When humanity first discovered that there was a dimension just beyond our own, one full of new life and mysterious energies, we became too preoccupied with whether or not we could reach it to wonder whether or not we should.
On August 23rd, 2062, at a secure complex in Greenland spanning 100 square miles, a team of over 50,000 people from every industrialized nation in the world came together to perform the greatest scientific feat in human history. After almost 19 years of continuous effort, 1.6 Trillion USD spent, and 92 workplace deaths, they had finally done it. They opened the first rift.
We've been paying the price ever since.
I was 12 years old.
My mom and dad died that day. Before you feel sorry for me, you should know that my parents died at the Skæbnevindue site. They were both FCI.
My father had been working for the First Contact Initiative in America when he met my mother, and she found work with them to stay close to him once he was transferred to Greenland.
So yeah, you can curse their names and spit on their graves, or you could if they had anything like a gravestone to spit on. Angry crowds have torn down every monument built to honor the FCI team. I don’t blame them.
As for those names to curse, they were Joan and Chris Norstrand.
You should know that neither my mother nor my father were bigshot scientists or engineers. Mom worked in catering, and dad was quality control for the 7th klystron array. I don’t say that in their defense, but to point out that while FCI paid well, our family wasn’t filthy rich or anything.
I had some nice things as a kid, but I used to pout that I’d give them all up to spend more time with them. I grew up in Jakobshavn, coast of Greenland, in a home with 11 other kids whose parents were FCI: no one under the age of 21 was allowed within 20 miles of Skæbnevindue. That literally translates to “Destiny Window” in Danish, by the way.
I’m sure this might seem like a basic history lesson in the beginning, but I don’t know how much of this is even taught in schools anymore. Even when I was a teenager, the narrative around the first rift was being distorted, rewritten.
They called it “a reconstructive history and moral contextualization.” One day, I’m sure some social worker with moral context will reconstruct what I write here. I hope that guy dies horribly.
My mom and dad worked hard, but they still tried to get on a video call with me every night before bed. They would ask me about my day, tell funny stories about their jobs, exaggerated for my enjoyment I’m sure. My best memories are their visits. Every other month they would be given a three-day leave to take a train to the coast and come see me.
Can’t say there was a lot to do in Jakobshavn, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need VR parks or the zoo. Most days we stayed in. I would watch them cook a meal together, even help in the kitchen as I got older. They would read a book with me, or tell me what their childhoods were like.
And they would listen to me. I would prattle on and on about everything a kid cares about, and they would listen as if I were an FCI executive.
It seems strange to us now, of course, but in those days everyone assumed that the Skæbnevindue site would be stable, a permanent fixture, that a great city would rise up around it. My parents would daydream with me about what job I would get on the site, what department I would work for.
It was never a question that I would go to work for FCI. My parents wanted me to take advantage of the family hire program and schooling benefits. I just wanted to be like them.
. . .
They never actually told us that everyone was dead. We had to piece that together later. But of course something was wrong, the way we were evacuated from the children’s homes that summer evening without explanation or warning.
I remember huddling in a too-small room with about 70 other kids, sniffling to myself. I was upset that I’d been forced to leave, dragged away actually, without my tablet. It had my little games on it, but also photos of me with my parents.
I didn’t know that the flickering lights overhead were caused by a catastrophic electrical failure cascading throughout Greenland. My shaky 12 year old knees weren’t caused by nerves, it was the mild earthquake that hadn’t stopped for almost 2 hours.
The crowd of other children around me chattered and bickered and whined and cried, and generally failed to stop fidgeting or fighting for even three seconds.
I sniffled in my puffy coat, on the floor with knees bunched to my chest, and ignored my surroundings. I could hear the caretakers shouting amongst themselves, but I wasn’t listening. They usually tried to keep a brave face in front of us. This wasn’t that.
A matronly woman I’d known all my life, who’d never once raised her voice at us, was nearly screaming over a phone. Her name was Ida, and she was trying to save our lives.
“Do you understand that there are children here?! What do you mean, operating procedures? This is an emergency! You can’t just tell us to-”
She cut herself off. She’d realized that the emergency dispatch had hung up on her. She looked up at Kenese, the samoan girl, college-age, who’d taught me to ride a bike, and they clearly thought we were already dead. The more observant kids were growing restless, with the adults in the shelter at a loss, unsure how to comfort them.
