A small number of short-stringers decided to use their remaining time to take revenge on those who had wronged them. When the target of one’s rage had a long string, any murderous efforts would inevitably prove futile, so other ways were found to exact pain. Ordinary folk behaved like mafiosos. Windows were smashed, homes were burned, legs were broken, money was stolen. Both embittered and emboldened by the knowledge that they wouldn’t live to suffer a lengthy imprisonment, some short-stringers felt almost invincible. There was no need to fear death row if you were already sitting there.
And the risk-taking of those with the shortest strings was matched by those with the longest. Buoyed by the assurance that they would live through old age, they went skydiving and drag racing and experimented with hard drugs. They forgot that having a long string only promised them survival. It didn’t preclude them from injury or illness. It didn’t mean they would go unpunished. News anchors, doctors, talk show hosts, and politicians urged long-stringers to remember they were not invulnerable. You’ve been given the ultimate gift of a long life, they said, you don’t want to spend it in a coma or in prison.
But despite the dramatic acts of those with long strings, it was still the short-stringers who caused the greatest alarm. Surely those who turned to violence accounted for only a minuscule fraction of the full population of short-stringers, but there was a sharp enough rise in criminal acts to stoke public anxiety. And, while most of the world’s long-stringers could sympathize with the short-stringers’ anger and grief, they couldn’t help but grow fearful.
People began whispering about those with “dangerously short strings”—a particularly ill-fated community with members in every city and every country who found themselves staring into a future whose brevity ensured little to no consequences for their actions and whose rapidly approaching end served as a blunt and brutal reminder that there would be no cosmic rewards for ethical behavior, no late-in-life blessings, no tangible motive to do good.
This caricature of the extremist short-stringer with regard for neither public law nor moral order seeped into classrooms and boardrooms, into hospitals and households. And it eventually trickled into the offices of high-ranking politicians in countries across the globe.
In America, where the populace had proven time and again to be particularly susceptible to paranoia, suspicions took root deeply and quickly. It was estimated that the number of short-stringers—those whose strings ended before age fifty—hovered between five and fifteen percent of the country’s total population. A small number, yes. But not small enough to be ignored.
A few short-term measures had been enacted, a bandage on a gaping wound. Several states formed dedicated hotlines, under the slogan “Don’t Look Alone,” encouraging residents to speak with a trained professional while opening up their boxes. Congress debated special aid to short-stringers—eviction bans? onetime payments?—but ultimately fell to gridlock, as the particulars proved unmanageable. （Just how short must a string be to qualify? And was there a risk in offering a financial incentive to look, pressuring those who had chosen otherwise?）
But nothing could stop the swelling rumors, fed by every act of violence, until the mayors, governors, and senators began to quietly discuss a different matter, distinct from earlier efforts to help. Though it wouldn’t be until the events of June 10 that the president would decide the “short-stringer issue” had reached a boiling point and significant action needed to be taken.
Anthony
When the strings appeared in March, most Americans briefly forgot about the next year’s presidential election, the campaigns for which were just getting underway. Many of the major magazines and newspapers even canceled their planned features on the candidates.
But Anthony Rollins did not forget.
A blue-blooded congressman from Virginia, with uninspiring polling figures, Anthony Rollins saw the strings as a blessing from God.
At the end of February, before the arrival of the strings and just after Anthony announced his candidacy, a former college classmate appeared on CNN to claim she had once overheard a drunken Anthony make crass, sexist comments about female partygoers at his fraternity. She also recounted that freshman girls were warned not to drink the punch at Anthony’s frat house, after several incidents in which women experienced memory loss after a party, and a male student even died from alcohol poisoning.
Anthony’s team quickly crafted a response noting that Anthony, as the son and grandson of several remarkable women, had always treated the opposite gender with the utmost respect. The statement confirmed that Anthony had attended various events hosted by his college fraternity, during which occasions alcohol had been consumed by all, but that he had no recollection of any particular “punch.”