In the halcyon days of that final fall, when you worried in the abstract about the havoc Alistair Gilby might wreak on the off chance he were elected, you never thought about the silence. Nuclear winter, of course. The cold and the dying of a withering world, but in those nightmares you imagined a death rattle alongside every war cry. Sonic booms and siren shrieks. Even the patter of acid rain on rooftops. You never imagined it would be like this–only the whisper of snowfall, the crackle of fire, and the wheezing rattle in your own failing lungs.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re not cut out for the silence any more than you are the solitude. Before, before<\/em>, you always had your headphones on. At your desk, on the metro, in your bed. As you worked and as you slept. You grew up in a world of earbuds and smartphones; you were addicted to the cadence of other people\u2019s battle songs. Music was your constant lullaby in a dangerous world.<\/p>\n To say nothing of the human element, the riot of noise and love that made you feel so alive. Henry\u2019s off-key humming and Hannah\u2019s offbeat laughter. Hell, even talentless buskers and aggressive drivers. You were a city boy, through and through–raised in San Francisco, came of age in New Haven, lived in DC ever since–all you knew was noise.<\/p>\n Now the whole world\u2019s a silent graveyard, and you\u2019ll never be out of mourning.<\/p>\n So when they come for you with helicopters that beat the snow bank like egg whites, you\u2019re sure the apocalypse they promised all those years ago has finally arrived–the one that you told yourself, in the darkest hours of the night, would have been a blessing. Maybe you\u2019ve lived this long as penance, to see the price of your cowardice, and now this clamor that could fracture the firmament itself is here to call you to your reckoning. Not the trumpets they promised, but the endless roar of rotors calling you to meet your fate.<\/p>\n You leave your tea kettle whistling on your wood-burning stove, stalling only to jam your feet into shredded scuffed galoshes and drape an old hunting coat over your shoulders. You\u2019re dressed in threadbare flannel pajamas, but there\u2019s nothing you can do about that now.<\/p>\n Outside, the helicopter has landed, and half a dozen men and women dressed in fatigues disembark. They\u2019re armed to the teeth, bandoliers and automatics over their shoulders, as if they\u2019re stepping into an active warzone.<\/p>\n The woman who steps forward to meet you, where you\u2019re guarding your hearth as if it\u2019s still worth something, is taller than you are. She\u2019s thin but not emaciated, not like most of the earth\u2019s ailing population. Her faded auburn hair is done up in a tight bun, her skin like crepe paper. Age is difficult to guess–everyone tolerated the radiation differently–but you\u2019d guess sixty, if you had to. The truth is you wouldn\u2019t know her from a common foot soldier if it weren\u2019t for the four stars embroidered in metallic gold thread at her collar. That, and the unequivocal note of command in her voice when she calls your name. \u201cArden Chang-Haas?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s left of him,\u201d you wheeze, then cough into your fist. It\u2019s been months since you last used your voice, and now you fear your larynx is just another instrument in disrepair.<\/p>\n \u201cYour country needs you, Mr. Haas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s Chang<\/em>-Haas, and I didn\u2019t think I had a country anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s left of it, then,\u201d she smiles. \u201cSee, I believe you\u2019re operating under the false assumption that you have a choice.\u201d She snaps her gloved fingers, and her goons level rusted assault rifles at your chest.<\/p>\n Warily, you consider your options. An open grave here is no different than what you had come to expect in a handful of months. Whatever she\u2019s offering, it\u2019s something other than dying alone at your in-laws\u2019 lake house. You don\u2019t dare assume it\u2019s a chance to atone, but Henry would have wanted you to try. \u201cAll right.\u201d You raise your hands in mock surrender. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGet your things. We leave in ten.\u201d She waits for you to turn away before she calls out, \u201cOh, and Mr. Chang-Haas? You won\u2019t be coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten minutes to pack up a life you\u2019ve already lost. What relics do you have left?<\/p>\n So you throw your tattered clothes into a duffel bag, and you rifle through the piles of ephemera on your desk. So many memories like sand through an hourglass, sifting through your fingers until they\u2019re lost. In the end, you save only a stack of photos with curling edges and your set of crumpled journals. All you have left of your family and the stories you wrote to them, after they were gone. The words you used, in vain, to fill the silence, as futile as raindrops sieging a dam.