Query Letter / Query Letter for /Yahweh/ and 1st Chapter

Dear Jud,

Yahweh is both a focused exploration of one family through three generations and an observation of the culture and evolution of humans. It begins with Wyatt, a New York graduate student from the Midwest, whose traditional religious background that he shunned comes back to taunt him the day he learns that a message received from space contains only one word: “Yahweh.”

From this starting point, the novel weaves together the storylines of Wyatt, his son Parker, and Parker’s son, Alex, an investigative reporter seeking one big story to get him recognized. These three men of the same line all live by the very same rule: “Be nothing like my father.” These are rigid, isolated men whose relationships with their wives and siblings range from mere toleration to outright hostility. Around these lives, the world turns, with further, indecipherable messages from a long vanished species, advances in technology, and a question of human evolution that may actually hold the secret to understanding the messages and the place humans play in the universe.

With intimacy and insight into psychology to parallel Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things as well as the scope and humor of Kurt Vonnegut, my writing explores the large topics of God, love and purpose without ever losing sight of the simple fact that life is most often unpredictable, and ridiculously so.

I have recently had various pieces of short fiction published in journals based out of Southern California, which included the journal of sex-themed short stories entitled, See You Next Tuesday. While I currently live in San Francisco, I have also lived in Philadelphia, Charlotte and Washington, D.C., though I was born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, a liberal college town in the heart of conservative America. It’s the kind of place that breeds a person best suited for spotting life’s great ironies.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and I hope you enjoy the first chapter of my book. If you wish to see more chapters, I would be happy to supply them for you.

Sincerely,

Joseph Fonseca

Chapter 1

Everyone was talking about the message. An entire subway train committed to one topic while steel pillars passed by the windows with their typical symmetry and focus. The cacophony took on the properties of a thunderstorm interjected with the sounds of radios. Like families huddled in bunkers waiting for the damaging winds to recede and listening for the forgiving emptiness of passing clouds.
It was the first day of Spring.
Wyatt Priestly was speaking to no one, instead listening intently to as many conversations as his ears could catch while groups of two, three and four entered and exited the sliding doors. He sat directly underneath the subway map, forcing elderly Chinese couples and white teenagers from the Midwest to peer over his head to determine which stop they needed. Every last one of them was talking about the message, even as they eyeballed Wyatt suspiciously for intruding on their conversation even though he had been on the train well before them.
It had come from space, the news personalities announced over the dinner hour, even though most people had already read about the message while surfing the internet at work or on their sleek phones in bright digital colors. A radio transmission, broken and incomplete, but irrefutably from space. Distant space. Far, far away.
That was the headline on the morning paper, which the portly old man, sitting on the opposing side of the train and breathing through his nose in a rhythmic wheeze, was reading.
Message From Far, Far Away
The Post could be counted on to illuminate the profundities of this event. Wyatt allowed himself a grin but immediately restored his face to an expressionless mask. Eavesdropping was best done under a guise of disinterest. He was currently listening in on two conversations, taking from each as much new information as he could.
"They've had this message for, like, years. They covered it up at first. Some reporter uncovered the whole thing. Big conspiracy."
"I hears they’re still makin’ sure it's not just some old radio program tha bounced off the moon, or somethin'. All this hype fah reruns ah Howard Stern, I bet."
"It's old. Real old. They're saying like hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. No way it came from earth. No way."
"My brother said you can already download the whole thing on iTunes."
Most of the gossip was dismissible. What little of it that might have actually been true was nothing he hadn't already heard in a half dozen earlier conversations. The 24-hour news stations were predictably just recycling the same story in a dozen different packages, all with catchy taglines and oddly dramatic music. Nothing new had surfaced since last night’s train ride. The subway was Wyatt's information superhighway.
He lived in a squalid apartment, even by Brooklyn standards, with no television and a glorified typewriter which provided the missing link to the modern PC. With a white-out feature, it performed in the only way he needed, allowing him to do his writing without the tedious effort of manually fixing his errors (of which there were many). He was in the last throes of finishing his MFA in creative writing at NYU. He joked that he was majoring in initials and received polite but bored nods from companions. There was an outstanding job offer for an editorial position back at his hometown’s paper, but he was entertaining the idea of struggling on as an underpaid restaurant manager while attempting to get his novel published. He supposed the decision was really up to his stomach.
His contact with the outside world came mostly from the lips of passersby and headlines at newsstands. There was a TV at his restaurant, over the bar, usually on ESPN, but when he opened he tuned to CNN until 11 when they unlocked the doors for the early lunch rush. Today he was working the midshift. John, the GM, opened this morning. College basketball highlights where surely awaiting him.
A stream of black high school girls flowed onto the train, taking up all the space in front of him. There was no need to eavesdrop; they spoke for the whole car to hear. Not about the message, though. Sasha, purportedly, had "a huge crush on Dijon," but this was clearly not possible since he was "like, a total midget."
