When we came out of our apartment the humidity punched us in the face like we’d unsealed a wind tunnel or opened a blast door. In my mind a deep, otherworldly howl accompanied the shocking temperature change. I pushed the door shut.
William had sad puppy eyes. His mom had died and he’d been a huge mope for days. He had depresso tendencies in the first place so it was not a good situation. He had to get outside. I grabbed his face with both hands. The patchy stubble on his cheeks prickled my palms.
“Listen, man,” I told him. “This is going to be fun –– no, this is going to be more than fun. This is going to be an adventure. Like just a fundamentally life-affirming experience, okay? Trust me.”
I patted his shoulders, he nodded, and we launched into a dead sprint. I could feel heat emanating from the concrete as our sneakers scraped grit. For about a minute our footfalls were the only sound until the abegnado sirens started. We weren’t athletes, and we were wearing blue jeans, but we maintained our pace and both of us began breathing hard. Jeans were the wrong choice but we looked good.
We ran alongside the mostly vacant ground-floor storefronts of squat office buildings with black windows. I’d never loved a beige/gray streetscape before but this one glowed under freshly activated streetlights and a deep blue sky. The contrast! It was cinematic. It was like I was in a movie. The sound of sirens and sneakers mesmerized me. The whole thing was heroic and iconic.
A deep thumping entered the mix and we knew a rotating metallic slab had begun homing in. Booms, like from a distant cannon, except somehow not so distant, and they were getting bigger and louder and faster. I was not sure how far back the thing was from us but it seemed like it was getting closer more quickly than I’d expected.
William grunted. He was a step behind me. I pushed harder. I felt like I had to push the pace for both of us. We were in sight of our destination and I felt sure we would make it.
Up ahead a man emerged from The Passport and stood there beckoning us with an arm gesture. The thumping got insanely loud and the man slipped back inside. I made it first and was able to slow down enough to hang a left through the doorway in a controlled manner.
I turned around and apparently William had skidded and fallen trying to stop himself on the sidewalk, and the abegnado was right there, looming massively, decelerating as it neared, its shape and motion indistinct yet vaguely twirling and hard-edged and black. Time slowed. A swinging metal wedge nicked the fingers of William’s right hand, outstretched behind him, just as he lunged through the door and our new friend slammed it shut.
“Jesus Christ, you guys. You’re lucky I happened to look outside,” the man said. He had a rag over his shoulder and the weathered jeans, flannel shirt and crow’s feet of an experienced low-income alcoholic bartender.
The Passport was cool and dark, with a silver bartop, black walls and a purple carpet. Cool blue light flowed from under the bar and behind the shining liquor bottles along the wall. It was extremely pleasant. Shutting the door muted the sirens and the thumping, but you could still hear them just enough that it enhanced the bar’s sanctuary vibe. There was no decor — it was like it had been a vacant office for years before they stuck a bar in it — and the minimal effort made it feel like you could really relax. There were three empty tables made from blistered black particleboard. I felt a surge of gratitude for the tables.
The bartender seemed annoyed by how we’d spilled into his establishment all panting and gasping. “Why were you running around out there? Why didn’t you hire a truck?”
Two or three customers looked at us, but quickly turned their heads. There were like eight guys drinking and they were all watching Animal Man on the flatscreens mounted above the big bottles along the wall. Everybody had his phone in front of him on the bar, deftly tapping away without looking down. Animal Man was in the middle of one of his prize giveaway contests, burying his followers alive in fake graves, and millions of people like these bar slobs wagered on the outcomes in real time from their touchscreens.
We were dripping sweat, our faces all flushed, and we couldn’t talk. William grimaced, holding his right hand. He hunched over. The bartender had started walking back behind the bar but he stopped and turned.
“Are you okay, man?”
William couldn’t catch his breath. His back heaved up and down. But his hand did not appear to be bleeding. His fingers were intact.
“I just need a beer,” he said.
The bartender’s entire countenance shifted — he liked us now. “All right, man, I’ll get you guys a couple Budweisers, okay?”
We nodded and made our way to two stools nearest the door, on the short side of the L-shaped bar. We didn’t have as good a view of the TV screens, which I thought was fine because I didn’t want to get pulled into Animal Man again.
I didn’t see Angela — there were no women present — so I asked the bartender, as casually as possible while I was still all red and sweaty, if she had been here. He was pouring shots of whiskey.
“Who?”
“Nevermind,” I said. I glanced at William but he was still fixated on his hand, so hopefully he didn’t notice or care about my question to the bartender. My guts clenched.
