Radio Sphere (2 page)

I returned a self—comforting smile.

The place alone gave me goosebumps, it had a disquiet that was easy to mistakenly overlook— hundreds of people all around yet alone, so I was glad to have some clean clothes and could leave. That creeper was easy enough to ignore the rest of the time even though I knew he kept staring at me.

Mom and dad had me over for dinner, I hadn’t seen them in seven months, since moving out, but most importantly Chad would be there. Chad had these pectoral muscles that must have been so comfortable to lean into, to fall asleep on, that he could use to protect me.

His hair had this one brawny Superman
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curl that danced around his forehead as he moved and he had that faux—mountainous
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smell of a clean man. My own One from City of Lost Children.
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Chad got along well with my dad ever since his own father passed— which meant he started going over to our house. I could see in dad’s eyes a calm he never had years ago whenever he and Chad had their long mentorus talks in the study. Chad was only four years older than me. Mom, who was pushing 232 years old, and birthed me at 213, grew up with Chad’s dad back before the world changed from blue to brown. We figured mom was among the last still alive— from before the bombs went off— in Boston at least.

I completed more of Yoshi’s Island, sitting on the duffel of clean clothes, while I waited for the T
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which came late because it had been stalled by another jumper—
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people having trouble coping with one thing or another. The trains only ran for three hours in the morning and again for three hours in the evening, so jumpers completely messed up the schedule. Mom once told me that people looted until they realized the TVs they’d stolen wouldn’t work, after that there wasn’t a lot of crime. Mom had said it was better now, that I could live happily, but I could tell she always missed something from before. She almost never spoke about what it was like in her youth. Logan had men there, lifting, moving, hammering; they all wore jumpsuits of mismatched colors— green, orange, blue— and operated in ordered groups of four or five. The colors didn’t seem to correspond to anything at all.

Nobody spoke to them and they spoke to nobody, the men with guns watched from all corners. The men with guns usually patrolled on foot between, and at, the train stations. From the John courthouse, Boylston, Dartmouth, and down to Union Park the soldiers made triangular patrol routes. You could see them clearly from high enough— when reading The Giver on the topmost accessible floor of the remains of John Hancock Tower— I could watch the clusters of dots blithely roam. Some jumpsuit men came from down track with plastic gloves and containers covered with tarps or canvas or something. Even after the Callahan tunnel collapsed Logan kept regular patrols and the general appearance of order. Grandpa and dad worked very hard to hold the city together; each held high positions at one time. They kept the city from ruin.

Greater Boston became a figurative island, surrounded by a sea of chaos and ignorance, except the occasional caravans that came in through Mass Pike from nowhere towns not on the old maps.

The trucks were like clothing; scraps stitched together and lumbering around like Frankenstein’s monster— things that didn’t seem to fit in the world.

The trucks were cobbled together from Logan’s hoarded tires; most had a bed built from a picnic table and children’s park equipment since all they needed to do was haul Great—paste from where ever they were grown.

I watched the trucks because they rumbled and made no sense. How can piles of debris be energized to life— they were more than the sum of their parts and had a great usefulness— but were nothing like Wenji and her family. Of the eight trucks— Kitahn, Copley, Perry, Shaw, Lowry, Nena, Hepburn, and Dean— that motored about the city from time to time, Nena was my favorite. She had two silver slides on her side to wall the back of the truck and monkey bars that soldiers would dangle their legs through to gate the hatch. Nena limped the most and, when the soldier’s would remove the plastic green turtle shell of a hood to see and fix what may have gone wrong, she was loved the most by her companions.

The soldiers who drive the trucks brought news bulletins and announcements from Logan, posted in public areas. The thin paper sheets and paint—like ink rendered the missives lives short, so most communities had a reader or two to relay the news.

I kept records at the water dispensary, they’d set us up in Old South Church, which wasn’t too far a walk from my apartment. Many of the old churches were converted into water dispensaries since running water had been cut off to the city two centuries ago due to contamination, radiation. It was supposed to be clean water. The serosity was impure. I’d often watch the particles float in the water and dance across sunlight and wonder what they were. It had to be something gross; from a dead fish, frog poop, mud, or human bits.

We kept handwritten records on paper, so we had a sizable staff to keep everything organized and accounted for. The city had re—purposed a lot of space around the financial district for workers to make paper, ink, and other necessities. Grandpa taught me cursive, but those weren’t allowed at work because nobody could read them. Handwriting died out at least two generations ago— we revived it; we were chosen because our hand—eye coordination allowed for the most legible writing in Boston. I got fed for working; it beat some of the other jobs people needed doing. Grandpa taught me most of my lessons growing up since he was already retired and lived with us, he was one of the few to have lived for over 300
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years. He was a leader at Logan, an archivist, a strategist, the last of a certain type of educated man, a teacher.

Dad told me there used to be a time, long ago, when people craved the knowledge to read and write, but that even Grandpa wasn’t old enough to have seen it. The whole city was saddened by Grandpa’s decline, how the radiation affected his memory, and the medicine that allowed for his extended life began to run out causing rapid decay and irreparable aging. The same happened to mom, the supplies at Mass General
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waned, the last reserved for those already on the treatment. They won’t get enough— no more was going to come— causing synaptic function to decrease more than anything physical, the older you were the harsher the decline. The elders became husks, first like children, then like barely living mannequins until they finally died.

When the T came I put away my DS and entered the screeching car. They’re kind of amazing. The whole subway smelled of the old world; sun and rust and rain; the green and gray cars looks like they’ve traveled it whole.

