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Concrete and metal fall to nothing. A bolt flies out from forest, of black and white, in blue, above blue, from blue, to seek ruin and deny it. He has wondered little on reach that laughs at man and scoffs at nature and would question the creator’s dominion. Dominion. This bolt, set apart, this bolt, unbolted, yet emphatic on his tether! Love tethers, not loves tethers, unfettered. Dominion. Fear not. He is the same as you in my sight; he too is a piece of clay. No fear of him should take you, his hand shall not be heavy upon you.
Devaris raises a barbell, then drops it. “Stellar timing to leave your phone.”
“Sorry I’m not tied to my phone like you are.”
Andrew hears more strikes of metal and other weights dropped. The energy in the gym is different from the fall, passions refocused, as football has passed, for some for good. Some here drive dumb machines in anger, hard in every lift and press, as if they can will themselves to a spot in the draft, as if this effort now will bring enough luster to be bright among the diamond dregs and filtered to the pros. Devaris remains calm, his fate is sealed. He says “It’s a new world.”
Andrew thinks about his father’s truck. “So I hear.”
“Feels shitty that I thought about sports and not all the people who would have died.”
Andrew’s doing shrugs. “It’s hard to think about disasters that happen somewhere else. You know they’re bad, but you don’t have any connection. What do you say about a hundred thousand people dying? It’s awful, but you didn’t know any of them, and you’d never been to that country let alone that city, and you couldn’t have done anything about it, anyway. Imagine if there were some plague in China, what could you say? At least it’s not here? There’s no context.”
Devaris frowns, “Funny hearing that from you. I bet you haven’t thought about football for days. I bet you were all torn up when you heard about Tampa and then you had the biggest relief when that guy showed up.
Andrew shakes his head, “We’re different, we think about things differently. You shouldn’t feel bad, a lot of people thought what you thought. A lot of them were probably more happy that their house wasn’t destroyed or their dog was saved than that their neighbors survived.”
“Yeah. But a lot more probably felt like you.”
Andrew feels the injured woman in his arms. He hears her say What are you?
“I’ve always been like this. I bet if you could personally stop the spheres, you would. That’s what matters.”
Devaris says “You’re right, I would. Thanks man. God damn. I keep thinking I should feel even more blown away by that guy, but after months of these fucking psychic spheres I guess it dulled the surprise when somebody finally showed up to stop it. I wonder what took him so long.”
“Maybe he was flying in from space,” Andrew says, grinning.
Devaris laughs, “You think he’s an alien? Lotta people think that.”
“Nah, probably not.”
“If he is, aliens must really love Adidas. I guess I just assume this is the government up to something. It’s such a jump, but it would kinda make sense though, right? A bunch of governments all discover this shit after the US has been working on it for a while, so when it goes wrong here we had a guy ready to fly in and stop it?”
“Yeah, it makes sense.”
“Man. If that is just some guy, what couldn’t he do?” Devaris shakes his head. “Nah, it’s the government, gotta be.”
That would be—what would it be? He doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He finishes the sets, he showers and walks to class.
He meets Emilia for lunch.
She says “It was nice yesterday, with your dad.”
“Yeah it was. You know we have a game in November in College Station, maybe I could meet your parents.”
She smiles, “Or you could visit over the summer.”
He thinks. What would she do if she knew? Would she shake in my arms as she looked at me and asked What are you? Would she accept me? Could she accept me when she knows I could have stopped the other spheres? Should she?
He looks off, not feigning thought. “I’d like that.”
She sleeps in his bed. He sits on his couch, watching cable news. A woman speaks.
“—I want to know what the United States Federal Government is doing to find whoever or whatever that thing is. This is an entity who is capable of flying faster than jet aircraft and who, seemingly on a whim, just ‘turned off’ a force field several miles in circumference before crushing several hundred thousand tons of rubble into a ball. And what happened to the woman at the center of the sphere? They touched her and she disintegrated as easily as all that debris. We have a word for this and it’s superweapon, but even that feels like the mother of all understatements. If that’s a superweapon, what are nukes? Playthings? What are their limits? How is it possible they do any of this? How do we know they won’t go city to city, destroying everything they come across, or just making people disintegrate? How does democracy survive when something like that exists? The President says they’re not ours, okay then, whose is it? Russia? China? Who? The Mexican government sent out fighter jets, their rockets did nothing to the barrier. Air Traffic Controllers in Tampa say they saw nothing on their systems. Nothing! Is it even possible to track this entity without seeing them? And God, what happens if there are more of them? I have never wished as much as I do now that the government, that you, President Ryan, are lying to your people and the world, and this actually is ours and you just don’t want to set off the arms race to end all arms races. So I will ask again. This isn’t your job on the line, this isn’t your ass on the line, the world is on the line. Secretary Petraeus, what is the Department of Defense doing to identify this entity? General Nakasone—”
He changes channels. Different cable news, commercials and wrap up.
