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Ignoring the emergency alert post on my cellphone, I hit the speaker button and call Carl again, hoping not to get a machine.
“Valley News.” Good. I recognize the receptionist’s voice. Brittany the flirt.
“It’s Colton. Patch me to Carl.” As usual, my words are brusque when speaking to her. But this time, the horrific scenes displayed on my laptop divert my attention.
“In a sec,” she replies in the same short, brash pitch as mine.
The photos keep flipping in front of me.
A wailing mother holds a light blue baby blanket.
A picture of a movie star’s daughter with the caption “Disappeared” printed on a flyer.
Several groups starting to gather outside of the U.S. Capitol and the White House, maybe already seeking answers or demanding action.
I think of the show, The Twilight Zone. This evening’s events would make a great movie if you could capture the freakiness of it. Are you as blown away as I am by how fast the news has been posted for the world to see? All thanks to high-speed, instant communication.
I finally hear Carl’s voice. “Sar—I’m busy,” he complains curtly.
“Sorry, uploading video in a few,” I say. “When’s the deadline, so I can do a write-up?”
“Don’t bother. Got too much feed; there’s no room for words. Text me only details, no fluff. Send over videos ASAP. George will upload them to our website, and we’ll dovetail them with brief descriptions. Been using Meta so far and want a local approach on our page. You got survivors?”
“Only one, and it’s exclusive.” I’m glad James avoided the television crew.
“Great, send away. Is Jeremy with you?”
“Jeremy? No, why?” Yes, we stick close together at work; he’s a video technician so is always giving me tips. We’re the same age, born in the Valley, and have many things in common, except I’m married, and he’s not.
“Just wondering. He left about fifteen minutes ago. I thought he was headed your way to the crash. No doubt rattled about what’s happening. But he also told Brittany he needed to go to Encino to check on his parents.”
“I did get a text from him while I was at the crash, but I didn’t see him in the field. Doubt he’s there, but other news vans arrived. Checking on his parents makes sense. I’ll text him when we hang up.”
“Thanks,” answers Carl, obviously distracted. I can hear several people in the background vying for his attention.
“I may have a follow-up story,” I add, trying to bait his curiosity. “The kid and I bonded.” I suggest it because I’d love to do a feature article on James and mention that Eddie guy.
“We’ll see.” Having worked for my boss for three years, I’ve never heard him sound defeated. It’s not like him.
“Carl, everything all right? You sound off.”
He pauses before replying, perhaps weighing his next words. Next, I hear over the phone an office door close; it could be his because the background noises become muffled.
“I don’t want to alarm you, but people have up and disappeared, and no one can say where, why, or how. It’s unbelievable, and no one knows anything.” Sniffles come from the phone; he could be crying. “Something has happened, something awful.
“Helen is a wreck—she almost got killed on the freeway when a car sped past her at eighty miles an hour with no one at the wheel.” I think of his lovely wife and the horror of witnessing such an event. “The car had to be on cruise control with no driver. At least our neighbor got her to take some sedatives a few minutes ago. Then, Frank, you know, the older guy who’s temping in records? We found his clothes and stuff at his desk—no Frank.” I hear the unmistakable sound of Carl blowing his nose.
“Whoa, that’s weird. What’s your thought about it?” I put the video card in the port to load the transfer.
“Beats me. At first, missing reports suggested people suddenly being gone from their families or jobs. There were strange crashes and accidents. Then we have these cases of people vanishing in real-time; we even have some incidents on video. So far, there are thousands of missing people, they estimate, on a national level. But we know it’s global and rapidly escalating. I’m unsure what numbers we’re talking about, but it all seems to have happened at the same second in time.”
“What’s the cause?” I ask, baffled; you most likely are, also.
“Who knows? There’s a group of scientists suggesting it may have something to do with another strange virus, you know, like an abnormal mutant of COVID or AIDS or the Marburg virus, but far faster and more destructive to the body, making it disintegrate instantly. Maybe a chemical reaction of some sort.”
I think of James’s description of Eddie in Star Trek’s transporter.
