Light Years

by Emily Ziff Griffin

  “I hate to say it,” my dad says. “But he’s right. This is a big fuckup.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter. I try to focus on the idea of the government making mistakes instead of three thousand people being dead.

  “Which is not to say I want Thomas Bell to be our next president,” he adds. Everyone expects Bell to run next year. And a lot of people think he can win.

  My dad switches the TV to Front Line News. I take a seat next to him. He gives me a look.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m okay.” Right now my imagination would be worse than whatever is actually going on.

  On the screen, a cool-nerd interviewer is introducing a pudgy man known as Merz. Just Merz. Like Beyoncé. His face is flecked with acne scars. His voice is confident and clear and it makes my mouth pucker with the taste of sour apple.

  “The government’s response on this is like an elephant trying to dance Swan Lake. It’s not pretty,” Merz says. “Front Line has already activated its massive network all across the country to respond to ARNS.”

  A banner appears at the bottom of the screen: WWW.FRONTLINEARNS.COM.

  “We are on the ground, we are on the streets, assessing what is needed and delivering it. Food, care, information, preventative supplies, we’re doing it. The government is not. This is the Blackout Bombing all over again, and we will be the ones who make the difference in terms of saving lives and getting the country back on its feet when this is over.”

  The interviewer pauses for effect. “Will it be over? Seems unlike anything we’ve seen.”

  “Everything ends eventually,” Merz replies.

  The camera cuts back to a newsroom set. A young anchor stands in the center.

  “That was Front Line representative Merz speaking from our headquarters in Brooklyn. We’re going now to the streets of San Francisco, an area that has seen numerous cases of ARNS over the past twenty-four hours. Volunteer correspondent Trisha Huff is on the ground. Trisha?”

  The screen cuts to a young black woman standing outside a grocery store describing, in her words, chaos. The camera shows empty shelves and long lines for food and water.

  I stand up. “What do we do?” Flashes of yellow are coming one on top of another. I begin to pace.

  “We wait and see,” my dad says. I count my steps. “The most important thing is that we stay calm. We don’t need to panic about food, so that’s good.” My mother put a serious stockpile of canned supplies in the basement after Blackout in case something like that ever happened again. “And really, this is what the news does. They scare everyone so we keep watching. I don’t think it’s as dire as they are making it seem.”

  “Okay,” I say. I want to believe him.

  “I left a message for your mother,” he adds.

  “Cool.”

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod and go into the kitchen for coffee, then head back upstairs.

  I get back into bed and Janine texts me: U seeing this? I write back yes. She writes: Freaked.

  I press my hands against my hot mug and I hear Bell’s voice: “Are you a problem solver?”

  I go over to my desk and pull up the Front Line ARNS site. They’ve listed the places where people can go for supplies. They’ve listed the medical facilities that are receiving victims. And they’ve posted hundreds of video clips with real-time reports from all over the country.

  I click on one from Elizabeth C. in Chicago. It opens with a girl sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan. The wind whips her long brown hair and empty sand stretches out behind her.

  “I’m Elizabeth. I’m sixteen and my sister died today,” she begins quietly. Tears fill her eyes. “She got sick three days ago. We took her to the hospital today, but it was too late. She was only nine. She liked tap dancing and soccer.”

  She looks out across the water and then back into the lens. “Her name was Catherine.” She begins to sob. I look out the window and count the leaves on the maple. “I haven’t cried until now,” she continues. “I think my mom may have it too. Help us, please. Somebody please help us.”

  She clicks off. The video refreshes and begins to play again, as though Elizabeth C. is now trapped in this pleading loop.

  I pause it. I put the link into LightYears and click Mine. The text cloud starts to build. Words bloom in front of me. Horror. Pity. Compassion. Thirty-four percent Sad. The abstract idea of what the words mean, and the numbers—they’re like a shade blocking out the glare of the feelings themselves.

  Wanna chat? The cloud is suddenly obscured by an x.chat window. The sender’s handle, Theodore_Nam, glows on the screen in black boldface. It’s a name I don’t recognize.

