I See the Teeth

by blasted0glass

Summary:

Zach has agoraphobia of an unusual flavor.

Chapter 1: The Sun

Zach’s terror wasn’t actually birthed on a late summer day when he was six. From the outside it may have looked like a normal kid was somehow transformed into a whimpering agoraphobe, but from the inside he could feel that it was much simpler than that. Of course he should be afraid, it’s natural that he be afraid. The fear was a bed Zach had always slept in. It’s just that one August afternoon he happened to wake up.

Zach and Susan were playing, unsupervised. They didn’t often visit Grandpa. He was an ancient, one-eyed, oaken man, a subject of many stories in their household, and essentially a deity to the young children. The old man was incidentally also a gentle soul, but Zach didn’t know that because he was too afraid to talk to him. He struggled to guess which eye underneath all the wrinkles was the real one. When Mom suggested they play outside for a bit, both the kids ran out the door without a backward glance.

They went straight for the coal shed. They only knew it was a coal shed because Dad had named it thus when they drove up. He explained that Grandpa had switched to natural gas long before they were born, but since it had previously held coal it would forever be known as the coal shed. It was now used for storage. The kids could infer that it would be full of junk, that is, full of things Grandpa had wanted to keep but had forgotten about.

What allure could the summer day’s shimmering air and crackling grass produce, that could compare with the allure of the treasure horde of a deity?

The shed’s air was thick--not hot, but heavy anyway with the scent of drying-but-never-dry motor oil, which competed with an earthy smell of cinder block. Rusted metal parts sat in bristling piles alongside half-spent reels of fencing wire. Opposite the door, boxes of old photos decayed among stacks of forgotten magazines and jars full of spider webs. More boxes were stacked behind those in tottering piles. Two children delighted with the sheer volume of mystery, and strove to outdo each other.

Five minutes later, both were hopelessly dirty and in the middle of a mess they had made.

“Look!” Susan said, holding a long metal rod with something stuck on one end. Her four-year-old arms could barely lift the tool, so Zach grabbed the other side and steadied it. The socket at the end of the rod had six sides and a smudge of black grease where it connected to the handle. Neither child had an idea of what it could be for--it was a tool, for sure, but it seemed too huge and club-like to actually be useful for anything.

“That’s cool.”

Zach didn’t spend much time examining it. The long socket set was indeed very interesting--so he’d have to try hard to find something better. The unspoken contest was to find the most bizarre thing, the most incomprehensible prize. He couldn’t win by taking time to understand things.

Zach left his sister with the club she had found and started going through the boxes. He was about to dump one out when he had second thoughts, for the first time. Would Grandpa get mad at them for making a mess of his shed? What was he like when he was angry, anyway? Maybe he was like Dad, who swelled and shouted, but since Grandpa was Dad’s dad, his anger would have to be even bigger and louder. The thought made him stand up and stop. Before he finished contemplating it, Susan had dropped the wrench and upended a box herself. Bits of paper money and little wooden cubes spilled out of an ancient board game in hundreds of clattering trajectories, and suddenly Zach felt helpless. That only lasted a moment.

Maybe going through that mess alongside Susan would be cheating in the contest, or would make him the target of a deity’s rage, so Zach rationally turned to the box stove.

It was set apart from the wall. He went behind it and saw that the rusty stove pipe had been disconnected. He could see a hole through the brick and into the greenery beside the shed--the pipe on the other side was also missing, though a long section remained and must have stuck out of the wall. Somebody had set something inside of the pipe, something small and black. What sort of prize would be displayed in that hidden, ostentatious way?

Zach stuck his arm into the pipe up to the shoulder, but he couldn’t reach the mysterious object. In ageless brilliance, he cast about for the nearest thing that could solve such a dilemma. The wrench his sister had dropped would serve. It was heavy but he didn’t really have to hold it up--just jam it into the pipe and try not to push the little black whatever-it-was further away. He extended his arm fully, trying to scrape, not really feeling what he was doing. Finally, with much scratching and clanging, he dragged the thing to the front of the pipe.

It was a piece of coal, and it turned his palm black where he held it. He walked back around the stove to show his sister.

“Hey, Susan,” he said. “Look at this!” She walked over to inspect it, and of course grabbed it right out of his hand.

“Coal?” A small nod. They had never seen the stuff before, it had to be worth something. “Shiny…”

That was when they heard the buzzing. A yellow-and-black insect flew through the air between them. Zach almost fell over backward. Both kids looked in unison to a section of wall above the door, where a fat wasps’ nest hung over the entryway. Twenty or more of the insects crawled on it--but it might as well have been hundreds.

Zach froze. How had that horrible thing escaped their notice? The base of his neck hurt as he tensed, unsure of what to do. His sister, however, reacted immediately. Without logic she threw the piece of coal straight at the perceived threat. Zach’s heart was pounding--in slow motion he watched the small black stone leave her grasp and fly through the air to bounce off of the grey side of the nest. The wasps all stopped momentarily as their home shook. Susan had realized her folly almost before the black rock had left her hand. She sprinted out the door. Her brother was right behind her, and a half-dozen angry wasps were behind him.

Except, to his terror, the outside felt completely different. At some point between his entering the coal shed and fleeing from it, the world had quadrupled in size--or so it seemed. The blue sky washed over him like a suffocating tidal wave. It crushed him straight into the ground, where he breathlessly skidded to a stop on the gravel. He couldn’t move.

He felt at an immensity above him, like the fist of God ready to crush him flat, a horrible, inescapable something hanging behind his head. To him it seemed to snarl ferociously, uncannily, like a cloud of chainsaw-sized wasps pouring out of a weather-balloon nest growing on the side of the sky. He rolled over, desperate terror constricting his heart, to see what insectile or mechanical or biblical horror hovered above him, waiting to destroy everything he knew. His terror doubled, and doubled again, and kept doubling.

The first thing he saw was the sun. The glowing disk swelled in his vision until it was all he could perceive. Confusion pinned him to the ground, and he saw. Zach wouldn’t find the words to describe the sensation for the better part of a decade.

Zach witnessed the ten million nuclear bombs per second that the celestial body represented. It was as though he were bathing in it. For a moment his world was nothing but white-hot flame, immense dancing columns of luminescent wind and radio static. He could feel them rise, the tornadoes of fire and electricity, channeled invisibly toward the merciless vacuum--and him.

He felt the titanic grip of that frothing ball, dragging him and his world around by casual accident. The tiniest sliver of its power pinned down everything he knew. It trapped the entire Earth like a glass jar over a spider, forced it to dance powerlessly along an edge that would never be lifted. If the hand holding that jar down ever came near, then the entire human race would be obliterated as immediately and surely as a raindrop in a volcano. He had ignored this thing all his life, but now he realized--it had ignored him, too. Zach could feel that part as well. Gravity’s dance would never bring the terrifying monster any nearer. Somehow that immense disaster had missed them, and would continue to miss them forever.

