Clive sat in his room on the ninth floor of the Hotel Spire without a working cell phone, thinking about the end of the world. He had nothing to distract him. No books, no music. He couldn't buy any movies because the global credit card systems were still down.

He remembered his dad's instructions. Do not leave the hotel. Do not speak to anyone.

He couldn't sleep.

It was sometime between very late on one day and very early the next, and he was beginning to feel hungry.

His dad hadn't told him to stay in the room, he reasoned, merely not to leave the hotel. He could leave the room and remain in the hotel and still follow the rule.

So, while normal people (if such people presently existed in the Hotel Spire) were fast asleep, Clive quietly left his hotel room and strolled down the hall, listening to whatever he could hear—fans, the faint buzz of electricity, forced movements of air—and stopping at each hotel room door to put his ear against it and hope to discern a sound, any sound, betraying occupancy.

When he was unsuccessful on the ninth floor, he tried the eighth, then the tenth, eleventh and twelfth. It was on the twelfth floor that he finally heard something. Something familiar. With his ear pressed against the door, he heard the theme song of his favourite anime, One Piece, followed by the start of an episode he distinctly remembered.

He hesitated—then knocked on the door, reasoning, a knock on a door is not speech (unless the knocking is in some kind of code, such as Morse code, which Clive's knocking wasn't.)

There was no response.

He knocked again.

This time, One Piece abruptly went silent, and Clive swore that what he heard next was the sound of someone shuffling closer to the door.

He knocked for a third time.

“I don't want anything, thank you,” a voice said from inside. It was, as best as Clive could guess, a male voice: the voice of a boy. “Please go away.”

Clive cleared his throat—still, he reasonably understood, not speech—then thought, what dad doesn't know won't hurt him, and it's not like I'll divulge any secret information (no longer, it must be pointed out, an explanation of how he was following Dr. Altmayer's rule but a justification for breaking it) and said, “It's not room service. I'm just someone staying here at the hotel. I heard you watching One Piece. I like that anime a lot. Do you like it?”

“What's ‘One Piece’?” the boy asked from the other side of the door. “What's ‘anime’?”

“It's like a Japanese cartoon. One Piece is the name of a pretty famous one. I know you were watching it because I recognized the music,” said Clive.

“Anime is animation?” asked the boy.

“That's right. My name is Clive, by the way.”

“I'm Or—Michael Simpson, a fourteen year-old boy born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, in the U.S. of A. I sure enjoy watching basketball, don't you? My favourite team is the Cleveland Cavaliers. I'm staying here with my mother, Patty. Look, that's her now. I have to go. It was swell meeting you. Bye.”

That sounded almost robotic to Clive. He just wasn't sure if it was meant sarcastically or not. “I don't think your mom's in there with you,” said Clive, realizing that he was disobeying his dad's instructions for the only reason he ever disobeyed instructions: in pursuit of adventure.

There was a brief silence before the boy asked, “Why not?”

“Because I'm pretty sure your mom wouldn't let you watch anime at three in the morning.”

“My name is Michael Simpson,” said the boy.

“I know. You said that already.”

“I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, in the U.S. of A. I like basketball, especially the professional team called the Cleveland Caval—”

“Right,” said Clive. “Who's your favourite player?”

“Player of what?”

“Basketball player. On the Cavs.”

“Cavs? Is that also a famous anime Japanese animation?”

“The Cavs are the Cleveland Cavaliers,” said Clive.

“They are called two things? That is wholly irrational: to have two names for one thing.”

“It's a short form. Like, say, you're Michael but I bet your friends call you Mike.”

“No one calls me Mike,” said the boy.

“So what do your friends call you: Michael Simpson?”

“That is my name.”

“Who’s your favourite player on the Cleveland Cavaliers, Mike?”

“I do—.”

“Mike? Michael Simpson?” Clive repeated a few times, and knocked on the hotel room door, but the boy didn't answer. Indeed, Clive heard no other sound from behind the door. No shuffling, no One Piece. It was as if the boy had dropped dead.