I lugged the duffel into the center of the train car. The creeper from the laundromat had followed me. They say the sudden emptiness of the world had affected people’s brains, Grandpa called them beat—brains; most of the people who were badly affected had already died off, but some still lived and their brains flow like an icebound river. They can’t even figure out basic Van Hiele,
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then suddenly they can see things we can’t, insights and the like, as if their brains were reconstructed in a different way— a broken yet beautiful calamity. Grandpa came across many in his time working at Logan and he was one, in a way, as he died. They all were, the aged ones, as they no longer got the medicines that kept them.

He coughed like he wanted to keep even the air out, but gave up for a while because his body made him; try, try again.

“Don’t you what I know regret toast?” Grandpa muttered to his own photograph from ninety years before. He giggled to himself, took a sip of water that dribbled down his shirt, and flicked the photo across the room with a tear in his eye.

In his younger elderly years, he was often harsh and cold because he wanted more from people and they rarely lived up to his expectations. He didn’t care about how you did something but, rather why you did it— if you messed up constantly for the right reasons he came close to giving you a pass.

“I do like toast, don’t you miss it Lizzie?” I wasn’t sure what toast was I just placated him and he rocked back and forth with a grin. I picked up his photograph and he asked me what I had in my hand.

“It’s a kind of bird, Grandpa, have you’ve seen these kind before?”

“Oh yes, long ago we had a bird bath in our yard and those and all kinds of birds hopped on all fours… they bathed and dad shot them with pellets. I thought them all extinct, didn’t you Iola?”

We were alone so I knew he forgot I wasn’t my mother, but it wasn’t the first time so I knew not to fight back. Things got bad when I didn’t play along.

“Well Grandpa, if these birds are so rare maybe we can follow them home— maybe there are more there and we can go on an adventure.”

“I’m too old for adventure.”

“One last adventure!”

“You’re too young to leave the house.”

“That’s the thing you remember?”

“Where is your mother? Sarah? Sarah?!”

“Sarah’s not my mom. Who is Sarah?”

“Sarah?!”

The spittle flew from his mouth because he knew Sarah was dead, but he also thought she was in the next room. My mother heard his shouts and joined us.

“Papa, it’s me— Iola.”

“I know that. You’re right over there,” he pointed at me.

“That’s Liz, your granddaughter, Papa,”

“Yes, little Lizzie. That’s right.” He leaned in and whispered “Lizzie and I are going on an adventure. She thinks the photo is a bird.”

The boy from the laundromat kept staring at me, and soon I could smell the mix of fecal and mint odors he carried with him.

“They’re not green, your sister saw the sky that isn’t hers— threw a seahorse at them all!”

I mistakenly giggled.

“Hush! The plum poppies don’t know anything yet.”

He descended upon me with his aggression palpable, almost condensing on the windows. The enclosed train car left me with no place to escape to. He held a red, uneaten apple
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in one hand hanging off a limp arm as he raised the other hand above his head. The train cart rocked gently as it rolled down the track and I ran to the door.

I got as far away from him as I could, my back to the wall, he still stood on the other side of the car looking at me with a gloss over his eyes that I’d seen in Grandpa’s eyes that meant nobody was home. The door was locked. There were no other people on the Earth, for a single moment; I was alone with erratic behavior personified.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I pleaded.

“Find your way.”

I wanted to escape, to find someone who could help, to float away into the sky on a cloud. I had to stall until the next station, to keep myself present at this of all moments. I couldn’t remember how far it was; panic infiltrated my perception like black—water drops running down a window with cascading intensity blurring my vision. The train car got smaller as the man got closer. I wondered how much was my fault.

I shouldn’t have looked at him at the laundromat.

I shouldn’t have giggled.

I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.

I pretended like I was in control by hiding secret power in my soul, waiting, waiting, waiting for Chad to notice me and see that every day— most days for no reason at all— I live, and it is due only to my secret difference from everyone else, this uniqueness in my soul. That I could, at any moment of my choosing, release my power. I looked the creeper in the eyes, the eyes reminded me I had no power but more of a hope that, because I’m alone, I struggle to hold on to.

He stopped his advance and struggled to express: “…because it’s donut day,”

“I forgive you,” for being a beat—brain. It wasn’t his fault for being that way; broken and lost in his own mind. I was almost happy to be there beside him, but that’s only because I realized how much alike he was to anyone else, really, lost in the weird world of mental states covered in dirt and grime with no clean perch to rest on. “…so please don’t hurt me.”

He lunged at me. In an awkward arc, he fell forward as if he were defying gravity and stayed there impossibly for several moments. The train was slowing. It allowed him to hold an absurd stance before tripping over my duffel and falling on his back. His long messy hair covering his sunken eyes, he cried. I left the train. Left my DS on the seat. I’d got off several stops too early. Some stranger would find out that Yoshi’s Island was my escape, and they’ll steal it for themselves: that wonderful island, shiny and clean, where I actually had my hidden power. I ran away from the station. My mind was blank. I didn’t realize I was running until a raw taste filled my mouth then faded away. I shook in that inside part of me that knows reality and keeps me there even when I most want to go crazy. I try to escape and live in a butterfly world with old world foods because this is a place where nobody cares and we all grow fat and live happily. It could be a place where nothing decayed and all day and night was sunny.

The wind blew flecks of rust, as it often had, that danced like I’d imagined ballerinas did. I ducked into the museum to wait out the storm. Faneuil Hall was all but abandoned, two elderly creatures prowled the building to dust off the artifacts they’d collected there. Most of it was tech that no longer functioned, but stacked in piles that looked artistic. A pile of television guts here, the screens over there, black and gray cases and whatnots on whatnots. Rome, I’ve seen in pictures, had marble statues and we have these.

I went back to the crowded station an hour later to catch the 6pm train the rest of the way to my parent’s neighborhood. A malodorous emanation lingered in the train that may or may not have been real.