FILTERS 9

BROKEN

Andrew lies in bed, staring at his ceiling.

Emilia has her arms splayed, one across his chest.

He sees the sphere. The dunes. The people who escaped.

He thinks about those who didn't.

He wants to stay beside her. He wants, so desperately, to sleep.

The churn. The sands. The lost.

He can't stay still.

He gets up and changes. He's out the door, running.

He finds Emilia sitting up when he returns, but her eyes are closed. When he gets into bed she asks "What are you thinking about?"

"Everything. . . I'm afraid more of those are going to happen."

She leans over, her head on his shoulder, her eyes still closed. "Why?"

"Call it my father's pessimism."

Emilia hmms as she falls back to sleep.

She's still sleeping when he leaves for the gym. Earbuds in, news on.

PRESIDENT RYAN DECLARED TODAY THAT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSE OF THE DISASTER SOME ARE NOW CALLING A "SEISMIC SPHERE." HE FURTHER GAVE THE NATION'S CONDOLENCES TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND ISSUED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR A PROGRAM TO DETERMINE THE CAUSE OF THE DISASTER. FLAGS HAVE BEEN ORDERED AT HALF-MAST AND CANDLELIGHT VIGILS ARE BEING PLANNED FOR THIS EVENING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND SEVERAL MAJOR AMERICAN CORPORATIONS HAVE ALREADY PLEDGED FUNDS TO AID AND RECONSTRUCTION. MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL AND THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE WILL NOT SUSPEND PLAY, WITH PRESIDENT RYAN ENCOURAGING NORMALCY AND COMMUNITY IN THE WAKE OF THIS TRAGEDY. AS FOR THE EFFORTS AT RECOVERY, THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS–

He would rather listen to the other players' banter.

Later in the morning, Devaris sends a livestream. Andrew looks skeptically at the link before opening it.

"–Craziest shit I've ever seen. Thanks again for doing this on such short notice, guys."

"I still can't believe it. When you called me last night and said 'there's some alien shit happening in Germany' I thought yeah okay, he's on DMT again. What are you hearing people say happened?"

"They're saying it's aliens! Listen, there was a force field around the sphere and buildings were going flying. Obviously it's some weapon that can really fuck with gravity. Did you see how people got through the force field?"

"No, how?"

"It's bizarre, they could get through–pull that shit up–but only if they were naked. Yeah, watch–Arm goes through, shirt gets stuck, he takes his shirt off, pants get stuck, okay now he's naked and he gets through, but look, all his hair got pulled out, it's still on the other side! Full Brazilian."

"What the fuck?"

"Right? Ain't nothing natural about that."

"Freaky shit."

"But you know what? After what Ryan said today a lot of people think it was a government weapon. Some people online dug up these old patents the Navy has. Right? What were they?"

"Uh, it was a bunch of things, there, it's up."

"Look at that. 'Spacetime modification weapon!' Lotta fingers being pointed, guys. Like they're asking why there wasn't a joint statement by world leaders. The United States and Russia and China all made their own statements. I think it's entirely possible it was one of them. Why wouldn't they speak together unless they think one of the others did it?

"What was it Ryan said? We should act like everything's normal?"

"Exactly! They know more than they're letting on, that's all I'm saying."

As Andrew walks to one of the dining halls, he sees a pair of students inside, taping lines of black, red, and gold paper hearts to the windows. Lunch is a complicated relief.

"What the fuck was that?" Devaris says, landing across from Andrew.

"It was awful."

Devaris says "Yeah, no shit, man. You watch that vid I sent?"

"Yeah."

Devaris is nodding, "Yeah, so, it's gotta be a weapon, or some government lab blew itself up working on a weapon. Twitter says it's aliens, but I can't figure out what aliens would get out of that. Nah, gotta be something we did."

"Yeah, maybe something gravitational, like those Navy patents."

Devaris laughs, "Shit man, that's the best you got? You're the one taking all those science classes."

Andrew scoffs, "Introductory-level, and while we've talked about imaginary scifi shit it's never been about things like that sphere."

"So what do you think did it?" asks Devaris.

"I don't know. But they're right, aren't they? What options are there besides some government or aliens?"

Andrew is thankful for that distraction and those that follow. School, practice, Emilia, and the rare nights he can get away to fly. The sphere drifts back, another game arrives. Weeks pass, speculation mounting, Andrew reads everything he can, but there's nothing useful. More games, only wins.

