FILTERS 21

CLOUD GENERATOR

Drenched instantly in the storm whose thunderclaps feel like nature's exhortation, Andrew runs. Alongside a few slow cars, headlights cast brilliant in tire spray. Emilia is walking out of her apartment, down the hall to the elevator, taking it to ground, through the lobby to the glass door. He can see her, and she can see him, and he feels the pulse.

He fumbles with his slickened phone, slowed in habitual motions to open the VPN and browser to Twitter. #PsychicSphere

Fuck.

Andrew looks up at Emilia and back to the dark street. She opens the door and calls his name.

Redhat is five thousand miles away. You're up.

He looks at her again, then at his shoes, water flowing around and off his head. He turns, at full sprint in a stride, Emilia's rising cry lost in his footfalls and the storm that only worsens, so heavy his surroundings are almost invisible, not that he needs his eyes. Down side streets into little woods that will have to be good enough. His phone is turned off and flung into the rain, a great arc to fall through the open window of his bedroom where drawers are tossed and clothes are piled together and pulled out and up. He meets them in the clouds, tearing off shirt and pants and shoes that turn to dust and concealing himself, white jacket last. Over the ocean and above the storm.

He moves in relation to himself, the glowing origin locked-static in the field. Speed is arbitrary, however fast he moves becomes baseline, a rolling frame of reference. He doesn't experience gravity, momentum, or inertia when he flies, but neither did he tumble through walls when he first held his form on this celestial body moving 30 kilometers per second. Control doesn't ignore, it takes account and compensates. However fast he moves, it seems he can move faster still, finding old caution about hitting mountains or planes causeless, baseless, his greater sight expanding until his form is a bright point, runaway up the coast. He feels his heartbeat, Savannah and Charleston, he feels his heartbeat, Wilmington, he feels his heartbeat and faster still until Virginia Beach and over Chesapeake Bay, feeling instead a flash of aggrandizing wish that some system monitoring capital airspace pinged the comet already past Philadelphia. The island is in his sight, the sprawl of towers filled with figures, and so is something else. A score of small spheres dark for lack of heat and buried within a wall of clouds approaching the city from the west. Their certain cause, a flying void, a figure. Another.

An old man wearing the half-fatigue uniform of the long-ago-enlisted patiently climbs the steps from the subway station on 33rd. His gloved hands are buried in his camo pockets and he's thankful his glasses don’t fog as he begins his walk up Park. His mouth is covered by the scarf but he's smiling and you can see it in his eyes, at lit trees and great red baubles and his breakfast to come and the chance to talk simply to the girl at the restaurant. There are few stories he knows that don’t end in blood so he hides them from her, makes himself plain, asks her questions about herself, says thank you with his mouth and his eyes. He pulls his hand from his coat so he can be sure they’re open. He knows it’s perfect, he knows his time.

A young woman reties her hair and covers it in a knit cap as she walks through the restaurant, giving it a final once-over before they open. Jellies filled, sugar topped off, bowls ready, the floor and tables as clean as they get. For a moment she considers how few of those coming in really see the undirt, what she does for them in the hours before they come, but pushes it away, noticing a straw wrapper stuck under the iron of one of the booths against the wall. As she crouches to pull it out she hears the staff in the back shouting and laughing and she smiles, picturing the face of one in particular. She gets up from under the booth and takes out one airpod to charge it in her apron next to pens and loose change and now a straw wrapper. She walks to the door, no need to check the time, the old man is her clock and his time is perfect. When she sees him she unlocks it and when he's close enough, opens it.

He hurries through, saying "Good morning, Rochelle, how are you?"

"I'm doing fire, Yuri, how about yourself?" She lets go of the door handle, then grabs at it to hold open for two more customers.

He pulls off his scarf, "I'm good, cold though! How's Shavon?"

"I bet! My sister's doing fine, just like yesterday, Yuri."

Yuri fiddles with a pocket, withdrawing his wallet. "That's good. She's a good one, you all are. I realized this morning, I been walking around under all these lovely decorations. You have Christmas coming up, right? Do you have plans?"

Rochelle adjusts her apron and taps the single airpod (Children growing, women producing) as she walks behind the counter "I do, my boyfriend will be spending it with me."

