“I agree, but if we don’t have any actual facts, then we risk just adding to the noise,” said Nina.
“Or fearmongering,” said another.
“Everyone’s already afraid,” one of the writers interjected. “Some people have tried checking their security cameras on the night the boxes appeared, but nobody’s been able to get a good look at what happened. It seems kinda shadowy, and then once the footage clears, the box is just there. It’s fucking crazy.”
“And the boxes still haven’t appeared for anyone under twenty-two, right? That’s the youngest age I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, me too. Seems a little unfair that the kids aren’t exempt from dying, just from knowing about it in advance.”
“Well, we still don’t know for sure that they predict when you’ll die.”
“At least we’re just as in the dark as everybody else.” The correspondent raised his hands in defeat. “The easiest article would probably be to ask a bunch of people what they’re doing about it, whether they’re building bunkers for the apocalypse or just ignoring everything.”
“I saw a story about couples who’ve split up based on different beliefs about the strings.”
“We’re a newsmagazine, not a gossip rag. And I think most people have enough of their own drama right now, they don’t need to read about everyone else’s,” said Nina. “They want answers.”
“Well, we can’t come up with answers if there aren’t any.” Deborah Caine, the editor-in-chief, spoke in the same calm tone as always. “But the people deserve to know what their leaders are doing about this, and that’s something we can actually tell them.”
Predictably, government offices at every level and in every nation had been dealing with an onslaught of frantic phone calls since the very first boxes arrived.
A cadre of financial leaders from the Federal Reserve and the IMF, as well as the world’s most powerful banks and multinational corporations, had immediately assembled, just days after the arrival, to shore up the global economy, hoping that a familiar combination of methods—lowered interest rates, tax rebates, discount loans to banks—might fend off any instability stemming from a very unfamiliar threat.
At the same time, the politicians, faced with a growing number of questions, turned to the scientists for answers. And, since the boxes had appeared all over the world, the scientists turned to each other.
At hospitals and universities on every continent, samples of the strings were chemically analyzed, while the material of the boxes themselves, so like mahogany in appearance, was simultaneously tested. But neither substance proved a match for any known matter in the laboratories’ databases. And though the strings resembled common fibers, they were bafflingly resilient, unable to be cut by even the sharpest of tools.
Frustrated by the lack of conclusions, the labs called for volunteer subjects with strings of varying lengths to be brought in for comparative medical testing, and that was when the scientists began to worry. In some cases, they could find no discernible difference between the health of the “short-stringers” and the “long-stringers,” as they soon came to be called. But, in others, the tests on many of those with short strings revealed dire results: undiscovered tumors, unforeseen heart conditions, untreated illnesses. While similar medical issues also turned up in the subjects with long strings, the distinction was alarmingly clear: Those with long strings had curable ailments, while those with short strings did not.
One at a time, like dominoes, each lab in each country confirmed it.
The long-stringers would live longer, and the short-stringers would die soon.
While the politicians were urging constituents to remain calm and maintain normalcy, the international research community was the first to confront the new reality. And no matter how many NDAs were signed, something this monumental could not be contained. After a month, the truth began to leak through the cracks in the laboratory walls, creating small puddles of knowledge that eventually grew into pools.
After a month, people started to believe.
Ben
“So, you seriously believe that these strings are some sort of lifeline? That they tell us how long we’re going to live?” the woman asked, her eyebrows arched. “You don’t think that sounds certifiably insane?”
Ben was sitting in a corner of a coffee shop, studying the blueprints of his firm’s latest venture, a flashy new science center at a university upstate. Back in February, Ben couldn’t stop thinking about this project, imagining all the future students who would someday study and work in the classrooms and labs that he helped design. Perhaps they would even make some world-changing discovery in the very building that he had first sketched out on a page at the back of his Moleskine.