Before any other classmates could appear on any other national news outlets, the boxes mysteriously appeared, and any interest in Anthony’s college antics dissipated overnight.
That morning, almost three months ago, Anthony and his wife, Katherine, brought their two small boxes into the living room and debated what to do. Anthony called his campaign manager, who advised him not to open his. Anthony was a public figure, after all, and if the message on the box were indeed true, then any sensitive information about Anthony’s life was at risk of being stolen and leaked to the press.
Katherine called her friends from church, who also advised her not to open the box, warning that the end times were surely near.
“Do you think that’s really what’s happening?” Katherine asked her husband, clutching her King James Bible. “It says right here in Revelation, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. Maybe these boxes are some sort of tabernacles? God dwelling among us?”
Anthony was skeptical. “Doesn’t it also talk about waves of destruction, and water turning to blood? An entirely new world emerging?”
“Well, how else can you explain it, then?”
Anthony took the Bible from his wife’s hands and placed it on the table, next to their unopened boxes.
“A few days ago, our campaign was under attack,” Anthony said. “Now people couldn’t care less about what that woman thinks she remembers from college. I believe these boxes are a sign from God that He’s looking out for this campaign, protecting us from harm.”
Katherine wasn’t fully convinced, but she took a breath and let her shoulders loosen. “I hope you’re right.”
Anthony smiled and kissed his wife. “Besides, even if the world were ending,” he said, “you and I are shoo-ins to be saved.”
It didn’t take long for Anthony and Katherine, along with the rest of the world, to understand the truth of their strings. When they ultimately opened their boxes to reveal strings of substantial length, promising at least eighty years for them both, they knew they had been blessed with a wondrous gift, rewarded for their faith.
At church the following Sunday, they gave thanks for their good fortune and asked for guidance on the long campaign ahead. Katherine even wore her lucky suit—a crimson skirt and matching blazer that complemented the color of Anthony’s favorite tie and made her look like a young Nancy Reagan. It was the same outfit she had worn on the cold morning in January when Anthony had been sworn into Congress, and the same one she sultrily peeled off whenever the two of them role-played as Mr. and Mrs. President in bed.
As the man at the pulpit assured his congregation that God would lead them through this tumultuous time, and Katherine dutifully nodded along, Anthony sent up a prayer of his own—that their two long strings were just the beginning, a harbinger of even greater things to come.
Throughout March and April and May, Anthony’s small campaign staff continued to canvass and tweet and poll voters, while most of the world was busy deciding how to react to the irrevocable changes around them. And, despite the underwhelming turnouts, Anthony insisted on continuing his rallies and engagements. （After all, it was his wife’s family signing most of the checks.）
Anthony had married his college sweetheart, Katherine Hunter, on her family’s three-hundred-acre estate in Virginia nearly twenty-five years earlier, when he was just a young prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office and she was a new board member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, both equally hungry for something bigger.
And now they were on the cusp of it.
Anthony and Katherine didn’t have any children, but ever since the campaign’s kickoff back in February, members of the Hunter family had attended nearly all of Anthony’s events. （It was especially helpful whenever Katherine could convince her camera-shy nephew, Jack Hunter, to appear with them onstage, sporting the crisp-cut uniform of a twenty-two-year-old army cadet and reminding voters just how strongly Anthony supported the troops.）
But even with the Hunters’ help, Anthony knew his campaign was still struggling to be heard over the commotion of the strings and the voices of the better-known candidates, and as the spring pressed on, Anthony waited for something, anything. The catalyst his campaign desperately needed.
At the end of May, he got it.
One of the campaign volunteers, an older woman named Sharon, told her supervisor that she needed to speak with Anthony and Katherine directly.