November. Andrew is in the bus after yet another win, his head leans against the window, his legs are on the empty seat beside him. Devaris sits a row forward, looking at his phone. Marques sits a row back, on a call, talking to his parents about the game. He is about to reply to Emilia when he feels the pulse.

Twitter open. #SeismicSphere

Just now. CDMX.

He refreshes, the feed slowly filling with dark pictures and videos. One is striking, a picture from somewhere elevated. A harrowing order as he sees the effects of the sphere not by damaged buildings but by the blackout it has caused, a blackout that extends beyond the boundary of the barrier and so must instead insinuate its size by contrast of darkness against light. His heart weighs heavy. He messages his father and pockets his phone and closes his eyes.

Eventually Devaris shifts, leaning forward in his seat, face close to his phone. He sits up and turns, leaning over the back. "Yo, Drew, there's a sphere in Mexico City."

"Yeah, I just saw."

His phone vibrates, Devaris says "Sent you a stream."

Andrew looks at it for a long time before opening it. He hears panicked voices and sees little sad jittery beams from flashlights.

"–mío."

"Dios mío, ¿qué vamos a hacer?"

"Dios mío, Dios mío."

Messages race at the bottom.

Get to the barrier. You can get through if you're naked.

DESNUDO PARA PASAR!

Llega a la barrera! Si estás desnudo puedes pasar!

DESNUDO PARA PASAR!

DESNUDO PARA PASAR!

"Dicen que podemos pasar la barrera si estamos desnudos"

"¡¿Cómo?! ¡¿Si estamos desnudos?! ¡¿Y cómo vamos a llegar allí?!"

Run! Correr!

DESNUDO PARA PASAR!

Andrew thinks "Yeah, run through darkness and several miles of collapsed buildings and sunken roads and sinkholes while meteors fall all around you."

He hears Devaris quietly say "God."

Emilia is waiting at Heavener. Andrew can barely look at her, can barely say "Hey."

"¿Qué está mal?" she asks, hand on his arm.

"There's a sphere in Mexico City."

She hugs him.

She drives them to her apartment. It's a studio, he's only been in passing. It feels nice. Laminate flooring, rich faux-wood to the far wall, entirely a window, glass sliding door to a balcony, all covered in sheer white curtains. He's sitting on her sofa, he wonders if it's pleather, his bare feet on a black-white-gray-hexagonal area rug. The television is on, a panel discusses the sphere. Emilia is at the stove. She hasn't cooked for him before. He would rather watch her than the screen; he does.

Delicate motions. A saucepan on a burner, blue, set low. She melts butter and mixes in flour and stirs it, to him, almost hypnotically. She adds milk and salt and stirs again. She removes it from the heat and grates parmesan into it. On a burner, orange, set high, a pot boils. She opens a paper package and adds pasta to the water. It cooks quickly. She drains it and adds it with the sauce and ground pepper to a large ceramic bowl and tosses them together, then repeats with parsley and prosciutto. She takes smaller blue ceramic bowls from the baking sheet in the oven where they have been kept warm and fills them, and carries them on a handled tray to the couch.

Andrew thanks her, she smiles at him.

They eat, he washes dishes.

They watch the sphere until Emilia says enough and changes to a show. They watch an episode, she falls asleep during the next, stretched across the sofa, her legs resting on his lap. He changes back to the news.

He thinks. He thinks.

Two spheres. One in Germany, one in Mexico. What could be the cause? Is it someone like him doing this deliberately? What could be their purpose? If they wanted to hurt people they could surely do worse. Is it, in some twisted way, for show? To inspire random horror? Could there have been a hidden objective? What objective could justify such action?

Could this be the government after all? Was he the result of some great conspiracy finally making its existence known? If the government created him, they must be keeping tabs on him. They would know everything. They could appear at any time–should he look for men in dark suits after all? Or the conspicuously benign approaching out of the blue? Again, if this is deliberate, what could justify so many lives lost?

Would the world look this way if some government had labs working on something like this? "A lab accident" is overly broad, thought-terminating, as if someone could just accidentally enter the wrong command into their reality machine and give some fucking kid psychic powers, and, oops, another wrong command leveled a sixth of Munich. Oops, another wrong command leveled a twentieth of Mexico City. Oops, we blew up the fucking planet.

Months apart and nearly the world apart. No real way for him to determine motive. Could it be distinct labs in different countries? He thinks that unlikely. What could he expect? If it is a weapon, if he is a weapon, why would their work only encounter this issue now? They never happened before Germany, unless they were in places far from civilian eyes, places the results could be hidden. But why suddenly cities? Could it be a faction at war with itself?