<\/p>\n By the time you join the general aboard the battered helicopter, only five minutes have passed. Noise-canceling headphones damp the screech of the tin dragon. Strapped between a cold bulkhead and a silent soldier, you watch the Blue Ridge Mountains recede to lumps of sugar on the disappearing horizon.<\/p>\n You fly for hours, sunrise chasing at your tail, and you stare through the porthole at the ruins of the country below.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all alike. Amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, and the fruited plain leveled to a barren wasteland. A frontier gone white with ash and snow.<\/p>\n They tell you later that the bunker where you land is under the desert of New Mexico, but truth be told, there\u2019s no way you could tell the difference.<\/p>\n The General sends you off to the dorms after you land. Tells you to rest up because there\u2019s a briefing at 0900.<\/p>\n Soldiers lead you to a double room no larger than a prison cell and just as sterile. They shove you in and lock the door behind you.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a woman in the far bed, curled away from the door, weeping rivers into her pillow. As desperate as you are for human contact, you don\u2019t have it in you to disturb her.<\/p>\n You choose to believe what\u2019s left of the army has evolved enough to arrange gender-neutral housing, rather than default to the mislabeled F on your birth certificate. For a brief shining moment, when there was a Camelot, you were a man in the eyes of the law, until Alistair Gilby rolled back every law and statute on transgender rights. Took away your personhood\u2014your manhood, to be exact\u2014 with a swish of his Mont Blanc. Thought that would be enough to strip you of your manhood, too, as if your masculinity were as fragile as his, but yours was forged in fire–tested, tempered, shatterproof.<\/p>\n You clean up with icy water in the en suite bathroom before you lie down on the your egg carton mattress of the empty bed. Remove your boots, but you don\u2019t bother with anything else. Stare up at the mottled concrete ceiling, looking for constellations in the fault lines.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t sleep.<\/p>\n At the briefing, an aide-de-camp arranges you and a dozen other civilians around a conference table like dolls at a tea party. <\/p>\n Presidencies usually age their presidents, but Gilby was preserved in amber, rendered immune through an uncanny marriage of bioengineering and modern medicine. His presidency aged the rest of you. Everyone here is gray and haggard, every face a topography of canyons and drought-cracked deserts. <\/p>\n Unlikely heroes for this, the last resistance. Or so you assume.<\/p>\n At the head of the table sits the woman who pulled you from your home. General Constance Fletcher, you learned. Lesser generals perch like prized birds at her side. She stares you down with her steely blues and informs you, \u201cThe thirteen of you are the last hope of a hopeless nation.\u201d<\/p>\n The yarn she spins, the twine between such unlikely suspects as a pastry chef, a zookeeper, and a journalist, is something out of this world. The kind of story your editor never would have published, even if you\u2019d had a four-star general as an anonymous source. But, this world<\/em> hasn\u2019t been itself in twenty-two years, so maybe–maybe time travel<\/em> is no more surprising than fascist dystopia<\/em> was all those years ago. <\/p>\n Fletcher talks about lynchpins and pivot points. Fulcrums and levers. People who had–who have<\/em>–the power to change history. \u201cIf we send the right person back, we can prevent the War from ever happening,\u201d she says. \u201cReverse nuclear winter before it starts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you think that\u2019s one of us?\u201d your roommate asks with a stiff lower lip. Her warm brown skin glows under the fluorescent lights.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to our calculations, Ms. Amador, all of you have the potential to rewrite the past.\u201d<\/p>\n You feel sick, a swarm of locusts in your stomach, because you know what they want you to do. What you should have done, all those years ago.<\/p>\n Just like you know why there are only thirteen of you assembled at this table, and why you\u2019re such an odd fellow bunch. Everyone else–every other pivot point, every citizen who resisted, every person who had any real power then–is dead. All killed by Gilby\u2019s secret police.<\/p>\n Like you would have been, if you\u2019d done then what they want you to do now.<\/p>\n That afternoon, you sit across from Fletcher under the glare of halogen lamps. The far wall is a lustrous mirror. Your own reflection stares back at you, ragged beard and scraggly hair, but you blink past it.<\/p>\n One-way glass. No doubt Fletcher\u2019s cronies are listening from the other side. <\/p>\n You know an interrogation when you see one.