Songs for the End of the World

by Saleema Nawaz

  “And, like, more than just health inspectors are coming tomorrow. Some government people. I think it’s actually going to be on the news.” She looks over at him, her face so eager and animated that he cannot help but stare back. “Mystery virus,” she says, over-enunciating.

  Owen’s ears, which he was willing closed, now pop open. He can hear his own breathing over the muted rumbling of the car and the traffic. “I think I may have read about it, earlier today,” he says.

  “Well, it all started with us, if you can believe it. They thought it was food poisoning at first, but not anymore.”

  “Did you serve the people who got sick?”

  Edith seems not to catch the severity of his tone, or maybe she thinks it is born out of a natural concern for her well-being.

  “Maybe.” She is nonchalant. “I mean, I was working the night they’ve been asking about. But I don’t know who got sick, or if they were at any of my tables or not.”

  If the traffic wasn’t so bad, he would pull over. It is almost too much, the day’s relentless insinuation of the virus upon his consciousness. But logical enough, he supposes, given his book. It is his own work that has invited the conversations. His back stiffens and his hands tighten on the steering wheel. This she notices. After the past couple of months, Edith is attuned to his body in ways that keep surprising him.

  “I’m not sick!” she exclaims. “God, relax.” Then she laughs. “You would definitely already have it by now, if I was.” Her eyes are teasing, sexy, inviting him to laugh with her, but all he can manage is a grimace.

  When he gets home, he turns on his computer and visits the CDC site again. The infection alert is still there, and seeing it in larger type makes it even more horrifying and unreal. The urge to shower again crawls over his skin like a spreading rash.

  Shoulders twitching, he logs into NextExtinction.com, an online forum he joined when he was researching his previous book. Back then he logged in daily, posting comments and asking questions like any survivalist newbie trying to learn the ropes. He found the best places to buy N95-rated face masks and other protective gear. He followed links to sites that sold crates of canned goods and bottled water at deep discounts. Owen even learned how to buy bitcoin and access the dark web to purchase antiviral medications in bulk, though he was too uncomfortable with the idea to actually try. In the end, he came away with a handful of useful details for the book and an uneasy acquaintance with the culture of fear.

  He shares the CDC alert in a new thread on the disease monitoring board, adding that he has heard about it first-hand from someone who was at the initial infection site.

  Someone he used to chat with messages him almost immediately. Unlike some of the right-wing kooks on the forum, GERTIEBIRD is a kind soul who only recently rejoined society after dropping out in the seventies. She posts tips on the proper way to use water purification tablets, and how to build a natural shelter out of native Californian trees, and other bits of off-grid advice relevant to the interests of a fringe group of paranoid internet users.

 

  I hope you and your friend are doing okay. Still feeling well?

 

  I think we’re infection-free for now, thanks.

 

  Are you feeling lucky? You should buy a lottery ticket.

 

  Quite the opposite, actually.

 

  But think of the odds. You’ve already had a brush with the virus, and you’re fine.

 

  Might be too soon to tell.

 

  Maybe. But I have a good feeling about you. You like dogs, right?

  Owen reminds himself that he is talking to an actual nut—a lucid nut as far as nuts go, but a nut all the same. A few of GERTIEBIRD’S posts suggest she spent decades believing herself a survivor of a nuclear blast, afraid to emerge from hiding for fear of capture or radiation.

 

  I used to have a dog, when I was growing up.

 

  See? I thought so. You’re an animal person.

 

  Is that supposed to mean something?

 

  No. Except that maybe you’re sympathetic to the forces at play…

 

  You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Gert.

 

  These viruses usually come from animals, don’t they? Usually when their habitat is under threat from humans. That can’t be a coincidence.

 

  Ah.

 

  Mother Earth is trying to restore some balance. Stop global warming and overpopulation. Maybe it’s a battle we’re going to lose? I don’t know.

 

  So we die, she wins? I thought this site was about us winning instead?

 

  You think so? I ended up here after I first came out of the forest. It was a place for me to connect after being alone for so long. It showed me how people could cope with their fear and how I could help by sharing what I know. I think it’s a nice group of folks, overall.

  Owen wants to laugh. Only the most deluded Pollyanna could imagine the survivalists of NextExtinction.com as altruistic. If they are ever generous to one another, it is only from a sense of allegiance to their shared paranoid ideologies. They are nothing more than a self-selected community of outcasts.

  Before Owen logs off, he checks his original post. A user named FLUDAD, one of the site’s most active members, has written a response. If FLUDAD’S posts can be believed, he has a bona fide bunker completely stocked with six months’ worth of supplies and equipped with its own ventilation and water treatment systems. He used to be a moderator over at MushroomCloudPreppers.net. Once he was finished preparing for nuclear war, he started to consider the implications of a new strain of bird flu.

  Checking with my man Li in China, Jorg in Germany, and a few other people I know in research around the country. We’ll get some answers soon.

  FLUDAD’S email signature is Buy more ammo!

