Miranda waited
impatiently at the stop light, blowing a breath of air through her bangs to try
to cut the heat. If she could just get into traffic, the breeze would help
mitigate her broken air conditioner situation, but there seemed to be a lot
more traffic than normal. The car in front of her edged out and she took first
position at the intersection. Traffic crawled in both directions as far as she
could see, so when the nearest light changed, stopping traffic entirely, she
took the chance to edge the nose of her car into the small space between two
cars in the line. It hardly counted as cutting anybody off, since all she
really wanted to do was cross traffic to the left turn lane, which only had one
car waiting to turn.
The car stopped far
enough back to let Miranda cross and once in the left turn lane she found a
break in the oncoming traffic to steal her turn. She breathed a sigh of relief,
but was still confused as to what the heck was going on. Half these people
seemed to be texting while they drove. More than half.
The rest of the
drive downtown didn't improve matters. As she approached the city center
pedestrians joined the cars in their inexplicable swarming.
“Geez, was there a
parade or something nobody told me about? A celebrity in town? What is this
shit.”
There was nobody
there to answer, but since she was used to that. Nobody responded to her
regular directing of other drivers, either.
It was a ridiculous
amount of traffic. All she needed to do was get to the bank and return a pair
of library books, but clusters of people were stopped in the stupidest of
places, all agog at their phones.
She spun the radio
dial for some explanation, but she wasn't even sure which stations were local.
Normally she listened to a CD or NPR, which was great for national and
international news, but didn't cover much locally. When she found a station
that sounded like news she stopped turning.
...Pokemon Go
has people across the country exercising...
She turned the dial
again.
...craze. more
than fifteen million people have downloaded the app and are searching for their
Pokemon...
“What the...” She
turned on her phone. “Siri, what is Pokemon Go?”
Siri's explanation
cleared up everything... except how this had taken over the world overnight
when there were so many larger issues.
She shook her head
and stepped up to the ATM, but as she pressed “deposit” she heard the first
shout. It was to the north, toward the courthouse or the post office. Had one
of these idiots stepped into traffic and caused an accident? But this sounded
more like a fight, reminding her of the country's unrest.
She finished her
deposit, then got a little cash, trying to convince herself it wasn't safe to
be too curious. But what could happen to her in her car? Could it hurt to just
drive by?
The unrest She’d
thought of had been a closer guess than a Pokemon fiasco. She could see that
from a block away: six or more police cars and a thick group of people cornered
between them. She turned the other way. MLive would have to catch her up to
speed later from the safety of home.
She drove up
Liberty, headed for home, but something on the horizon gave her pause. At first
it looked cloudish—a gray spot through the haze, but it was too regular. A
blimp? But for a blimp to be so large, it should also be close enough to be
clearly defined. And nowhere else was hazy. The morning humidity had been
visible, but that had burned off to blue sky before she’d finished her second
cup of coffee.
Her gawking almost
caused her to hit another group of idiots whose eyes were on their phones
rather than the road. Then again, she hadn't been watching either. The group
focused on the far side of Liberty and crossed in front of her.
“Careful!” she
shouted. She may have been jointly at fault this time, but these idiots were
going to get themselves killed.
They just laughed,
throwing her an apologetic wave.
The hazy cloud
blimp seemed to be coming closer.
“Hey, excuse me!”
she called to the group.
“We said sorry,” a
girl called.
“No, I mean... Do
you see that?” Miranda pointed.
She had pulled into
the bike lane, thinking she should get a second opinion. A car honked as it
passed her. The girl gave an irritated shrug to her friends and then approached
Miranda’s car, following Miranda's finger with her eyes.
Confusion scrunched
her face. “What?”
“That blob.”
“They aren't up
that high.” She started to walk away.
“But what is that?”
“Look, I don't see
anything. Maybe you are a few levels above us.”
“I'm not playing. I
see something.”
A horn blared.
“Well I don't.” The
girl turned and continued her walk back to her friends.
Miranda pulled away
from the curb and turned into the Lutheran Church parking lot, driving around
behind the building. She wasn't feeling religious. It was just the closest
place she could park to the Eberwhite Woods. Something fishy was going on.
She'd read too many apocalypse tales to think she wanted to be in the middle of
a group of people. Or visible to that blimp. Better to wait in the woods and
see if she could find any news about what was happening on her phone.
The three minutes
of news she managed to find was useless, and then she heard a loud clunk followed
by silence. It took a minute to understand it was the lack of air conditioners.