Next hour. A man speaks.
“The top and only story of the night, month, century, and all human history, is the appearance of the remarkable individual who stopped the sphere event in Tampa. Many now call the spheres ‘psychic’ spheres, just as they refer to that individual as ‘The Psychic.’ I will cover that individual more in a moment, but we have a breaking development tonight on the possible identity of the woman who was at the center of the sphere. We have received a list of names, these names, however, are not public, and no official identification has been made. This is what we know: in Clearwater a deceased man was found in a strangely ruined apartment. What was strange about it? Well, for one, everything inside, every piece of furniture, every piece of clothing, even the windows in the bedroom, looked like they’d torn themselves apart. What else was strange? The man’s cause of death. I’ll spare you the details, but it involved a very heavy wooden table landing on his head. What else do we know? The apartment is leased to a woman who worked at the now-destroyed SunTrust tower in downtown Tampa. Again, this woman is not officially considered to be the woman who was at the center of the sphere, but she is considered a missing person of interest. Accompanying this, screenshots from local social media pages have people claiming they know the missing woman and claiming to believe she is one and the same as the woman at the center of the sphere. Whatever the truth, we will keep you informed. As for the individual referred to as ‘the Psychic—’”
The screen changes, a graphic laid beside the commentator with a timeline.
“What we know hasn’t changed since yesterday. Cameras caught the initial explosion at the SunTrust Building at 8:31 Eastern Time on Saturday morning. The first tweet, now shown on screen, was posted at 8:32. Exactly one hour later, at 9:32, this tweet was posted, and I’ll read it: ‘Holy expletive, something just flew over my boat, it looked like a man in a rain jacket.’ More posts like this followed, including those with blurry pictures of the individual. Moments later this picture we now show captured the individual above a Publix, which is chain of supermarkets in the southeastern US. The individual spent several minutes lifting two sections of a roof split by the barrier at the edge of the ring, moving them back and forth. Moving them. Was this just for fun? Probably not. They then crushed the roof into a ball and set in the parking lot, and the US government has since acquired—‘acquired’—that ball for research.”
The graphic now includes one of the pictures Michael sent.
“After this, they proceeded to the sphere. Pausing again, this time at the wall of debris. They entered it, and just after that the sphere fell and the woman was revealed. As we understand it, at the exact same moment the sphere fell, the barrier also disappeared. We have this stunning picture from Sam Rosen, a professional photographer, including this moment as the individual touched the woman, after which her body turned to dust. Some speculate the individual did that to the woman, but I think something different. We saw after, they were disintegrating things they didn’t need to touch. Why would someone go to all that trouble to do what they could have done without anyone knowing? Because they couldn’t, obviously. I think the individual broke her from her ‘trance,’ as it were, because what did they do after? They saved people. They carried victims, gently, watch the video, gently to a park near the tower. When they were done they set another ball, one made from the disintegrated debris, in the park, and of course the government has ‘acquired’ that ball as well. We’ll play this footage provided by ABC Action News in Tampa. Watch. Watch! They set the ball down, then they look at the crowd. The crowd is waving at them, and they wave back! That’s a good person.”
The graphic changes to Mexico City.
“After the individual’s departure, reports came in from around the world claiming to see that individual. The only credible pictures and reports came from Mexico City. As you can see here, these pictures show the figure above the Mexican capital. As we all remember, last November the second such psychic event occurred there, and based on these reports, the individual stopped briefly at the site of the disaster.”
The graphic disappears and the man looks away, as if composing himself, then back.
