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DAD POOH-POOHS The Worst. Next thing you know, I’m doomed because I was born on a Friday the thirteenth, he says.
Dad believes in Reason; he believes it will prevail. Mother wishes he were right, but it’s humans she doesn’t trust. Look where Reason and technology and science got us, she says.
* * *
*
“I WANT to see the plane. I want to see it.”
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KATY’S A doctor; she believes in all possibilities, fundamentally. Still, she lives like she doesn’t believe in The Worst. Yesterday, she had one tube of tomato paste, three apples, and one tub of organic hummus in her fridge. Katy doesn’t plan for Eventualities. When she sees a Lack, like in her fridge, she seeks Abundance, like in the supermarket. Katy fixes things. Which is how we ended up at the supermarket after she got home from work last night. And because it’s summer, it was still light out, the gray streetlights holding their breath, and Katy said, Look. I looked up and saw a shadow blip across the sky. When I blinked, the shadow lurched and swallowed the clouds. When I rubbed my eyes, the shadow smudged and strobed like distant lightning before breaking into pinpricks of light that fused into one pair of eyes belonging to one crow perched on the telephone wire, watching the passage of our groceries.
* * *
*
“MAI?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
And I do. Erin’s my brother; he doesn’t need to be in the same room to know what I’m doing. Jacki calls it the Mind’s Eye, which is a knowing that’s independent of seeing and that beats seeing because seeing doesn’t always add up to knowing. Feel that tingling on the forehead? That’s how you know you know.
I sit firmly on my hands and draw my awareness away from my eyes to my forehead and concentrate.
*
The term “human” refers to the genus Homo (H.). Scientists estimate that humans branched off from their common ancestor, the chimpanzee, about 5–7 million years ago and evolved into several species and subspecies now extinct. Debate continues as to whether a “revolution” led to modern humans (“the big bang of human consciousness”), or a more gradual evolution. According to the Out-of-Africa model, modern H. sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago and began migrating 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, replacing H. erectus, inhabitant of Asia, and H. sapiens neanderthalensis, inhabitant of Europe. Out-of-Africa has gained support from mitochondrial DNA research which concluded that all modern humans descended from a woman from Africa, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Both human and chimpanzee DNA, to which human DNA is approximately 96% identical, are undergoing unusually rapid changes compared with other mammals. These changes involve classes of genes related to perception of sound, transmission of nerve signals, and sperm production.
—Wikipedia
Why did humans split off from chimpanzees?
How come some humans survived and not others?
Why are we changing like no other mammals?
Are we all changing, or only some?
How rapid is rapid?
Who was Mitochondrial Eve?
Where was Adam?
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“DO YOU think we’ll ever know who’s in the torpedo?”
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5:45 PM. Two hours two minutes left. Out there in the world, there are gorillas who have learned to sign, and humans who have learned to see like bats and whales. Daniel Kish is such a human. And so is Ben Underwood. Ms. Alvarez-Johnson called it human echolocation.
*
Human Echolocation: A learned skill whereby humans use sound, such as palate clicks, to navigate the environment.
Clicks (mouth): Clicking sounds made by placing the tongue on the palate and snapping it back. Mouth clicks are used most often by the blind to determine the distance, size, and shape of objects and locate them, but they may also be valuable to rescue workers, such as firefighters.
—Wikipedia
But how do you stop the earth and sky and sea and people from erupting like a sudden sun blinding the bluest sky, leaving an endless archipelago of beached fountains leaking algae, a verdant hieroglyph of a lost civilization, fluorescing in the permanent dark.
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*
“ERIN? JUST at first, will you read to me if I go blind?”
Erin looks up. At first his eyes are blank. Then they widen, tadpoles of fear darting across them. He wakes his phone: Mother won’t be home for another hour, and Katy even later. He drums the table. Drums and drums. Then he looks at me, pulls a chair next to his own, lifts the three point eight feet rule, and I know he knows, and he’s going to tell Mother.
*
The Sun is approximately halfway through its main-sequence evolution. In 5–6 billion years, it will enter the red giant phase, during which its outer layers will heat up and expand to eventually reach Earth’s current position. Recent research suggests that the Sun’s decreased gravity will have moved the Earth out, away from the danger of engulfment, but it will not prevent Earth’s water from boiling and its atmosphere from escaping into space. Long before that, however, as early as 900 million years from now, Earth’s surface will already be too hot for the survival of life as we know it. In another billion years, the surface water will have disappeared.
—Wikipedia
Will whales shrink to the size of moles and enter the earth?
Will they have learned to see underearth by then?
Where will humans be?
Will they have learned to see underearth too?
Why do we exist, Erin?
Is anyone else out there?
How will they find us?
Will they tell our story?
What’s going to happen to us, Erin? Are we going to bring about The End?
Are we, Erin?
Are we?
Are we?