In ran Anton, that bearded bastard who was always telling me to get off my tablet and play outside more. There was a desperate smile on his face. I sulked at him from my corner as he shoved a handheld radio into Ida’s hands before spinning Kenese around in a circle. “Help is coming!”
The radio squawked in Ida’s incredulous grasp. “Jakobshavn? Dolon 1-2. I read your distress call. We have orders to egress, but there is a window for extraction. We’ll get one shot at this. I need a headcount, how many souls? Over.”
Ida and Kenese’s confusion had turned to frantic excitement as they’d listened, and Ida hurriedly replied, stumbling over her radio etiquette.
“Yes, yes! Uh, Dolon 1-2, this is Jakobshavn. We have sixty…” and she looked to Kenese and a trio of other volunteers for confirmation, “Eight! Sixty-eight juveniles and nine adults! We’re sheltering in the community center just off the main FCI compound!”
A pause from the other end. There was a horrid dread in the silence from the radio that no one present seemed to detect.
Our caretakers and guardians, having guessed the fate of our parents, were too busy celebrating this moment of hope. Finally the helicopter pilot spoke again.
“Jakobshavn, Dolon 1-2. The Chinook is cleared for a max of 55 souls without cargo, and we’re already hauling cargo from Site 1. Those numbers are for adults, so we might have some room to work with. It won’t be much. Atmospheric pressure is going batshit, my readings make no sense. Either my equipment is out, or the sky is rioting. Under these conditions, it’s not safe to fly overweight. It’s your call.”
We were too young. We didn’t realize, didn’t know. But they did. It was in their faces as they heard the news, as they looked to each other for strength, for resolve.
Finally, Anton took the little radio out of Ida’s trembling hands, speaking quickly before his voice could break.
“Understood. We’re ready. Tell us where to go.”
. . .
We ran through the little town in a messy crowd, 68 juveniles and 9 adults, passing idyllic cottages and FCI warehouses. The bitter cold went unnoticed the whole way. Something besides adrenaline was keeping us warm.
The sky was full of brilliant aurora, almost like we’d seen before, but these were no Northern Lights. They blazed in unnatural colors, and they were too bright, too big, too low to the ground. Like rivers of fire in the air, coming so low you could hear them crackling in the sky overhead, so close I could feel the heat.
The ground was still shaking. I still thought it was my legs. We made it to the landing zone.
The helicopter was deafening. I couldn’t hear the helmeted men shouting as they ushered us onboard. I couldn’t hear what Ida whispered in my ear as she hugged me one last time.
I couldn’t hear the other kids cry out as they realized too late that Ida wasn’t coming with us. None of them were. All nine of them stood in the snowy field and held each other, watching us go with tears in their eyes. But like they had so many times before, they managed to put on a brave face and smile in the end. For our sake.
I was one of the unlucky kids who managed to get my head up to a cargo bay window, so I had a view of our caretakers as they turned to leave the makeshift helipad, find some other way off the island.
A shadow appeared at the top of a distant hill. An enormous shadow with legs. It was on them in seconds, black as night and fast as hell, slick frog’s skin and wolf fangs. I watched it tear them to pieces.
I didn’t hear the screams or vomit from the other kids who’d seen what I had. It wasn’t the helicopter deafening me now. It was a roaring of blood in my ears. And then, as we flew over the gray ocean and cried silent tears, every one of us heard a voice.
Of course, I don’t just mean everyone in that helicopter. Every single human alive that day heard a voice speaking to them, in that exact moment, all over the world.
Mine just said, “The Crow in Dust.”
It was the day everything changed.
~}§{~
I awoke with a start, clutching at nothing, as the shadows and screams and helicopter gave way to the trill of my old fashioned LED alarm clock and the dim dawn in my window.
My breathing slowed, and I cursed myself for having that dream again. It always felt as if I brought it upon myself; a vision summoned by thoughts of the past.
