Wednesday's Child

by Alan Zendell

  Everyone agreed, and we decided to deal only with people who had a demonstrated record of integrity and intelligent, unbiased reporting, respected journalists who’d already had successful careers and were now retired or working on ventures out of the public eye. We reached out to the three we liked best and agreed to a series of televised interviews in which they would all participate, while alternating acting as moderators. They convinced their networks to give us time to present our case in whatever manner we deemed most effective and we agreed that they could ask us any question that all three of them agreed was reasonable.

  52.

  The first interview was a ratings blockbuster for the three networks that aired it. They helped us package our presentations and promoted them relentlessly. Viewer anticipation was high, and sponsors actually bid for commercial slots once they knew what we were planning. More than a hundred million people tuned in, initially, and as word spread during the hour-long telecast, that number rose to almost two hundred million.

  The journalists asked tough questions but the atmosphere was more collegial than adversarial. That clicked with the viewers, and networks in thirty countries asked if they could carry future broadcasts. The sponsors gave the three commentators a blank check, and the next three interviews were all seen by nearly a billion people.

  Every telecast was followed by online chat rooms that went on for hours, with all four of us taking part in the discussions. Networks and individual stations sponsored message boards and forums in which millions of people expressed theories and opinions. Thousands of websites sprang up overnight to discuss what we had revealed to the world.

  After four successful broadcasts, in which we covered everything we could think of, we opened the format to permit viewers to phone in questions while we were on the air. The response was overwhelming, with people calling from all over the globe.

  A month later, the team assembled to assess what we’d accomplished. Rod hadn’t been directly involved in the interviews. Instead, he’d been carefully monitoring the responses of major media outlets around the world. He’d prepared an enlightening review.

  “First,” he said, “there’s no doubt that you got your message out. Two-thirds of the civilized world knows about Dylan Brice, who lived days out of order and foiled the terrorists, but whether people took what you intended from the message is another matter.

  “Debates are raging all over the Internet. The loudest and largest is whether, in spite of all the evidence and testimonials to the contrary, the videos are clever fakes.

  “A close second, at least in terms of the number of websites devoted to it is Dylan himself. Some groups think he’s certifiable. Others believe he’s being manipulated by aliens, and a portion of those believe he actually is an alien in human form. Some think, as the AG suggested, that he’s God’s messenger sent to warn the world about Armageddon, while others postulate less arduous interpretations of divine intervention: angels, demons, and such. My favorite is a website devoted to proving that Dylan is under the hypnotic control of a secret international cabal trying to take over the world.”

  We’d known from the first that the window of opportunity to effect change was limited. Nevertheless, we’d been so involved in the details that Rod’s assessment came as a shock.

  Jerry had directed our approach ever since the first briefing. “You’ve done all you could to inform people,” he said. “It’s time to change your strategy before this degrades to a circus.”

  “Part of the problem,” said Rod, “was the impact of Dylan’s announcement that he wasn’t living days out of order any more. It made people wonder if the whole thing had been faked all along.”

  “I’m the one who lived it,” I said, “and even I’m beginning to doubt it. I used to go to sleep at night wondering what day it would be when I woke up. Now I half expect to wake up and find that it’s July 16th, and all this was a dream.”

  Jerry got us back on track.

  “You need a new focus,” he said. “Even among people who believe you and realize that things need to change, there are a hundred different ideas out there. I think you should adopt the best ones, and try to get a grass-roots movement going, which was Dylan’s idea in the first place. You should also continue to lobby people in power who’ve been sympathetic while you still have enough credibility to make them listen.”

  “Two points of view are gaining prominence among people who think action is needed,” Rod said. “One stresses better communication with the populations that support terrorism, improving relations with the Muslim world. The other is the complete opposite, forming a solid world-wide coalition to fight a war of extermination with Islamic fundamentalism.”

  “If you had to choose,” I said to the room, in general, “which would you support?”

  Mary, who’d been silent until then, said, “We have to support both. After decades of strife, it was the only approach that worked in Northern Ireland. There has to be a believable, substantive attempt to resolve the grievances of the Muslim world, while we demonstrate that if that fails, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to win. And since their primary grievances all relate to our presence in their countries, and the reason we’re there is oil, there also needs to be a total commitment to developing energy alternatives.”