This information seemed no more or less pertinent to Wyatt than messages from distant galaxies. He wasn't an urban writer and he wasn't a science fiction writer, either. Mostly, he wrote about bad marriages between vaguely religious people set in lifelessly generic places not coincidentally similar to where he grew up. Sasha and Dijon didn't really seem likely to show up in any of his stories.
The girls got off after three stops.
Wyatt's stop was the next.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"And you see this as newsie?"
"Compared to the President's latest girl? I'd think so."
"Ain't nobody gonna wanna read it."
"Doesn't mean we shouldn't get the story. Sometimes we have to think about more than just traffic."
"Our traffic is why you've got a job."
"Traffic is why you have a job. I’ll always have work. There's always need for hounds. An editor, I don't need."
"Wrong. That's exactly what you need."
"Like an anal fissure."
"You do have a way with words. If there's something worth reading in this whole mess, I want it by Friday's posts."
"Oh, they'll be something. Trust me. You'll be sucking my dick when the Times is linking us."
"My lips quiver in anticipation"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cool air greeted Wyatt as he emerged from the subway stairwell. It was windy and piles of gray, lumpy snow from a previous week's blizzard still lined the buildings. Puddles were practically unavoidable, but Wyatt fell in behind rushing men in suits and watched their feet for shallow spots. A man in wingtips misjudged the curb and ended up with dark, sandy water up to his shin. He shook his foot with two quick jerks, but otherwise continued on as if he had not noticed.
Wyatt skipped over the puddle and continued in the footsteps of his intrepid leader.
It was just four blocks from the stop to his restaurant, two east, two south, precisely enough time to smoke a cigarette. Wyatt no longer smoked (a decision he was regretting in these final months of preparing his dissertation), but when he did, these four minutes of his day had been the most satisfying. As the glowing tip seduced its way towards his lips, he relished the relative silence of the outdoors (accustomed to the ever present sounds of traffic and street vendors). Once on duty, he was lucky to have even one minute free from questions or a customer's request to speak with him.
Quitting the habit was difficult, but never more so than during these precious four minutes when the very act of stepping out of the musky, urine-scented atmosphere of the subway tunnel into the slightly less urine-scented air of lower Manhattan activated a Pavlov yearning for a puff of nicotine.
He entered the towering, steel double doors to find the restaurant less than half full. Only two waitresses were on the floor while John was behind the bar adjusting the nozzles on one of the beer taps, oblivious to the world, as usual. Wyatt nodded at Claire, the newest and youngest of the staff (a born waitress), and headed back to the office. He hung his coat on a broken hook and checked the schedule to see who he would have working. Claire was working the midshift with him, along with Tony who would be in an hour. Experience and natural talent, Wyatt was content with his crew, even if Tony could be grating with his unending and, frankly, far too graphic soliloquies on his boyfriend.
"Slow day?" Wyatt asked John as he came around to the inside of the bar.
"Meh," John replied in his usual articulate manner. "Tuesdays."
"Uh huh. Problem with the tap?"
"I think the line's clogged."
"So, no Stella today?"
"Oh, there'll be Stella. I'm gonna fix this."
Wyatt nodded, "Of course," reminded yet again that John would never allow a product to sit. If he had it in stock, he was going to find a way to sell it, even if it meant slicing the keg open and serving out beer with a ladle. That's what made him the kind of man that could manage a business. Wyatt was too laidback about such matters; John told him this often. What Wyatt lacked in killer business instincts, he made up for in people skills. His personal touch made him the preferred manager to work with and the only one who could talk an irate customer down without having to offer a meal comp. That's why John liked him.
John was a hulking man, obviously accustomed to feeding his many appetites. Besides for his love of food, alcohol and women (despite his cumbersome size, John’s dance card was consistently full, or so it seemed), he also indulged his adolescent fantasy: He wanted to be a rockstar. On off nights, he played bass in a bar cover band called, appropriately, Freebird. Wyatt had never seen his boss play, though on numerous occasions had mused, “I really need to come out to see you guys some night.” The scheduling needs of the restaurant provided Wyatt with a foolproof alibi for missing most of Freebird’s gigs (someone had to work in John’s absence, and Mike, the Back of House manager, though having been with the restaurant for twice as long as Wyatt, was reliably unreliable).
While John continued his efforts, Wyatt surveyed the restaurant for any situations that might need his immediate attention. The customers all seemed to be taken care of, the floor was swept and other than one recently vacated party of four, the tables were all bussed. Not surprisingly, the girls were on top of everything. Almost certainly, Claire was taking the brunt of the load.
Erin was the other waitress on hand, a twenty-four year old, six year college student who clearly made it by on her looks and was in the right line of work for such talents. Despite not being a very good waitress, she was a customer favorite. She had what could be delicately described as generous breasts, magnets for good tips (even from women, oddly enough), and she managed to flaunt them in almost everything she wore. She knew exactly how attractive she was, flirted incessantly and was followed by rumors of her numerous sexual encounters (apparently she had slept with Wyatt, which was either a complete fabrication or he was suffering from a most unfortunate case of early onset Alzheimer’s). He knew from experience, that kind of girl was more trouble than she was worth. At work or at home.