7:00. My backup alarm. I’d slept in. I stumbled from bed and around my room, gathering my things for a cold shower that woke me quickly. It was rare that anyone in Delwood had hot water.
My clothes had been laid out the night before, carefully chosen by my aunt; business casual. She said I needed to look “effortless,” whatever that meant. As long as it helped in my interview. Today was a big day. I couldn’t afford to blow it.
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I crept to the kitchen softly, in case my aunt and uncle were still asleep, only to find him sitting at the table, newspaper in hand, while she flitted around the stove.
My uncle let out a low “Hmm,” at the sight of me, a smile on his face, and my aunt whirled around.
“Hey, handsome! How’re we feeling?”
It was a loaded question, but I took a deep breath. “I’m ready. I have to be.”
“Come eat, hon. Then you’ll be ready.”
I sat beside my uncle, who was still looking at the paper. Without glancing up he murmured, “Don’t worry. You made it out of high school. Whatever’s next will be an improvement.”
A grin was my only response. I knew he was nervous for me. There was a cup of dark steaming chocolate beside him, but he hadn’t touched it. His eyes weren’t moving over the newsprint, but stayed fixed on one point.
He was determined to treat today as if it was any other day, to help me relax. I loved him for that.
My aunt dropped a loaded plate in front of me: hashbrowns, eggs and… ham. I looked up at her, incredulous. “Where did…?”
“It’s a big day!” She gushed, serving herself and uncle before sitting with us. “Why not celebrate a little?”
There had been an outbreak of Verl Swine disease in America just a few months ago, and ham and bacon, already scarce out here, had been nearly impossible to find in shops ever since.
Aunt Helen, being Aunt Helen, had served up uncle and me with the lion’s share, without making a fuss of it. Uncle knew it, and performed his usual ritual, stealing Helen’s plate from her gently to even their portions.
She huffed as if she was irked, he remained almost emotionless. Their smiles were small.
I rolled my eyes at their affection, then slid Helen’s plate my way, as if to pile some of my breakfast on there, too.
“No, hey! Don’t you dare!” She grabbed her plate back, and laughed, seeing the smile on my face. “Ugh, you!… eat. You’ve got less than an hour, and I still need to comb your hair.”
“It’s not his first day of middle school, love. You don’t need to do the boy’s hair…”
I ate as they went back and forth, relishing the food and the company. Though I tried not to, I often thought of how lucky I was to have this family, compared to my life before. My life after Greenland.
-)&(-
The women wore pantsuits. The men favored floral-print buttoned shirts under sport coats. They would show me their business cards, like flashing a badge, but never gave me one. Not to be wasted on a 12-year old, I guess.
Certainly they smiled and laughed a lot, at least early into their visits. But it was always forced, scripted. A lazy ploy to get me to open up to them. They weren’t like the nurses who cared for me throughout the day, kind souls who really seemed to want me to smile.
These people wanted me to talk. In the beginning they were FCI, then from law enforcement agencies, world governments, the UN.
Usually they would bring me some kind of snack, something sweet, and before I’d finished eating the questions would begin. They wanted to know what had happened to Greenland; as in, to the entire island.
I suppose they were desperate for some kind of lead, but they were pathetic, badgering a child for their answers. I see that now.
In my first few interrogations I protested, said I didn’t know anything about Skæbnevindue except what everyone knew: they’d been building a huge machine. My parents didn’t work in Admin or Science, their work stories had been mundane, ordinary. But they just kept asking the same questions. For hours on end.
They thought maybe I had been trained by FCI to not answer questions, under my parents' NDA or something. To make them uncomfortable, I’d talk about the monster that had killed Ida and the others, but the fastest way to discourage them was to say nothing at all. I’d sit on my sickbed, shaking my head and nibbling on packaged sweets, waiting for it to end.
Sometimes it took hours, enduring their pleading and yelling. But in the end they’d leave, tersely wishing me a fast recovery or offering blunt condolences.
Those visits were the worst, but they weren’t the only ones. We were being held in a hospital, after all. The doctors came more often than the suits, and they always seemed to have something new. Sometimes they’d bring a fancy machine into my room, sometimes they’d move me to where the fancy machine was.
