This Book Does Not Exist

by Schneider, Mike

  In a cubicle near me, there is a Page-A-Day desk calendar for the comic strip Boondocks. The cartoon depicts the conscious-minded Huey sitting in front of a computer, telling his little brother Riley he’s having trouble writing because he is serene and optimistic. The next panel contains no action or words, and in the one that follows Huey’s tranquil thoughts evaporate. “Whew!” he says to his brother. “Glad that’s over with.”

  “September 10, 2001” is typeset above the comic strip.

  Depending on when the owner of the calendar tears away the pages, today is either September 10th or September 11th, 2001.

  It is now 8:26 in the morning, and I am inside the World Trade Center.

  I consider this, and only this, until a man with an unflappable demeanor and a lackadaisical gait says, “Well, here we are. Back together again.”

  It is Geppetto, of course.

  “I have so many quest-”

  He cuts me off.

  “You’ve made progress without me. This is how it has to be. I can help sporadically, offering advice, setting up specific scenarios, that sort of thing, but for this to work you have to figure things out on your own.” He checks his watch. “Walk with me. We have a few minutes.”

  He turns towards the stairwell.

  “Today’s September 11th, right?”

  “Today is September 11th,” he says, as he holds open the stairwell door.

  I want to know if we’re going up or down.

  He nods.

  “What does that mean?”

  He nods again.

  I tell him that doesn’t qualify as a response.

  “Yes, it does. I reacted to your question with a nod. That’s the definition of a response. Now come on, you’re wasting time.”

  For better or for worse, I go with him.

  THE TOP OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

  Geppetto leads me up the stairwell.

  On the way, I tell him what Kirsten said about the makeup of the other world. “I understand what the Door is doing.”

  We reach the top of the stairs. As Geppetto walks out onto the roof of the South Tower, taking me back to where I started, he explains, “What I can convey to you – since you’re willing to admit as much now – is that yes, the Door has been manipulating your memories and then deforming them with your imagination.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “You kind of sensed it, didn’t you? It’s not terribly important, anyway, to really understand the mechanics. I wouldn’t have rushed to confirm them now, but what you did with Kirsten – getting to her, seeing her, talking to her – was admirable, and she wasn’t terribly illuminating. I blame her nerves. You came up while she went through her incidents. My colleague Amelia told me that. Something about that time you met… You had a lasting impact on her. The Door molds people – you know this from the brochure – but no one is flawless, nor should they be. Amelia said Kirsten can lose focus sometimes. She’s a free spirit. I want to make sure what she told you was clear. You earned as much. The Door won’t give you anything unless you earn it.”

  “I went to close the Door, but your world created the movie set. Why stop me?”

  “I don’t know that it stopped you so much as you walked away. Be honest with yourself. What do you think would have happened after you closed the Door? You weren’t going to quit thinking about Naomi. Not given the state you’re in. You might have held out for a couple hours, even a few days, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact that she still exists – out there and inside your head.”

  “Kirsten said she had to destroy the Door. Is that-“

  “Don’t you want to find Naomi? Don’t you want to know why she never got on the plane? Don’t you want to understand why you lost her in the first place? If you destroy the Door before you reach her you’ll never know the answers to these questions.”

  I think about the prospect of never seeing Naomi again, of never knowing what went wrong, of living with this gap for the rest of my life. Geppetto is suggesting there is only one alternative: leave the Door alone, keep searching for her, continue combating the other world until I find her. Who knows how long it will take or if I’ll survive. I should walk away. I should force myself to get over her. But something is deeply wrong inside of me.

  Using different words, I admit as much to Geppetto.

  “Which is why, ultimately, you’re here,” he says. “But first things first, you have to handle this incident. Hopefully, it will allow you to understand something you didn’t understand before. Speaking of which, you have… Oh, about nineteen minutes until the other tower…”

  He trails off.

  I look over the edge of the roof in a worthless attempt to appraise how much time it might take to reach the bottom of the building through the stairwell. The view is awe-inspiring. My smallness in relation to the immensity of the Twin Towers and the entirety of New York City is daunting. I’m a fragment in comparison to these structures, most of which will outlast me and my love for Naomi. The Door has made huge things happen to little me, and if they have all led purposely to this moment, they have succeeded in making me grasp just how incredibly small I am.

  “Can I stop the tower from falling? I can’t, right? It’s like Dallas. Like JFK…”

  Geppetto looks at his watch. “The plane is going to hit the North Tower in sixteen minutes. You have more than enough time to make it to the bottom. But it’s more complicated than that, as I’m sure you could have guessed. Naomi and Katie, the hostess from the restaurant, have wandered into this tower.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Naomi knows you’re here. I’ve been waiting for her to show up. That’s why we’ve been talking endlessly. Didn’t you wonder? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing the sound of my voice.”

  “She wants to talk to me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. She might just want to see you from a distance, see if there’s still a spark. Or she could be planning to make your escape more difficult. The last I heard, she and Katie are on the 99th and 90th floors – but I don’t know which one is where. Obviously, you need to get out of this building as quickly as you can, but if you’d like to encounter either woman, I urge you to trust your instincts, and I think you’ll end up running into whichever one you most desire.”