With a jolt he lost sight of the sun. Gravel was digging into his shoulder-blades. His cheek tingled painfully. Zach absentmindedly swatted at his face. A wasp had landed there and stung him, but that was irrelevant. The fear hadn’t gone away

Something remained above him. He tried to stand, but the overwhelming fear made his legs too weak to lift him. He couldn’t breathe. He flailed around weakly, his limbs glued to the ground.

Dad came out, and carried him inside Grandpa’s house. It was good he did. Zach might have suffocated if he stayed outside for even a minute more. His first shuddering breath came out as a sob, and the sobbing got in the way so that he couldn’t explain to his parents what he had seen.

Even after he calmed down enough to talk, he couldn’t make them understand. Zach didn’t have a way to communicate the vividness, the utter reality of the terror he felt--how could he tell them things he didn’t even know how to tell himself? And yet being unable to explain changed nothing. He refused to go outside for a day, then for another. When they left Grandpa’s house to return to their own, Dad had to drag him out to the car. Zach’s flailing grew intense when they got out the front door, and he only made it home by smashing himself down between the seats to cry.

A few days after they got home his parents took him to a doctor. He fought as hard or harder at that time.

It was labeled agoraphobia, and was a major inconvenience. Mom smiled in helpless confusion; Dad shrugged angrily, trying to contain his frustration. Zach learned to curl into a ball whenever his father wanted him to go somewhere--it made the weight of the sky a little more bearable. They sent him to therapy, hoping secretly that his problem would vanish as quickly as it came. Only he could appreciate that it wouldn’t ever go away, because it had been there all along. At least Susan seemed to genuinely believe him when he said that Outside was the scariest place on Earth.

It wasn’t even the sun that was the specific problem. The sky itself was inherently dangerous. You were only safe when you couldn’t see it. He learned that looking out the window could trigger the same feelings as being trapped outside. What if looking out the window destroyed the safety of his room? He kept his curtains drawn.

Zach could handle his family’s ignorance. It was fine to not be understood, as long as they understood they couldn’t make him go outside for long. Eventually his eccentricity became accepted, if not normal. For eight years Zach refused to look at the sky.

He would come to regret that initial fearfulness. It wasn’t until he started to face his fear, that he realized he would need to make his parents--and everyone else--understand.

Chapter 2: The Moon

Zach loved the internet. People on the internet, if not sympathetic, were at least ignorant of your specific weaknesses. The magic of being online was that it necessarily squeezed the wide world down into two perfectly safe dimensions, and human interaction became a single sterile stream of text. He wasn’t really cognizant of the favors that text messaging did for him, like concealing his youth behind a large vocabulary and his awkwardness with the ability to edit the messages--but he knew his best (and only) friends were made online. The real selling point was that he didn’t have to go outside to meet them. And now that summer break had started, he could spend all day online, and then chat late into the night.

Of course, he ended up much closer to those people than anyone he knew in real life.

 

7ManfulThumbs: I think you should go look at the sun again, when it comes up tomorrow.

AlgerNonsense: That’s terrible advice.

7ManfulThumbs: Well, not directly at the sun. Perhaps not the sun. Don’t damage your eyes. You should just go and perceive the outside world as it is, maybe look at the stars tonight?

AlgerNonsense: Having more panic attacks isn’t going to help.

7ManfulThumbs: The goal isn’t to have panic attacks, it’s to accept reality. The outside is out there, whether you choose to look at it or not.

AlgerNonsense: I *know* it’s out there. The problem isn’t the outside, it’s my brain, and the feelings I can’t control.

7ManfulThumbs: Then show your brain reality, so that it can accept it. There is a rationalist skill: Looking into the Dark. You should utilize it.

AlgerNonsense: You just don’t understand. I can’t will my panic attacks to go away.

7ManfulThumbs: You won’t know until you try.

AlgerNonsense: I HAVE tried. Just wanting them to go away didn’t work.

7ManfulThumbs: Then use the try harder, Luke!

AlgerNonsense: Fk you! Hahah. Can you wiggle your ears?

7ManfulThumbs: ...no, I cannot.

AlgerNonsense: Just try harder then I’m sure you can do it!

7ManfulThumbs: Be right back.

7ManfulThumbs is AFK.

AlgerNonsense: You can’t be serious. I was joking!

 

Zach shook his head. 7ManfulThumbs, whose real name was Manny, was one of his weirder friends. He had an almost obsessive interest in discussing the way people thought, and what mistakes they could make while thinking. Zach enjoyed talking to him. It seemed like Manny was an outcast as well, in some ways, and admittedly his obsessions were kind of interesting. It was frustrating that Manny had latched onto Zach’s agoraphobia in such a disappointing way. Zach didn’t really like to talk about it and now it was all Manny seemed to care about. He shouldn’t have even mentioned it to his friend.

 

7ManfulThumbs has returned.

7ManfulThumbs: So it’s true that I can’t make my ears wiggle in five minutes, after looking up relevant information. But it’s also true that my life wouldn’t be significantly easier if I could wiggle my ears, and it isn’t like most everyone uses an ability to wiggle their ears on a daily basis.

AlgerNonsense: *shrugs*

7ManfulThumbs: Maybe you’ve been approaching it from the wrong direction. It’s hard for people to see things in a new way, especially if they’re considering things they’ve taken for granted for years.

AlgerNonsense: You seem to think you know better than me how my mind works.

7ManfulThumbs: I don’t in the general sense, but I think this is a special case. You clearly have an Ugh Field around thoughts of your agoraphobia. And you can’t argue with the utility of going outside--you should be trying a lot harder to overcome this disability.

AlgerNonsense: That sounds like my parents.

7ManfulThumbs: I’m sorry.

AlgerNonsense: It’s okay, you have a point. Speak of the devil, I’ll be right back.

 

Someone was knocking on his door. It wasn’t his parents, though: it was Susan.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” She seemed impatient, as though she wanted the interaction to be over as soon as possible--but she was always that way. “I was reading this book. Can I come in?” He had been standing in the way of the door. He hadn’t cleaned his room in weeks.

“Honestly I’d rather not right now.” His sister sighed theatrically. When he didn’t move, she turned around and left, stomping the whole way.

As far as Zach was concerned, that was a self-solving problem.

 

AlgerNonsense: That was weird. My sister tried to talk to me.

7ManfulThumbs: I wasn’t aware you had a sister. I should have considered the possibility--do you have other siblings as well?

AlgerNonsense: No. 

7ManfulThumbs: At least I only missed one, then!

AlgerNonsense: We aren’t close. I don’t usually bring her up.