Wyatt glanced up at the television. It was on CNN.
"No basketball today?" He asked, genuinely surprised.
"Nah. Been watching the news all morning. You hear 'bout this space message?" For the first time since Wyatt had entered the restaurant, John looked up from his work.
"Yeah, I've been hearing some things. Don't know much about it."
"Well, they're saying they've had this message for months, or more, been trying to decipher it all this time." John wiped his hands on a shabby, formerly white bar towel now spotted with stains that spoke of a prolific career.
"I had heard that. Wasn't sure if it was true."
"Oh yeah. I guess, like, the only reason they came out with it now is because they figured out what the message said."
"Oh? Hadn't heard that. So, what's it say?"
"I don't know, no one's spilled. I hear there's gonna be some big press conference. I've been waiting all morning, but so far, zilch." They both looked up expectantly at the TV as if with their combined efforts they could will the press conference to begin. A commercial for an energy drink played at an inaudible level.
"So nobody knows the message yet?"
"Well, somebody does. They're probably telling the president and congress or something, then they'll tell us. All anyone seems to know is that it's just the same thing over and over again. I hear, when they first got the message, they thought it was, like, an entire library of information. Then they realized it was just some repeating phrase."
"Weird."
"I know. Must be some sort of motto, is my guess." John turned back to the taps and stuck his head underneath so as to peer up into the nozzle. “At astra peer astro, you know”
"No, what I mean is that it's weird they would release information about the message, but not actually say what the message is." Wyatt turned from the television and noticed Claire approaching
"Oh, yeah, guess that is weird," John replied, not noticing Claire.
"Hey Wyatt," she said timidly, still showing signs of new girl nerves even though she had yet to make even one rookie mistake. Wyatt could commiserate; it was tough being the newbie. He did his best to always make the new person feel like one of the family.
"Hello Claire, how's it going today?"
"Pretty well," she answered with a smile, adding, "Kinda slow," as an afterthought.
"Yeah, well, Tuesdays tend to be. You're working some nights this week, right?"
"Uh huh, Thursday and Saturday."
"Well good, you'll make good money then." Friday and Saturday nights were a reward that Wyatt, as the Front of House manager, bestowed on those who put in extra effort during the week. His staff needed to prove they deserved such prime real estate. Erin always worked Friday nights, since well before Wyatt was manager. He was handcuffed when it came to her, he could never take her off the shift without causing major dissension. Piss Erin off and piss off the kitchen staff who all openly ogled her and made lewd references to her body in or out of earshot of her. It was a shame, because there were plenty of better waitresses who had come and gone and had deserved the spot. Claire was on that long list.
In a just world, Wyatt believed, skill and talent would be rewarded above nice melons.
"John?" Claire stammered, retreating back into her timid voice.
"Hm," he grunted.
"Um, I've only got one table now, and I think both of Erin's tables are about through. I think, maybe, she's ready to be cut."
"Don't tell me," he said, "Wyatt makes the afternoon cuts."
"S-sorry."
John, whose partiality towards Erin was fairly obvious, had a way of making new hirers feel like idiots simply for not knowing every intricate detail of restaurant operations. He was oblivious of other people, a trait that bothered Wyatt but which was usually an asset in his duties as general manager.
"You can tell her she's cut," Wyatt said without waiting for Claire to redundantly ask him as she likely would. "Just have her clean her tables and sweep up her areas. She shouldn't leave that for you."
"Okay," Claire said as she backed away. Wyatt knew Erin would take advantage of the new girl and leave a messy section for her if he didn't say something. All the same, Erin would probably still convince Claire to clean it up for her. She had some sort of power over people. It was simultaneously awe-inspiring and unnerving. Wyatt was entertaining the very real possibility that Erin was, in fact, a vampire.
"Hey, turn it up!" The command surprised Wyatt. Unbeknownst to either manager, a patron had sat himself on a stool at the far end of the bar. He was a shaggy haired man, probably no older than Wyatt, with dark, round eyes and an ashen face that looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks. Wyatt eyed him briefly before looking up at the television where a grey haired woman was standing at a podium. John looked up, too.
"Oh, yo, it's the news conference. Turn it up, Wy." Wyatt found the remote lying in a small puddle of, he hoped, water. He held his finger on the volume button and watched as the green bar on the bottom of the screen grew to half the length of the screen.
The woman's voice echoed and fuzzed from the box, the speakers having long ago blown out. Her eyes were focused straight ahead, presumably at a teleprompter, though she held papers in her hands. An official looking seal was displayed behind her, though what it was the seal of was unknown to Wyatt.
"...the message was received just over two months ago by researchers with SETI. Their findings have been investigated and substantiated by government funded researchers. That this signal came from a great distance beyond our own galaxy is undeniable. However, the exact origin of the message has yet to be determined."
"What's the message say?" John called at the TV, speaking the question on the minds of everyone watching the broadcast.
