But most people were screaming the same question into their phones: “Did I get one, too?”
Ben was still squinting at the neon screens above, his eyes dry and sore from an uneasy sleep. Flying, to Ben, always felt like sidestepping time, the hours on an airplane existing outside the normal continuum of life below. But never before had he so clearly exited one world and returned to another.
As he started walking quickly toward the AirTrain to reach the subway, Ben dialed his girlfriend, Claire, but she didn’t pick up. Then he called his parents at home.
“We’re okay, we’re fine,” his mother assured him. “Don’t worry about us, just get back safely.”
“But . . . you did get them?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” his mother whispered, as if someone might be listening. “Your father put them in the hall closet for now.” She paused. “We haven’t opened them yet.”
The subway into the city was distinctly empty, especially for the morning rush hour. Ben was one of only five in the car, his carry-on luggage tucked between his legs. Wasn’t anyone going in to work that day?
It must be a safety precaution, he realized. Whenever something cataclysmic might be striking the city, nervous New Yorkers avoided the underground. Few places seemed worse to potentially be trapped in than a small, airless train car below the earth.
The other commuters were quiet, on edge, sitting far apart from each other and consumed by their phones.
“They’re just little boxes,” said a man slumped in a corner. He looked, to Ben, like he was high on something. “People don’t need to be freaking out!”
The person nearest to the man shifted away.
Then the man started singing deliriously, conducting an invisible orchestra with his hands.
“Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky tacky . . .”
It was only then, listening to the man’s raspy voice, the eerie tune, that Ben truly started to worry.
Suddenly distressed, he rushed off at the next stop, Grand Central Station, and raced up the steps, grateful to be back on street level among the comfort of the crowds. The terminal was much more populated than the subway, with dozens of people boarding trains to the suburbs. Where were they all going? Ben wondered. Did they really believe that the answer to these mysterious boxes resided outside the city?
Perhaps they were simply running toward family.
Ben paused by an entrance to a vacant track, trying to orient his thoughts. About a quarter of the people around him were carrying brown boxes under their arms, and he realized that even more might be hiding in backpacks and purses. Ben felt surprisingly relieved that he hadn’t been home when it arrived, snoring obliviously in bed, separated from the invading box by only a shamefully thin wall. It felt like a lesser violation, somehow, when he was gone.
On a typical day at the station there would be plenty of tourists milling about, listening to audio guides, staring upward at the famous celestial ceiling. But today nobody stopped, and no one looked up.
Ben’s mother had pointed them out to him once when he was a child, the faded gold constellations above, explaining each zodiac in turn. Was she also the one who had told him that the stars were painted backward on purpose? That it was meant to be seen from the perspective of the divine, rather than humanity. Ben always figured it was just an excuse concocted afterward, a pretty story covering someone’s mistake.
“The measure of your life lies within,” a man was enunciating into his headset, visibly frustrated. “Nobody knows what it means! How the hell should I?”
The measure of your life lies within. Ben had picked up enough information by now, from the strangers at the airport and his phone on the subway, to recognize that was the inscription on the boxes. The mystery was only a few hours old, but some people were already interpreting the message to mean that the string inside your box foretold the ultimate length of your life.
But how could that possibly be true? Ben thought. That would mean the world had flipped around, like the ceiling above him, the humans now seeing from God’s perspective.
Ben leaned against the cool wall behind him, faintly light-headed. That’s when he remembered the bout of turbulence in the middle of his flight that had jostled him awake, the plane shuddering up and down, nearly spilling his seatmate’s drink. Like something had briefly rocked the atmosphere.
Ben would realize, later, that the boxes hadn’t appeared all at once, that they came during the night, whenever night happened to fall in a particular place. But there, standing in Grand Central, when the details of the prior evening still remained hazy, Ben couldn’t help but wonder if that shift in the air marked the moment the boxes had arrived down below.