7ManfulThumbs: Is it the same problem as you have with your parents?  

AlgerNonsense: Not really. She mostly avoids me, and I don’t need her to do things so we fight a lot less.

7ManfulThumbs: I see. What did she want?

AlgerNonsense: I don’t know. I told her I was busy.

7ManfulThumbs: Without even seeing what was up? That doesn’t seem very nice.

AlgerNonsense: I’m not sure I care.

7ManfulThumbs: Your refusal to want to know things is really concerning to me.

AlgerNonsense: Funny, doesn’t bother me much.

7ManfulThumbs: It should, though. Ignorance is strictly worse than knowledge.

AlgerNonsense: You are absolutely wrong about that.

7ManfulThumbs: I don’t think so, and since I’ve chosen to know, I’d probably know better.

AlgerNonsense: I’ll go talk to her after all. It’ll be easier than talking to you.

7ManfulThumbs: What do you mean?

 

Zach left the chat. He stared at his computer for a while, wondering if he could damage his teeth by clenching his jaw too hard. For someone who had ‘chosen to know,’ Manny didn’t know all that much.

Eventually he stood up to go to his sister’s room. He knocked on her door and it took her a second to open it.

Susan’s eyes were red-rimmed. “What’s wrong?” he said, and she glared at him. He felt his own anger at Manny trying to refocus on her, but he pushed it back. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier--my room’s a mess and I didn’t want you in there.” Her face softened a little. She let him in, and went to sit on her bed. After a moment he sat next to her. She stood back up to close the door he had left open.

He tried to at least not to feel trapped in his own house.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“This book,” she said. It was a grey tome, titled The Incredible Machine. “I was reading the part about human brains. It talked about damage to “were nickle’s” area...” He stared at her. “I got scared.”

“Can I see?” She opened the book and started flipping through it. It was apparently a book on anatomy. He got a glimpse of a full-color picture of a human brain, covered in living red blood vessels. He shuddered.

“Here,” she said. He read:

 

When Language Goes Wrong

A different part of the brain, Wernicke’s area of the left temporal lobe, is essential for the understanding of language. When people are injured there, the results are catastrophic. They can still speak, but only gibberish. In a strange parody of normal speech, they go on conversing fluently with correct rhythm, intonation, and even grammatical form, but their words are meaningless and they cannot grasp what is said to them. Their reading and writing are also impaired.

 

“Where did you get this book?” he asked.

“It’s Dad’s, I grabbed it off the bookshelf in his office.”

“Huh. Why’d you want to talk to me about it?”

“I was thinking that you know how to deal with being scared.” She was hugging her knees. “And I just didn’t want to be alone.” Zach stared at her helplessly for a moment. His way of dealing with being scared was to run away, and he didn’t know at all how to help others with it, especially when the thing they were running away from something they read in a book.

“I don’t know,” he said.  He sat next to her and put an arm around her. “Talking about it for a few minutes might help?” In his experience, it didn’t--but people kept trying to make him talk about things, as though it might help, so maybe it would work for her.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Just tell me what you were thinking.”

She was quiet for several moments. “The book talks about more than just the brain. Blood vessels, bones, the liver… I was surprised we know so much about it all. It’s weird to think that we are made of all these, these chemicals , and they all come together to make consciousness.” She looked at her toes on the bed. “When I read the part about losing your ability to speak, I thought about how it was just a small change, and it had such big consequences. And humans have walked around forever, not knowing that there’s a little part of their brain that if you hit it just right you stop speaking…”

“We know now.”

“Well yeah, and it’s an old book so maybe we’ve known for a while. But before they started cutting people up and figuring these things out they were still true. It’s weird that we’ve always been made of chemicals, we just didn’t know… and even after I’m dead and gone, people will still be made of chemicals… I don’t know. It just made me feel really small. What if a blood vessel in my brain broke tomorrow? I might not be able to talk anymore.”

“It’s possible. It hasn’t happened yet, though, and it doesn’t happen that often.”

“But it could happen.”

He didn’t like lying. “It could. You can’t let it get in the way of your life. It’s just how things are.”

“Yeah. How would you deal with it?” Zach shrugged.

“I’d just be scared, if that’s how it made me feel. For as long as it took.”

“What if I’m scared of it forever?”

“Then you’re scared of it forever.”

“That’s not very nice.” Zach shrugged again.

“The world isn’t obligated to be nice to us. Knowing this thing in particular might make you scared, that sometimes happens. Do you wish you didn’t know?”

“I--I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll always be scared, even if I’ll always know.”

“Must be nice.”

“Does everything always have to be about you?” she said suddenly. She stood up angrily. Zach almost stood up to stomp away himself--but instead he held back his anger, again, and this time it seemed to evaporate without effort.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m sorry too.” She hesitated. “The panic attacks are probably worse.”

“Probably. But if you are scared, that’s still legitimate.”

“Maybe.. It would help if you talked about it?”

“It never does.”

“Is that because nobody understands? Maybe I can understand now, that I am scared by the book.” He doubted it, but he felt he owed her an attempt. In some part of his mind Zach thought that if she talked about her fears to him, he had to reciprocate.

“Well, what you said about all the moving parts being there whether you think about them or not is kind of similar. When I’m outside, it feels… inherently unsafe. Like at any moment something will come and crush me--but like it’s always been that way, and always will be. There’s this potential for death that’s always there, and every moment outside feels like an unnecessary risk.”

“But what would it be that killed you?”

“Nothing in particular, that’s just how it feels.” When he said it, he almost believed it--but then he remembered something Manny had said the other day. About semantic stop signs, which were words or phrases whose only purpose was to make you stop thinking. Zach had a flash of insight.

‘That’s just how it feels’ was probably a semantic stop sign of his own. It was a phrase Mom and Dad kept saying when he told them he was scared--it was a phrase the therapist had used, to explain to him how his feelings were meaningless. 'That's just how it feels,' meaning 'that's just an illusion' or 'that's not legitimate,' even. To him that phrase meant he should stop thinking about his feelings, because they weren’t real.

“I’m sorry it feels that way.”

“Me too. But hold on a second, let me think about it.” In that moment, he decided to try a little harder. His heart rate sped up--it always did when he contemplated his panic attacks too closely. He persisted with the thought, perhaps foolishly.

But why not? It wasn’t like he was in serious danger. He was sitting down, his sister would call for help if he needed, and anyway he wasn’t outside. He still had a little bit of control, here.

Zach tried to remember what it felt like, all those years ago when he had first had a panic attack. He remembered the pyroclastic towers reaching out from the sun, spraying radio waves in every direction.

He remembered, for the first time in years, that he hadn’t merely been afraid.

“I saw the surface of the sun.”

“What?”

“I definitely did. It wasn’t just something my brain did, I saw things back then I couldn’t even name.”