“Can’t figure,” Carl continues. “The press is speculating. We’ve got some real doozies. You know, things the psychics had visions of eons ago only now coming to pass. There’s a theory about chemicals that entered a hole in the ozone and invaded the planet or another about a solar flare or polar shift erupting its magnetic energy to infect specific individuals. Satellites somehow sprayed poisons into the earth’s atmosphere. And the Martian-took-over-our-bodies or UFO/aliens-arrived concepts. And, of course, there’s the religious idea about the end of the world. Believe me, the list of explanations is expanding. But there must be a scientific answer. Over an hour ago, certain people—in the thousands, perhaps millions—don’t suddenly disappear everywhere on the planet. Where did they go, and will they come back?”
I purse my lips tightly and shake my head at this collection of possible explanations as I open my video links and start scanning through them to make sure they’re viewable. I should call Aunt Amy and see what she thinks, but I know she’ll lash out with her “my God is great” attitude and try to convince me the end of the world’s doom and gloom has finally arrived. She’d gloat with righteous indignation, even if it weren't the exact cause.
After passing the video clip where I noticed the wedged candy bar, it shows James’s fingers waving in the zoom-in. Perfect. I’m so thankful I took a still shot at the same time. No need for words when a photo or video shows it all.
Carl mentions the odd sound, recalling he heard it, and thought it might have something to do with so many people disappearing.
“Other ideas the scientists are looking at is the common denominator,” he says. “A White House communique came in before you called. It’s unreal, Sarah. They’re inquiring about children under a certain age missing. Up to the age of ten or twelve was a guesstimate. Do you know what that means? There could be no babies in the United States, perhaps the entire world! No kids in elementary school or preschool, no babies being born, no pregnancies. Gone, kaput. Every one of them? If so, that’s unbelievable. The report specifically asked the press to downplay this angle. We thought COVID was bad, but the impact of this will be something our country or world has never experienced.”
I freeze. Did you, too? What about me? Was there a baby inside me or not? I wince at the thought I could have been pregnant today and had been considering an abortion. Me. No cramps now, but I have a sick feeling that I had been carrying a child—Denny’s and my child—and I am no longer. Did my baby, our baby, disappear when that sound happened? Could it be possible?
And then there are Jack and Jasmine, my nephew and niece. Did they go, also?
Do you know anyone with young kids? Can you check to see if they’re missing?
“I had no idea this was so colossal,” I say, trying to block out all images of children and think analytically.
“It is,” Carl replies. “Another report mentioned that the vanishing rates seem to be higher among the elderly and the developmentally disabled than those in the twenty to sixty-year-old age group. Explain that. Maybe they have some unique gene configuration.”
He pauses and lets out a loud breath. “We’re intelligent beings, and we’ll figure it out.”
I open our online news portal and begin up-linking the videos and stills one at a time. “Scientists can only suggest a new virus?” I ask. “But what do they think causes it, and will it keep happening?”
“These scientists think the virus is the most realistic choice. It may have affected the weaker people of the youngest and eldest generations, but so far, no one knows of any more disappearing acts. Let’s hope it’s a one-time event, and we don’t hear that odd noise again. What I don’t understand is why did it happen in the same second and not sporadically over time around the world. To avoid global panic, the White House has asked us to hold back some information; we don’t want the public to go berserk, especially about all of the children. We’ll let it leak out slowly, giving people a chance to absorb it bit by bit.”
“What else is coming across the Source?” I ask, referring to our massive database. Thanks to incorporating and swapping data with Meta’s supercomputer, information is retrieved instantly and efficiently without human interference. It gives us police information, driver’s license numbers, registrations, addresses, personal credit card balances, mortgages—anything you want on anyone, there at your fingertips. We read it often and use the information to our benefit. Big Brother is a huge asset to our industry.
“More than you could imagine,” Carl says. “It’s been dumping data continuously. We can’t keep up with the uploading to our website.”
All my videos and photos are now online and pasted into the link.
I invite him to check my Source folder. “Got four videos and many pics posted in sequenced time and order. The third one is the best; you can use the still of the kid’s hand waving.”
“Thanks. I’ll add it to the rest. We’ve got a ton of cameras on streetlights and buildings and enough car accident videos. But I want to get your plane material so locals can see what’s happening in the Valley.”
“Great, I’ll type up a quick email and send it over with the details.”
“Just give bullets. With all this data, we can’t run much more.”
“Gotcha. Give me a few minutes.”
We say our goodbyes. I text Jeremy, asking where he is, and put the cell down on the counter. After closing the news portal, I open my email account.