The guy on the next barstool, on the corner of the bar, looked at me. He looked me up and down, kind of appraising me, and I wondered if he knew her. He had on blue jeans and a black T-shirt and a plain black baseball hat. I stared back at him. We were pretty much the same, just a couple of awful schlubs, except he was younger and he had a hat.
“Why didn’t you guys call a truck?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t want to call an armored vehicle for a 45 second drive here from my apartment, okay?”
“Geez, sorry for asking,” the guy said.
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry that my way of getting here has put you out,” I said.
“Okay!” he said, fake-laughing as if to seem nonchalant. “Geez.”
The other guys at the bar started yelling loudly, all of their faces tilted upward as they lifted their butts slightly. Animal Man had sealed another fan inside one of his see-through caskets, and he’d just revealed a major surprise — he was funneling enormous live rats into the casket through a hatch near the fan’s feet. The poor guy lay on his back screaming and trying to bring his knees up, bumping them on the front of the casket. A text bubble popped up on the screen saying HE DOESN’T LIKE IT LOL. Our interlocutor turned toward the TV and made loud noises like the others. Everybody was happy.
The bartender gave us our Budweisers, plus two shots of whiskey, which he said were on the house. It made me feel so rich, so welcomed. William and I threw them back immediately and took huge swigs of beer. We craned our necks to see the TV.
If this guy in the casket could deal with the rats, he would get like a million dollars. But he was tapping on the glass and wanted to get out. Animal Man leaned toward the casket, his weirdly thick neck holding his face inches above the plexiglass, his tousled hair dangling perfectly. He begged his fan to stay in the casket (“bro!”) but the guy clearly had a thing about rats and it wasn’t going to work. Everyone at the bar started booing.
“The rats aren’t hungry, they won’t bite you,” Animal Man told his fan, who was probably himself an influencer with a significant following, albeit one that was much smaller than Animal Man’s. Turning to a guy wearing a headset, apparently part of his entourage, Animal Man asked if it was true what he’d said, that the rats wouldn’t bite. The guy shrugged.
The fan in the casket shook his head no, no, no and Animal Man pulled a latch on the front of the glass and the fan quickly got out. He jogged over to a corner of the room and put his hands on his knees, then started holding his elbows and rubbing them, blowing air out of his mouth, his eyes bulging crazily as he struggled to get his panic attack under control.
Animal Man threw his shoulders back and clapped magnanimously, encouraging the other fans to clap, too, out of generosity for this obvious loser with evaporating clout. Everybody had on sharp-looking athletic leisurewear, everybody was so buff and hot and young, even the crybaby being banished from their circle of fame.
The picture zoomed in on a young woman clapping from inside her own glass box, and then a wider shot showed the dozen or so caskets, most of them occupied, in a room with several other fans and members of Animal Man’s gang milling around. Some of them gave the guy a thumbs down for tapping out, and they booed him, albeit in a gently mocking way, not a nasty way. The guy appeared to calm down a bit and offered a forced smile. It appeared the episode was being filmed inside an aquarium at the base of an enormous blue water tank.
William was still rubbing his hand. I asked to see. The knuckles and fingers were red and a little swollen. It didn’t look like some catastrophic injury.
“Can you make a fist?”
He could. He could extend his fingers, too, slowly and shakily. I told him to ask for some ice but he said no. He was always afraid to be a bother. The bartender heard us, though, and immediately filled a little metal bucket with ice and gave it to William and he said thanks and put his hand in it.
“I think it might be broken,” William said. “It hurts.”
“If you can move it, it’s fine,” I told him. “The ice will make it hurt less. But you should also keep moving it. It will heal faster. The tendons, I mean. I’m sure it’s not broken. The tendons will heal faster if you move it. There’ve been studies about how you should keep it moving within its comfortable range of motion, that that’s the best way to heal a sore tendon.”
William looked at me. He was hurt, wounded and sad. I could see it all over his pudgy, scraggly face. He was about to cry. He was about to fall back into a fifty-foot grief tunnel. He had not wanted to run to the bar. He’d said it was stupid and dangerous. He did not seem mad at me, though, because he looked up to me and was always willing to do what I wanted. He didn’t have much confidence.
“What even are those things?” he said. “What the fuck.”
“Well, they’re like plexiglass caskets, I guess. They must have air holes or something.”
“No,” he said. “The abegnado or whatever.”
“The abegnado?” I asked.
“Yes. Why do we have giant spinny metal things hovering around and trying to kill us whenever we go outside?” he said. “What the fuck.”