Eventually, Clive got bored of sitting in the hall, checked the ninth floor to see if his dad was back (he wasn't) and took the elevator to the main floor to see if he could find something to eat.

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The hotel lobby was nearly empty. The restaurant was closed. The only thing open was the bar, behind which a barman stood drying glasses.

Clive asked him if he had any food.

“Afraid not,” said the barman. “Payment systems are down so no way of putting through transactions.”

“Why are they down?”

The barman smirked. “Why don’t you tell me, kid.”

“I don’t know,” said Clive.

“If you don’t know, I don’t know.”

“If you can’t sell anything because your payment system’s down, how come you’re still washing and drying glasses?” asked Clive.

“Force of habit,” said the barman. “Ain’t you ever seen an old movie? We’re always drying glasses.”

Just then a woman walked in. She was in her late 40s, wearing a waxed, olive-coloured cotton jacket and carrying a handbag and two notebooks, the digital and analog kinds. Clive noticed her when the barman nodded at her, and as Clive turned around to take a look, the woman said, “Mix me up a periodista, would ya?”

“Sure thing, Friday,” said the barman.

Clive stared at him.

“What?”

“Can’t sell anything. Right.”

“That’s not a sale. It’s a drink for a friend, from my own collection of booze that just happens to be in a bottle next to bottles that aren’t mine. And if it ain’t—you can’t prove it. Besides, she pays cash. Low-tech functionality.”

The woman took a seat on a stool beside Clive’s, plopped her notebook down on the bar and scribbled something in it with a fountain pen. “That’s eighteen hours now,” she said.

“Bizarre, eh?” said the barman.

“Something’s obviously, royally up,” said the woman.

“What—you don’t believe in glitches?” asked the barman; and after a slight, serious pause, they both erupted with laughter.

The barman went to work making the woman’s periodista. The woman scribbled some more in her notebook. Clive’s stomach rumbled.

“Hungry?” she asked Clive.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Do you know this kid?” she yelled at the barman, who yelled back, “No, but he’s alright. Seems sharp for his age.”

“And how old are you?” asked the woman.

“Fourteen. My name’s Clive.”

“What’s your last name?”

Clive smiled. “None of your business.”

“Mine’s Evans. First name: Friday. I’m a journalist for the Post.”

“One of the best journalists in D.C. and the entire country, if you ask me,” yelled the barman. “In no one’s pocket and the only thing she’s after is God's honest truth.”

“And periodistas,” she added as the drink came smoothly sliding her way.

But before taking her first sip, she dug around in her handbag, pulled out a plastic-wrapped airport sandwich and a few packs of peanuts and put them on the bar in front of Clive. “Here. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Thanks,” said Clive.

The barman put down a (recently washed and dried) glass of water beside the sandwich and nuts. “On the house,” he said. “D.C.’s finest tap.”

Clive ate the sandwich. Friday Evans drank her drink. The barman checked his phone. “I can’t live without this eff’ing thing,” he said.

“Still down?” asked Friday.

“Still down.”

“How’d you get in here?” Clive asked Friday suddenly.

The journalist smiled. “It’s a hotel. I walked in and asked for a room. Why? Is there anything so special about this hotel that a girl can't come in and get a room?”

“No,” said Clive.

“How do you know that?”

“I said I don’t know that it’s special.”

“No, you said there’s nothing special about it.”

“Come on, Friday. You’re not gonna get drunk and grill a teenager, are you?”

“You said he was sharp,” said Friday. “Plus, he started it.”

“I’m just here with my dad,” said Clive.

“What’s he do for a living?” asked Friday, grinning. “I bet he’s a plumber.”

Clive said nothing.