Could it be that he is doing it? Less than two months after he first flew Munich happened, except it didn't happen when he was flying–it did happen after games. Could there somehow be an interaction there? The pulse propagates thousands of miles across the field. What does that mean? He draws on the field, he must intersect with some great extradimensional edifice. Is it at all possible that spheres are a consequence of his use?

Does the field exist naturally, or did someone make it?

Is this some pinch of the divine? Was he chosen by God?

Was he chosen by something else?

He has it, there must be others.

Could it be someone like him? Could someone have reached too far and broken a final limit? The thought chills him. What would he do, never use it again? Unthinkable. Should he take flight and flee, finding somewhere remote to live out his days? As if running from the thought he takes to the field, an aimless drift into the gulf, focusing instead on the distant pressure he still feels from the sphere. Soon he can hear it.

He hears basal tides and distant thunder, the tempest in the reaches.

Pressure brings storms, this storm is pressure; sound joins pressure, but what is sound but pressure? Split signals, first signal pressure, second signal sound, a cogent flicker: pressure without pain can signal cancer.

Something surging forth, ineffably wrong.

Spheres claim what they can, they stop at the wall. "Could the barrier be protective?"

The pressure ceases, and as he imagines the sphere collapsing and the sand fanning out into the streets he understands.

The sphere isn't the center. The sphere is around the center. Around the source.

He lifts Emilia's legs to stand and sets them back on the sofa. A few steps away is her bed and he pulls the covers and sheets back. He takes her in his arms, one drowsy hand trying to reach for his shoulder and instead landing on his face, and he carries her to her bed and sets her in it, pulling the covers over her. Her eyes still closed, she murmurs "Quédate conmigo."

But he can't stay. He shakes his head and kisses her, and he leaves her apartment.

PRESIDENT RYAN HAS AGAIN EMPHASIZED NORMALCY. . .

Thanksgiving evening. Emilia talks with his mother in the living room. Andrew is with his father in the office.

"I think I know what causes the spheres."

"You mean specifically," says his father.

"Yes. I think it's people not entirely unlike me."

His father says "Elaborate."

"I connect with what I call the field, it is not something that I generate, so it must be externally tangible. Obviously I don't think it's what I'm about to say, but I have to acknowledge the possibility, and so if it exists externally that must mean there could be research studying it and trying to tap into it. But it's happened twice and both times were in major cities and I think if they had any idea of what they were dealing with those labs would be far away from people. It's possible they didn't know the first time, and maybe the second time they were trying to shut down when everything went wrong, but again I don't think it's any of this. If a whistleblower came forward that would be proof, and if no spheres happen, or none for a long time, maybe that's weak evidence that it was a scientific accident. But no, not research, and not the government, and I don't think it's an alien civilization either."

"I connect with this. So maybe it's possible for people to be almost like me, but whose connection with the field is flawed, and that connection can turn unstable. Not easily, not when they try to use it for the first time, and not some point after they've used it for a long time. Maybe they don't even know what they have. Until the worst day of their life, when whatever handle they have on their connection breaks off and like a faucet pours out until–I don't know. Until the only thing left for the power to consume is themselves, I guess."

"if that is what you believe happened, then that is what I believe happened." says his father, continuing, "Until it consumes themselves. . . you are unable to use it directly on others, but you can use it on yourself, which I suppose means that you can harm yourself with it, which you must already know."

"Yes. Understanding that was what allowed me to fly."

"Do you think you could use it on other people who have it?" asks his father.

"I don't know."

His father rubs his chin, "If those individuals have a flawed connection, could it be assumed to be a lesser connection as well? If so, it could be that your power is superior to theirs. You told me that you can move objects far away from your body. Is your range greater than theirs?"

"I have moved things much farther away than the radius of a sphere, but those were single objects, not everything around me for miles. If I tried, maybe I would hit that limit."

His father says "If they are using all of their power, and they are doing so unwillingly, then could it be that they would be unprepared for you flying in? You said you are enveloped by the field when you fly, could that allow you pass through the barrier?"

"Well, if it didn't, I could always go in naked."

His father's eyes search the room for thought, "If we assume that you are a superior user of the field, what could you do to test that?"

Andrew thinks, then says "I could fly to just outside the barrier. Unless they can affect my sight in the field I would know before I arrived if someone was at the center, and I could try taking over. Either they would wrestle with me and I would see that, or if I'm more powerful, maybe they couldn't do anything. So if a sphere happens close enough that I could fly there in time, I could try to stop them indirectly, and if that worked, take everything away from them, fly to the center, and see if I could help them, or if I had to, stop them."

