We Are the Ants (11 page)

Within one year, cancer becomes little more than a ­nuisance—­curable with one treatment and no side effects.

Within two years, HIV, cerebral palsy, Huntington's disease, blindness, polio, and male pattern baldness are eradicated. They become footnotes in history.

Genetic defects are repaired in utero.

Two years, nine months, seven days, and two hours after Fixers are approved for public use, the world experiences its first full day without a single death. It is the day humanity becomes God.

It begins on 26 January 2016 at 7:35 a.m. EST at a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia. Donald Catt, already irritated over having to wait in line, completely loses his cool when the barista doesn't know how to make
his
drink the way
he
likes it. Despite the barista's attempts to calm him, Donald refuses to leave until he gets what he wants, prepared exactly the way he wants it.

The store manager eventually calls the police. Donald Catt resists, and the officers have no choice but to Taser him. The electrical shock causes a Fixer, deployed to repair Donald's erectile dysfunction, to malfunction. It scrambles the Fixer's software and initiates self-replication.

Fixers were designed to replicate under strictly regulated conditions, but the damaged Fixer replicates uncontrollably, at an exponential rate, using whatever materials are at hand. That includes still-twitching, undercaffeinated Donald Catt.

Attempts to quarantine Georgia are unsuccessful, and the new Fixers, whose sole function is to replicate, consume the entire planet in three days, leaving behind nothing but an ocean of gray goo.

My situation at school deteriorated. Marcus and Adrian glued my locker shut and wrote
Space Boy gargles alien balls
on the door in permanent marker, and I couldn't walk the halls without being stalked by whispers and cruel laughter. I tried to ignore them, but that only made them meaner. In PE, Adrian's been keeping his distance, but I've noticed the murderous glares he shoots me across the gym. I started something I'm certain he's determined to finish.

Diego is still a mystery, but I enjoy spending time with him. He listens when I need to vent, talks when I don't want to, and knows more about literature than anyone I've ever met. The only thing about him that unnerves me is the dark look that falls over him when I tell him about something that Marcus said or that Jay Oh and Adrian have done. It's like a completely different person replaces the smiling Diego I've come to know. And then, quicker than a summer storm, it disappears, leaving me to wonder if I imagined his reaction.

Nothing will make me change my mind about the button, but I'm trying my best to maintain the status quo for the days that remain. I figure if I keep my head down, maybe I can serve out the balance of my life sentence in relative peace. Wake up, go to school, go home. Repeat until the world ends.

  •  •  •  

The house was quiet when I got home from school—Mom wasn't screaming at anyone, and Charlie wasn't being Charlie. It was nice. Living in a house with my mother, brother, and Nana means that someone is usually shouting or dashing from one room to the next as if everything is of monumental importance. I wish they understood how little their actions matter. With the end of the world looming, I can finally see the pointlessness of everything. How the whole of human civilization is nothing more than a mosquito's annoying buzz to the universe.

My stomach rumbled, so I figured I'd make a snack and watch TV while there was no one around to bother me. The fridge was pretty barren, so I settled for peanut butter and jelly. The bread had some mold on it, but I cut it off, too hungry to care.

A sonogram with
HAWTHORNE, ZOOEY
printed across the bottom clung to the refrigerator door—held in place by a magnet from our favorite Chinese takeout joint. The picture looked like a miniature monochrome galaxy, teeming with stars and worlds and boundless potential. I took the sonogram to the kitchen table and tried to determine which part of the amorphous blob was my future niece or nephew. It was a game: find the fetus. Was it too early to know the sex? Probably. Not that it mattered. It wasn't even a baby yet. It was just a little parasite, and it would never be anything else.

A shadow fell across the table, startling me. Nana hovered to my left, staring at the picture over my shoulder. “Jesus, Nana, you scared the crap out of me.”