“And that would kill you?” He looked at his sister.

“No, sorry, I got distracted. I’m starting to wonder what exactly happened when I was a little kid. Maybe… I forgot some parts of it, after all.”

“Huh.”

“Maybe I should go back outside. To look at the sky.” His sister definitely seemed taken aback by that--it was the first time he had volunteered for such a thing. Even so, Zach wasn’t sure if he could do it. It was one thing to sit here and think dangerous thoughts, it was another to put himself into danger. He’d probably have a panic attack in the first thirty seconds, maybe immediately if he dared to look up.

“Why do you want to look at the sky?”

“To see if I see anything.” She was looking at him like he was crazy. To be fair, he probably was. “I mean, anything out of the ordinary, anything extra. When I was a kid I saw… things. It was why I freaked out.”

“We can go and look if you want....”

“I’m worried that if I step outside I’ll have a panic attack.”

“That’s silly.” He was offended until she went on: “It’s not like you have to go outside to look at the sky.” She pointed over her shoulder, at her window. He had forgotten about it. The blinds were drawn.

“Of course. Why, er, why don’t you open the window?” He didn’t want to stand up and do it himself, for whatever reason.

“Okay then.” She leaned over her bed and pulled the cable, which caused the blinds to rise. Weak moonlight streamed over him and his hair started to stand on end.

Zach looked at the moon. It was a thin crescent on the horizon; the sun had set not long before. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, despite his pounding heart.

Then it started to grow in his vision. He found he could see the shadowed part of the moon just as well as the bright side. At first the growth was slow, but after a few seconds it changed size as quickly as a baseball might if it were going to smash into his head. A dark crater, lit from below, grew until it encompassed his entire visual field. It revealed that it was made of smaller craters, which themselves were full of craters, and on it went, everything coated with piles of dust and fractured rock. The moon’s face was made of unhealing fractal scars, and it stared back at him in mute idiocy.

Sheets of dust drowned all. The powdered rock was almost like black snow--but it didn’t compress, and it stuck to itself in unending thirst. There was no water to soften edges, no wind to stir the soil. The dust was the ultimate abrasive. It piled up like honey made of sandpaper, each sharp edge part of an endless list of grievances that weren’t ever addressed. Hanging above was the titanic--and dead--mass of the moon. The thing was a cold corpse. A pile of discarded skin. The wounds on its surface couldn’t heal without planetary heat, without balmy water, without soft wind. Sunlight tauntingly abraded the surface. Even over aeons the force of sunlight couldn’t round the sharp edges of the sand. Looking at it made him swallow dryly.

And it was right there. It trudged around the Earth, and had done so for a longer time than Zach could comprehend. All the while it never let the Earth leave its jealous sight. The moon was literally made of uselessness the Earth had cast off, and it longed to return like a child to its mother. It remained distant, and slowly--slowly!--drifted away.

The moon was slowly receding. Even as it did it gave futile gifts. Its gravity pulled forlornly on oceans it would never taste, its light fell on vistas that churned with undeserving livelihood. The Earth was reflected on the moon’s face. No wonder it could not turn away. The monolithic fingers of gravity couldn’t bridge that gap, and all the while its grasp grew weaker, a celestial child walking away, backward. Knowing it was going away only made Zach feel relief, and guilt for feeling relieved. The moon was ugly, whatever its kindnesses.

For all its immensity, it was little threat to him, but he could not rest. His heart pounded, as though if he kept looking he would find the truly terrifying part--around any darkened rock he might find something that justified the horrible gnawing fear that grew into a panic attack. His eyes were helplessly darting over the unlit surface. He could no more resist the examination than he could stifle a flinch during an explosion. He saw the rocks on the cold side of the moon, squat boulders stuck in the merciless, endless cycle between lunar day and night. His gaze flew over the landscape, brushing up against the horizon which curved away into a deeper, deadly blackness. His view started to dive into space, which frothed with unseen stars. He was too timid to look directly at anything, yet he didn’t stop looking. Zach’s head started to tilt back. And then--

The blinds cut off his vision of the moon and sky like a guillotine. He fell back on the floor, coughing and sobbing. Zach scrambled to get out of the room, cursing himself for letting the door be closed while he was on the wrong side of it.

“Are you okay?!”

He nodded mutely, opening the door. A cough unstuck his voice: “Got to go to my room. ‘Sorry.”

“I’m--” The door was open: he didn’t wait for her to finish. When he got to his room, he dove under the covers and waited for the panic attack to pass, curling into his familiar ball. Susan embarrassingly followed him there. All he could do was try to assure her it was okay, while he waited to see if that was really true. She seemed to feel terrible. He just wanted her to go away. Susan left when he asked her to.

His heartbeat finally started to slow down. His thoughts were heavy and muted--stifled by the exhaustion unique to a panic attack. Even so, a particular thought was forming in his mind. Zach eventually decided he was going to have to do something extremely difficult. He would tell Manny about what he had just experienced.

Chapter 3: The Sky

7ManfulThumbs: You have to understand that this is like a dream come true for me.

AlgerNonsense: Why’s that?

7ManfulThumbs: I didn’t think I was going to get to munchkin a power in real life! Though honestly, we don’t really know how your power works yet, so I don’t know how to munchkin it.

AlgerNonsense: I don’t think we know that it isn’t a hallucination.

7ManfulThumbs: The car thing is suggestive. And if you’d just go out looking for satellites, we’d have much better evidence.

 

He’d been cautiously experimenting over the last two days, and taking suggestions from Manny. Some things had become apparent. The first thing he had discovered was that going outside still felt like holding loaded guns to his temples, in both hands. Half the time he couldn’t even do it.

Zach thought that using his sister’s room would be inconvenient, and he didn’t want to accidentally make his own room unsafe by having panic attacks there. Yet he couldn’t go outside. Instead, he looked out of the window at the top of the stairs. It seemed that just looking out the window could cause a panic attack, particularly at night, and he felt frustrated. He reasoned his constant grappling with the fear was making him tired by the end of the day.

On the first morning after he had viewed the moon, Zach tried to look at the cars on the highway, from the window. Zach found that he could see their license plates, but only if they were moving. When traffic began to slow down, for whatever reason, he couldn’t make out the plates anymore. And of course he couldn’t tell if he was just hallucinating the numbers he read.

After forty seconds of attempting to view far-distant cars he had to quit or the fear would be overwhelming. He found that while he tried to do it his gaze kept creeping upward, like he was looking for something that might swing down from his roof and into the open window.

Manny had suggested that he tell his parents to go out for a drive, so he could see if he could read their plate, but that was laughable. Zach knew that not only would they ignore the suggestion, but even if they didn’t he’d still know the right number to hallucinate. Manny acknowledged that problem. They’d need a double-blind test, he said.