Ignoring the unheard question, the woman continued reading her prepared message:
"The message we received does not appear to be meant for or directed at us, or at anyone in particular for that matter. As near as we can determine, it is simply an identification signal, encoded with preliminary information, set on continuous loop. There are still many uncertainties, but what we do know is the signal we received began many years prior to even our own Radio Age. There is no question that this signal did not originate from Earth."
Wyatt suddenly felt the presence of more eyes behind him. The whole restaurant was now standing behind them, having left their unfinished sandwiches and lukewarm bowls of soup to listen to, arguably, the most astonishing announcement ever to be made on television: Another species completely alien to humankind existed. Or had existed. That, the next few months would prove, was still up for debate.
"The received message was looped. There were actually two signals, the first nothing more than a test signal of sorts, a very basic mathematical code that bares no other information other then, as near as can be determined, an alphabet that appears to be numeric in origin. The second signal is the message. There is no reason to believe that whoever originally sent this message is expecting any form of response. In fact, the contents do not imply any desire for a response. It would seem that the aim of the message is solely to announce their presence. Whoever they may be."
Off screen, a barely audible voice could be heard. What was asked could not actually be discerned, but it was clear that it was a repeat of John's early question: "What does the message say?"
"The message seems to be one word, possibly a name, but at this point any meaning attributed to the message would merely be speculation." The voices of the patrons were beginning to escalate. The shaggy haired man at the end of the bar shushed them convincingly. The woman cleared her throat (having paused for a commotion in her own audience), and then continued.
"Based on what we have gleaned from the alphabet, the word consists of only four letters. Or rather, three unique letters. Now, as you will understand, this language is completely foreign to our own and so we must hasten against any inclination to attach an arbitrary definition to these letters. Even using a Human alphabet to represent these symbols risks adding more meaning to them than might be intended." Another voice off screen could be heard. "Yes, ahem. The name... rather, the word we received, while for now unpronounceable, appears to consist of the letters, in order, Y, H, V, H."
There was silence both from the television and among the crowd in the restaurant. After the initial moment of shock wore off, there was a general rumble of disappointment within the crowd. Wyatt felt it, too, let down by such an anticlimactic announcement.
There was, again, a voice off screen who spoke. While indistinguishable, it was clear that the crowd in the televised conference room was stirred by whatever comment had been made. There was silence in the restaurant.
"Well, yes, that is correct. These letters do correspond with the Tetragrammaton. We are aware of this. Of course, at the time we must assume it is only a coincidence..."
"What's the Tetragrammet?" John asked. No one answered, but Wyatt furrowed his brow. It was a word from his past. He knew it, but he could not place it. Something from an old college course, he felt.
"At this time, we do not wish to jump to any conclusions. For the time being, all that can be asserted definitively is that the message is 'Y, H, V, H.' That is all we know for now. Any further developments will be announced as they come to light. I'm sorry, but that is all we know. That is all I am prepared to say at the moment, I will not be taking any further questions." The grey haired woman quickly left the podium to shouts and bright flashes. The camera remained focused on the podium.
For a few more seconds, the entire restaurant watched the television, perhaps expecting someone else to arrive and explain everything. No one appeared.
"Well, what the hell does that mean?" A patron called from behind Wyatt. He turned to find that more people from outside had joined them. His first instinct was to scold Claire and Erin for not taking them to a table, but it was clear they hadn't come in for the food. There was a rumble among the crowd as they discussed the announcement and its decidedly unfulfilling content.
At first, no one noticed the shaggy haired man with the deep, dark eyes when he spoke. The second time, Wyatt heard him, but didn't understand his meaning.
"Wait," he said with a sweeping gesture towards the crowd and was a bit amazed that they all quieted for him. He took a step towards the man at the end of the bar. "What did you say?" The crowd quickly turned their attention toward the man, sensing from Wyatt's tone that important information was pending.
"The Tetragrammaton," the man answered.
"What about it? What is that?"
"Y. H. V. H." He spoke each letter slowly, deliberately, letting each one drop like pebbles in water.
"Yes, we know," John demanded. "She said that, what's so special about that."
"More commonly translated, in English, as Y, H, W, H." There was a small number of people in the crowd who seemed to comprehend immediately, Wyatt included. He remembered where he knew the word from. He had the sensation of an ice cold shower in winter. A quick scan of the crowd made it apparent that he was among few who appreciated the weight of this knowledge.
"And that's suppose to mean something?" John, the born agnostic, asked.
"Yes, as a matter of fact." The man met John's eyes. "Yahweh." Even John understood that word's meaning. There was dead silence in the crowd. Wyatt let out a lungful of air that he didn’t realize he had been holding in and leaned back against the counter, ignoring the puddle of water that soaked into the back of his shirt. The crowd became a flock of sheep without a shepherd, not knowing whether to go back to their tables or to leave the restaurant altogether. So they stood by the bar and searched for words that refused to be found.
Wyatt felt suddenly small. The restaurant was nothing. New York was tiny. The whole world nothing but a speck.
