Erin Before vs. Erin After. There are pros and cons to both.
• Cons: Voice Change. When he laughs, an alien heehaws out of his face. Freaky. Also, he accuses people of thinking things about him they never thought to think about. Very freaky.
• Pros: Greater Intelligence. Which he shows off, but I don’t care. Knowledge is a form of Power, and knowledges must be gathered from many different sources. Mother says it’s one of the most important things to remember.
“Erin?” My eyes touch his face. “Can unco-surgeons fix things besides cancer?” My voice joins my eyes, and I rub them all over his face; three point eight feet means nothing to sound and light waves.
“Unco-surgeon?” Heehaw heehaw. “Did you just say unco-surgeon?” Heehaw heehaw.
Sarcasm is a Con. I click my pen and write on my hand to Ask Katy Later.
*
Dinosaurs first appeared 230 million years ago. 65 million years ago, a catastrophic extinction event ended their dominance. One group is known to have survived to the present. According to taxonomists, modern birds are direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs.
—Wikipedia
Why were dinosaurs dominant?
Did theropods survive because they turned into birds?
When did humans appear?
Are we dominant now?
Like what’s a catastrophic extinction event?
Erin returns to his Code and refuses to google more.
* * *
*
“STOP IT. What’s wrong with them?”
My eyes, Erin means. I turn my back and rub them some more.
“I’m warning you, Mai,” he says.
I retreat from the living room and rub my eyes In Private.
* * *
*
ONCE UPON a time, people thought robots would take over the earth or take people’s jobs. So far there are still poor people to manufacture things, but Jacki our neighbor back home says we should prepare for when the earth turns barren and everyone will have to live like people who still can’t afford things like air conditioners, even though they themselves assemble them in boiling factories that squeeze every drop of their sweat before tossing them out like bug husks. Think of the inhumanity, she always says. And they don’t even get Minimum Wage, which is required by Law, I always say. And Jacki’s eyes shine. Oh, honey, forget minimum wage; they get nothing, nada is what they get paid, and who can live on that, or buy air conditioners, with or without an employee discount? Jacki abhors air conditioners. They make the rich richer and the earth hotter and give her a special chill: the Chill of Monstrous Irony. She makes it a point to boycott them.
Dad doesn’t approve of Jacki. He says he and Jacki don’t see eye to eye, which Jacki says is because they exist on different eye levels. Dad and Mother also exist on different eye levels, but they make it a point to look at each other. Dad says, Nobody should ruin anybody’s life, but people need jobs, and companies offer them. What does Jacki do for people besides boycott air conditioners?
Mother doesn’t disapprove of Jacki, per se. She tells Dad it’s the exploitation Jacki objects to. Besides, she says, we have to start somewhere, and every bit counts. Like Jacki, Mother believes today’s real war is with the Climate. And she says “we” to spread the responsibility. We, we, I think, like a French person. But Mother also tells me not to hang on to Jacki’s every word; hearts can be in the right place but don’t always lead to the best results. What Mother doesn’t know is that Jacki’s connected to The Universe. People like Jacki are burdened by Knowledge, which they feel so clearly they can no longer live like they don’t see it. Such people are often shunned by Society, which is set up to encourage Blind Complacency. One day The Truth will prevail and reorder the world as we know it, but Jacki’s skeptical if one day will be soon enough. Even Erin, who avoids Jacki, can’t deny it could happen. The End, I mean.
* * *
*
2:43 PM. Birds are chirping in the gutters, squirrels are making brown waves in the grass. Sunset is not until 7:47 PM. Which means five hours four minutes of daylight left. I make my way to the center of Katy’s living room and breathe.
* * *
*
EXPLOSIVE DECOMPRESSION: A steep drop in cabin pressure, causing distention, blistering, even popping of air-filled materials—such as maybe the eardrums and lungs, we think. Erin says the statistics are low, only ten passenger planes since 1954, which was seventy years ago. But low doesn’t mean never. Does it?
* * *
*
“WHAT THE HECK?”
JAPANESE SUICIDE TORPEDO “KAITEN” FOUND. Thursday, volunteer divers still searching for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 nine years after its disappearance found what they believe is an intact Japanese World War Two–era manned torpedo known as the “Kaiten”…[To read the full story, subscribe or sign in]
Kaiten (回天), literally “Turn the Heaven,” were suicide crafts used by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the end of World War II. Manned by the Special Attack Unit, the first Kaiten was a Type 93 torpedo engine attached to a cylinder that became the pilot’s compartment. Early designs allowed the pilot to escape after final acceleration toward the target, but this was later dropped so that, once inside, the pilot could not unlock the hatch. The Kaiten was fitted with a self-destruct control in case the attack or vehicle failed.
—Wikipedia
“So someone’s in this thing?” Erin says, peering at the news article’s greenish underwater image. “Is he, like, vacuum-sealed—like preserved?”
Effectiveness [edit]: Despite the advantages of a manned craft, US sources claim only two sinkings were achieved, while some Japanese sources claim a higher number.
—Wikipedia
“This is insane,” Erin says. “When was World War Two anyway?”
* * *
*
“ERIN, CAN we check on Dad’s plane?”
* * *
*
KATY HAS six windows: one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, two in the bedroom, two in the living room. My favorites are the ones in the living room overlooking a courtyard with one fountain and one oak tree that scatters light in the summer and pelts the windowpanes in the fall until the first snow brings out the notice Courtyard Now Closed For Your Safety. Erin wonders why they even bother; nobody ever goes out there. When I asked why not, he said it’s because the courtyard’s an idea, something to look at and be reassured by, like a museum. Look at this brownstone, five stories high and shaped like a U, hoarding that patch of grass and those twittering birds splashing in that fountain that’s only pretending to be ancient, like something that’s been there and will be there forever and ever—