Then Manny had suggested looking at satellites. If he could describe them, and they could find information about the satellites online, it would be a purer test of his abilities. Unfortunately, there were a multitude of problems with that, not the least of which was that Zach had been exhausting himself by looking at distant things every day, leaving him unable to use his ‘power’ at night. In fact, since looking at the moon he hadn’t had a chance to look at the night sky at all. He couldn’t do it without immediately having a panic attack.

 

AlgerNonsense: What do you think would happen if I looked at a star?

7ManfulThumbs: I thought of that one too. It’s a really risky idea, though. You don’t know if your power works faster than light.

AlgerNonsense: So?

7ManfulThumbs: You might get stuck staring at the same star for like fifty years, waiting for information from it to reach your brain.

AlgerNonsense: I don’t think that’s how it works. The sun thing happened instantly when I was little.

7ManfulThumbs: Did it, though? Do you remember it well enough to know that?

AlgerNonsense: I’m pretty sure.

7ManfulThumbs: If it is indeed instantaneous, then technically it’s time travel. You could probably use it to get information from the future.

AlgerNonsense: That’s valuable, right? At some point I’m going to try looking at a star. If I get locked-in, I’ll get out of it when someone finds me and blocks the view.

7ManfulThumbs: Okay. I’m surprised you’re so experimental about this.

AlgerNonsense: What do you mean?

7ManfulThumbs: Previously you didn’t even want to talk about it. Now you are suggesting that you risk having panic attacks. What changed?

AlgerNonsense: I think it’s just because my panic attacks might actually mean something, now. I always thought they were just a bad thing happening to me. Or something wrong with my brain. Now that I can take them seriously, I don’t know, I feel like its worth it to try to understand.

7ManfulThumbs: Even if they were just something happening in your brain, I would think that they are worth understanding! But I’m glad that you are more accepting of them. Maybe we can get to the bottom of your powers.

AlgerNonsense: If I even have any.

7ManfulThumbs: Overcoming your fear is a power of its own. You know what I would do if I were you? I would try practicing going outside.

AlgerNonsense: Why?

7ManfulThumbs: To get ‘stronger’ at dealing with the fear. Not only will that be useful for experimentation, but if it turns out you are just hallucinating you’ll still get a big benefit.

AlgerNonsense: That makes sense, but it also makes me think that you don’t believe I actually have some sort of power.

7ManfulThumbs: If I’m honest with myself and with you, I still don’t really believe it. It doesn’t fit into my conception of how the world works. You are just someone I talk to online. To be perfectly honest… it’s more likely you are deliberately lying to me, for some reason, than this is actually true.

AlgerNonsense: That’s okay. I mean, I’m kind of hurt, but not really. I hardly believe it myself.

7ManfulThumbs: At any rate, I think you should walk around outside more. Even if what you see is just a hallucination. And I’ll keep talking to you anyways, you never struck me as a liar.

 

It was thus that Zach started going for walks in the afternoon. He was pleasantly surprised to find that they were merely ‘extremely difficult and harrowing’, rather than ‘impossible’. The entire time he was outside he felt like he was walking along the edge of a cliff, but he knew he could step back at any moment. His walks were short. A few hundred feet away from his front door was all he could manage. It felt like a tether was pulling him back. Even so, as long as it was light out and he refused to deliberately look at the sky he could keep his fear in check.

After a few days, it even seemed like he was getting better at dealing with the fear. One day, when the sun was about to set, Zach glanced up toward the slowly-waxing moon. It sucked him in like last time. He could feel his heart speed up as the view expanded, as the moon grew to cover all. Before it blocked his vision entirely he managed to fall backward and run back into the house. He didn’t attempt it again. Manny agreed that it was a big enough victory for a single day.

Zach got to bed early that night, and woke shortly after sunrise. He strode outside, confident in his improving ability--only to regret it immediately.

Terror crushed him like a bug. The night, even in retreat, held so much threat that Zach collapsed as though his strings had been cut. The darkness over the western horizon hissed, churning out waves of panic that threatened to sweep him off the planet and into the rising sun. He barely managed to crawl back across the threshold and into the living room. The panic attack was one of the worst he had ever had--just the knowledge that darkness was outside, over the horizon, paralyzed him for long minutes.

“Zach! Are you alright?” His father had found him lying in front of the door. Of course: he was on the way to work.

“N-no... “ he said. “Panic attack.”  The man looked down at his son, pityingly.

“Will you be okay?”

“I think so.” With that, his father stepped over him and opened the door. He had to get to work, after all. Zach held his breath until the door clicked shut.

When Zach could finally stand again, he went to his computer and relayed the bad news to Manny, who was fortunately online.

 

AlgerNonsense: I just went outside and had a terrible panic attack. It looks like I didn’t make much progress after all.

7ManfulThumbs: Don’t say that. There will be good and bad days. You have to keep at it.

AlgerNonsense: I don’t know, it felt even worse than normal somehow. It could be that having all these panic attacks is making me more sensitive to them.

7ManfulThumbs: That might be plausible, except you really are having an easier time, some of the time. 

AlgerNonsense: And harder others? Maybe they average out.

7ManfulThumbs: Perhaps.

 

The next day was Saturday, so both of his parents were home. They watched TV in the living room. The TV was on the wall opposite the front door. Zach tried to sneak as he walked down the stairs, but the stairs squeaked whenever anyone walked on them.  It would normally be marginally better if his parents knew he had to go outside--sympathetic or not, you want people to know when you go into danger--but he didn’t want them to be a part of his experimentation. His mother must have noticed the squeaking of the stairs over the sound of the TV.

“Zach? Are you going outside?”

“Yeah, just for a moment.” She stood up and walked to the front door.

“Why? Not that I disapprove!” Her optimism was a misunderstanding and too deliberate.

“I just… “ he sighed. A partial truth might give them false expectations, but he couldn’t think of any plausible lie. “I am practicing going outside.”

“Finally seeing sense?” His father had only been pretending to ignore their conversation. “It’s awful hard to get girls to go into a room you never leave, after all.”

“Oh hush,” said his mother. Then: “That’s wonderful! Do your best!” She hugged him, and before he could decide whether he really wanted to hug her back she had started walking back toward the couch.

Zach took a moment. He was almost sad that she hadn’t asked why he wanted to go outside, or offered to go with him. But why be sad that he didn’t have to do something difficult, namely, explain things to her that she wouldn’t understand? He cautiously opened the door, and to his relief he could step outside without falling down. It was near noon. He had chosen the time deliberately.

He walked around outside, basically without issue. Momentarily he glanced up at a cloud, and to his surprise it started to grow larger in his vision. Zach snapped himself out of it before the process could get far. At that moment he was eighty paces from the front door, and he couldn’t afford to do anything risky. Even so, his heart had started to beat hard.