I was scanned, monitored, had blood drawn, had lights shined in my eyes. Some machines would squeeze my entire arm until I cried out, or clamp onto my chest and back, becoming hotter and hotter until I felt like I was burning.
They never seemed to find what they were looking for, and their anger scared me. I thought the doctors were frustrated with me, that I was a disappointment.
In reality, while the tests may have been uncomfortable, even cruel at times, all those men and women were just trying to find some explanation for the voice.
Either the human race had suffered a mass auditory hallucination the day Skæbnevindue fell, or a strange woman had spoken simultaneously into the minds of every human alive. Neither seemed possible.
It had to have something to do with the Greenland disaster, and we were some of the only people to make it off Greenland. It was natural they poke and prod us.
They’d get answers eventually, but not from their testing. Ordinary people would end up finding a lead before they did.
~}§{~
Full of encouragement and breakfast, I stepped out the door of our tiny apartment and into the day. More specifically, onto one long porch that ran along the front doors of 49 other apartments. The sun wouldn’t rise for an hour, but the silver light in the clouds told me it was inbound.
A few of the neighbors were out on the porch already. They jerked their chins in acknowledgment, or ignored me on my way to the stairwell. Most seemed to be enjoying their 7th-floor view of a pre-dawn sky and the nine other stack buildings that made up Block DL.
Those distant buildings had tiered stacks of porches that were also waking up, same as us. Little silhouettes were leaning on their own railing, walking to their own stairwell. Some of them were probably watching us back. All of us standing around in our box made of concrete and sky.
I buzzed my way through the stairwell door and started my jog down seven flights of molded aluminum. The stairs were mercifully empty, except for old man Meighen, hobbling down at an impressive speed for someone of his advancing age.
“Good morning sir! It’s good to see you!”
He paused, and turned at my call. A clever smile crept into his wrinkles. “Oh? What’s so good about it? No one told me.”
I offered him my arm, and he bapped my leg with his cane for my trouble, which made me laugh. “C’mon sir, let it be a good morning, I need one. My assignment’s today.”
He cast a cold, ancient eye to the tied folder of documents I had under my arm, as if the paperwork had pissed on his shoe. “In that case, come over to my place this evening, bring your folks. I’ve been hiding a stiff bottle. We’ll mourn together.”
I laughed more, partly out of discomfort that the old man had just told me he had a controlled substance in his residence. “Don’t be like that, I could get something really good!”
“I should hope not!” He snapped, continuing down the stairs. “I should hope they make you a Blue, or else I’ve judged you all wrong, young man.”
Mr. Meighen had a dry and irreverent sense of humor that made it difficult to detect when he was being serious about something. I was in the beginnings of a detection. “Sir? You think… I mean, why would I want to be-”
“You just run along to your appointment, and remember that if they want you as anything other than a Blue, there’s something wrong with your soul.” And he waved a gnarled hand, clearly dismissing me.
Indignation welled up in me at that treatment, but I shook my head and passed the codger, hurrying down and down. I liked Mr. Meighen, but not so much that I’d waste my time, on today of all days, trying to decipher his rambling. Why would I want to spend the rest of my days as a low-paid manual laborer? Crazy old man. It made no sense.
-)&(-
“We can both agree that it doesn't make any sense, can’t we?”
I hung my head in frustration, my butt aching from how long I’d been parked in that steel chair. I wanted to go back to my room. I wanted to eat a Twinkie and get yelled at by lawyers. “So why am I lying to you, ma’am?”
My counselor pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and tutted disapprovingly. “Now, that’s not very fair to me, is it? I never said you were lying to me. I just asked you to agree with me, that’s all.”
This smelled to me like doublespeak, and my 13th birthday was coming up. A little early teenage attitude reared its head. “Ok then, I agree with you. Nothing about it made any sense. The aurora, the evacuation, the monster. But you still won’t tell me anything about what happened, and won’t let me see the other kids, so why don’t we talk about that? Because that doesn’t make much sense to me.”
Her thin lips pursed with frustration at this. Unlike the doctors, her job was to talk to me, so pointing out the lying and the secrets made things difficult for her. I made sure to hold it over her head once a session. It was my only power over anyone here, my only leverage.