  Geppetto walks over to the edge of the roof, which is safety-proofed with an extra ledge and barbed wire to eliminate jumpers.

  “Have you thought about what it’d be like to be up here when the plane hits?”

  In my imagination, a plane rockets across the sky beneath me… And then there is a blitzkrieg of metal at the speed of sound, an explosion of heat and jet fuel… I see myself getting knocked off the tower. I watch myself fall to the ground, albeit incompletely, because Geppetto interrupts.

  “You could always try this.”

  He leaps off the tower, somehow clearing the barbed wire and the ledge.

  I lose sight of him entirely.

  But I do see a plane coming.

  I thought I had fifteen minutes.

  I don’t.

  WHEN THE PLANE HITS

  When the plane hits the opposite tower everything is as I imagined.

  Except for the sound. I didn’t think of the sound.

  The rupture of flames and breadth of destruction is terrifying and stunning, simultaneously a fantasy and a nightmare. The thought of people dying hits me as I’m driven backwards by the force of the collision and the heat from the burning jet fuel. My spine smashes into the stairwell door. The metal bludgeons the back of my head. I’m thankful. The door saved me from falling off the roof.

  Like Geppetto.

  I put aside my pain, open the door and descend into the stairwell.

  Rushing down the stairs, I recall the two floor numbers Geppetto mentioned – 99 and 90 – while checking the one I’m passing (102). Picking which floor to go to is arbitrary. I have no reason to believe one floor would be more suitable for
Naomi than the other. Plus, Geppetto said she was here “the last he heard” – meaning she might not be in the building at all.

  I wheel by floor 100.

  A second plane should be hitting this tower. I can’t predict when. The first plane crashed sooner than it was supposed to, sooner than Geppetto said it would. Did he lie? I already concluded he wasn’t malicious. Do I have to go back on that?

  I reach floor 99.

  Looking down the stairwell, I see crowds of people fleeing. My path to the 90th floor is impeded. I stare at the door in front of me.

  I take a chance.

  THE 99TH FLOOR

  The floor is over-populated by men and women wearing business attire. Most are working the phones. Others scurry back and forth across the carpeted floor talking and delivering paperwork. No one seems to know that an aircraft struck the North Tower minutes ago.

  I storm the office, yelling for everyone to get out of the building. I don’t care if these people are real or not. My eyes don’t need to witness anymore deaths.

  Not a single person pays attention to me.

  Time is evaporating. Everyone needs to evacuate, and I need to find Naomi.

  I canvas the entire office space.

  I don’t see her.

  Coming to this floor was a mistake. I should be trying to get to the bottom of the building. Naomi knows the end game. If she’s here, that will be her destination.

  I turn around. One last time I scream, “Everyone needs to go!”

  No one listens.

  I push back towards the stairwell, splitting between a thin man and a stocky woman. Both are unafraid. In the corner of my eye, however, I catch a glimpse of someone huddled underneath a desk.

  Katie.

  She’s trembling, as tears slide across her cheeks. She sees me looking at her. She recognizes me. Hope amasses in her picturesque eyes.

  I run, saying, “Katie… Come on, we need to go.”

  She cries out, “The building’s going to collapse, and we’re all going to die.”

  “I don’t know how you got pulled into this, but that’s why we have to move. Now!”

  I hold out my hands. She takes them. I lift her up. Although we have to run, she doesn’t let go of me. “We’ll never make it,” she says, locking on to my eyes. “The towers collapse. Both of them. Thousands of people die.”

  Of course she knows this. That’s why she’s scared.

  “Are we from the same world?”

  Cryptically, she responds, “I can be from wherever you want.”

  And then she kisses me.

  I pull back.

  “What was-”

  “I wanted to,” she says. “I wanted to kiss you before we all die.”

  I tell her I won’t let us die, and I tug my hands away from her. This is insane, inexplicable that it’s happening at all let alone in this moment. We have to go. I start to leave, hoping she’ll follow. I look over my shoulder. She’s coming. “Okay,” I say. “Everything will be okay.” Her cheeks dent. Her lips curl. I think about our kiss, and it agonizes me to realize I would like it if she kissed me again.

  I grab the handle on the stairwell door.

  The second plane hits the building.

  THE SECOND PLANE CRASH

  The shockwave sends me and Katie to the floor. My shoulder lodges into the indoor-outdoor carpeting. I roll over. My temple cracks against the floor. Blood runs down my cheek. Katie clings to my chest. I hear her whispering that this will be our grave.

  I try to stand but the tower is shaking. The plane must have hit somewhere beneath us. I fall. I can’t get untangled from Katie. I see that the rest of the people on the floor are finally panicking. Frightened and confused men and women with bloody faces scream and cry.

  The structure finally settles.

  Everyone runs.

  Katie holds on to me. Tears rain from her eyes. “I want you,” she says, while the world prepares to fall apart. I say I want to survive and latch onto her hand, leading her into the stairwell like a fullback ripping through the defensive line. Smoke and ash billow up from whichever floor the plane struck, flooding the chute. I can’t see more than an arm’s length in front of me. People flutter in and out of the haze. They look like ghosts. I’m afraid that’s what we’re all about to become.

