MattCarney::FictionWriter

Los Ange­les, California

July, 2004

At prime time on July 1^st, Fox Report was the first to break the great­est story of everyone’s lives—Los Ange­les and the world were both more than likely doomed. The story, “ver­i­fied by sci­en­tists,” con­firmed what every­body had sus­pected all along in a mag­nif­i­cent feat of cable news jour­nal­ism; the apoc­a­lypse was not only real, it was com­ing imme­di­ately. The good Shep­ard explained in a firm, melodic voice over blurred footage of cities in flames and crisped skele­tons that accord­ing to sci­en­tists, Los Ange­les and the world were “more than likely doomed. They’ve sug­gested that 2063 Bac­chus or 433 Eros or 99942 Apophis have a prob­a­ble chance of cross­ing Earth’s orbit and strik­ing the Earth, destroy­ing Los Ange­les and the world.” And in the ten remain­ing sec­onds fol­low­ing the quick cuts and footage of utter destruc­tion with sta­tis­tics, the good Shep­ard prompted a real sci­en­tist from Los Ange­les who appeared in the left half of the screen.

“In your pro­fes­sional opin­ion,” he asked the real sci­en­tist, “is it pos­si­ble that any of these three aster­oids have the poten­tial of strik­ing the Earth in the near future and destroy­ing Los Ange­les completely?”

The sci­en­tist squinted, twisted his lips. “Well, um, I sup­pose the short answer is ‘yes’—”

And the good Shep­ard thanked him, con­clud­ing the rea­son­able, bal­anced and unafraid report on the utter destruc­tion of the world as the image faded to the painfully erotic Dis­aronno com­mer­cial with the buxom brunette ask­ing for “Dis­aronno on the rocks” and suck­ing off the last ice cube.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple con­tacted and turned to the inter­net. But is this the truth, they asked. But is this real? And the screen­ers resound­ingly reit­er­ated and con­firmed what the real sci­en­tist had said: “‘yes.’”

The inter­net exploded with blog posts and forum debates on the star­tling “yes” from the real sci­en­tist, con­firm­ing that it was true. If more than one writ­ten source con­firmed the same infor­ma­tion, how could it be wrong?

Some, like Allycat_88, argued that it served us right for our com­pla­cency. xxSten­soni­texx retorted that plans were impos­si­ble any­way because any cer­tainty was impossibility.

Sil3ncingM4chine trumped them all with dia­grams and illus­tra­tions from NASA’s web­site, ones which clearly pic­tured the Earth and the orbits of thou­sands of aster­oids in neon col­ors, the wildly ellip­ti­cal lines tan­gling together around the tiny planet, each one with a name, and all he wrote in accom­pa­ni­ment was “pwned.”

But John316000 shouted them down in all caps. He reminded them that all con­tra­dic­tory sci­en­tific mumbo jumbo in the inter­nets was only just now try­ing to describe some­thing the the­olo­gians and believ­ers had known for centuries—“CHRIST WILL RETURN TO THE WORLD AND REND THE FLESH OF ALL YOU HEATHENS AND DOUBTERS AND MILLIONAIRES AND YOUR SPINELESS COHORTS AND TURN OTHERS INTO PILLARS OF SALT AS THEY GAZE BACK AT THEIR PITIFUL CITIES OF PORNOGRAPHY AND BELLIGERENT SODOMY VAPORIZING IN THE MILLION DEGREE BLAST OF HIS RETURN!”

The alarm sur­round­ing the report drew the atten­tion of Fox’s com­peti­tors. MSNBC’s prime-time exec­u­tive pro­ducer shouted to the con­fer­ence room, “peo­ple deserve bet­ter than right-diving mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion or third-rate inter­net jour­nal­ism!” He straight­ened his jacket and tie.

The table full of senior pro­duc­ers and assis­tant pro­duc­ers and seg­ment pro­duc­ers all straight­ened their jack­ets and ties. They nod­ded vig­or­ously, shout­ing “yeah” and “no kid­ding” and guz­zling lattes. They checked for new com­ments on posts they wrote with their Black­ber­rys beneath the table.