  Wrong number? I write.

  Lu, you’re no fun. A jolt of adrenaline. He knows my name.

  Who are you?

  A friend, he writes and then disappears, dissolving the chat.

  I text Janine: Was that u?

  She replies with a question mark. I look back at my computer. I pull up Alex Murphy’s profile page. There’s a photo of him at the Egyptian temple Abu Simbel. He looks miniscule next to the soaring pharaoh statues that guard the entrance to the tomb. His face is inscrutable.

  I open a message to him. My fingers hover over the keys. I’m tons of fun, I write. A second later, I erase it. I close his page. Elizabeth C.’s frozen face stares back at me, next to the completed LightYears analysis. Pervasive sentiment: Sixty-eight percent Afraid.

  My grandfather is the only dead person I’ve ever seen up close. He was eighty-two and I was seven when he died of lung cancer. I remember his hands placed across his belly in the coffin, his thin gold wedding band glinting in the brown haze of my vision and how my mother cried in my father’s arms. She kept saying it didn’t look like him.

  I look back at the tree. I stopped counting the leaves at forty-four. When they all fall off and die in winter, does the tree know they’ll grow back in spring?

  I go up to my father’s bathroom and take my temperature again. Still normal.

  “Hey,” Ben says, ducking through the doorway.

  I jump. “Jesus!”

  He zeroes in on the thermometer. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Normal,” I say. “Just checking, like as a precaution.” I rinse it and put it back in the cabinet.

  “Dad’s down there, glued to the TV. I’m thinking of heading over to Front Line. Kamal says they need sleeping bags and tents and we have all that crap in the basement.”

  My legs tingle at Kamal’s name. “They’re saying three thousand people are dead.”

  “Yesterday it was forty-one; today it’s three thousand. Tomorrow it will be back to ten.”

  “Yeah. Ten thousand,” I say.

  “They have to make it sound like the end of the world or else no one will watch.”

  “True. But what if it is the end of the world? And since when are you so eager to help the hippie communists?”

  “Phoebe said they need stuff,” he answers plainly, brushing back his eyebrows in the mirror.

  “Oh, Phoebe said?” Now I get it.

  His face flushes. “Phoebe, Kamal. Whatever. We have like twelve sleeping bags in the basement.”

  “Uh-huh.” I walk out of the bathroom.

  “What?” he snaps.

  “Nothing. I’m just not sure it’s safe to go out.”

  “Look, you’re the math genius. There are nine million people in this city. Even if all three thousand people had been in New York, which they weren’t, that’s like what, .003 percent? It’s more likely that we’d be killed in a car accident on the way over there or gunned down by a leprechaun riding a goat.”

  “A leprechaun riding a goat. Excellent.”

  “Don’t you want to see what it’s like out there, with everyone freaking?” he asks.

  Not really. But I do want to see Kamal. “All right, fine. I’ll go.”

  I follow Ben down the stairs.

  “Have you ever heard the name Theodore Nam?” I ask.

&n
bsp; “Don’t think so. Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  The television is off. The door to my dad’s music room is closed.

  I hesitate. Toward the end, when his using was getting really bad, I would stand in the hall and listen to a strange snorting sound coming from the other side of that door. I realized a few years later it was my dad getting high. But even then, I knew it was something bad because I would hear it like the smell of vinegar. It would sting my whole face to stand there and listen to that sound.

  To this day, I hate the smell of vinegar. And I hate that door.

  Ben knocks gently.

  “Come in,” my dad calls. He’s sitting at his piano with a sheet of music paper and a pencil.

  “Front Line needs some extra camping supplies,” Ben says. “So we’re gonna drive over and give them some of our old gear. Cool?”

  My dad looks up. “Mmm, I don’t know. It’s getting pretty weird out there.”

  “It’s like a ten-minute drive,” Ben argues. “Kamal’s over there. Lots of people are there helping out. And we have all that stuff downstairs that could help people. We don’t need it all.”