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you understand what we\u2019re asking of you, Mr. Chang-Haas?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGo back in time. Kill Hitler. Stop the war. I think I\u2019ve seen that movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t a joke, Mr. Chang-Haas. The future of the free world is at stake, here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think you mean the past.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean your husband\u2019s life, and your daughter\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter wouldn\u2019t have had a life, if I\u2019d published. Gilby would have had me killed a year before Hannah was even born.\u201d<\/p>\n Fletcher scoffs. \u201cSupposition. A coward\u2019s escape hatch on a sinking ship.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSupposition?\u201d You seethe. \u201cDo you remember how many journalists they killed? How many accidents and disappearances went uninvestigated? Because I do. I watched my friends, my colleagues, the best investigative writers I knew, die.\u201d The most courageous journalists of an era buried in empty coffins under platitudinous headstones.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the tip you threw away, Mr. Chang-Haas, had the power to destroy Alistair Gilby, once and for all. You had proof of an impeachable offense. If you\u2019d published, Congress would have removed him from office. The FBI could have put you in protective custody. You\u2019d have been safe, if that\u2019s all you cared about.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t know that, not for a fact.\u201d You debated all of this twenty-two years ago. You agonized over your pro and con lists, and all you found was doubt. Your life depended on the good graces of the country\u2019s most corrupt politicians–men who proved, again and again, that they\u2019d rather kneel before Gilby\u2019s iron fist than fight for anyone.<\/p>\n But then again, so did you. You gave up your reputation as a hard-hitting political correspondent and became the kind of journalist who wrote puff pieces about the First Lady\u2019s dresses–sugar-spun confections, empty calories for polite consumption–while the whole world burned.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know, Mr. Chang-Haas, what sets you apart from the other men and women we\u2019ve assembled here?\u201d Wan lips drawn thin, Fletcher sneers, \u201cYou knew. The rest of them didn\u2019t realize what power they had, but you? A journalist with one of the most prestigious papers in the country. A scandal that threatened to crack the very pillars of our democracy. The story of the century fell into your lap, and you threw it away. You threw it away knowing damn well what could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n You did. You knew, you did. You sink in your chair, like the spineless jellyfish Fletcher thinks you are under the force of her scrutiny.<\/p>\n Fletcher leans forward, her palms flat against the table. \u201cCan you really tell me you\u2019re prepared to make that same mistake twice?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do they want you to do?\u201d Esperanza Amador whispers in the artificial silence of your dorm that night. Over the course of an hour, the two of you lie in your respective beds, tracking the ceiling with hooded eyes, exchanging sob stories, the only currency you have left. Your voices never break a furtive whisper, an unavoidable habit of living in a panopticon for too many years.<\/p>\n She is the daughter of undocumented immigrants, who watched Gilby deport her entire family when she was only seventeen. She got a job as a pastry chef at an upscale bakery in Georgetown, made a life for herself, but she was alone.<\/p>\n You tell her about your life as a second-generation Chinese-American trans man, about your Black Jewish firefighter-turned-soldier husband, and about your brilliant daughter, who wanted to be a journalist, like you, and would have lit the world on fire if only she\u2019d had the chance.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want me to poison him,\u201d Esperanza admits into the forgiving dark.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want me to tell the truth,\u201d you confess in kind.<\/p>\n Even in the dark, you mark the furrow of her brow. Not a fair exchange, in her mind. Her life, forfeit, and yours? Redacted question marks in goldenrod files. \u201cWould it have been so bad?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it would, at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWorse than this?\u201d<\/p>\n The room is silent but for the whir of recirculating air and the shudder of your breathing.<\/p>\n While Esperanza sleeps, you huddle on the cold linoleum of the bathroom, and with numb fingers, you shuffle through the photos you brought with you. Your eyes have adapted to the dark, but even so, you can barely make out the shape of faces you used to know better than your own.