  Just as Owen is about to turn off the computer, he thinks better of it and instead sends a message to Rachel: I know I’m the last person you want to hear from, but I’m worried about you and Henry. Keep a close eye on this new virus, okay?

  Owen stays in that evening, eats leftovers out of his fridge. When he gets a text from Edith, he ignores it for an hour before asking her again to send him a photo of her breasts. One of these days she’s going to give in and send one. But when she suggests meeting up instead, he jerks off and goes to sleep.

  The next morning, he wakes up with the notion of the virus still vexing him, like a sentence left unfinished. He gets up, goes to the bathroom, then moves around his apartment without a clear sense of purpose. He feels the call of the water and the urge to lose himself in something rhythmic and mind-emptying, but the rowing club has been inhospitable of late.

  He’d underestimated the women. The club is close-knit, its members all neighbours, friends, confidantes. He slept with one too many and now when he shows up he can sense a current of hostility thrumming like a transformer as soon as he walks through the door. Once women talk amongst themselves, there is not much room for someone like him to manoeuvre.

  Opening the fridge, he takes out the orange juice and pours himself a glass. He ought to work on the new manuscript but knows he is too tense. Without his scull, he doesn’t know what to do for exercise. He doesn’t want to have to find someplace new to go.

  After his split with Rachel, he’d tried to stay in Lansdowne. He was still teaching an advanced fiction workshop once a week and co-supervising an honours thesis, so he rented an apartment near campus. But most of their mutual friends had shunned him, either passively
or actively, and after the ex-boyfriend of a student he’d slept with spoke to the Chair of the English department, there began to be rumblings that a spousal hire who was no longer technically a spouse might not belong on campus anymore. So he’d left, before more of the women started talking and before the bureaucratic bomb could blow up in his face. But it is an uneasy thought always lurking at the edge of his mind: that there is a whole town in America where Owen is persona non grata.

  He quells the rowing urge with a few sets of push-ups, making a mental note to order some new weights. Then he finds himself sticking close to home, monitoring the news and the chatter on NextExtinction.com. As the only active forum member in NYC, he is the subject of more than a few unsolicited messages either asking how many weeks of non-cook food he has laid by or urging him to get out of town. When Owen goes silent on the thread, FLUDAD posts a notice asking people to lay off GRANTER and stand by for more information.

  Once the message board quiets down and he gets into a good groove with one of his chapters, Owen tells himself this is why he’s staying in. To get some work done. He tells himself the same thing the next day. And the next.

  * * *

  The following Monday, Owen drives back to the gaming studio, braving horrific crosstown traffic and forking out an exorbitant sum to park in a lot three blocks away.

  This time, the meeting feels like a pitch. There are more people in the room, most of them projecting a youthful vibe accentuated by jeans and pop-culture T-shirts. The blue-haired girl is nowhere to be seen. Owen keeps his hands in his pockets throughout the introductions, nodding at each new face, realizing that he is old enough to not even believe he was supposed to stay young. He takes a seat at the far end of the table and accepts a maple-flavoured soy meal-replacement drink, making a note to mention the product on the message board.

  Curly-haired Josh starts the meeting and thanks Owen for his input to date. He takes him through a quick slideshow of some background artwork samples, then brings them back to a discussion of gameplay.

  “So we were trying to think about what’s different with this IP in particular.”

  “IP?” says Owen. There are a lot of acronyms flying by.

  “Intellectual property. I mean, it’s not the first disease game, not by a long shot.” Josh nods towards the other end of the room, which has been cleared for a demonstration. “We’ve got something novel with the VR, but we want the goal to be more than just evasion.”

  “I can’t help it if that’s what happens in the book,” says Owen.

  “Of course not,” says Josh. “But our job is to make it entertaining. Playable.” He shoots a look at his colleague, who stands up. “Over to Ryan for part two.”

  “Well, we’ve got the kids he’s saving,” says Ryan, taking Josh’s place in front of the meeting table. “That’s great. But we want to complicate the mechanics in another way,” he adds. “Morally.”

  Owen waits, as it is clear they are leading up to a talking point. He sees a few of the team members exchanging glances.

  One of the older guys says, “We’re thinking the player character will have access to an arsenal and the ability to add to it, but they will also have a humanity bar tracking them. If they do good, their humanity meter goes up.”

  “And violence lowers it,” says Owen.

  Ryan is watching his face. “Do you see where we’re going with this?”

  “Guns?” says Owen, feeling the start of a dull headache. “You want there to be shooting.”

  “Well, it’s more active, for one,” says Ryan. “I guess the question is whether you can see your guy doing that. If necessary. Let’s say his family is threatened.”

  “Maybe,” says Owen. “I guess I could see that.”

  “Then once he collects the children, he’ll have to find enough money to buy the boat and make his way out to the water.”

  “Maybe he fights his way through some panicked citizens?” suggests someone else.

  “Look,” says Owen. “I’m not going to be okay with random murder, under any circumstances.”