Something had knocked out the power. Depending on how widespread it was, it
potentially meant her wi-fi was no longer updating, so she shut off her phone
and listened.
Not silence. Still
squeals, laughter. Just at a distance. The game went on.
She crossed the
woods to see if the blob still sat in the sky. It did, but was nearly directly
overhead, crossing above the woods, so she ran back to where she had entered
the woods. It wasn't so much a solid object over her head as some odd light
absorption—like a shadow blocking the sun. But she reached the other side to
see it passing across anyway, material object or not. People seemed to be
heading in the same direction. Home was also that direction so she headed back to
her car. She'd break off as inconspicuously as possible when she got close.
Traffic crept. So
many people for side streets on a Tuesday. No football game. No political
rally. What the hell was going on? The image of the crowd downtown, surrounded
by police, came unbidden to her brain.
Home.
She just needed to
get. Once she got home she could figure it out.
All traffic was
headed the same direction, but when she reached a through-road, she turned to
head to her house. She wasn't the only one. It really was like a game day—people
were looking for parking, meaning whatever was going on was happening nearby.
When she turned
onto her street, cars lined either side, just like football days. Thankfully
she had her driveway available. She laughed as the idea of charging people to
park in her yard passed through, but she didn't really think she wanted to be
out in the open for this. Whatever it was.
No power meant her
garage door wouldn't open, so she parked in the driveway and went in the side
door. She gave a glance over her shoulder as she went in. The blur had stopped
over the football stadium. Right where everybody was heading.
She scuttled
inside, feeling watched. The bolt clicking shut seemed too little, yet she
wasn't even sure why she was afraid. There had to be a good explanation. She
hurried through her house pulling shades then made her way to her meager pile
of camping supplies: a sleeping bag, a small propane grill, a plastic tarp that
had seen more paint jobs than camping trips, and her wind-up radio. That was
what she was looking for.
She cranked the
radio handle as she climbed the stairs again, deciding to survey her
neighborhood as she searched for news. She turned one of the louvers sideways
so she could glimpse through it without being too obvious and then began slowly
turning the radio dial as she watched. Fuzz.
The exodus from her
neighborhood was regular. Not her immediate neighbors. Were they gone already?
Strangers, mostly—probably parkers rather than residents—walked up her street.
Their faces were all lit by their phone screens as they followed whatever
entranced message she was not getting. Was afraid to try getting. Because
clearly it turned off some center of reason in the brain.
A question came to
her as she watched and failed to find a station: how brave was she?
Was she brave
enough to investigate? How could she stay safe if she did?
She watched a while
longer, ate a large piece of chocolate for courage, and decided at first her
best bet would be to blend in.Walk with the crowd, listen, staring at her
phone, then break off at the Pioneer Woods. That was as close as she dared get
to the stadium. The closest where she might hide without trespassing, though
most of what surrounded the stadium was open space or university buildings. Not
so much trespassing as unsure access or the risk of visibility.
She filled the
cat's dish and checked the radio again, stalling, but found nothing helpful so
she stood, almost without decision. Autopilot guided her. She grabbed a small
purse and her phone, then went back out the side door, locking it as she went.
She was glad the
neighbors she fell into line with were already mid-conversation. They smiled,
waved, and let her join, but they seemed to assume Miranda already knew what
she was doing.
The three of them
rounded the corner toward the stadium, joining the swarm of chattering gnats. Less
than half a block up though, Miranda ducked from behind her neighbors into the
woods. It was barely a path, but she didn't want to risk taking the bigger path
and find herself moving against traffic, drawing unwanted attention.
She wove into the
oaks, avoiding the thorny bushes that dotted the underbrush. She was less
successful avoiding spider webs, but that was good. It meant this was the path
less traveled.
When she got far
enough from the street for the foliage to muffle the chatter of the crowd, she
turned to cross the woods. She would have to cross the main path, but only
once. It was much harder going off a main trail, and her path meant she had to work
her way around tangles of bushes and one fairly convincing fort.
She heard a car
roll down the street she would hit if she kept going and she decided she'd gone
far enough. It was time to look up.
She skirted the
edge of the woods a ways before finding what she was looking for. It wasn't an
oak. The branches of the oaks all began too high to reach. This was a tall
pine, close enough to the edge that it got the sunlight to nurture lower
branches, and thick enough around to hold her weight, even in the higher
branches.
Voices from the
woods told her she wasn't alone, but she couldn't actually see anyone, so she
trusted they could not see her, either. She wove into the branches and began to
climb.