“I will be honest. I think it is natural to look at what this individual did and feel fear. They fly. They fly! With no visible means of propulsion. They can move massive amounts of rock and metal with nothing indicating how they do it. They can even turn that rock and metal to dust. But consider this: at the barrier and the sphere, they spent time looking at them, like they were evaluating them, like they didn’t know what they were dealing with and needed to make sure it was safe for them to enter. Think about that, that incredible picture, of their hand on the woman’s shoulder. What did they do, what did they not do? They didn’t strike her. They didn’t show any aggression at all. Do you know what I see? Compassion. What did they do next? They cleared debris to find victims, to find the dead, and carried them to a park. What did they do next? They waved to a cheering crowd. We don’t know what they did in Mexico City and I’m not confident enough to share my guess, but I am confident enough to say this: that individual at every opportunity did the right thing. So I’m not afraid of them. I’m thankful for them, I’m thankful they appeared and saved so many lives, and I’m hopeful since and if, God forbid, more spheres happen, we now have that individual who can stop them.”
He turns the television off. He closes his eyes, imagining he can hear Emilia’s breaths. He wants to lie down with her, to feel her skin tight against him. But he stops himself.
“I don’t deserve her.”
He jogs to the gym, works out, showers, and walks to breakfast. Devaris still talks up a storm. He walks to class. Back of the hall, seated on the aisle, shoes tapping the rubberized floor. Notebook and recorder and pen out. He texts Emilia. His professor goes through slides and writes on the board.
He feels the pulse.
Twitter open. #PsychicSphere
Nothing. Refresh, refresh, refresh.
Just now. Denver, CO.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
Gainesville to Denver, 1500 miles. 25 hour drive, 4 hour flight from JAX. 20 minutes at Mach 6. Good luck moving a mile a second, try not to hit the mountains.
He needs to stand. He’s in the back, he could just leave. He could email his professor and say he had a family emergency. He’s acing the class, he’s Andrew Black, they would give him a pass. Okay, just stand up. Stand up, Andrew. Stand up and leave. You’re not putting your things away, you’re not getting up. Why aren’t you getting up?
Stand up and fucking GO, Andrew.
He hears phones throughout the room vibrate.
STAND UP AND GO, ANDREW.
A student near the front says “Doctor Batton, there’s a psychic sphere in Denver. Oh, wow . . . someone on Twitter says CNN has a crew inside, they’re broadcasting.”
His professor says “Oh really? Excellent–erm, well, you know what I mean,” and he walks from the board to his desk and changes from the lecture slides to a browser, to CNN. Nothing yet on the front page.
The same student says “I just emailed you the link.”
The broadcast opens. A reporter stands in a busy parking lot outside Coors Field, cars behind her are crowded at the exit to a busy street, racing to be closest to the inevitable jam at the barrier. Pedestrians are running, a truck stops, a man gets out and shouts and waves at the crowd to fill the bed and cab. In the distance, far above and behind her, a tower is consumed.
—LESS THAN A WEEK. LAST SATURDAY THE FIGURE IN WHITE INTERVENED. WE CAN ONLY OPE THEY APPEAR AGAIN TODAY.
He begins to put his things away. Notebook, recorder, pen. The camera adjusts, center on the sphere, zooming until it fills most of the screen. He looks at it, noticing the little differences. The sphere in Tampa rotated east to west, this one rotates in reverse. The currents as well, in Tampa they were smooth, these pulse out with a rhythm. He’s reaching for his phone, getting ready to stand, when he notices a speck pull from the sphere, hang in the air, then disappear. His eyes widen and strain.
He waits for the reporter to say something. He waits for someone in the class to say something. Did no one else see that? Was it his imagination?
The same student says “Oh shit! They’re saying someone’s flying in!”
His phone slides from his hand, hitting his knee and spinning before it lands on matte blue rubber with a dull thump.
—WORD THAT SOMETHING HAS BEEN SPOTTED FLYING TOWARD THE SPHERE
Hard spin and pull back on the camera, a blur is caught and lost. The camera tracking, catching and losing, until the blur stops at the sphere. To small for detail beyond color: red, white, black, and blue. The figure moves in a close circle around the sphere.
Every second hangs.
Did it take me this long to figure it out? Would they know they’re bulletproof? Sure, reasonable, they don’t want to die, they don’t want to make multiple assumptions about things they had no concept for before Saturday. Saturday. How many does this make? Two in the US, two in a few hundred million? What are the odds they were close enough and ready to intervene? Did I give them confidence to act? Two in three days? Close to fifty, right?
He watches the screen. His phone vibrates into the floor.
The sphere falls with the figure still outside. The camera offers just enough to suggest a nude man at the center, then the figure flies to the man. The man, too, disappears, and then the figure clears the tower, carrying bodies to the ground as they find them. But when they’re finished, they don’t fly away.
He lands in front of the camera and says “Good morning! What questions do you have?”