  “Noted,” says Ryan. He grins. “Thanks for being such a good sport about this.”

  “We’ll show you the environment we’re working on,” says Josh, possibly to change the subject. He goes over to the desk on the far side of the room and holds up a large black headset. “Showtime.”

  Everybody gets up and pushes in their chairs. Josh gestures to Owen to go first.

  “Can we wipe it down?” says Owen when he gets close. “Can’t be too careful.”

  Josh shrugs. “Sure.” He puts the headset back on the desk and rubs it all over with an antibacterial wipe.

  “Sorry,” says Ryan. “He was supposed to do that anyway.”

  Ryan and Josh both help Owen put on the headset, which completely covers his eyes, and a large set of headphones that engulf his ears. And all at once it is dark. Owen blinks and finds himself outside. It is nighttime, the darkness softened by streetlamps. He looks to the left and sees grey concrete scrabbled with graffiti. Owen steps forward and knocks into something invisible. The pain, in its incongruity, disappears for a moment but throbs back as though coming from far off, just like the suppressed chuckles he can hear in the real world.

  “Sorry,” he hears faintly, followed by the sound of a desk chair rolling away. “Meant to move that.”

  He is in an alleyway. A puddle ahead of him reflects the moon. When he tilts back his head, he can see it rising high above him, bright and cold, in a sliver of sky between buildings trimmed with fire escapes. In the distance are the sounds of sirens and traffic. And much closer, a whimpering. Owen turns the other way and sees someone huddled in the alley, crouched beside a dumpster. A child. A little boy, by the looks of it. Just about the age of Rachel’s son. He takes a small step in his direction, feeling queasy as the scene zooms forward more quickly than expected.

  Breaking into his dream, he hears an instruction from Ryan: “Just move slowly. You’ve got lots of room.”

  He hears the echo of his own footsteps, mismatched to his own stuttering pace. He is a soul in a new body, struggling to take control. And the little boy is ahead of him, still whimpering. Not looking up. As Owen draws closer to the child’s hiding spot, he feels a chill spreading across his shoulders and the overwhelming urge to speak to him.

  When Owen is a foot or two away, the area around the boy begins to glow. He can make out a striped T-shirt and grimy arms and legs. The boy’s face is buried in his knees. As Owen reaches out to the boy, the soundscape changes abruptly. He can hear panicked shouts and footsteps approaching. He takes a step backwards before stretching a hand out to steady himself on the dumpster, but his fingers pass through and he stumbles to the side. There are the sounds of helicopters and approaching sirens, and a distant wailing, as if of the bereaved, overlaid above the boy’s uninterrupted sobs. Owen knows he is supposed to act, to make a choice, but he feels nothing but a conviction that something bad will happen no matter what he decides. That he is forever doomed to do the wrong thing. He resists the frozen terror of his body by closing his eyes and reflexively starting to push upward on the headset. Almost at once, he hears flustered voices and feels other hands reaching to help remove the expensive equipment.

  “That was fast,” says someone.

  “Were you dizzy?” says Josh. “That can happen.”

  “Was it like seeing the future?” asks Ryan, grinning.

  Owen shakes his head. He feels alien and adrift, like a shaman coming out of a trance. He mutters something about being late, exchanges dazed goodbyes with the development team, and finds himself sitting in an armchair in the lobby, hunched over and with his head in his hands, before he has even processed leaving the room.

  He exhales slowly, trying to calm down. The developers are probably upstairs laughing at him, a middle-aged man freaked out by five minutes of a game prot
otype. He’ll send them a note later, when his heart stops racing and the queasy, light-headed panic has ebbed away.

  He pulls out his phone to do something that feels normal and sees that he has a notification from the NextExtinction.com board. FLUDAD has revived the thread about the mystery virus, and forty-four messages have been posted within the last hour.

  Heard back from my friends. I think this is it, folks. There’s a province in China with a weird flu. Practically a whole orphanage of kids infected. Same symptoms, insanely contagious. All the nurses and doctors who’ve gone in are sick now. No official word yet but you can bet the WHO is tracking where all the NYC patients have been recently.

  Buy more ammo!

  Then, in his next post, FLUDAD has shared the link to a new advisory from the CDC, citing over two hundred new cases logged at hospitals across New York’s five boroughs. The Department of Health is urging anyone with direct exposure to an infected patient to self-quarantine and report themselves to authorities.

  Another user has posted a computer simulation of a pandemic spreading across global networks. To Owen, it looks like a firework exploding in slow motion.

  Many of the messages are addressed to Owen directly, asking what he plans to do or requesting that he keep everyone updated. In the absence of any immediate response from GRANTER, a number of users have taken it upon themselves to suggest what he ought to do, or what they would do in his situation. All in all, Owen has never seen the users of NextExtinction.com quite so worked up. He suspects it is not only the dreadful excitement of a potential Big One, but the idea that they have pieced it together themselves. They are, if not ahead of the WHO, then at least in step with them.