“I’ll put it to you this way. We live in a world of people-who-know and the rest of us. By virtue of birth, you’re part of the people-who-know, even if you don’t know all that they know yet. You will in time. Me? I represent the rest of us. It’s my duty to stick my nose in your business so that the rest of us know something too. Capisce?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This just looks like a normal hotel to me. I’m just a normal kid on vacation.”

“Sure, up alone at four in the morning.”

“Insomnia,” said Clive.

“Where’s your dad?” asked Friday.

“Sleeping.”

“Communications have been down for almost nineteen hours. Before they went down, there were dozens of posts on social media about people getting attacked by reptiles. The American army started moving troops around. Flights are grounded. Banks aren’t letting people withdraw their money. You’re hanging around the Hotel Spire. What’s your dad do, Clive?”

“He’s a plumber.”

“Told you he was sharp,” said the barman.

“That’s private school for you. They don’t quite churn out sheep like the public system. They spawn arrogant weasels,” said Friday.

“I didn’t go to private school.”

Friday wrote something in her notebook “Good to know. That narrows down who your dad could be.”

“You’re wasting your time. It’s not going to matter who my dad is.”

“Why not?”

“Because it just won't.”

“Well, if a weasel says so, I better take it on faith. Take my plebe reporter's nose out of its weasel business and go home. Nothing to see here. Source: weasels.”

“I already said I didn't go to private school,” said Clive.

“And I already said I'm interested in information you have that I don't, so that I can share it with others who don't have it but would deserve to have it. I’ll stop wasting my time searching for that information, i.e. the truth, when I’m dead. Short of that, I’m a sleepless bloodhound.”

Clive finished his sandwich and put the packets of peanuts into his pocket. He downed his D.C. tap water in one gulp. Friday Evans was getting to him, which meant he should probably remove himself from her presence. There was nothing to be gained by staying here any longer.

“Thanks for the sandwich.”

“See you around, kid,” said the barman.

“Enjoy pacing the halls of power when you get to them,” said Friday Evans.

“You’re assuming they’ll still be around,” said Clive.

“Who?”

“The halls of power.”

Friday Evans laughed and asked the barman for another periodista. “They’ve been around. They are around. They’ll be around.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Clive, and he walked to the elevator, which he took to the ninth floor. Dr. Altmayer still wasn’t back, so Clive got on the bed and checked his phone. Still down. Nothing left to do but wait. Wait and think about what Friday Evans had said, both the new information she’d given him (about troop movements) and her accusation that he was privileged: that he knew more than other people, which was true; and that they deserved to know what he knew, which was maybe true.

But what if Friday Evans knew everything he did—or even what his dad did—and published it in the Post, or wherever else, because the Post probably wouldn’t publish it anyway—what good would that do? It would just cause panic. Washington D.C. was peaceful this morning because only a select few people knew about the objects in space. Yes, some people suspected something was up, but they didn’t know. They couldn’t prove it. Because the world remained ignorantly peaceful for the next few hours or days, smart people could plan, and planning might save the planet.

On the other hand, Clive thought of Ray, and Ray’s mother. Didn’t they have a right to know, to plan their own lives with the knowledge that their lives would soon be disrupted beyond imagination? It was a tough dilemma, one that Clive would have liked to talk over with his dad, or with Bruce, but Bruce was who-knows-where and Dr. Altmayer was busy trying to save the world. Sometimes, Clive wished he belonged to a normal family, one whose members were regular people with regular jobs. The price for being in power, for having information, Clive decided, was really not having a family at all. Not when it counted. Knowledge, he thought, made you an orphan.

Meanwhile, Friday Evans drank her third or fourth periodista and “Michael Simpson” sat silently in his hotel room, waiting for “Patty.”

Three people met at the Hotel Spire while the First American Symposium on the Fate of the World was in progress.

They met by chance.

None of them were important enough to have warranted an invitation. Two were teenagers, and the third may have been a sleepless bloodhound but was otherwise a nobody.

Little did they know of the impact they would soon begin to have on the very future of humanity.