Even Erin's impressive breasts seemed remarkably insignificant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

People in secluded villages of China knew about the content of the message within twenty-four hours of the press conference. Despite the efforts of many governments to filter what information could be accessed by their citizens, the desire for knowledge always prevailed. It helped that Americans infected most crevices of the earth. Where there was a college student abroad, active hormones raging, there would be internet access. Nothing could prevent the spread of information for long.
On Wikipedia, an encyclopedia entry appeared within minutes (seconds?), consisting mostly of purely speculative and highly dubious details, but its existence cemented the event into the common consciousness of humankind. The facts eventually sifted to the top, though a few errors remained (most commonly, people incorrectly referred to the message as radio waves, when in fact it consisted of digitally encoded microwaves, akin to a cellular phone signal).
The impact of the first communication from an alien species was immediate, but lasting effects were not as overreaching as first predicted. That its arrival coincided with our epoch of rapid technological evolution only served to give the whole occurrence a feel of inevitability, as if it was only natural for us to receive such a signal. In typical human fashion, the reception of the signal came to glorify (or, even, justify) our evolution, implying that the true wonder of this event was not that we had received a signal from another species, but that we were advanced enough to receive it.
It was irrefutable that whoever sent the message was greatly removed from us, both in distance and time. It seemed unlikely we would ever make contact with the species, and so the common consensus among educated and layperson alike was that the species had died off thousands (perhaps millions) of years ago. Ironically enough, the discovery that life had existed somewhere else at some unknown time actually made it easier for people to believe that we were alone in the universe. Yes, there had been life elsewhere, but if it still existed it would certainly have found us (the assumption being that discovering humans would be a feat of great pride for any alien race). X-Files fans excepted, the human species was proud to believe it was alone in the universe (either by the grace of God, or the finesse of Darwin).
No, it seemed whatever life had once existed had long ago vanished. There would be no one on the other end of the message if we did attempt to communicate.
As it turned out, receiving a message from distant space was not the foundation shaking event we had always imagined it would be. We are a remarkably self-involved species.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As could be expected most afternoons around 5, the streets of Chicago were nearly empty. Above, trains were flashing by every few seconds, crossing and linking with precision and the slightest bit of friction that still made Alex uneasy whenever necessity required he take the El. The main appeal of living in the city (for him) was avoiding public transportation. And, of course, the cheap rent.
His mother still begged him to move out into the suburbs, clearly not understanding that the wages of a net journalist would barely cover the utility bills out there. Being a minority in the city might not have been safe, but most people left him alone. The hysteria was subsiding ever since the fires had been quelled. The burbans were oblivious to the realities of life in the cities, their only information coming from the left wing tabloid television mags, aimed at frightening the general public. Lowest common denominator shit. The kind of work Alex once took with a smile just so he could stay medicated.
Anyway, he couldn't move back to Iowa, too much distrust, too much knowledge. Too much family.
Most stores would be closed within the hour. He still needed to buy milk and a pack of cigars. He was going home to an apartment with no food and less heat. He pulled on his jacket zipper, attempting to squeeze water from a stone. It wouldn't go up any further, it was already pinching at the hairs on his neck. The shredded black pleather jacket was as much a fossil as the city. An heirloom of sorts, his father's father's, or his father's father's father's. He really couldn't remember, all he knew was that it had ended up in his possession sometime in high school, dug out of an overflowing closet. It was retro from the days when retro actually meant old, not just manufactured with flaws and bought off the rack.
Some days it was all that made him feel human.
Chicago had become the model for the modern American city. What, with its cold touch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There were patterns in the dirt that he had made with his finger, deep grooves where he dug the tips until they felt like blisters. He had intended to write words but nothing came to mind and so he made a circle, a line out of the center of that circle and spirals from that, meaningless impressions he quickly brushed away with his palms. And then he did it again.
From the hill, Parker saw three boys his age approaching him, confident little pissants who stood inches above him and laughed in unison like apes at the zoo just hoping to hold onto their branch. He was okay thinking that he hated them because he knew from experience that hatred was the most calming of emotions. It simplified complications. Not that it could make them go away. It was not, yet, that powerful.
"Hey Peepants!" He could already hear them calling from the trough of the field, their ascent up the hill now inevitable. A nickname only recently resurfaced from an incident already half a lifetime ago. No phrase proved more abhorrent than, "Hey, remember that time..." What was so great about memory?
There was no reason to indulge them. Let them trudge all the way up and take him by the shoulders if they wanted his attention. Let them go to hell.
Their shoes surrounded him, Tall David standing on the patch of dirt where Parker had been tracing ancient, meaningless hieroglyphics. To his right, Mikey, to his left, Fat David. It was now merely a question of whether he would give in and look up at them, assuredly outlined by the afternoon sun, or wait for them to do the work for him. There seemed nothing in it for him by making it easier on them.
"Peepants," Mikey chortled, expecting his brother hyenas to laugh with him. Fat David breathed out with a huff, either laughing or trying to catch his breath from the clearly strenuous trek up the hill. Tall David bent down so that his mouth was in line with Parker's eyes.