Zach deliberately walked slowly as he returned to the door. He could practice not running. His arms and legs jerked as he walked, and his neck got stiff, but still he didn’t run. By the time he got to the door he had already decided that he could look up at a cloud later, when his heart rate had slowed.

“That was fast,” said his father. They were still watching TV, of course.

“Did you have a good time?” asked his mother.

“No,” said Zach, “but it could have been worse.”

“That’s the spirit. Maybe next time you can go to the store, save us some trouble.”

“It’s just a short walk! I think that’s an excellent goal!”

“I’ll try,” said Zach. His dad turned around at that moment.

“Good luck.” He turned back toward the television. Zach returned to his room.

 

AlgerNonsense: Maybe you’re right. That time it wasn’t even that hard.

7ManfulThumbs: See! The strength was within you all along!

AlgerNonsense: Oh ha ha.

7ManfulThumbs: I’m serious. Even more than the possibility that you have a power, I’m happy that you are overcoming your fears. I guess human concerns still dominate the human mind.

AlgerNonsense: I feel like I’m not making progress very fast.

7ManfulThumbs: That’s okay, though. Making progress at all is sufficient for now. You go as fast as you are able, but no faster.

AlgerNonsense: Thank you for being patient. I know that’s hard for you.

7ManfulThumbs: You have no idea. I am very curious about your power and how to test it.

AlgerNonsense: If only I could go out at night.

7ManfulThumbs: I’m sure you’ll get there soon.

AlgerNonsense: I don‘t think so. It’s really different at night, and so much worse. I can barely handle it. I think looking at the moon that one night made it unsafe for me.

7ManfulThumbs: You’ve looked at the moon since then.

AlgerNonsense: My fear attached itself to the night sky instead. It does things randomly like that, it’s unpredictable.

7ManfulThumbs: Have you tried predicting it?

AlgerNonsense: Of course. I wish I understood my brain better, maybe I could do something about it then.

7ManfulThumbs: Well, perhaps it isn’t in yo

AlgerNonsense: ?? Did you forget to finish your sentence?

 

Three dots appeared on the screen, indicated that Manny was typing--and retyping--some thought he had. This happened sometimes, usually when they were talking about something complicated. Perhaps Manny was searching for the best way to say something. Zach certainly didn’t imagine that Manny had been struck by fear and disbelief. Finally:

 

7ManfulThumbs: I’ve thought of a really good possible explanation.

AlgerNonsense: What’s that?

7ManfulThumbs: You don’t already know? Let’s look at the evidence. First: you have panic attacks when you go outside, but they are way worse half of the time. Particularly at night.

AlgerNonsense: I hope you aren’t going to say I’m afraid of the dark.

7ManfulThumbs: No, of course not. Your room is probably dark right now, even. You don’t open your window.

AlgerNonsense: That’s right.

7ManfulThumbs: Second: when you were in your house, you could look at the moon through a window without as much of an issue, right? Even at night?

AlgerNonsense: Well, yeah. I did that once. But I can’t look out the window at night any more, only during the day.

7ManfulThumbs: A *different* window. One that’s on the other side of the house?

AlgerNonsense: ...yes, that’s true...

ManfulThumbs: Finally, just yesterday, just after sunrise, you still had a terrible panic attack. Even though it was day. But at noon you’re just fine.

AlgerNonsense: So?

ManfulThumbs: Yesterday you technically saw a part of the sky you don’t normally see--and that part of the sky was setting?

 

And then Zach got it. The problem wasn’t that his panic attacks randomly got worse or better. It also didn’t matter whether the sun was up. However, time of day was still important.

Something else that wasn't the sun or moon was also rising and setting. He didn’t know what it was, because it was something that he had never dared to look at. All he knew about it was that if it was in line of sight it immediately crushed him with fear.

Chapter 4: The Teeth

“I’ll sit in the camping chair.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to have to lift my head if I can’t do it myself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Once I stop talking, wait a minute. If I don’t speak again before a minute is up, wave your hand in front of my face. Or cover my eyes. If that doesn’t work, drag me inside if you need to. You can always call for help.”

“What if you collapse or something?”

“If you think I’m in danger, call for help.”

“Okay.”

“Susan, I know this seems crazy. Thank you for helping me. I promise you that it is extremely important.” His sister looked at him for a moment, then smiled.

“I’m glad I can help.”

It took Zach a few seconds to build the courage needed to open the door. He stepped outside, and already fear was making his legs weak. It felt like a massive pair of eyes were turning their gaze on him. He dropped the chair and spun it, collapsing into it bonelessly. He could hardly breathe as he rested his head in his hands. Stars danced in his vision, perhaps not unlike the stars that would be dotting the sky. He didn’t know, because he hadn’t yet looked up.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes… just give me a moment. I can still move my head.” With a deep breath he leaned back to look at the sky, and immediately he knew the vicinity of the whatever it was. Once he knew he was looking for something specific, he couldn’t not know where to look. That patch of sky didn't contain anything at first glance. His eyes refused to focus on it.

Apprehension gnawed at the base of his skull, his heart begged him to flee from whatever stood on the other side of the heavens, but he had made up his mind. If his fear was real he needed to know, especially if whatever it was might put others in danger. Susan stood behind him, ready to help. He had to be willing to face this, in case it was important.

That was one thing Manny hadn’t ever stopped harping on. Zach needed to know. A part of him drove him forward to that knowledge. He couldn’t deny that whatever this thing was, he felt it was extremely important. Above all, he had to accept the truth if he was going to do anything about it.

Zach’s body resisted. Explosively he stood and fell forward. It felt like something was pushing at the backs of his knees, forcing him to the ground. He waved Susan off when she tried to pick him up. With great effort he stood back up on his own, and lifted his gaze once more.

His legs wanted to carry him away, like a horse running from gunshots. He was only a half step from turning around and fleeing back to the safety of his home. However, even if his instinct to flee arose from his body’s disagreement, his body was loyal. His feet remained where they were. Zach looked toward the heavens.

He could feel where to look, because it was the place he least wanted to look. There was nothing there that he could immediately see, but his feelings guided him. The sky seemed to come into focus for just a second. Then Zach’s vision swam and the world dropped away.

He fell through space for endless heart-dropping seconds. The stars in the periphery of his vision started to drift as his viewpoint crossed multiple lightyears. Still he saw nothing, and that made it worse. Impatience and helplessness mixed. He was plummeting to his death and wishing he’d just hit the ground already. It was beyond fear, he felt so terrified that even his heart threatened to freeze in petrified anguish, and yet he had made up his mind. Whatever it was, he was almost there. Still it was invisible. He waited, not breathing, not moving, not able to think.