"That's wonderful. Well you know what I came here for."

Nikos, already slicing a bagel, says "Of course, Yuri, we're on it."

Yuri pays the cashier, Adi, and backs from the line.

Nikos passes her the sliced bagel and as he hears "One blueberry, one everything, and also–" turns around to pull them from the baskets on the wall. She adds cream cheese then deftly separates lox from parchment paper and adds it in layers. She's bagging the sandwich (No more askin', "Who really are you?") when all of the lights shut off, the restaurant plunged almost entirely into darkness if not for the dim exit signs.

Yuri hums. The second customer stands at the window and says, "Hey. . . lights are out all across the street. It's so dark," and they leave to the sidewalk. The third customer joins them.

(You cray? We cray, too)

Rochelle says "Yeah, must be a—" her heart skips, she understands. Her hands begin to shake, she drops the bag and raises a hand to the airpod (You pray? We pray, too–Never too late for) but her hand convulses and she drops that too, hearing it bounce at her feet and hearing in the distance something deep.

Adi has his phone light on, reaching into the cabinet below the cash register to retrieve a flashlight. Rochelle taps him, "Adi–it's a–Jacob–the guys–we have to—" but she sees Jacob and the others come out of the back, all holding their phones-as-flashlights.

"What's going on?"

"Blackout, look across the street."

"Hasn't been one since I was a little kid."

"Do you hear that? What's that sound?"

"Yeah, damn, what is that?"

"Construction? They hit something major?"

"Kinda sounds like demolition."

Outside, one customer has their hand on their head, the other has both on theirs.

"What are they looking at?" asks Yuri.

One shakes the shoulder of the other. Both turn and run.

"Why are they running?" whispers Yuri.

Several cars, one after the other, speed through the intersection, making U-turns. More figures run past. Rochelle takes the bag and pushes it into her apron pocket and as she walks down the counter she can see her fallen airpod in the lights from the phones and she puts her shaking hand out toward it and it pulls itself to her palm. "We have to get out of here."

"What is it, Ro?" asks Jacob, but their phones collectively sound with an emergency alert and he reads it and he says "Oh. God."

When the alerts finish she can hear the faint wail of air raid sirens.

Adi holds the door as they run out of the restaurant. She doesn't want to look at it but her gaze still moves toward the sound. Toward the building she's only seen but still associates with so much, the little nicety of a finished commute, the drag of work, the joy of who she works with. Now she can only see the ruined profile of the MetLife building, the edges of the sphere that started in what she might guess is its upper quarter. The cover of the morning Post comes perfectly to mind. REDHAT IN BUENOS AIRES.

"Redhat's in Argentina."

"How many thousands of fuckin' miles away is that?"

"Wha–what about the others, what about the First?"

"Pray like hell someone's on their way but we gotta fuckin' run!"

The others run, primal, away from death they cannot see but know comes for them. Jacob still holds Yuri's arm. She sees something fall in the shadows beneath the sphere and hears a great crash. Grand Central. . . and she has a most terrible thought of subway cars colliding with the barrier and the people within–she violently shakes her head, trying to reassure herself. Failsafes. There are failsafes. There are failsafes–but it's pierced. No failsafe for the barrier cutting through the middle of a train. Or bus. Or apartment building. She feels tears in her eyes. Jacob touches her shoulder, "Come on, Ro, we have to move."

"Yeah–yeah."

They walk as quickly as they can but they're slowed by helping Yuri. "I appreciate what you're doing but I'm an old man, so if I tell you to leave me and run, you run, okay?"

"We're not leaving you, old man." says Jacob.

"Don't give me that. If I tell you to leave me, you leave me!"

"I'm not going to hear that right now, okay Yuri? One of them is on their way."

Cars fill the roads and as the trio approaches 36th they see a wreck in the middle of the intersection, then as others try to swerve around it a blue Honda clips the back end of a pickup and slides into a light pole. The drivers in the collision get out and run and drivers in cars caught on the other sides of the jam begin to do the same. All around them people run out of buildings and join the masses, hundreds, thousands. Most see the direction of the crowd and follow it without looking back. Some turn to see the sphere, then run. A few stop completely, frozen, staring. They almost hit one, a man, Yuri prods him angrily–"You! Stop gawking! Run!"–and the man shakes himself off and does. Rochelle sees a young woman curled up and rocking on the concrete at the corner of the next intersection, she runs to her. "Hey baby, hey, you need to run, come on, I'll help you up."