“The inter­net lets any Smith, John­son and Williams pub­lish any ridicu­lous thing that comes to their head. They can speak their opin­ion with­out checks or restric­tions or any cred­i­bil­ity at all—they’re gonna put us all out unless we get it together and make this the best damned story we ever told!” And there was a resound­ing “yeah!” through­out the con­fer­ence room as they stood and pumped fists with certainty.

The story then ran on MSNBC prime­time; it was the num­ber one story on Count­down. The story on NEOs and con­firmed NEAs also ran on CNN, CNBC, and much later on CBS, ABC, and NBC. LA, with­out a doubt, was doomed accord­ing to the con­fir­ma­tion by a real sci­en­tist. And they all played the short clip of his resound­ing “yes.” No doubt, the news would alter the course of civ­i­liza­tion. The reports sup­plied ample graphs and sta­tis­tics and illus­tra­tions from NASA’s web­site, ones which clearly pic­tured the Earth and the orbits of thou­sands of aster­oids in neon col­ors, the wildly ellip­ti­cal lines tan­gling together around the tiny planet, each one with a name.

And a young man, tak­ing a break from his fever­ish online com­mu­ni­ca­tion for a veg­e­tar­ian corn­dog, rec­og­nized the col­lec­tion and order of illus­tra­tions imme­di­ately. “They stole my post!” He shouted at the tele­vi­sion. He dropped the corndog.

The hearts of mil­lions skipped mil­lions of beats as each of them came across the story of the end. The news men cried so much their faces were wet. Res­o­lu­tions were made and shat­tered, wag­ons were jumped from and jumped on, secret desires revealed, not-so-secret desires enacted. Ram­pant indul­gences begun and ended, favorite vices were reem­ployed and dis­cov­ered from sud­den tri­als. Dis­counts were flaunted, hon­ored, sur­ren­dered, stolen, wrenched from the cold, stiff fin­gers of the hard­work­ing peo­ple. Love was given up on and real­ized and reunited, and it was too late and never too late for all of them.

Jacob had never been in love—that is, he’d never shared it with some­body. He always hid it away fear­fully in his bed­room beneath his pil­low, scrawled in the dark in a shaky, stubby hand he believed to be dis­gust­ing. But as he lis­tened to the TV, he shot up from bed, the sheets falling from his baby soft skin, sticky and naked in the heat. He threw the pil­low from his bed and threw his jour­nal and his sheets and jumped up hol­ler­ing and hurled the mat­tress away from the frame.  He tore from his room through the hall­way with­out his pants or shirt, past his gasp­ing mother sit­ting beside the TV, past his father in the liv­ing room. He wrenched the front door open, hurtling out and up the street in his white briefs toward Emily’s house, the patio where he imag­ined her every day of his life for the past five years, in her blue dress, pony tail and soft lips.

Isabella pulled her car in the dri­ve­way and shut it off, the stut­ter­ing media man’s voice fad­ing with the shut­ter of the engine. She loos­ened her tie, unbut­ton­ing the tight but­tons of her blouse, and she sighed, sur­mis­ing of the end. A fiery erup­tion? Scream­ing riots, mad­den­ing orgies? What would they do? What would she do? She bel­lowed iron­i­cally in the iso­la­tion of the dark­ened dri­ve­way. She was rich. She was an anchor! She was a talk­ing head and shoul­ders every­body knew! “But all I did was read,” she con­fessed to the dark­ness, “I read invis­i­ble men’s words and they made me rich.” Maybe she read her husband’s script, too. She’d never had an orgasm, ever, always focused hard on script read­ing for boo­giemen. But she real­ized, laugh­ing again as she caressed her chest, her shirt unbut­toned and her hair down in the dark, that she felt sexy on her own now that she needn’t try any longer.

Offi­cer Michael Brown had always grabbed his son Tony by the col­lar when he found out he’d been get­ting high or drink­ing late at night with pond scum down the street like Josh Cooper or that no good swim star William Pow­ers. He’d take the joint from his out­stretched, shak­ing hand, slap­ping him across the back of his stringy head. Once it was a lit­tle bag­gie with white, pow­dered rocks inside. That was the time he broke his son’s nose and wiped the blood from his fist onto his pants. Offi­cer Brown sat in his unbut­toned uni­form at the edge of his bed, the tele­vi­sion­man ram­bling hys­ter­i­cally. He was a law­man. He’d avoided all the things he pun­ished peo­ple so relent­lessly for. Slowly, he reached for the box beneath his bed. He’d never turned the mar­i­juana or cocaine into the sta­tion. He smelt the joint cau­tiously; the scent was deep and sweet. He hung it in his mouth, curious.