  “Did I really raise two do-gooders? Imagine that.” He glances at me. “You okay to go out?” I nod. “Just straight there and back, yes? Nowhere else.”

  “For sure,” Ben says.

  “And don’t take anything we might need.”

  Ben and I go down into the basement. The wall of shelves packed tight with gear oozes with the actual smell of bug spray and woodfire ash. It rockets me back to our summer trips to Maine, to the top of Mount Katahdin at the head of the Appalachian Trail. We’d roast hot dogs and marshmallows in the fire, tell stories, wish on stars. In the morning, Mom would wake us before dawn so we could be the first people in North America to see the sun rise.

  “We have seven sleeping bags and nine tents,” Ben says. “Plus all this stuff.” He starts digging through a shelf piled with camping stoves, dishes, headlamps, and climbing rope. “But they just said tents and bags. So we keep four of each?”

  “Seems right. Why do they need this stuff anyway?” I ask.

  “They’re expecting a ton of new volunteers to show up at their tent cities, apparently.”

  We stuff everything into two big garbage bags, then load into the ten-year-old gas-guzzling station wagon that has seen us through so many trips home, so many arguments, so many good times and bad.

  “This reminds me of Blackout,” I say as we pull out onto the empty street. “When we drove around with Dad.”

  “Sort of. But that was fucking bizarre. New York with no lights is like another planet.”

  A wave of white from my mother’s smell left behind on the seatbelt. “This is pretty bizarre. It’s summer and there’s no one on the street.”

  “Not no one. There’s a guy walking his dog.”

  “Yeah. He’s wearing a gas mask.”

  Ben shrugs. “I was hoping for more of a chaotic feeling. This is just, like, a Sunday morning vibe.”

  We arrive at the gates of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A masked Front Line Peacekeeper steps forward holding a tablet. His hands are sheathed in black gloves and my eyes go straight to the gun on his hip.

  Ben puts the window down.

  “Good evening, sir. How can we help you?” The man’s voice is firm.

  “We’re here to drop off a donation. To Phoebe Lowe.”

  The Peacekeeper taps his tablet. “Identification, please.”

  “So official,” I whisper to Ben as I hand him my learner’s permit.

  “Hippies don’t trust anyone,” Ben jokes. The guard hands us face masks and gloves.

  “Make a left at the stop sign and park in spot number twelve. You’re going to building D-6, second floor. Put those on before entering the building.”

  The wrought-iron gates slowly hinge open. We drive through, park, and get out. I put on my mask and gloves. I feel ridiculous.

  We unload the bags. I notice Kamal’s black Tesla Model X parked two spots over. I glance at my reflection in the window. I sweep my hair off my forehead.

  A large three-story building marked D-6 stands in front of us. Just behind it, Manhattan looms across the river. Sharp angles of steel and glass define the skyline—One World Trade Center at the center and a large waxing moon shining down. It bathes everything in silver light.

  The buildings. The bridges. From dirt and grass, humans built this city, this civilization, this world full of people making decisions and asking questions, hurting each other, loving each other, laughing, sleeping, living and dying. But the moon, the sun, the earth itself—they don’t depend on our existence. They are indifferent to our experience. I close my eyes.

  What if when I open them, everything is gone?

  We arrive at the door of D-6 as my watch trills with a call: my mother. I tap Decline and we go in.

  People are everywhere, rushing, loading up supplies, carting pallets of water and boxes of food. They’re talking on phones, typing on tablets. They are electrified by their urgent tasks. And they’re all wearing the same black gloves and masks.

  “Stairs?” Ben calls out to a guy in a Detroit Lions T-shirt. He barely stops to point us to the right. We make our way up to the second floor. Central air pumps in an arctic chill with a hum. There’s a large room with about a hundred chairs arranged in a series of concentric circles. A small army of volunteers watches an orientation video on a multidirectional projection screen. Faceless in their masks, I wonder if some of them will be dead by next week.