Animal Man started another commotion. His fans yelled, the dudes at the bar yelled, as one of the caskets went upright and then floated into the air, the woman inside yelling in amazement. Animal Man bellowed that she would be put to the ultimate test. Cables hoisted the casket high above the fans until it reached the top of the water tank. The casket then floated laterally over the edge of the tank, above the water. The fan inside, who had on black yoga pants and a tight black T-shirt, was extremely attractive. She appeared to be weeping.
“Amanda, this is a huge opportunity for you,” Animal Man proclaimed. “Your oblong box is going in the shark tank, and if you can keep your cool for an hour, I will give you five million dollars as soon as you get out.”
The woman shook her head no, no no. She looked terrified. From an overhead camera shot you could see the big sharks gliding through the water beneath her. Her chin quivered in a closeup.
Animal Man couldn’t believe it. “No? She’s saying no?”
She shook her head again. Everybody in the bar booed, and the dudes at the base of the shark tank booed, too. Animal Man tilted his head all the way back and closed his eyes in exasperation. Another fan was tapping out. Like she was literally tapping on the glass as if it were a touchscreen. A bubble on the TV said SHE SAID NO!!!
“You know, it’s the government,” the guy next to me said to William.
We stared at the guy.
“The abegnados are from the government,” he said. “To control people.”
“It’s not the fucking government,” I told him. “How is it controlling people? That makes no sense. You can do whatever you want. You can even be a huge know-it-all and spy on somebody else’s conversation.”
The person on his other side — a second guy, also wearing a baseball cap — chimed in: “No, he’s right. It’s not the government exactly, but it’s some government-funded AI project. And it came alive and it wants to kill everybody but it’s just not good at it.”
I was taken aback by this second guy, talking like he knew things. The first guy looked up at the TV, trying to seem not-overly engaged in the conversation, which was clearly escalating.
The woman’s casket slowly descended on the outside of the tank. She nodded her head with her eyes shut in relief.
“Yes, well, Animal Man is just some asshole named Josh who got famous by constantly being an asshole,” I said. “Did you know that?”
I had nothing to argue — I knew nothing about the spinny metal things except that they would thump your head off if you let them get near you — but I felt confident I could win this situation through sheer forcefulness. And I had to: I had to overpower these young dudes in front of William after dragging him here and getting him hurt and making him sad.
“Animal Man is an entrepreneur,” the first guy said. “He’s rich.”
“He’s not an entrepreneur,” I said. “He won the influencer lottery by pushing out a thousand ‘hey guys’ videos and optimizing his brain into applesauce. It’s a joke.”
From his seat the second guy turned his shoulders toward me. His hat was dark blue, mesh and it said FLO-GROWN next to a little picture of an alligator. He was pale, freckled and stubbly. The hat made him seem a little dangerous.
“It’s the government or a defense contractor and they can’t control them and they can’t get rid of them,” he said. “It’s some kind of autonomous nanotechnology that was supposed to fight our wars, or be like police, and it costed like a trillion dollars, and it didn’t work and the government just set them loose because nobody knows what to do.”
I asked, “Did you read that somewhere?”
He blinked a few times. Everybody at the bar was now watching us, ignoring Animal Man as he reached up to guide the casket to the floor with his hand. Even the bartender wanted to hear us. Nobody was even tapping their touchscreens. These bar people had probably not seen such a confrontation in a while, with someone disagreeing harder and harder instead of saying “geez” so everybody could resume drinking and tapping. So I pushed it further.
“Did you learn that from reading? Did you get that information from an authoritative written source? Like printed out on a piece of paper?”
He looked at his beer.
“No.”
Animal Man let the woman out of her upright casket. She exited with confidence. She knew she didn’t need that experience. She could do something else with her life. She would meet new people. She did not need to tether herself to Animal Man for another minute. And he didn’t need her, either: Almost as soon as she left the picture one of the guys who’d been standing around rushed inside her casket and pulled the lid shut. He wanted to go in the shark tank. He gave a big thumbs up and pointed to an enormous shark that happened to be swimming by the glass behind him. I felt like I was in the casket, longing to leave like the woman had done.
Animal Man did not reciprocate the guy’s enthusiasm. He acknowledged him with a lazy thumbs-up and a closed-mouth smile, turned toward his headset friend and twirled his finger in the air, signaling for the guy to up. He was so bored by these people making life-altering decisions as part of his little game.
Arthur Delaney works as a journalist in Washington, D.C.