  Nothing stops me from trying to get down the stairs. As dangerous as it is, there is no alternative. Katie and I know this. Not everyone else does. Some people are actually running up the stairwell, towards the top of the tower, away from the site of the crash. I yell at them. It doesn’t matter.

  In the chaos, I lose Katie’s hand. “Stay with me!” I shout. I can no longer see her. The stairwell is in disarray, a coffin full of noise. Feet stomp, bodies fall, people hack in between piercing cries. Every sound echoes. The smoke and the ash make it unbearable to breathe. I wonder if I might die from asphyxiation. I squint my eyes to keep out the dust. I think I see Katie coming back to my side. I feel a hand on my back. I force past the people crowding the steps in front of me, initiating a cluster of thoughts – survival of the fittest, Naomi seeing me with Katie, the number of floors to go… Nothing sticks. As if in a dream, my sense of time and place decomposes. The march of my descent becomes impossible to track. There are no more demarcation points, only images that come and go – dark colors of clothing, pale patches of skin, the floor Naomi might have been on, the numbers nine and zero, smoke pouring out of doors like burning ovens, ash greying Katie’s face like a zombie, a clearing beneath where the plane crashed, fewer bodies taking up less surface area – and then everything rushes back into form and coalesces, and I think I see a clear pathway out.

  I can’t believe it, but we might actually make it.

  The bottom of the stairwell comes fast. The door to the lobby dangles open. Someone runs through the gap. I race after them, irrationally alarmed the door will swing shut and lock before I reach it. I look back for Katie. I don’t see her. Where is she? I can’t lose anyone else.

  A horde plows through me, escaping the stairwell. I face the lobby, staring through the open door, hoping Katie somehow beat me down. Firemen, police, and paramedics are everywhere. So many will die trying to save people that can’t be saved.

  I dash into the lobby. Maybe I can still find Katie. Maybe Naomi is outside. Sprinting, my vision becomes abstract. So little of what I see equates, so little of what I do feels as if it is within my control.

  Daylight. There is daylight.

  And then I’m standing in it. I’m outside the tower.

  SURVIVING THE TOWERS

  Outside the tower, I search everywhere, through wounded people and emergency personnel, shouting for Naomi, the woman I can’t see but still love. I grasp and wish and stumble. Every time I hear a new sound, I assume the tower is beginning to crumble. Every other moment I think I’ve stayed one moment too long. People are hysteric. Amongst them I see glimpses of Naomi – her hair, her profile, her earrings, her nape – but it’s never her. Nor is it Katie. It’s not even Geppetto. A grand feeling of emptiness, of being utterly alone in the universe, ushers over me, and then the South Tower implodes, as if God were playing Jenga and he pulled the wrong piece.

  I sprint to get outside the blast radius.

  Everything quakes. I capsize, ricocheting off a parked car. Time plays its trick – one second feels like ten – the catacomb of debris lands, and a surge of rock and ash and metal and the flesh and bones of the dead chases me and everyone else who is fleeing. I anticipate the impact. I sense it coming, but I don’t want to believe I’m going to die, and in that same instant I find an enclave and throw every joule of energy I have into getting inside of it, praying for protection, and then the cloud of devastation is no longer coming… It has come.

  I close my eyes. I know that people are dying, that the destroyed tower is now destroying the world around it, that there will be massive ramifications far outside of this circle. The lives lost here will crack the lives of those in other places, t
he parents, siblings, lovers, grandparents, and children of the dead. Destruction begets destruction – another catastrophe is waiting to happen once the flow of information travels.

  Debris batters my body. A flood of smoke cascades over me, and my world turns black.

  GROUND ZERO

  Lying at the bottom of an assembly of broken things, I smack at my face, ridding it of ash and dirt. I test my arms and legs. They move without incident. I crawl out of the pile and clamber onto the street. After regaining my footing, I survey the area.

  Ground Zero has been vacated.

  Only haze and ash and two bottomless pits of rubble remain, all of it grey, all of it wallowing in desolation and remorse. Now that I’m actually here and at one with the city instead of in Ohio staring sadly at a television screen with my dad and brother, as I was on 9/11/01, I consider what it will take to rebuild. The streets whisper to me, “The horrible thing has happened and now we have to live with it.”

  I stand still for a long while and ponder my failings.

  A voice says, “I take it you didn’t get to either of them.”

  I turn around. You-Know-Who is gawking at me.

  “How the hell-”

  “I found a nice, soft place to land.” He adds, “So… No Naomi. No Katie…”

  “Katie,” I tell him, letting the matter of how he survived leaping off the tower pass as just another unbelievable occurrence in a world defined by the inconceivable. “But then I lost her.”

  “Katie, not Naomi? Hmmm. From afar, it seemed like you did a good job trusting your instincts.”

  As Geppetto walks towards the rubble, I tell him I had too much information to act on instinct.

  “Do you think you would have lost Katie at the end if you weren’t stuck on reaching Naomi?”

  I can’t answer that. He beckons for me to follow him.