"I heard about your sister," he said. Despite himself, Parker felt compelled to meet Tall David's burrowing eyes. He tried not to convey any knowledge on his face, no expression whatsoever. Feigning disinterest had no tactical benefits, it was just his default response. It was no surprise that his sister's big announcement would backlash on him. There was really nothing anyone could do to her without being slapped with an insensitivity demerit and a week's worth of detention. And everyone knew Parker wouldn't say anything. He had too much pride to tattletale.
"Does it run in the family?" Fat David chimed in while ruffling Parker's already unkempt hair. The three boys laughed.
"As a matter of fact," Parker found himself responding, ignoring the voice in his head, "it does." The three boys stopped laughing. Fat David and Mikey stepped back, perhaps only for show, but Parker hoped it was out of genuine disgust.
"You saying you're queer?" Tall David wasn't giving up any ground.
"I'm saying that my aunt's a lesbian." Parker was no longer feeling intimidated. His initial reaction upon his sister coming out was one of dread. She told their parents a week prior, and then her class only yesterday. He certainly didn't begrudge his sister being open, he just knew that nothing good could come of it for him. But having spent the last 24 hours avoiding contact with anyone his age, he was suddenly feeling very sick of himself. Let the peons have their fun.
"So, you do suck cock?" The other boys made a show of their laughter while Tall David let only the faintest smile cross his face.
"Was that an invitation?" The boys, again, stopped laughing. Parker knew the hit was coming, but he figured it was worth it. The fist slammed into his shoulder, Tall David's knuckles finding the crevice of Parker's bones. It didn't matter that he expected it, Parker couldn't withhold a grimacing whimper. The other boys emitted the requisite 'oohs.'
"Your mouth's gonna get your assed kicked." Tall David was back in Parker's face, and his proximity was all that prevented Parker from responding with, "What did you want me to do with my mouth?" There would be plenty of future opportunities for ending his life. Let it never be said that the survival instinct doesn't still serve a purpose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Most suburban cities and small (i.e. wealthy) towns were now regulating temperatures through solar and wind powered spectrum networks. Theoretically, you could go from Poway, California to Littleton, Maine without feeling a change in degree or humidity, though people still swore their knee aches and hair frizz could tell them when they crossed state lines.
It was only in the major cities where attempts at weather grids had failed on large scales. It was no surprise that New York had attempted it first; the richest, most liberal city in the world was going to be the first to simultaneously combat Global Warming while targeting the latent effects of the past two hundred years of human progress. The system ran nearly flawlessly for two years, enough time for other major cities to follow suit. That New York's grid survived two years instead of failing within the first month like most of the others was a testament to the city's wealth. Nobody wanted to see mankind's most self-serving experiment fail.
Certainly not as tremendously as it did.
Alex was already residing in Chicago's north side when the grid went online. On the human level, the cracks in the system were obvious immediately, even while the bigwigs and politicians patted their backs and praised the ingenuity. The temperature difference from Boy's Town to Wrigleyville might as well have been two entirely separate longitudes. Sweltering heat on Michigan Avenue was nothing in comparison to hitting freezing point up in Evanston by ten every night. In July.
Complaints fell mostly on deaf ears, or indifferent ears, but even as the technicians hired to maintain the system warned of serious miscalculations, the news broke across the world: New York City's entire power grid had blown. Blackouts, fires and even earthquakes were reported in every borough. Rioting wasn't even a concern; a practical ice age had hit the city and people wanted out. As was its bitter fashion, how went New York, so did Philadelphia only hours later. Between the dark ages within the cities and the panic driven refugees of the surrounding areas, the Northeast was declared under a State of Emergency.
Not to be outdone, Chicago followed suit two days later. The few other grids that had been activated were all shut down immediately, and those that were scheduled to come online in the next few months were all scrapped.
The cities were evacuated. Sprawling suburbia became reluctant home to an even more reluctant mob of nomads. Towns became cities overnight and that sudden growth brought about rapid evolution. Technological advances were no longer luxuries; they were necessities. When towns began discussing their own weather systems, they took the hard lessons from the cities and discovered how to deregulate the system while decreasing the stress the system put on the grid as a whole. In hindsight, it was obvious.
As usual, those left behind in the cities were the poorer classes. Though mostly minority, the very term took on a whole new meaning. Being white in a city held deep implications, especially among whites in the suburbs (the term 'suburb' no longer meaning what it once had). A new form of racism arose, not between the different races (though that was implied), but within those of the same race.
So, when Alex's mother begged him to leave the city for the suburbs, he not only spurned the request, he resented her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He attempted to sleep in on Sundays. But when senile Mr. Grayson, his next door neighbor, returned from his stroll to pick up the oversized Times, Wyatt's eyes refused to stay shut any longer. It could have been that six days out of the week, he woke up early for work or to get some writing done before work, and so his body refused to ignore the call of the sun on his tattered blinds. Or, perhaps, it was that the sound of Mr. Grayson's key scrapping metal as he inevitably missed the lock in turn caused the old man's pudgy little Pekingese to start yapping its Sabbath morning praises.