"I can't. I can't."

"Don’t be stupid, take my hand."

"I can't. I can't!"

Rochelle shakes her shoulder. "Take my hand or you’re gonna die, honey"

The woman sits up. Jacob's beside her, they both take a hand and pull her up. "Th–thanks," and she runs.

Rochelle hears another crash from behind but she ignores it, all thoughts on moving forward. They're past 34th when she hears the shouts and screams in front of them change in waves–are they cheering?

Something awesome in the sky. A blur beyond all colors, past them.

Andrew projects invisible walls as four revolving sets of three words.

I SEE YOU

They respond.

HANDLE SPHERE THEN TALK

Unnecessary direction. He's between buildings in final approach, already dismissed the outer barrier and wiped away the debris ball and hands-raised to halt instantly and lay them upon the man at the center. The man who for that moment is no longer black and not then gray or white but all, like old static, and soon none, as he finds himself again in that different place, the man looking to him from within the waters, and as he again watches a human die beneath his hands. To the building beneath, sending off entire floors as he finds the trapped, as he finds the dead, his hands reaching through evaporating concrete, sheetrock, and steel to lift figures and deliver them to first responders whose expressive gamut of fear and relief and astonishment he looks past, and back, to other damaged buildings, to other trapped and other dead, again and again. But that was only the center, and this is not Tampa. More destruction was wrought by the barrier, he sees the cleanly sliced towers, where their fallen more-or-less-than-halves have collapsed into more buildings still. The wall of clouds has reached the island, a thick fog, a haze rolling through the streets as the other joins his effort, though so differently. Clearing buildings for the trapped but staying far above, shaping walls and floors like skiffs for ferrying casualties to ground while reaching underground to stopped or damaged subway cars to push them to the nearest stations.

Again Andrew has little awareness of how swiftly he works, but there was still much to cover and overcast light comes through the waning haze when they have finished. He drifts into clear air, the Met directly below, knowing exactly how many faces and cameras are on him: all who can see. Let them look, then. Let them record and find the perfect picture to cover every front page. Here over the museum, or somewhere further south, eyes and phones pressed to windows up and down every supertall on 57th, or further south still, past MoMA and winter-dead living roofs and lit evergreen beneath the Top of the Rock, until he is again at the root, the ruins whose name he does not know but will soon enough. Helicopters approach, but no drones surveil from far above. Content, he could think, of the thousands of images already uploaded and of live footage from sky cameras. Yes, look at this. Not Sports Illustrated, not ESPN, not pictures from the last time he was in this city to be handed a piece of metal for being the best among men in a contest of strength and speed when he is at his least on the field. See your son, see your brother, and though you do not know it, girl, see who he is and know him by his deeds and fear not.

The other waits. Andrew ascends.

Through clouds, through a barrier he knows thoughtlessly will not hinder him, to the other. They wear a jumpsuit as well, tucked into boots and with long gloves pulled over the sleeves and a helmet that covers their entire head. Every inch a uniform color, all appearing to be made of or covered by the same strange silver material, mirror-like, distorted patterns reflecting in it from the movements of the clouds.

They say "Well done."

Andrew says "You too. I guess you don't want people to know you exist, but after all of this. . ."

"It's inevitable, but even a few more hours of ambiguity about my existence is to my advantage."

Andrew hears something in the voice. "That's quite a take. I like your getup, is it camouflage?"

"Yes, thanks, though there's nothing to become iconic with this like your jacket, 'First.' I have a question for you."

Something familiar. "What's that?"

The other removes their helmet. Their head is still covered in silver hood and white mask but he can see their eyes and they ask "Do you believe your future is still in football, Andrew?"

Andrew might have left that instant if their hood wasn't coming down and their mask wasn't lifting. Fresh shock ejects panic. He knows this man's name.