  Kamal appears with a rush of pine from behind a closed door. His thin gray T-shirt falls perfectly over those broad shoulders, its hem just grazing the top of his low-hanging black jeans. He even manages to make the face mask look good.

  We follow him back into a hallway that runs along a glass-walled conference room. Phoebe and three men are inside talking. One of the men is Merz, the Front Line rep from TV. He’s not particularly handsome, but he looks like the kind of guy who could talk you into anything. My gaze darts compulsively between him and Phoebe.

  “It’s the end of days,” Kamal says.

  “A bit much, don’t you think?” Ben replies. “All this fuss?”

  “They’re pretty freaked. Sounds like it could take down several million people, and quite quickly.” Three taps.

  “Are you joining the cause?” Ben asks.

  Kamal laughs. “Not officially. But I don’t really have anywhere else to be. ” His eye twitches. “And Phoebe is very persuasive.”

  “I bet,” Ben says. Ugh. We all turn and look at her through the glass. She speaks with her salty eyes, with her body. I can’t hear a word, but I feel myself agreeing with whatever she is saying.

  “I have to admit though,” Kamal says, “I’m scared.”

  A flash of yellow. “Me too,” I say. Our eyes meet. His smell shoots through me quicker than my own pulse.

  He grabs the bags from us. “Thanks for these.”

  I notice a screen inside the conference room. On it is the image of a young boy lying on the ground in the middle of a road. His wild eyes stare straight at the camera. My heart plummets into my stomach with more yellow, then red.

  “What is that?” I murmur as Phoebe opens the door.

  “Guys, hey. Could you help us with something?” she asks. “We’d like you to watch something and give us your opinion.” We file in behind her and she taps her watch.

  I eye the door, already wishing I could bolt. Instead, I steady myself against the large table in the center of the room.

  The video of the boy starts to play from the beginning. He’s walking down a suburban street. A Spider-Man backpack tugs on his shoulders. He’s maybe seven or eight. There are birds chirping in the background.

  He starts to cough. It’s the same cough Clara Adams had at Missy’s party. My stomach twists and my vision blurs red. Within seconds, he falls to the pavement. He wheezes. His tiny arms claw the air.

  “He can’t
breathe,” I blurt out. I dig my nails into the table and look away. Ben puts his hand on top of mine.

  The gasping sound stops. I glance back at the screen. The boy isn’t moving. His eyes are fixed open, his mouth agape. None of us says a word. Phoebe taps her watch again and the screen goes dark.

  “So,” Phoebe begins gently, “the question we’re dealing with is whether we release this.”

  “Are you joking?” Ben charges. “Absolutely not. How is that even a question?”

  “People need to see what’s happening. This is awful, true, but if this is what we’re dealing with, the world needs to know,” Phoebe counters.

  “It will create hysteria. And who’s the asshole who filmed it and didn’t help him, by the way?” Ben argues.

  “ARNS is creating the hysteria,” she says evenly. “The video will save lives by forcing people to take it seriously. And we don’t know who shot it; it was sent to me by some untraceable deep web handle. But there was nothing he or she could’ve done to save this boy and they had to make the tough call to capture something that can help others. If we put it on the air.”

  “What about his parents?” Kamal asks with a shaky voice.

  Merz stands up. “Exactly. We don’t know where this came from, if it’s real, who this boy is. It’s not good journalism in the traditional sense and there could be a backlash.” He pauses and turns to me. “What do you think?” I inhale, looking at the black screen, certain I can make out the ghosted image of the dead boy. I hold the table.

  “I think it’s horrible. But it’s not the first time the world has seen someone die on camera.”

  “This is a child,” Ben mutters.

  “But if it can save a life now,” I continue, “then maybe he didn’t die for nothing.”

  Phoebe nods. “Smart girl. Look, Merz, these are extraordinary circumstances. I don’t think the usual rules of ethical journalism apply.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “Push it out for a vote and have it prepped for the ten thirty broadcast in case it passes.” The other two guys nod and rush out. “I hope this doesn’t bite us in the ass,” Merz adds, following them.