasn’t any happier. The Christians and the Muslims, while pleased that the theory seemed to prove the existence of the individual immortal soul, seemed upset by the implication that human souls were reincarnated, which would fuck up centuries of theology. The Taoists and the Buddhists, while pleased that the theory seemed to prove the existence of reincarnation, seemed upset by the implication that every human had an individual immortal soul, which would fuck up centuries of theology. The Jains and the Hindus, of course, while delighted both that the theory seemed to prove the existence of the individual immortal soul and that the theory seemed to prove the existence of reincarnation, were distressed by the implication that the cycle of human reincarnation was separate from the souls of other animals, and, like the Sikhs, were profoundly disturbed by the notion that human souls could in any way be finite or quantifiable, which would fuck up centuries of theology. Everybody seemed to have been wrong in some way or another. The internet was haunted by angsty monks and clergy, gloomy specters appearing in interviews for newspapers and vlogs, bemoaning the bewildering state of the world. Even the Scientologists seemed troubled by the implications of the theory, although nobody except the Scientologists knew why the Scientologists would be upset, since nobody except the Scientologists had any clue what the Scientologists believed.

  “I mean, if souls are real, and reincarnation is too, how do we know that souls don’t move back and forth between h
umans and other animals?” said an acne-scarred janitor in the lobby of the hospital, helping to hang explanatory posters adorned with colorful infographics about the epidemic.

  The data seemed conclusive. The phenomenon didn’t appear to affect other species of animals. Cattle weren’t giving birth to empty calves. Dogs weren’t giving birth to empty puppies. Horses weren’t giving birth to empty foals. The shortage only seemed to affect humans. And basic logic led to the same conclusion. Considering that humans had spent the past century exterminating countless species of animals from the planet, causing the greatest mass extinction event since the Quaternary, a shortage of souls in newborn babies was presumably only possible if human souls were separate from animal souls. Overall, although the human population had dramatically increased over the past century, the total number of living organisms on the planet had decreased considerably. If humans had been able to share souls with other animals, then there should have been a surplus rather than a shortage. Still, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, an idea soon spread that killing animals might somehow liberate souls that could be used by human babies. Nowhere was this idea as infectious as in America. Within days of the theory being published, there were towns that had been whipped into a frenzy. Towns out in the country, coal towns and farm towns, where the locals subscribed to mysterious folk religions whose curious belief systems combined elements of born-again evangelicalism, talk-show morality, gun worship, truck worship, bibliophobia, and pagan superstitions about college athletics. Towns where feeling ruled over logic. Towns where hearsay ruled over data. Towns where every nonhuman animal had been slaughtered, the bodies heaped into piles as high as haystacks. Corgis shot through the forehead, beagles shot through the forehead, terriers shot through the forehead, pugs shot through the forehead, cats slick with wet blood, horses bleeding in ebbing spurts, deer that had been rammed with cars, canaries that had been slain with hammers, parakeets that had been crushed with shovels, cockatoos that had been smashed with rocks, rabbits speared with pitchforks, beheaded chickens, mangled porcupines, groundhogs, raccoons, weasels, finches, cardinals, robins, woodpeckers, herons, and squirrels with snapped necks, a heaped mess of limbs and paws and hooves and tails and bloated tongues, being set ablaze at twilight in town squares as children in military fatigues marched about the burning bodies. The killings had no visible effect on the phenomenon. The killings kept happening anyway.