Either way, Wyatt was up.
If he was not writing or sleeping, Wyatt preferred to vacate his apartment. Besides for its claustrophobia inducing size, being at home only reminded him that he could be revising his novel, a nagging burden he had the right to ignore at least one day of the week. He showered but didn't shave his stubble and left with his wallet, keys and a worn copy of War and Peace (this being his third attempt to read it all the way through) all in his hands. His cellphone remained on his desk next to a mostly full legal pad of yellow notepaper, a pile of overturned CDs, a half dozen pens (almost all out of ink), a paperback dictionary with a broken spine and a nearly empty box of tissues.
The elevator did not work and even if it did, he would have taken the stairs anyway. He fully expected to be awoken some night by the sound of that epileptic box crashing to the ground. He had given up smoking for fear of cancer, he wasn't about to die at the will of poetic irony.
He journeyed out into the sunlight which for the past week had been gradually raising the temperature to a comfortable 58 degrees. Spring hadn't exactly roared in, but one knew to be satisfied with anything above 40 this early in the season. A drop back below freezing was in the forecast for midweek. Despite the bitter breeze, Wyatt had gone out in nothing more than a t-shirt and jeans, dressing more for the temperature he wished it was than what his body actually needed. The hairs on his arms pricked up with every blast of arctic cold.
Two blocks from his Brooklyn hovel was a coffee shop not quite shabby enough to be ironically trendy, which would have converted it into hipster trendy within a year. No, the baristas weren't quite rude enough, the paint on the walls hadn't peeled enough. In that sense it was a bit of an underachiever, and Wyatt felt at home in its fluorescently lit booths. He ordered black coffee with no frills and cupped both hands around the sytrofoam once the heavyset girl with dirty dreadlocks and multiple piercings set it on the counter. His body instantly responded to the warmth, and though it would still be a few minutes before he could sip his drink, he was comforted just having it in his grasp. He read somewhere (online probably) that caffeine was the second largest addiction next to tobacco, though he realized that it was the kind of fact so vague and insubstantial that there was likely no research to support it. He made a mental note to check sometime.
He settled into a wooden bench seat that faced the door. This was not the most conducive spot for really delving into a book (which Tolstoy certainly required), but it was habit. He liked being able to see what women entered, though this early on a Sunday morning would likely offer him nothing but elderly couples and the wobbling wino hoping for some Christian charity (obviously in the wrong place).
It was emptier than usual this morning and Wyatt had to check his watch to see if maybe he had gotten up extra early today. 9:45, pretty much as always. The only other patron was an elderly gentleman who made even Mr. Grayson look practically sprightly. Every few minutes he hacked a grimace inducing cough that almost certainly required the attention of a doctor. Wyatt ignored the impulse to offer any assistance, as it would likely be taken as invasive.
A few minutes of earnest effort eventually proved that Tolstoy was not going to give in, at least not this morning. Wyatt spotted a New York Times splayed open on a vacant table in front of the muffin rack. He approached the table, and looking at the barista, held up a section of the paper. She shrugged with indifference verging on disdain and gave the slightest of waves with her left hand. Good enough for Wyatt.
He sat back in his booth and scanned the front page. After nearly a week of front page stories about the ubiquitous Message, he was pleased to find that, while still receiving some print on A1, today's lead headline had nothing to do with missives from (presumably) long dead civilizations. Or, of course, God. It was no surprise that religious people (in Wyatt’s head, the term was said with quotation marks) of all ilk would jump on the content of the message. No one could deny how astounding it was to find the name of God (in most Western religious tradition) within the first communication received from space. He wondered of the reactions from people in other parts of the world where Christianity and Judaism weren't so prevalent. Already, leaders of China, Japan and India had made official statements (so far, the nations of the Middle East had been conspicuously silent), but he was more interested in what individuals thought. World and religious leaders could be counted on to make meaningless assertions for their people, but what did Joe Hindu and Jane Buddhist truly think (ethnocentricity aside)?
Maybe they didn't even care. Would Wyatt if he were in their situation? He wasn't sure how much he really cared as it stood now. As much as people were trying to force meaning and 'facts' onto the discovery, with so little known about the purpose and origin of the message, the existence of God was no more provable now than it had ever been. As a commodity, faith was still at full market saturation. And as with most products, Wyatt was not a consumer. Not anymore.
He couldn't imagine the faith of any atheists being all that affected by the news. Then again, here he was on Sunday morning and there was almost no one to be found. It felt like Easter morning. To be fair, though, it very well could have been Easter morning. He didn't really pay attention to such things.