His mother likes Emilia. Andrew drives them both back Friday morning.

Saturday is Seminoles at Gators. Emilia is with his parents and Michael in the crowd.

December. SEC championship and finals. Andrew is on the honor roll.

The night before they leave for the holiday, Andrew takes Emilia to a theater. Afterward they go to her apartment and she cooks him dinner, the same dish she made the first time she cooked for him. He gives her a necklace, she gives him a kiss and Pedro Páramo. He stays with her as she sleeps, her arm across his chest as his mind wanders the field.

In the morning he takes her to the airport and she flies to Texas. In the evening he jogs into the forest and flies to Georgia.

Christmas is spent in Missouri with his father's family.

The last Thursday of the year. Peach Bowl. Andrew stands again underneath the lens at Mercedes-Benz. His family again in the crowd, Emilia flew back early.

January. Andrew flies to New York. He's in a suit, slight smile as he holds the trophy destined for a case in Heavener. JFK to IND for the National Championship. Fifteen up, fifteen down.

February. Michael, on a locally televised conference, announces he will attend Florida.

Andrew is in class when he feels the pulse.

Twitter open. #SeismicSphere

Nothing for a half-hour. Then: Zhengzhou, CN.

March. Andrew is at dinner with Emilia when he feels the pulse.

She notices his sudden change as his hand darts to his pocket to check his phone.

Twitter open. #SeismicSphere

Just now. Baku, AZ.

"What happened?"

He shakes his head.

He can't lose himself. Unending day after unending night.

Some small solace in Emilia, who knows something is wrong, but he doesn't explain. What could he say? "I know when spheres happen. I guess I'm kind of psychic, because I can fly, and I'm bulletproof, too, and I could try to stop them, or at least help people escape, but I'm too busy being worried about. . . what? What am I fucking worried about? I'm a coward."

≛

When she finished school, she could only find work outside of her desired field. She moved to a part of the country she had never visited, to a city with more people than her home state. She lived in an apartment that was nice enough but left her with a long commute. Her work was stressful, and her superior treated her with contempt, but she persisted. She joined a young-and-single group for the city and met someone. The relationship was nice at first, but she soon felt apathy from her partner and began to worry he was seeing other women and only using her.

Work worsened and her relationship worsened. When she told her partner to leave and not return and threw closed her door with a slam that was in symphony with the scraping of wooden table legs across ceramic tile and of wooden chairs clattering from upturning, she looked at her furniture and for lack of superstition dismissed it, put everything back, and slept.

When she awoke from fitful sleep and remembered what happened and sobbed, she noticed that belongings from her dresser were now on the floor; again she entertained and accepted denial.

When she met someone else and they finally went to bed and her partner laughed and said "We moved the bed." she looked around and thought "And my desk, and my dresser, and my vanity, and probably the clothes in my closet" and she also thought that she should speak with someone. This took time. Her first choice would not be covered by her insurance, her next had no space for new patients. Her dozenth resort was busy and it would be months before she could see them.

Her appointment came and she met with the counselor and explained how occasionally things around her seemed to move without her touching them, she was worried something was wrong with her memory. The therapist, a skeptic not only in that context, thought it might be something it wasn't. She was seen weekly, she always felt better after her visits and would have continued only to work through her professional stress when she was advised to see her doctor. She made another appointment, this one at least coming soon. At the visit she had labs drawn and a follow-up was made to be seen by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist referred her to a neurologist, the neurologist referred her for an MRI. The scan showed nothing of concern, and since there were no other physical or cognitive problems she complained of, and since time had passively hardened the skepticism of all parties involved, most of all her, she was given a prescription to balance her mood. It seemed to work.

Had her response been subject to greater scrutiny it would obviously be anomalous; outwardly she showed confident stoicism in the face of stress. Inwardly she found herself incapable of voicing discontent.

Her mood plummeted, but when asked she would say she felt fine. She felt duplicitous, she felt worse, that she was living in the second person, like she was observing someone else living her life. Someone who would not show frustration and sadness in unfair treatment in her work and distaste and opposition in romantic encounters she wished to forego. She didn't want to do that, why did she do that? But still she maintained routine. She saw her therapist and complained mildly of work problems as though this someone else controlling her even cared about her as they lied to each hand involved in her treatment, and since nothing seemed to move since she started the medication, it must be working.

She began to feel a rising pressure.