Josh loved speed. He loved the chal­lenge of search­ing, call­ing end­less phone num­bers to find it, lov­ing a thou­sand “best friends” with their fad­ing faces. He loved blow­ing glass in tin-foiled rooms, the lit­tle crys­tals cast in rain­bow and dragon white smoke pour­ing from their long whis­pered exhales. He loved that sud­den orgasm of sta­tic elec­tric in his skin and mind and the end of time. He loved suf­fer­ing; it meant time for more. But the news—he dreaded this news of the end really. Was it really? What was “really,” really, he asked every­one in the thin, pal­lid sweat of his 140^th hour and the world’s 11^th. Then he told them it was a dream he’d had six months prior and it was finally com­ing true. Chris Kand­min know­ingly advised him to sleep on it. Josh mur­mured deliri­ously he didn’t need sleep, that he’d never tweak again,  and crashed into a black slumber.

Ethan always wanted to sleep with some­one. And he didn’t even care if it was a boy. He just wanted to know some­body, to feel their heat and their heart and to come with them. Nobody from his high school wanted to be with him—he wasn’t unat­trac­tive. But nobody wanted him. He stepped out of his car and left it run­ning in the inter­sec­tion. As he walked, peo­ple of all ages fled through the dark street around him, some of them squeal­ing with delight, oth­ers with agony. Two top­less girls in school­girl skirts skipped toward him, their breasts bounc­ing in time. They hollered at him and picked at his shirt but­tons, laugh­ing. He could smell the rum and choco­late. But now in the street, with every­body cheap and afraid, it meant noth­ing and he no longer cared.

Olivia always respected those who killed mer­ci­lessly. She silenced the ram­bling radioman, shov­ing the XtoЯt album into the player and skip­ping ahead to Son of a Gun for a proper sound­track. She spit out the win­dow and ripped her shirt open, throw­ing her bleached hair back and step­ping on the gas and not let­ting up. Her mon­strous Ram surged for­ward, bar­rel­ing down the dark street through a red light and another—she missed a pass­ing motor­cy­clist by inches, the suc­tion and the wind throw­ing the bike out of con­trol. She laughed hys­ter­i­cally and eyed the tubby boy run­ning through the street in his briefs, jerk­ing the wheel to run him down. But the tires screeched on the pavement—she slid past him, careen­ing into the patio of the house on the end of the street, a girl in a blue dress shat­ter­ing across the windshield.

Emma was sob­bing in her room, the blaz­ing tele­vi­sion­man blar­ing and run­ning on with his media cir­cus ser­mon, anar­chy and fuck­ing in the streets. He told them to pray, but Emma was tired of canon. She was tired of hymns, creeds and first coun­cils. She was tired of bod­ies and blood. She was tired of hear­ing inces­santly about bel­liger­ent sodomy. Emma was sick to her stom­ach from all the adher­ents and the adher­ence in her life. But sud­denly Ava burst through the door and tugged vio­lently at her Sun­day school skirt and shirt, rip­ping the shirt open, scream­ing to Emma, “You’re free! You’re free!” And Emma jumped up, fol­low­ing Ava’s lead.

Danny always worked hard at remain­ing a con­sci­en­tious biker. Though he often rode his bike fast, he didn’t cut or split lanes obnox­iously. But nobody was con­sci­en­tious dur­ing his return from Cres­cent City that day. Leav­ing the red­wood high­ways, the road became pro­gres­sively hur­ried, fren­zied, and finally anar­chic, with top­less daugh­ters and bel­low­ing fathers hurl­ing beer bot­tles at him in Whit­tier. So he cut every­one off, split­ting the lanes and weav­ing at will. What was hap­pen­ing? As he rushed toward the inter­sec­tion near home, he saw a boy, fat and glis­ten­ing, jog­ging through the street in his briefs, gaz­ing ahead with a glint in his eye.