Two branches up she
wished she'd changed into long pants for this adventure, despite the heat. Another
six feet up and her mind wandered to what would remove the pitch that would
cover her hands before she was done. The climb required more agility than she
had needed in at least a decade, but she managed to climb above the maple that
was the only tree between her pine and the stadium. By holding one branch down
a bit, she had a good view so she settled in to watch.
The blur above the
stadium looked closer. Larger and more menacing, though no better defined. Like
it carried its own fog. Yet still people walked toward it, drawn into the
stadium, either not afraid or maybe not even seeing. Was that possible? She
didn’t see anybody looking up.
A metallic crash jerked
her attention, followed by shouting, but had to reposition to see. Behind the
high school a pair of cars had gotten into a battle over a parking spot. It
only merited a short look however, as in the front of the high school cars began
to drive onto the grass as if it were actually a football Saturday.
Miranda began
doubting this was just some dumb game. Maybe there was a political event after all. She shifted so she was sitting
comfortably in the branches and got her phone from the little purse she'd slung
over her shoulder and around her neck. Her search led to nothing. No event was
formally being held at the stadium, nor at the arena next door. Whatever this
was, it was spontaneous.
The voices from
inside the stadium had risen to audible from her tree suggesting seats were
filling up, the stadium nearing capacity.
The buzz started
low. Miranda thought maybe the power had kicked back on, but that would have
come from behind her—the direction of the houses that would be running their
air conditioners. This felt like it was coming from all around her.
The thing over the
stadium seemed to solidify. Its borders became more distinct and somehow the
gray became brighter: graphite rather than smoke.
The buzz grew until
the air pulsed with it. The people within the stadium went silent. The steady
stream to the stadium had thinned, most of the people headed there were already
inside, but those Miranda could see stopped walking and were staring up at the
blob as if it had just appeared.
Miranda's stomach
tightened. She wished she'd had the presence of mind to scream at them as they
headed to the stadium in the first place. The price of her cowardice clawed at
her and tears stung her eyes as a sort of door appeared to open at the bottom
of the blob.
Then she heard the
delighted “ahhhh” as the crowd collectively spotted something. Laughter
followed and a thirty foot hologram began to descend from the orb.
It looked like a
cross between a giant turtle and a dragon, cartoony and adorable.
“What?” she said,
pushing the branch further out of her way.
The excited chatter
in the stadium increased in volume.
Miranda leaned back
against the branches trying to reconcile her fear with what she was seeing.
Apparently there was no alien invasion. No nefarious plot. Just some enormous
twist on this game craze. Was that possible?
She took a deep
breath and began her descent from the tree. The pitch was more annoying now,
since it had been for nothing and all. The scratches on her legs hurt more,
too, since the adrenaline was quickly draining away. But she made it to the
bottom and debated what next. Seventh Street was closest, but she was feeling a
little stupid, so she moved the other direction into the woods instead. When
she hit the path it seemed stupid not to
take it, to go the hard way instead. She headed south, so she could come out on
the lower part of the path that hit her own street, rather than coming out on
Stadium where the masses would soon be exiting. She didn't want to explain
herself to anyone.
When she reached
her street she began the walk up the hill. She was right about people heading
home after what she'd seen. They were much more subdued than they had been
heading the other direction.
“Cassie?” She had
spotted a neighbor she sometimes jogged with. She looked dreamy.
“Yeah? Oh, hi.”
“Are you okay?” Miranda
asked.
“More than okay.
That was amazing.”
Miranda frowned.
Cassie was a perky, excitable woman. If something was amazing, she would
normally be chattering a hundred miles an hour.
“You look like you
had a religious experience.”
A smile spread
across her face. “Yeah. Sort of.” And then she wandered off toward her house
without saying good-bye. No questions about their next jog or a glass of wine.
She just left.
Miranda thought
about calling her back but another neighbor couple walked toward her, the
woman's head on her husband's shoulder. This was also out of character. The two
got along well, but it had always been a relationship of laughter and quips,
rather than oozing sentiment.
“Hey,” she said.
They stopped and
Morgan took her husband's hand. “Did you go?” she asked Miranda.
“Sort of,” she
lied. “I didn't quite make it inside.”
“Yeah, too bad they
were so full. Maybe they will do it again soon.” She hugged her husband's arm
and the two walked on.
A string of
tumblers seemed to fall into place in her head. “Virtual Valium.” But who would
want them all dopey and complacent?