She would be berated at work and abused at home and when she desperately wanted to lash out she found the place in her heart. It was different. A dissonance that built until crescendo, rumblings in her soul. Whenever she was screamed at, when her partner arrived drunk and belligerent. When she held the pill between her fingers and knew she needed to throw them all away but of course swallowed it instead.

Life fluctuated. There were nice weeks, even a nice month, but she went to a job she did not want to be at, and came home to a person she did not want to sleep with, and saw a therapist who she now felt she had only ever lied to all while taking pills she could not once refuse.

The pressure grew.

One night with him above her, she looked at her dresser and suddenly wondered if maybe it wasn't her own problem at all. Maybe when those things moved it was because she moved them, because she now stares at a picture on her dresser, and the more she focuses the more it shakes, until it shatters, sending metal and glass in every direction but hers.

She drives to work, the commute is fine. She parks in the garage underneath her building and walks through badge-swipe doors and takes an elevator to her office. She walks to her desk on the open floor and sits at her computer where she sees a message from her superior to see them immediately. There is an issue with a project she has done to exact customer specifications and yet her superior is unsatisfied. Her superior says that she failed, that she had done the exact opposite, and her superior wonders aloud about her incompetence and her lifestyle and why she's still employed. She apologizes and takes notes and on leaving looks pleadingly to the HR staffmember who she cannot actually bring herself to ask for help but she knows they heard and knows they could help, but still she just can't ask. In her superior's parting shot for their own half-day, they inform her she will be coming in the following morning, a weekend day she would normally have off, to "Clean her mess."

In the evening she arrives at an apartment she gratefully finds empty. She sits on her couch and wants to cry but can't, staring into nothing, hour after hour, until her partner arrives. He is drunk, and angry, and he demands she come to him and she does, but this time her agreeableness is not good enough, and she is struck and turns and falls and hits her head on the table and collapses to the floor.

When her mind returns and she finds her legs spread and her dress around her hips and sees her partner she finds herself finally able to cry out her refusal, but he is hitting her again and now takes her head in his hands and hits it against the floor and her vision is wavering and her very sense of self seems to, seems to—

A chair catches him by the neck and lifts him up and throws him back and as he gags and coughs with great confusion the heavy table spins up into the air above his head and is his end.

She stumbles into her bedroom, and as she falls unconscious every object in the room tears itself apart.

She awakens on an incline of soft material. She blankly looks at wooden fragments embedded in the walls and feels the breeze from an empty window. Her wardrobe is in splinters and she thinks nothing of the tatters of once-clothing. She walks over the destroyed box springs, frame, and stuffing, and over the remnants of her dresser and her vanity. She looks at her bloodied self in the reflection of her untouched bathroom and absentmindedly wets a cloth and cleans her face and automatically reaches for the orange bottle and swallows the little pill.

She ignores her table and chairs and steps over the body to put on her slippers by the door. She does not remember closing her door and she does not remember going to her car, driving, and parking. A glass door shatters when it does not open for her, and she takes an elevator to her floor, where she sits at her computer and pushes keys.

Eventually she feels a hard press on her shoulder, and she does not register the presence of her superior except that they have said something loud and cruel. She nods and turns and continues pushing keys when she feels a claw of a hand grip her shoulder.

"I said–"

The pressure breaks as she stands. She has been gone for so long, and her quiet self screams that she can't let it free, but there is nothing else that she wants, and nothing else to be done. Her hands shake as little weaknesses rush over her body and her breath catches in her throat as she so very needs to tell them, to show them. . .

She screams, and it leaves her with such force that her clothes are torn from her body and her hair from her skin and where a person was before her they have been thrown by desk and segmented by steel between windows, out into the open air with the shattered glass from walls of windows from the building that has exploded.

But the debris does not fall, it hangs in the air around her and begins to turn.

≛

Andrew is in his dorm.

It is the first Saturday and he sits on his couch, half-finished oatmeal on his little coffee table, his phone floating above it. He finally decides to wash the bowl. He's at the sink when he feels the pulse.

Twitter open. #SeismicSphere

Nothing. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

Just now. Tampa, FL.

His heart is in his ears.

His breath comes quickly.

He sends a message to his father, then calls him.

"Dad–"

"Morning, Andrew, what's up?"

"Dad, check Signal."

Silence.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Yes. Like we talked about."

"There is no going back."

"If they can't stop that, how are they going to stop me?"

"I sent you a message. We'll talk soon, Andrew."

"Yeah, bye dad."

Approach from the gulf. Mexico after.

Good luck.