Above the Ether

by Eric Barnes

  The people look around. There’s not much else to do. Assessing another morning on this lone hillside in the delta.

  The group is not particularly friendly with one another. There’s no anger. No fighting. But there’s no sense of community or camaraderie either.

  It’s more tolerance. A wary willingness to aid but not sacrifice.

  They are wounded, after all. Each one of them. Scared and scarred by what they saw, what they did, by what almost happened to all of them.

  Clearly, no one has much ability to help anyone but themselves.

  The crash of cars is broadcast real time, unfiltered and unedited.

  The debates of city councils are aired real time, long-winded, rambling, dull.

  The sex fetishes of old men are shown real time, women set up on small beds, willing to do anything for a range of progressively higher fees.

  On the radio, he hears about the oil leaks in the Gulf. Twenty oil rigs. Maybe more. All damaged, some completely overturned, sinking or already sunk. Oil slicks, at least twenty of them, growing every day.

  He hears the speculation on the numbers dead. Tens of thousands. Much of the city and the suburbs were hit with the wave of water. Whole buildings taken down. Entire neighborhoods swept flat and clean. People trapped in their cars as they tried to drive away. The water beating many to death with the simple force of its arrival.

  There are, though, tens of thousands of people who survived by making it to one of the elevated highways in the city. Others made it by staying in tall buildings, buildings strong enough to have survived the force of the rushing water.

  As it traveled north up the delta, the water gained strength via its destruction. It broke through levees holding back massive man-made lakes. It broke through levees holding the river in place for most of the last century.

  These lakes, the river and its tributaries, their positions and courses had seemed permanent, forever fixed. But now all were suddenly released. Because in fact those locations were only precariously maintained, water held against its will, now finally set free.

  The water joined the wave from the Gulf. And on it kept pushing forward.

  It’s warm outside now. The clouds have broken. The sun shines steadily. And by the end of the day, the landscape is soon coated not in mud but dust.

  “How long will we stay here?” his son asks.

  The three of them sit on the hood of the car.

  “I’m not sure,” the father says. “We can’t get across the mud yet. All that mud at the bottom of the hill.” He turns to them. “But it will dry. Maybe a few more days. And we’ll be able to leave.”

  On the highway, over the past few hours, they’ve begun to see vehicles moving slowly north. Not vehicles that survived the flood on the highway. None did. But these cars somehow survived what happened to the south. High ground. Now they slowly make their way through the wrecked and meandering maze.

  His daughter holds the phone. She is looking down at it. Staring. It’s every few minutes that she blinks.

  The kids have stopped asking if the phone works. Instead, they just reach for it periodically. A smooth black object, made of glass and metal and plastic, they turn it over and over in their small hands.

  He did have one text from her. Days ago.

  In the moments after the earthquake. When the sirens started and the radio and TV announced what had happened in the Gulf. When some people, like him, guessed what might come next.

  He saw a message on the phone. From her. But he didn’t tell the kids. There was no way they should read it.

  Take them. Now. And go. Because I can’t imagine I will survive.

  Maps accurate to the square foot, guiding you to what you’re trying to find.

  Don’t worry, don’t look around.

  Just listen. To the voice. Telling you what you need to do.

  The phone is ringing. It’s dark. The middle of the night. It takes him a few rings to wake up. To realize what the sound is.

  “Did you get out?” she asks, desperately. “Where are you?”

  “Yes,” he says. “About a hundred miles to the north. Then the water reached us. But we made it up a hill. By a church. We’ve been stuck here since then. But the kids are fine. They’re completely fine.”

  He can hear her crying.

  In a moment, he asks, “Where are you?”

  It’s a long moment before she responds. He thinks he’s lost connection. “Downtown,” she says. “The condo. The building survived. Ones nearby did not.”

  He says in a moment, “Good. Okay. That’s good.”

  He turns to the kids, in the backseat. His son is opening his eyes. “Wake up,” he says quietly. “Both of you. Wake up. It’s Mom.”

  As he hands the phone to them, the kids frantically start to talk to her. Heads together, leaning in, both now try to hear. He puts the phone on speaker, so they can listen and talk at the same time.

  But he feels odd to be listening to what she says to them.

  He gets out of the car. Closes the door. Stands nearby as he gives them space to speak with their mother.

  It’s warm outside, even in the dark. He can hear people moving around inside one of the cars near him. Shifting uncomfortably in their seats. He can hear someone snoring lightly in the church. He hears insects flying, buzzing the church and the cars, insects newly risen from the layer of mud that covers the delta.

  “Dad,” his son says, opening the door, twenty minutes later. “Mom wants to talk to you.”

  He gets back into the driver’s seat. Takes the phone. Turns off the speakerphone. “Keep going north,” she says to him. “Don’t come back this way. It’s not safe. It’s worse than what they’re saying. Much worse. I can’t even get out of this building.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  She’s crying.

  “Thank you,” she says. “For getting them out.”

  He says in a moment, “It was only luck.”