Tony had been intox­i­cated daily since his fresh­man year. But now, know­ing he could never take back the time lost to indul­gence, he vowed to end it and tell them every­thing. He left the party, never to speak with Chris or Rob or Josh again. Tony pushed his stringy blond hair and tears from his face and headed to his father’s door, cry­ing “dad”—his father sat at the edge of his bed in his uni­form, a joint hang­ing and smok­ing from his lips.

Chris strug­gled to take his gaze from the ris­ing sun while Rob and Josh “slept on it.” He heard screams and gun shots in the dis­tance. The sky echoed. But was it real? Or was it just the accu­mu­lated days of meth and wak­ing dreams? He imag­ined see­ing two sob­bing, top­less Catholic girls with that kid Ethan Stine walk­ing down the side­walk. They stopped before a BMW, where he heard a woman orgasm.

In her short years, Emily always felt she was an object. Now she was sprawled and shat­tered on the side­walk, her howl­ing par­ents pinned beneath the bat­tered Ram in their smol­der­ing house, its dying dri­ver laugh­ing, a famil­iar chubby face con­fess­ing to her again and again and again, her life puls­ing and fad­ing and fad­ing and fad­ing. She felt no different.

“Get out here, Tony! Don’t you dare hide from me!” Offi­cer Brown shouted, pound­ing on Tony’s door, emo­tional from the joint, relent­less from the lines, and fren­zied from the lone­li­ness and acute knowl­edge of loom­ing death. And Tony screamed as the day broke through his win­dow and the door crashed.

William Pow­ers, exhausted from so much effort the days prior at swim prac­tice, shifted beneath his sheets upon hear­ing some com­mo­tion, his heavy eyes scarcely lift­ing. He couldn’t under­stand it, so he did noth­ing, return­ing to Thursday’s sum­mer slumber.

Isabella let the three teens into her car, the girls top­less and cold, the boy weep­ing and afraid, nestling them close to her warm, bare skin and flow­ing hair.

The real sci­en­tist pan­icked, board­ing his power­boat for Chi­apa de Corzo and sub­se­quent escape to Pitcairn.

Emily passed away alone, Jacob think­ing she’d already died.

The four of them slept.

The sun rose.

Nobody who’d heard the story expected it when the world didn’t end the fol­low­ing morn­ing. There wasn’t a mil­lion degree blast or a ter­rific flood. No crazy flam­ing hail—not even typ­i­cal hail, for that mat­ter. Live footage from a local Los Ange­les metro news sta­tion did show a meteor falling to Earth in a fire­ball over the Hol­ly­wood hills. The footage was sum­mar­ily ignored by the public—though it was flam­ing and head­ing to Earth from space, it was far too small to destroy Los Ange­les, let alone the world. It landed harm­lessly in somebody’s Yukon XL, destroy­ing the truck completely.

The parts of the Los Ange­les news team assem­bled, sipped, wheezed and debated at their head­quar­ters in Uni­ver­sal City. They watched the flam­ing Yukon XL on one of the plasma screen tele­vi­sions in the studio.

“But that def­i­nitely is not news, peo­ple,” the morn­ing exec­u­tive seg­ment pro­ducer shouted at his reg­u­lar morn­ing seg­ment pro­duc­ers and the morn­ing assis­tant seg­ment pro­duc­ers and the other reg­u­lar pro­duc­ers. “There are flam­ing, com­pletely destroyed vehi­cles every­where right now. How is that any­thing any Jake, Josh or Jen­nifer doesn’t know already?”

“Well, I didn’t know that!” shouted Jen­nifer Brown, the morn­ing seg­ment senior pro­ducer, as the phone began to ring at her adja­cent desk. She picked up the receiver, but did not address the caller before adding, “We’ve been in here for twenty-four fuck­ing hours, Andrew. I have no idea what the hell’s going on out there!”

Though they’d bro­ken the great­est story of all our lives, they’d stopped report­ing it after mid­night: the red eye show aired follow-ups on the gay bishop story and the story that Michael Jackson’s nanny can’t merry him because she’s already mar­ried. Han­nity & Colmes and Ger­aldo were reruns, and the edi­to­r­ial report was focused on Dan Rather.