Nana's flaccid, wrinkled cheeks pulled back into an impish grin. “Mission accomplished.” She eased into the seat next to mine and snatched the sonogram, turning it this way and that, examining it from every angle. “What the devil am I looking at?”

“Charlie and Zooey's kid. I think.”

“Are you certain? It looks like an ink blot test.” Nana covered her right eye. “I see Jonah and the whale.”

“I won't tell Zooey you called her a whale.”

Nana snorted. “I wonder if they've thought about names.”

“Probably not. I call it the little parasite.”

“I like that,” Nana said. “That little parasite is lucky. Its life is just beginning, while mine is nearly over.”

“Don't say that.”

“You'll understand when you're my age, Henry. You spend your life hoarding memories against the day when you'll lack the energy to go out and make new ones, because that's the comfort of old age. The ability to look back on your life and know that you left your mark on the world. But I'm losing my memories. It's like someone's broken into my piggy bank and is robbing me one penny at a time. It's happening so slowly, I can hardly tell what's missing.”

I tried to think of the right thing to say, but sometimes the right thing to say is nothing.

“I look at people and I don't know them. Yesterday, I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out who the grumpy woman sitting beside me was before I realized it was your mother.” I laughed, and Nana offered me a feeble smile in return. “I've led a rich life, Henry, but I'm terrified of dying a pauper.”

While there are some memories I wish I could dispose of, sometimes my memories are the only things that keep me sane. There are times when I walk along the beach and smell the hot tar and sand, and I think of all the summer days Jesse and I spent lying in the sun, making our plans to rule the world. Then there are times when I see something funny on TV or hear a great song, and I pick up my phone to text Jesse before I remember he's dead, and the wound tears open, bloody and raw all over again. A person can become a part of you as real as your arm or leg, and even though Jesse is dead, I still feel the weight of that phantom limb. I have a thousand amazing memories of Jesse, but his suicide is leaking into those recollections, poisoning our past. I can hardly remember him without hating him for taking his life and leaving me alone in mine.

I honestly don't know whether it would be better to forget or be able to remember, but it physically hurts being forced to watch Nana diminish. Charlie and Zooey's baby will never know the terror of creating memories only to lose them, but Nana knows all too well.

“I love you, Nana.”

  •  •  •  

I was sitting in the living room, flipping through the channels, unable to find anything worth watching, when Charlie and Zooey came home. I didn't want to be in the same room with Charlie, but I wasn't about to leave and let him think he'd beaten me. He mumbled about needing to take a shower before stomping toward the bathroom.

Zooey looked cute in a pair of little jean shorts and blousy white top. I've never been able to figure out what magic my brother cast to make someone like her stay with him. To want to have a kid with him. When they first began dating, I assumed she must have been blind, but she wasn't. She actually and improbably seemed to like Charlie. Love him, even.

“Whatcha watching?” Zooey asked. She flopped down onto the couch with a thick book and a legal pad.

I'd stopped on the
Bunker
live feeds, but no one was doing anything interesting. You could watch for hours and never see any good action. It was a miracle the producers were able to cobble together enough entertaining footage for three weekly shows. “Nothing.”

I tossed the remote to Zooey and started to stand, but she said, “Don't leave on my account. I have so much studying to do.”

“What class?”

She rolled her eyes and glanced at her book. “Just a stupid history survey.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

“I hate it. Not history—history's pretty cool—just the way they cram two thousand years of human civilization into a five-month class.” Zooey shook her head. “Seriously, it's like history for dummies. No, strike that. It's like white male history for dummies. The professor totally ignores every major contribution by anyone who wasn't a white dude.”

She talked about history the way I felt about science. Science is all around us. We
are
science. It governs our bodies, how we interact with the world and universe. But most people are too stupid to realize it. They think science is optional. Like if they refuse to believe in gravity, they can simply ignore it.

“Is that what you want to do?” I asked. “Be a historian, I mean.”

“No,” she said. “I think I want to be a psychologist.” Zooey flashed me a wry smile. “To be honest, I'm not even a hundred percent certain about that.”