  “Let me talk to the kids again,” she seems to say, but he isn’t sure. The phone has cut out. No signal. Connection lost.

  He tells the kids. They sit silently. Then his son begins to cry, very quietly. His daughter stares out the window.

  “Make way,” he says, motioning them to move to the sides of the backseat. He crawls through the front seats, awkwardly, then lands between them, turning to sit. He reaches out to them. They sink into him, on each side.

  All he can do is hold them.

  “She’s going to be okay,” he whispers. “She’s going to be okay.”

  They sit that way, father whispering, each pressed close together, sitting that way for quite some time.

  It’s strange. He knows he’d once cared about her. But for years he hasn’t cared. And so what he feels now isn’t clear. It’s not that he doesn’t want her to be alive. It’s not that he isn’t concerned about what happens to her next.

  But he knows something. Now, seeing it unexpectedly amid the chaos.

  He knows he does not miss her.

  “She’s going to be okay,” he whispers to his children. Because that is what they need to hear.

  But he knows now, sadly, finally, without any doubt, he knows that he no longer loves her.

  A massive world, multidimensional, inhabited by creatures real and artificial, and some are in between, all accessed and controlled by kids hiding phones behind their big backpacks in the classroom.

  The meeting of investors trying to make more money, investing profits, together via video conference identifying tax havens, legal structures, offshore holdings that can maximize their wealth.

  The profiles of desperate men, others pious, others sad. The profiles of people looking for pleasure of every deviant and deranged kind. The profiles of women looking to be loved, simply, no touching, none of that, simply talk to me and, sometimes, will you please make me smile?

  In the air on the hill, the smell of rot is stronger. People, the bodies in the mud, beginning to decay. But the mud continues to d
ry. Enough that people test the area at the bottom of the hill. A group uses the father’s hammer and screwdrivers to strip boards from the walls of the church. They place the boards onto the mud. A rope has been found. One man is tied around the chest. Step by step, board after board, the man with the rope is able to cross the drying mud. In ten minutes, he reaches the shoulder of the highway.

  The boards sink some in places. But the mud is almost solid now. No longer does it suck people down inside it.

  Some people without vehicles leave the hill immediately. Pairs or people alone. Walking single file across the narrow row of boards, stepping delicately, lightly, at the ready to jump forward or back or just away. The memory of what could happen in this mud has not disappeared for anyone.

  But most people stay on the hill for now. Assessing. Talking about where they’ll go. How far they’ll have to walk. They are forty miles from the city north of here. The radio says it survived, the wave having dissipated before it reached that far.

  The people with cars on the hill know they can’t yet leave. Their cars would bog down in the mud between here and the highway.

  In the morning, another helicopter circles them. A military helicopter: a person in uniform leans out the aircraft’s door. He or she waves to them. They wave back. The person in the helicopter moves their arms and hands. Giving some sort of signal. Thumbs-up or stay put or you must get out of here. No one knows. The helicopter flies away.

  More people walk across the wooden path to the highway. Turning north.

  As he crosses, one man accidentally steps off the boards, stumbling to the left as a board sinks under his foot; three steps he takes, now four and five and six as he tries to regain his balance, his momentum finally carrying him twenty feet away from the path. He’s begun to scream, his feet sinking, then his legs, the mud is already above his knees.

  In some places, the mud is still that deep.

  The woman with him yells for him to stop, don’t move. He has his hands up in the air as if balancing. The mud has reached midway up his thighs.

  The rope is brought down the hill. Someone throws it to the woman, who then throws the end of the rope to the man.

  He’s panicking. Can’t reach it.

  She throws it again.

  The mud is near his waist.

  She throws the rope again. Yelling for him to grab it. Just grab it. It’s next to you, please grab it.

  He finally does. But he still can’t see her. His back to her. Sinking slowly. And listing forward. Swinging his arms carefully, as if he’s simply lost his balance.

  He manages to reach the rope, though, and tie it around his chest, and the woman begins to pull.

  For a few minutes, it seems that he is moving toward her. Leaning back. Maybe, somehow, she’ll be able to pull him from the mud.

  No one joins her on the boards to help. Out of fear for themselves. She must know this. Understand it. She doesn’t ask for help from anyone.

  It’s dusk now. She’s sat down on the boards. Her feet are dug into the wood and the dirt and the mud in front of her. Leaning back against the rope. Pulling on the man.

  He’s sunk down to his armpits now. Already the rope where it’s tied around his body has sunk beneath the mud.

  He’s talking. His lips and mouth are moving. And whether he’s whispering to himself or whispering to her or saying prayers or cursing the world or telling the woman how and why he loves her, no one knows. The others can only watch, from a distance.

  Even after his head is gone and the sun has barely set, the woman sits there still, on the boards, pulling hard, leaning back, hanging on to that thin rope.

  Dinner tables in the finest restaurants, the patrons’ faces lit so brightly by the screens they hold before them.

  Two days later, the people with cars begin to put down more boards, stripping the church of more siding, the mold-covered boards laid out, one after another. A ramp, or is it a bridge, linking this hill to the highway.