“We’ve had some call-ins about reck­less dri­ving, a few hit and runs, lewd con­duct and sex­ual assaults,” an assistant’s voice came in flatly from her cubi­cal across the floor. “Some gun vio­lence. You know.”

Andrew shook his head, plac­ing his hands firmly on his hips. He shouted around the room. “You’re not giv­ing me any­thing, peo­ple! That’s every­day stuff. That’s  hap­pen­ing every­where. That isn’t news.”

“We’ve got a report,” the voice con­tin­ued, “about a truck that plowed through a house and killed a pre­teen and her parents.”

Andrew wagged a fin­ger toward the assistant’s dis­em­bod­ied voice—he could not see her in her cubi­cal across the news room. “Now we’re on to some­thing. Alright, I want details.”

The voice rose as it sum­ma­rized the police report. “This dri­ver, appar­ently, was a crazed woman named Olivia Miller. She plowed into the first story of a house on Bush­nell Avenue in Pasadena where a teenage girl was sit­ting on the stairs, and the truck—”

“What was she dri­ving?” Andrew interrupted.

Some papers shuf­fled in the back­ground. “It was… right, a ‘97 Dodge Ram 3500. And as far as we know, this was com­pletely unprovoked.”

“So she just felt like it?”

“She just felt like it.” The voice con­cluded. “Although,” he added a moment later, “the report says some­thing about some music blar­ing from inside the vehi­cle. The disc was from an elec­tronic metal rock group called KMFDM. I did some research and appar­ently some of the mem­bers are Ger­mans. And, coin­ci­dently, the band was a favorite of those Columbine kids—”

Andrew shot up. “Columbine! You mean that Mar­i­lyn Man­son shit!”

The voice shuf­fled his papers, but con­fessed, “well, I’ve never lis­tened to either group, frankly.”

The wheels in Andrew’s head were turn­ing loud and fast enough to tune out the dis­em­bod­ied assis­tant and Jen­nifer Brown, who was try­ing to get his atten­tion hav­ing fin­ished her phone call. “It’s com­ing together for me, peo­ple. This… this, crazed maniac woman—”

“She was found top­less,” the voice cut in quickly.

“Andrew,” Jen­nifer said quietly.

Andrew resumed his train of thought, “Yeah—this topless—this naked, deranged woman blar­ing and—”

“Inspired by,” added another assis­tant beside Jennifer’s desk.

“Yes, blar­ing Mar­i­lyn Man­son whom she was strongly—who inspired her, through her devo­tion to him, to kill—”

“She slaugh­tered her!” some­body shouted.

“Andrew!” Yelled Jennifer.

“To sum­mar­ily evis­cer­ate an inno­cent lit­tle girl with the king-sized wheels of her Dodge Ram!” Andrew bel­lowed with final­ity, thrust­ing his fin­ger triumphantly.

All the var­i­ous morn­ing pro­duc­ers and their assis­tants fell into amused ooohs and ahhhs and uuugs and other smil­ing unpleasantries.

“Andrew!” Jen­nifer shouted, enun­ci­at­ing over the group, “one of Bob Wright’s guys is demand­ing an expla­na­tion. Accu­racy in Media is report­ing that we’ve sen­sa­tion­al­ized the aster­oid story.”

A chill­ing silence slapped them all. A few of the assis­tants and pro­duc­ers shied away from the open space, tak­ing their lattes back to their desks. Oth­ers were too uncom­fort­able to leave the cir­cle, instead shak­ing their heads or look­ing down at awk­ward feet.

Andrew’s eyes and brow nar­rowed. He pre­ferred a cig­a­rette in that moment, some­thing strong, a Camel Turk­ish Gold. Instead, he rel­e­gated him­self to a stick of cin­na­mon chew­ing gum. “Jen­nifer,” he began, cross­ing his arms and star­ing at her down his nose, “we haven’t sen­sa­tion­al­ized the aster­oid story.”

“That’s what they’re say­ing, Andrew. And we—”

“And we,” he inter­rupted, “are not oblig­ated to address some­thing that isn’t our doing or our prob­lem. Are we?”