Then it appeared all at once. The fall had required gut-wrenching speed that outdid everything before, but the stop was instantaneous. Even through all his fear he felt surprise. He could travel no further because he had already arrived at the horror, and he could see that it was small--tiny, even. Certainly smaller than him.

He saw glowing orbs. Two were close, while the third was just a bit further away from those. The three of them were within an arm’s reach of each other. None were larger than his fist, but they were heavy. They were made of a dense metal. All three would have been perfect spheres, but the sides that he could sense were pitted and scratched. Their shapes were warped by heat.

The three not-quite-spheres were flying straight at him, screaming toward him with a concentrated fury unlike anywhere else in the universe. They swelled with energy, moving so fast that space around them warped and threatened to tear. The entire universe was reflected in the white heat of their profiles, distorted by an unholy concentration of violence. It was uncanny, it was unnatural--it frightened him to his core to know it was possible--it was deliberate.

There could be no doubt about that. The spheres were far away, perhaps ten light years. If so they would arrive in ten years and a nanosecond. He could feel what was at the end of their trajectory. He was looking at a broadside fired at Earth.

Any one of them would be a fatal shot. Their velocity was absurd. They moved so fast that invisible light fell on their surfaces like a nuclear firehose, setting them ablaze. The gentlest radio waves of his planet would crash into them with ferocious intensity, such was their speed. That also meant that the most desperate message from behind would never reach them--they would outrace it for millennia, until the end of time, and even then it would be invisible if it ever arrived. He felt a momentary sympathy. The spheres were bathed in fire, caught between a universe of inferno and a speechless black void, unable to do anything but fly forward toward their inevitable violent obliteration, which from their point of view would happen immediately.

Zach knew their purpose. You couldn’t perceive them without knowing that. Someone or something wanted him dead, and had arranged for his murder. He saw the gears of the universe turning. Celestial machinery would put the clockwork of Earth in front of these bullets at just the right time, and then they would shatter everything he knew and loved into infinite tiny fragments. The pieces of Earth itself would rain down on the rest of the solar system with fatal intensity.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He couldn’t move the Earth out of the way to safety. He couldn’t touch these tiny specks as they flew in to kill him. He couldn’t even show another person what these horrible things looked like! Zach would be ground between the gears of heaven and then those gears would separate again to go on turning without the Earth, or him. His destiny was to become a smear in the teeth of a cosmic mechanism. That future was ensured.

Zach awoke in a hospital. His parents were there. If they asked questions he didn’t hear them. Everything mundane felt numbly frozen. Irrelevant. He didn’t speak for a long time. What could he possibly say?

Chapter 5: The Earth

Zach did eventually speak. He told his parents. They thought his experience was nothing but the product of a fearful imagination.

“Oh honey, I know you wanted to go outside more… but you pushed yourself too far.”

“You don’t understand! I saw--”

“You had a nightmare. You can’t let nightmares rule your life while you’re awake.”

“I was hospitalized!”

“For a heart palpitation. Even you know that extreme fear will do that.”

“Why can’t you guys just believe me? Why would I lie? What can I gain by being miserable?”

“That is a good question. Don’t think we haven’t already thought of it.”

“What?”

“You’ve got to know we love you and care very much. You don’t need to pretend--”

“I’m not pretending!”

“I get it, you are starved for attention. You need more friends.”

“That’s not it…”

“Well sweety, If there’s anything we can do to help--”

“Believe what I say!”

“--that will actually help, just let us know.”

He started screaming at them to go away--which they did with relief. Zach had known they wouldn’t believe him, but he had wanted to try anyway. He wished he had been wrong about it. If only something in his voice could convince them about the threat--but of course it didn’t.

Later, when he had returned ignobly from the hospital, he told Manny.

 

AlgerNonsense: What should I do?

7ManfulThumbs: Probably start taking SSRIs.

AlgerNonsense: You said you’d take it seriously.

7ManfulThumbs: I’m sorry. Well, it’s not like we can launch a rocket to intercept them. The rocket wouldn’t get far enough, and the debris from the impact would still hit Earth. Maybe we could get enough humans on Mars to start a colony? Ten years isn’t really enough time, but perhaps if the whole world were behind it, it could work.

AlgerNonsense: I don’t think Mars is going to get through this either. The Earth is going to explode when it happens.

7ManfulThumbs: That’s insane.

AlgerNonsense: C’mon, man.

7ManfulThumbs: I meant in scale. Anyways, it hardly matters, there’s no way you can convince enough people. It’s not like we could look through telescopes to see the threat. In fact, nobody on Earth except for you will ever see the Spheres. From what you’ve said they are moving too fast.

AlgerNonsense: I could probably convince scientists that my power works, by looking at satellites.

7ManfulThumbs: Perhaps. You’d still have to convince them that the Spheres were coming, though. That’s a separate matter. It’s also assuming you don’t get arrested by a government, to use your ability for spying, or something.

AlgerNonsense: I hadn’t thought of that.

7ManfulThumbs: Neither had I, until recently.

AlgerNonsense: There’s got to be something that I can do.

7ManfulThumbs: Technically, there doesn’t actually… but perhaps someone else could come up with a solution? There are a lot of very smart people on Earth.

AlgerNonsense: How can I get anyone to believe me?

7ManfulThumbs: I don’t know. If I were you, I’d try to move past your fears and lead a normal life.

AlgerNonsense: What, just try to enjoy my last ten years?

7ManfulThumbs: Maybe you do have more than ten years? You still don’t know it wasn’t a hallucination. 

AlgerNonsense: I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.

7ManfulThumbs: If certainty could identify truth, I have to admit that it would make our lives a lot simpler….

AlgerNonsense: I was hoping you could believe me on this.

7ManfulThumbs: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

AlgerNonsense: There is no evidence.

7ManfulThumbs: I’m sorry. I’ll keep thinking about it, and I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.

AlgerNonsense: Well, thanks anyway.

 

Zach understood why Manny wouldn’t believe him--but he despaired. He was running out of places to turn for help.

Zach had checked two of three boxes. He went ahead and told his sister.

“So, the Earth is doomed?”

“In ten years, give or take.”

“You could--well, nobody would believe you.” She thought about it silently. Zach appreciated that his sister, like Manny, was at least willing to entertain the possibility that he wasn’t insane.

“That’s right, nobody will believe me.” When she didn’t say anything he went on. “I wish I could show them what I see, let them feel what I feel--then I might be able to get them to help me.”

“Maybe you can start with just a few people, and use their help to convince others?”

“Who do I start with? Do you even think it is true?”

“Well… no. I’ve never had a panic attack. But there are lots of people with agoraphobia, right?”

“Yeah, but what could they--” he stopped. “Do you think anyone else has this same power?”

“No. But I don’t think you have it either, so…” Zack felt like kicking himself. 