  The father uses his hammer to pry loose the siding, his kids near him, holding the boards as they come free, then stacking them nearby. Other people pick up the boards and walk them down the hill. Putting them in place.

  He and his kids were the first car up the hill and so will be the last to leave.

  The cars, one by one, cross the white wooden path the people made. The boards sink a little with each car that crosses. Water pools on some boards, other boards sink into the dirt that, with the pressure of the cars, is once more turning into mud.

  “You’re both going to sit up front for now,” he says to his kids. “And you’re going to listen to everything that I say.”

  They pass the tombstones in the cemetery as he lets the car begin to roll, inching down the hill, moving with gravity more than the engine.

  “If we start to sink, I’ll tell you,” he says. “And then we’ll climb out the windows. Onto the roof. And we’ll be fine. No matter what, we’ll be fine.”

  The kids both nod. Staring forward now.

  The tires touch the first of the boards, the wheels for a moment spinning, then they grip the wood. He keeps going, the car rocking, listing now, to the left. He feels one board give way. He hears another board crack and pop. But he keeps the car moving forward.

  Don’t get stuck, he tells himself. Move.

  The car is listing more. The left side of the path is ruined. He realizes there are bodies in the mud. Mounds, he’d thought, just dirt. But they are bodies, bent over, faces in the mud, backs hunched as they desperately tried to lift themselves from the suffocating earth.

  He grips harder on the leather steering wheel, while his foot taps harder at the accelerator. A little faster. Just a little faster.

  The kids are starting to yell. Unintentionally. Not even aware. It’s a low moan, rising, guttural. They both are reaching for him, trying to jump over to his side of the car.

  “No, stay there,” he tries to yell, “stay there.” But his voice is just a whisper.

  The car keeps sinking to the left and he’s pushing against the kids with his right arm, the car seeming to sink more with every second, his children held away from him and now he’s pushing harder on the gas, maybe that’s the wrong move, maybe that will only dig them deeper into the mud, he sees it out his window, wet here, liquid, as the car slides off what boards remain, another body coated in a layer of mud, two bodies coated in a layer of mud, an adult holding tightly to her child, a bas-relief image of a horror he thought they’d avoided but instead he knows they’ll sink, the car will sink, he will sink, his kids will sink with him, joining the mud-encased remnants of a disaster too great to comprehend, but all that matters is he’d thought he’d kept them safe.

  He wants to scream.

  He wants to cry.

  He wants to hold his children.

  They reach the shoulder of the highway. Suddenly moving fast. The car righting itself as it hits the drier land.

  The kids are screaming, happy, he is screaming too, as the car reaches the asphalt highway, dry pavement. The kids bounce in their seat, screaming happily, “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” Again.

  And again.

  He stops the car. Reaches to hug them both, both of them at once. They slap hands. They hug again. He needs water. His daughter dances. His son looks down, around, finds the phone. Looks at it. Then hands it to his father.

  “It’s still not working,” his son says.

  His sister stops her dance. She drinks water. The boy does too.

  “I know,” the father says, slowly taking the phone from his son. “But we’ll just keep checking.”

  The kids both nod. He tells them to move to the backseat. Buckle up.

  In the night, as his children slept, he heard the news reports. Three buildings back in the city that didn’t collapse in the first onslaught of the water. But they finally did collapse. Hers included. The reporter used its name. Of the building where she lived. The building where his kids lived half the time.

  She had even
texted him. Oh god. My god. I think we’re finally done.

  The water simply took some time to finally bring those buildings down.

  Dumb luck. The timing. It’s just dumb luck. That his kids are here.

  On other stations, he heard more baseball. News about movies. News about business and diplomacy and war.

  The world continues.

  He can’t quite figure out how to tell the kids that their mother died.

  They’ll drive to the nearby city. Regroup. Then head much farther north. The city where he lived when he was a child. An industrial city. Dying. Where his parents have remained.

  The man takes a breath. Another. Then looks around. In the mirror, he sees his children doing the same. As if only now are they able to look at what’s around them.

  And to the left and right, to the north and south, all they can see is this flat highway, dry with dirt, covered with abandoned cars and wrecked trucks, and everywhere, as far as they can see, are the bodies of the people who did not survive.

  Phone calls, texts, video communication, medical history, photo sharing, news, jokes, porn, sports, movies, research, books. Just so many books.

  All sent simultaneously across this ether of electronic devices. All of it operating despite the heat, or the rain, or earthquakes, or tsunamis. Even blackouts don’t shut it down, people switching seamlessly from wall power to battery pack, or even simply switching from a computer or a TV to the sleek black phone in their rough hands; the cell towers that dot each landscape, densely urban or very rural, have all been tagged as a priority for electricity, a choice deemed a necessary protection against an unimaginable chaos, one of many choices that create a sense for everyone that this ether of so much connection is not man-made but divine.

  Still they laugh. Sitting on those couches.

  He wonders. She wonders.

  Even as they laugh.

  There’s a lightness to it all. Something they can feel. Something that seems to shimmer.