Without a way to gracefully change the subject, she opted for distraction, and pulled out a total violation of my privacy. “Why don’t we talk a little bit about this?” From her handbag on the floor she produced a familiar little notebook.
I shot to my feet, my face hot. “Give that back!”
“Castor, I’m very worried about what I’ve been reading in here-”
“You stole it!”
I knew what would happen if I tried to take it back from her. I’d gotten aggressive with a doctor once before. On my way to get my blood drawn one day, I’d thought for a second I’d seen Corey, down at the end of a branching hallway. We’d lived in different homes in Jakonshavn, but I knew him from classes.
However hard you think is too hard for a hospital orderly to hit a 12 year old? That’s about how hard they’d had to hit me. Perhaps immature, but I’d been desperate to see anyone I recognized, scratching and kicking and screaming for them to let me go, until the punch to my stomach came, and then I was slammed to the ground.
Now, the memory of that violence was like an invisible wall between me and Ms. Valdez. It was the only thing stopping me from rushing her and snatching the little book back. I knew two staff members were right outside the door, ready to put the pain on.
Frozen at that invisible wall, I seethed with open fury as she flipped through the ink-stained pages, shaking her head sagely. “I am a medical professional, not a thief. I gave this to you to make sense of your dreams-”
“You said it was mine! You didn’t say you’d have it taken from my room while they electrocuted me!”
“Advanced stimulation therapy is not electrocution…”
“If it’s so great, you get it next time!”
“Ah, here’s the page I was looking for.”
She held the book up to me, and I ground my teeth. I knew what this was. She was certain the monster I’d seen was the product of an overactive imagination. She wanted me to decide I’d invented it, and forget my memory of the smell of vomit as every other kid who’d see the grisly massacre puked all over the helicopter.
But the page she’d turned to wasn’t one of my drawings of the beast. This was something else. I had scribbled the same words, the same question, three times over in huge messy block letters that blotted out the page. Seeing it again, it admittedly looked a bit unhinged.
Knowing she wouldn’t let this go, I slumped back into my chair. “I could finally tell what the whispers were saying.”
“So you wrote it down, so you wouldn’t forget?”
“Yeah. I always seem to forget everything but the nightmare part.”
She seemed to like these answers. “Do the whispers scare you?”
“No.”
“Does this question scare you?”
“Why would it scare me?”
“Well, why did you write it three times?”
“She always says it three times.”
The counselor got a self important look at this, her face screaming ‘I’m smarter than a 12 year old. Hooray for me.’ Then, leaning forward as if she found me very interesting, she whispered conspiratorially to me. “What am I, what am I, what am I?”
I’m certain she had something more to say, that she wasn’t mimicking my nightmare voices just to be cruel or mocking. Before she could get it out, it happened.
“A Shawl of Briars.”
The voice sounded on the air with smooth confidence, loud and soft at once. I was on my feet again, a disbelieving smile on my face. I knew that voice.
The counselor looked mortified. Mouth hanging open, she stared around the room at the ceiling. On a hunch, I gave it a go. “What am I, what am I, what am I?”
“The Crow in Dust.”
Triumph swelled in me. It was her. All along, I’d only needed to speak the words aloud. I turned to my counselor in a very I Told You So kind of way, but she was entirely ignoring me. She whirled around as if looking for an invisible monster crawling around the room. “What is this? What do you want? Stay back! Someone, do something!”
The orderlies just outside the door came bursting in, surprised to find my mental health counselor acting like a crazy person, as opposed to me. The voice wasn’t answering my counselor, and I wondered why… maybe, I thought, this was like a game? Were there rules?
I took a breath. “What is this, what is this, what is this?”
There was no response, at least not from the voice. Ms. Valdez, on the other hand, was entering a conniption. “Stop, stop! Stop him, stop him! Stop talking!”
Confused glances between the orderlies, as if they weren’t sure whether they ought to enforce the will of a seeming lunatic. Meanwhile, I thought maybe I’d try again with one of my questions, not one of Ms. Valdez’s. “Who are you, who are you, who are you?”
Silence for a beat, Ms. Valdez started screaming again, and the staff moved to usher me out of the room, if only to get me away from her.
“Melette.”