“Doesn’t matter. Thank you. You’re brilliant--I’ll start by trying to find other people with agoraphobia who can back me up.”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s obvious, really.”

“Not to me, I guess. I’m glad you said it. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

When he told Manny about the possibility of finding others who could sense astronomical bodies at a distance, he laughed. Of course they had thought Zach was unique. Nobody had ever come forth with the power before, but maybe that was because it was hard to even recognize the power for what it was. Zach had thought he was merely agoraphobic, until recently.

Manny agreed that searching for others was a good idea. They joined some online agoraphobia communities, together, and started asking around. The vast majority of people online had no idea what they were talking about.

But Zach had been foolish to assume he was unique.

---

Zach’s heart pounded. A real experiment was about to take place.

An astronaut had gamely volunteered to make hand motions for few minutes during one of his space walks. It was the most attention that the Impactor community had ever warranted, since Zach and a few others had founded the group six months ago.

Perhaps the astronaut wanted to silence the newly-formed Impactors by proving them wrong in as public a fashion as possible. Zach had to admit they looked crazy. The Impactors had been making waves on the internet in the same way that Flat-Earthers did, or like doomsday cults did. So many liars had said that the Earth was doomed. How could you make anyone take it seriously anymore?

Indeed, the Impactor community itself would have been overrun with trolls and UFO cultists if it wasn’t for the ‘hidden test’ for membership. No one was accepted unless they used their ability to see the Spheres themselves. The Impactors were vocal about the existence of the Spheres, of course, but they’d kept the number and their arrangement a secret. It was a good membership test, a sort of inherent hazing ritual.

It was time. Zach looked at the space station, with what they had started calling the View. It didn’t take long for him to find the astronaut. The man was holding up two fingers.

Imagine the astronaut’s surprise when he later learned that twenty-five Impactor agoraphobes, from all around the world, could list the number of fingers he was holding up as though they were all in the same room. He stuck out a thumb: half the group said “three”, the other half said “he stuck out his thumb.” They did it in near-perfect immediacy, live streamed on half-a-dozen services. In many cases their declarations arrived faster than NASA’s own livestream of the same event.

After that, about half of them ran back inside in obvious terror.

It didn’t make everyone believe them at once, but it did get them the right kind of attention. NASA was interested, to say the least.

--

If three hundred people with supernatural abilities, vetted by dozens of replicated experiments, all tell you to pay attention to the same blank patch of sky--because the Earth is about to be destroyed--you at least consider what they have to say.

You might even go so far as to spend a few hundreds of millions dollars constructing satellites to help verify their claims. It is a lot of money, but there are many powerful people with a stake in the Earth’s continued existence, who would be alive for the impact if it were to happen.

Trying to look at the Spheres with anything other than the View is impossible. No telescope can resolve things at that distance. That's why the View is so implausible an ability, something that required very many verifying experiments. Still, there are other things you can consider.

Getting an orbiting satellite on a collision course with one of the Spheres, at twice geosynchronous orbit, doesn’t do much to protect the Earth. An exploding cannonball still lands. But putting something in the way can tell you a lot about the trajectory of the Spheres, as long as you have someone using the View.

The Impactor community can determine if the satellite they are looking at has entered a doomed orbit. You can calculate where the satellite will be for the next fifty years. With that, you just keep adjusting things until the Impactors tell you your satellite will be hit by one of the Spheres. Then you line up another satellite in a different orbit. You keep adjusting that one as well, until it is also destined for impact. With those two lines you can figure out exactly when the Spheres will arrive. You now know where they are coming from.

After that you can take measurements with ever-increasing precision, adding a third, fourth, and fifth satellite. All at different altitudes, all destined to be in the same line eight years hence. Then it would be a matter of making the satellites slowly dance, so that you can determine exactly how the danger will arrive. The Impactors couldn’t describe it with that superhuman accuracy, but that is of course okay. Human senses are easily helped by technology.

Political concerns might hinder you somewhat. Not everyone believes the Impactors, because no group of people anywhere has ever agreed to believe the same things. For any reason whatsoever. Fortunately for you, and indeed the entire planet, a microwave laser is well within your budget.

Chapter 6: Epilogue

There were only four years remaining before the Spheres were predicted to impact the Earth. Zach, against his better judgment, had decided to use the View to watch the Spheres when the first microwaves were calculated to reach them. It was going to be a singular event in the universe.

In the intervening years he had become a physicist. He had multiple reasons for not wanting to miss it. Even so, it took him almost as much effort as the first time to turn his gaze toward that particular patch of sky. The terror hadn’t lessened. He had to time it minutely, and be ready to disengage. A couple of EMTs were on standby just in case.

Once again his view came to rest on three baseball-sized pieces of metal. He didn’t have to wait for long.

Light slammed into the spheres. It had been produced by lasers, but the spotlight had unfocused to a diameter hundreds of kilometers across. That diffuse light was still a tidal wave. The immense velocity of the spheres themselves blue-shifted the microwaves far into the gamma range, so that the individual photons landed like bombs on the forward surface of each Sphere. All that added energy ablated the tungsten ever so slightly faster, scarring the Spheres and slowing them down during their flight.

It felt like the barrel of a gun was slowly twisting away. It would take weeks for the microwaves to make any significant difference. Zach ran back inside, as he had so many times before--but the laser light kept on shining.

--

A few weeks later, he looked again. This time his calmed heart already knew what he would find.

The Spheres themselves were hardly affected. Their velocities changed by only about fifteen centimeters per second, a paltry amount compared to the speed of light. Their journey across the galaxy continued almost unchanged.

The only difference was that Earth would be somewhere else when they arrived.

Although the spheres continued to travel through space, it was like the fire of their threat had gone out. Zach could appreciate them as something merely extraordinary. It would still be close. The Spheres would be visible as a flash, but nothing more--just a tiny blip, an easily-overlooked line of light. It would be something you might see out of the corner of your eye and forget about. Zach sighed, and his view returned to Earth.

The fact that there wouldn’t be an extraordinarily violent event to mark the passing of the Spheres was lamentable. It was true that some of the atoms from them were still flying right at Earth. Maybe those would be detectable, but Zach doubted it would matter much. Far too few people took the Impactor community seriously. There was a plan to place a target on the far side of the solar system. When that spacecraft violently exploded, maybe a few more non-believers would be convinced--but really, what would seem more likely? That the satellite was destroyed by celestial gunfire, or that someone put explosives on it?

Zach looked around.

The sky wasn’t exactly safe, but it no longer filled him with overwhelming terror. He took a moment to smile, to appreciate the stars that had come out. Perhaps he could use the View to examine them in earnest, now that it felt relatively safe to do so. That would have to wait.

He steeled himself.

Zach looked back toward the Spheres. Then he looked further, to see from whence they came.