It was an half hour before Wyatt saw another person, a short and round black woman in her late fifties, with a slim layer of gray fuzz where her hair once had been and a leather book under her right arm. She approached the counter with rigid effort and ordered some item in a voice that was too quiet to reach Wyatt over the whir of the espresso machine. The barista asked the woman to repeat herself. Whether it was the way she hobbled her way through the store or the fact that she was the only person to enter the restaurant, Wyatt found himself inexplicably fascinated by this woman. Undoubtedly rude, certainly inconsiderate, he had a disquieting fascination with the elderly, like those people who watched surgeries on television. Nothing unnerved Wyatt more than the thought of losing the function and control of his body. A part of him felt that if he studied them closely enough, he might unlock some secret to what they were doing wrong, some way to avoid becoming decrepit. There was a time in his life when elderly people actually annoyed Wyatt; now he just feared them and what they represented, the unavoidable unraveling of life. It didn’t help that his eyesight was no longer as strong as it once had been.
Wyatt had long ago stopped chiding himself for such thoughts; the young feared the death of their youth and the old feared death. It was natural and the best he could do was learn to ignore the dread.
The woman took her coffee in her left hand and with glacial footsteps moved herself to a booth across the room from Wyatt. Once seated, she set down her drink and pulled the book out from her arm, revealing to Wyatt's surprise that it was a Bible. As ridiculous as even he knew it to be, it had never occurred to him that anyone would actually read a Bible on Sunday morning and not be in church. Of course, with the latest events it was no surprise that people of all persuasions were taking up fresh interest in the ancient texts. But the sight of the book in his coffee shop felt like an invasion. I don't come into your church and read The Origins of Species, he thought, or didn't actually think but might have if he were a struggling and patently unfunny standup comedian (a career choice he had once considered, though (fittingly) not seriously).
His visceral reaction to the sight of the book was revealing a not-so-subtle bias that he had been indulging with increasing intensity as years distanced him from his hometown and childhood.
Minutes passed before Wyatt realized he was staring at the woman. He finished off his coffee, arranged the borrowed paper into a pile and made his way towards the door, Tolstoy riding along under his arm. Out on the street, the temperature had not increased in any noticeable fashion since he first left his apartment. He shivered and yawned with rays of sunlight on his face. He felt aimless, not ready to go home but not particularly interested in doing anything else. He decided to stroll down the sunny side of the street and indulge his Midwest proclivity for aggrandizing the mythical metropolis. Wyatt tried his best to come off as disinterested and bored as any other New Yorker, but he suspected that no matter how many years he lived in the city, a part of him would always be in awe of New York, having spent his entire youth dreaming of moving away and living here. Maybe that meant he would never truly be a New Yorker himself.
After five or six blocks, Wyatt came across one of the numerous small parks that randomly popped up throughout the city, sights that had originally seemed incongruous when he first moved to the city, but now felt as natural as bodegas and sushi bars. There was a small, brightly colored piece of playground equipment, currently unoccupied, as well as two orange, rubber swings swaying with the memory of absent children. Wyatt sat on a blue bench that faced a fenced in flower garden displaying the first remnants of spring colors. He watched as two middle aged women in sweatpants fast walked through the park with long, jolting strides, thin white wires trailing down from their ears. People were starting to come out onto the streets. Maybe the city had collectively decided to sleep in this morning and he had just missed the memo.
There were no children, though. By this time on a Sunday morning, Wyatt expected the calm to be broken by babies crying or boys fighting. Something. But no, nothing. So far there had been no strollers, no kids riding by on those shoes with the wheels in the soles. Mainly he saw young, professional looking couples and exercisers of varying attractiveness. It was pleasant without the noise, if not also a bit discomfiting. A silent film in an age of talkies.
Self-consciously, he sat and watched idly, feeling a bit like the dirty old man sitting in wait for children near elementary schools. This was an unavoidable feeling, the air was so wrought with paranoia and fear of child molesters. Had the internet actually made the problem worse, or just more apparent? Here Wyatt was, with nothing but a vague disdain for children and their dirt covered faces, but certainly no urge to harm or even touch a child, and still he knew that he would be suspicious of himself if he were someone else. An additional reason to enjoy the absence of children this morning.
There was a reoccurring noise filtering in through his thoughts, a clicking sound that he realized had been there all along, simply ignored. Letting his ears be his guide, he looked over his shoulder to see a woman with shoulder length red hair kneeling in the grass, bent slightly to her left and staring through the eyepiece of an SLR camera, her head cocked to the right, creating an 'S' with her body. Wyatt followed the line of sight from the camera to see that she was taking pictures of the playground set, or at least something in its vicinity. Nothing there seemed particularly photogenic, but Wyatt had never been accused of having an eye for photography.
He stared at her with no effort to hide his gaze, believing it better to be thought an annoying gawker than a creepy pederast. In her hunched position, it was difficult to determine her height, though he guessed a few inches shorter than him, somewhere in the 5'5" to 5'7" range. What little weight she carried was currently balanced effortlessly on her toes, giving the impression of a ballerina on her off hours. If the woman was aware of Wyatt's presence, she gave no indication. 8 or 9 shots clicked off while he stared. After her last shot, she continued to stare through her camera, determining whether she had gotten everything she wanted. Apparently she had.
She stood out of her folded position, meeting Wyatt's eyes as she did.
This was how they first met, they would later tell their children, with the embellished sense of fate that hindsight always provides.