  We met with our three journalists to propose a new series of televised forums, in which we would argue that all the major powers had to align together to push both initiatives. The networks were cool to the idea, however. The novelty was gone, and we were entering the area of special interests. Instead of science fiction and the supernatural, we were trying to resolve problems that had been around for centuries.

  We got some air time, but the new effort never really got off the ground. The Administration was comfortable with the status quo, with its friends in the oil industry reaping windfall profits and the unstable alliances in the Middle East propping up military budgets which made billions for its other chief supporters.

  It was depressing. I had about run out of steam. After everything we’d done it had come down to this. Greed and selfishness had won again. When our message stopped being fun, people had simply tuned us out.

  It took weeks for the realization that I had failed to fully sink in. When it did, I was mired in a malaise that sapped my energy. Nothing mattered any more. Ilene wanted me to talk to Jerry about it.

  ***

  It was December. The days were cold, the mornings colder. Henry was back in Baltimore and I’d returned to my day job three or four days a week.

  One frigid morning, an Arab student in an overcoat boarded an R-5 commuter train at Bryn Mawr, got off at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, and blew himself up in a crowded terminal.

  That evening, I sat with Ilene watching the gruesome replays and listening to the crescendoing calls for revenge and retaliation. I didn’t say anything, but she knew from my tortured expression and my silence that I was ready to explode in a different way. She came and put her arms around me.

  “It’s not your fault, Dylan. You couldn’t have done any more.”

  “I know. That’s not what’s bothering me. I want to know what the fuck July and August were all about. Was it just a cosmic joke at our expense?”

  “You said yourself HE might be testing us, seeing if we would heed HIS warning and save ourselves. Maybe HE decided we’re not worth saving.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not right. If HE’s so damn smart, HE knows enough about human nature to understand that this couldn’t have ended any other way. At least if HE’d left me able to demonstrate what HE’d done to my life in a way that no one could deny…but no, just at the critical moment, HE picked up HIS toys and went home. This is HIS fault.”

  I’d wandered out onto our deck while I spoke. I looked up at the sky and shook my fist. “You’re laughing at us, aren’t you. You’re worse than we are. If I could get my hands on you…”

  “Come inside, Dylan. It’s cold out there.”

 
; I went in and fell into the chair I used for reading, pulling a book off the shelf at random, though I should have known that random had no meaning for me any longer, if it ever did. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I hadn’t looked at it since my sophomore year at Columbia, yet it seemed appropriate, the story of a man living outside of his time.

  Ilene made me take a tranquilizer and I began to read, eventually drifting off to sleep like the dead. I awoke the next morning, not in the thirteenth century, thank God, with a passage securely locked in my memory. It must have been the last thing I read before falling asleep.

  …it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me…

  I called Tom Brenner, my favorite of the three journalists we’d worked with.

  “Tom, can I impose on you one last time? The suicide bombing, yesterday. It’s too much. I have to fix this.”

  “What do you have in mind, Dylan? My influence is limited, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “Get me some airtime, tonight. You and me. Five minutes on the network news. That’s all I ask. I know how to turn all this around and make them listen.”

  “You want to tell me what you’re planning?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  He said he did, and I told him. I knew I could trust him. I could even trust the network. If they bought my idea, they’d never blow the surprise ahead of time. They’d just tease people with a promise of another “must see” interview.

  That was how I got my last TV spot. At 7:10 pm, Eastern Daylight Time, thanks to a ten-hour promotional blitz, fifty million people saw and heard me throw down the gauntlet to the world’s leaders. Only I knew I was throwing it at the Übermensch as well. “Get your damn acts together or face the consequences. You have one last chance to get it right. Watch the sky at noon, tomorrow.”

  There was pandemonium all around me. Was I making some kind of threat? I felt totally at peace. It was out of my hands now. I turned off my phone and went home.

  Mark Twain’s protagonist knew with the certainty of hindsight that there would be an eclipse the next day. I knew that an eclipse the next day at noon could only occur as a result of a miracle.

  Ilene had seen the page I was reading when I fell asleep. The next morning, she said, “Let’s take the day off and drive to the mountains. Someplace with an unobstructed view of the midday sun.”

  About the Author

  Alan Zendell has had a long and varied career as a physicist, aerospace engineer, software and database developer, and Government analyst and manager. But as both a reader and writer, his first love was Sci-Fi and speculative fiction. In “retirement” he now helps middle and high school students improve their math skills as he and his wife divide their time between Maryland and Florida, the home of their present and future grandchildren and their favorite dog.