“You've definitely got the patience for it. You'd have to, dating my brother and all.”

“Who knows? Maybe I'll major in history, too, and become a historical psychologist.”

“Is that even a thing?”

Zooey shrugged. “Got me.”

Talking to her was easy. Even when she was watching the TV with one eye, I felt like she was really listening to me. Like she actually cared. “If you knew the world was ending, and you had the chance to stop it, would you?”

“Of course.” Zooey rubbed her belly. She wasn't even showing yet, not that I could see. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh,” I said. “It's for a school project.”

“That's interesting.”

I shook my head. “Not really. Like I said: it's just a school thing.”

Zooey turned toward me, giving me her undivided attention. “Not the question—the fact that you'd even need to ask.”

“You don't think there are some pretty compelling ­reasons for wiping the earth clean and starting over?”

“No,” she said, “but clearly, you do.”

I didn't get the opportunity to respond because Charlie returned, his shirt sticking to his still damp body. He flopped down between me and Zooey and grabbed the remote, which was my cue to leave. Though she didn't say anything, I felt Zooey's eyes on my back as I left the room.

  •  •  •  

I was surprised when Diego texted me later that evening to meet him outside in twenty minutes. He refused to tell me where we were going, but Charlie and Zooey had ordered pizza and traded her history homework for baby name books, so I was especially grateful for the opportunity to escape.

Diego grinned when I hopped into the car, and didn't even wait for me to buckle my seat belt before throwing Please Start into drive and lurching toward our destination, which didn't take long to deduce.

“We could have walked here,” I said when Diego parked on the side of the beach road. It was empty, save for a couple of packs of cyclists that whizzed past, wearing those obscenely tight spandex shorts.

“I didn't want to carry
that
.” He pointed at a long black duffel bag in the backseat.

“Are those the tools you're going to use to kill and dismember me?”

Diego rolled his eyes. “If they were, do you think I'd tell you?”

“I'd tell
you
.”

“As if. I'm pretty sure the only thing you could dismember is a sandwich.” Diego hoisted the bag over his shoulder. “Speaking of, there's a sack with subs on the floor. Grab the pop, too.” He started down the dunes, and I had to hustle to catch up. By the time he stopped, my shoes were full of sand, so I kicked them aside and peeled off my socks.

“If I'd known we were going to the beach, I would have worn flip-flops.”

“You usually do. I hadn't expected you to be in fancy dress.”

“Fancy?” I tried to ignore my burning ears, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't put some thought into my outfit. Still, it was only jeans and a V-neck tee. Compared to Diego, though, I suppose I was a little dressy. He was wearing khaki shorts and a green tank that showed off his lack of tan lines and his impressive shoulders. I tried not to stare at the way his muscles rippled when he moved, but I rationalized that it would be insulting not to admire them a little. “Anyway, at least I can pick a style and stick with it.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Preppy one day, surfer the next. It's like you can't decide who to be.”

Diego shrugged. “I like to try new things. You don't go to a buffet and only eat spaghetti all night.”

“Still, it's weird.” I walked to the edge of the water and breathed in the salt air. The sun had set, but the western sky was the color of peach skin, while the sky over the ocean was a clear lapis blue. The moon was a bright smile, hovering high to the south. “Is this the surprise?”

Diego knelt beside the bag and lifted out a navy tube and black tripod. It slipped, and I rushed to help. “It's my sister's telescope. I thought you'd enjoy looking at the stars.”

“I guess.” I'd never looked through a telescope before, and I'd always wanted to, but I kept waiting for Diego to crack an alien joke or ask me about the abductions, even though he hadn't mentioned either in weeks.

After twenty minutes of trying to set up the telescope, Diego threw his hands in the air and admitted defeat. I had no idea what I was doing, but I tried to aim it at something interesting anyway. “You know,” I said, as I fiddled with the knobs, “I kind of like that you suck at something.”