Jen­nifer stared at him, the rhyth­mic con­trac­tions of his jaw, his eyes flat.

He stood, throw­ing his arms out. “They broke the story in New York. New York!” And he ges­tured wildly to New York, out there, away from their morn­ing assis­tant seg­ment pro­duc­ers and the reg­u­lar morn­ing seg­ment pro­duc­ers and all of them. “How are we liable for what New York broke way out here in Los Ange­les? We had no part in that seg­ment what­so­ever. We did no jour­nal­is­tic or crit­i­cal research or put any­thing into that story whatsoever.”

“But Andrew,” Jen­nifer rea­soned, her palms open­ing as she stood, “are we not a part of this com­pany? And beside the com­pany, don’t we have an eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­ity to the pub­lic as the news media and jour­nal­ists in the big pic­ture?” She looked about the group of pro­duc­ers. “Even if we didn’t break the story, you and me and all of us on the West Coast, if it’s true that this chaos stemmed from sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing the aster­oid story, don’t we have a respon­si­bil­ity to cor­rect, or at least to inform the pub­lic, about… just to tell them…” The eyes of the oth­ers were turned coolly away from her.

“Junk sci­ence.” Andrew shook his head, also look­ing away from her. “Some junk sci­ence story doesn’t make peo­ple crash cars and rape and pil­lage. You say we should be respon­si­ble for some bull­shit that every­body ran? Every­body ran the story! Who’s respon­si­ble then, huh Jen­nifer? Is it you? Are you the media’s care­taker and every­body else’s?”

Jen­nifer thought care­fully about how to respond, but the tele­phone rang once again. It was her cell phone this time, and though she hung on to the thought as tightly as she could, the flurry of elec­tric infor­ma­tion from the per­sonal call stole her away.

The room rever­ber­ated her exit­ing foot­steps around its icy silence until slowly, one by one, the morn­ing pro­duc­ers began trudg­ing back to life. The trap­pings of the morn­ing media machine warmed, milled, and finally ran with direc­tion and in it’s typ­i­cal, expected whir, each piece mov­ing where it should, when it should, fol­low­ing the restraints of its casting.

Andrew and his team were left to pro­vide sto­ries to explain the chaos and destruc­tion which took place every­where out­side the stu­dio the pre­vi­ous evening. The dis­em­bod­ied voice from across the stu­dio sug­gested a sports riot; Beck­ham retired as cap­tain of England’s foot­ball team and plus, Brazil had failed out of the World Cup. But Andrew reminded the voice that no Amer­i­can cared a rat’s ass about “fut­ball,” and real foot­ball was a sea­son away.

Nev­er­the­less, the sto­ries on Beck­ham, for what they were worth, ran any­way, images of the angry Eng­lish foot­ballers drunk and hol­ler­ing in the streets and pubs. And the Brazil­ians, too, with their long, slurred names and Por­tuguese curses. They grum­bled through Rio, every­one smash­ing car win­dows and rip­ping down their flags and col­ored rib­bons until the cities were dim and sober again.

No doubt there were riots in Amer­i­can cities, too. They rea­soned; the world is on edge, frus­trated and angry and bick­er­ing with itself like some hundred-and-ninety-three headed demon slap­ping and scratch­ing at every inch of its body. Crazed dri­vers were inspired by the likes of Mar­i­lyn Man­son to com­mit mur­der on the inno­cent. Grown women molest­ing groups of teenagers. Police offi­cers turn­ing on their sons. It was a full moon, they joked, the pub­lic agree­ing and guess­ing that yeah, it was prob­a­bly the tides. Global warm­ing! Gore’s cer­tainly got every­body danc­ing and antsy on that one. And that John Kerry fel­low and George, all their bickering—maybe that and the foot­ball and the full moon too. At any rate, there were other things to report: the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment had out­lawed unseemly baby names, like “Llu­via,” “Azul,” and “Kevin.”

An evening two months later around 9:25, 4179 Tou­tatis began a slow tum­ble past the Earth within four lunar dis­tances. Silent, inert and unknow­ing, with­out fan­fare, it was observed only to those who’d awaited and expected its passage.