<\/p>\n You stare and stare at a dark-skinned man in his dress blues, who holds a toddler in a red gingham dress at his hip. He wears a slick-billed cap over his buzz cut; she has his freckles and his button nose, along with a gap-toothed smile and curls for days. There are other photos, photos of the three of you, or you and Henry years earlier, or you and Hannah years later, but it\u2019s this that nares your attention. The last photo of him, home on leave from the Middle East before they sent him to the Balkans. And the last of her without a ghost in her eyes of the father she lost.<\/p>\n You smooth your fingertips over the ink. Trace their faces like you used to. Like you can\u2019t, ever again.<\/p>\n You made a choice. You lived, and the whole world died, including the two people who made it a place worth living. All you have left is the silence and the guilt that eats away at you like moths in a darkened closet.<\/p>\n You were so afraid, then, of what Gilby could take from you. What you didn\u2019t understand was how easy you made it. You clung so tight, you squeezed the life out of the very thing you were trying to protect. <\/p>\n You don\u2019t know what you were expecting, but it wasn\u2019t this. Not a DeLorean or a TARDIS. Not the Guardian of Forever. Just a high-backed wooden chair with restraints on the armrests. \u201cWould it make a difference?\u201d Fletcher asks as you sit.<\/p>\n Her aide-de-camp straps you in with a clinical touch. Cool leather chafes your wrists. Fletcher looms over you.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does it feel like?\u201d you ask her. \u201cWill it hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou won\u2019t feel anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n A needle sinks into your skin as they hook you up to an intravenous drip. Clear, viscous fluids from two sacks, a paralytic and a sedative, seep into your welcoming vein.<\/p>\n Fletcher lowers a perforated metal helmet over your head, occluding your vision.<\/p>\n You shut your eyes. Breathe in deep. If this works, you\u2019ll see Henry again; if it doesn\u2019t, well, you were a dead man, anyway, and not just because of the cancer rotting you from the inside out. You wrote your own death sentence the day you said no. Everything else has just been solitary confinement on death row. <\/p>\n \u201cGood luck, Mr. Chang-Haas,\u201d Fletcher croons in your ear. \u201cYou\u2019ll need it.\u201d<\/p>\n Music. Roaring organs and a driving beat. Beyonc\u00e9, your alarm and wakeup call. \u201cMorning.\u201d A greeting mouthed against your skin. An invocation. A voice, Henry\u2019s<\/em> voice, and god, oh god–<\/p>\n \u201cWhat day is it?\u201d Your own voice, rough with sleep, rather than radiation poisoning.<\/p>\n \u201cVery funny,\u201d Henry laughs, a warm rumble that tumbles from his diaphragm. \u201cYou\u2019ve been counting down and marking off days on the bathroom calendar for a year and a half. The first Tuesday following a Monday in November\u2026<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Which means they sent you back early<\/em>. To election day. You\u2019re sure they meant it as a gift but you can\u2019t see this as anything other than cruelty wrapped in a barbed wire bow. To remind you what you had, what you lost, what you\u2019re fated to lose all over again.<\/p>\n Now Henry\u2019s kissing your back, your shoulder, the nape of your neck, and it\u2019s so much, too much, every fuse in your body short-circuiting all at once.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry,\u201d you breathe, \u201csorry,\u201d and extract yourself from his embrace.<\/p>\n So you run to the bathroom and brace your arms on the counter. Lose a staring contest with your reflection.<\/p>\n What you see is a body shaped and sculpted and chiseled by testosterone, only just beginning to go soft again. For you, for the molting body you left behind, it\u2019s been fifteen years since your last T shot, since you last felt at peace in your own skin. Hormone replacement therapy was just another casualty of the war that killed the world. Now you\u2019re twenty-seven again, in the prime of your life. Unblemished skin and a full head of hair. Bare-chested, your top surgery scars are still red, clearer than they\u2019ve been in years.<\/p>\n Your knees give out and you spill into a puddle on the cold tile floor. That dam you built inside yourself finally gives out, collapses under the pressure of a tidal wave of feeling. And you cry and cry in a way you haven\u2019t in months, not since the day Hannah died.<\/p>\n You didn\u2019t think this was possible. Part of you still doesn\u2019t; your rational brain\u2019s still searching for any other explanation–dream, hallucination, afterlife–but this feels so real. The tile stamping one-inch indentations into your kneecaps, the phlegm clogging your sinuses, the ache<\/em> where your heart is supposed to be.<\/p>\n Now that you\u2019re here, now that you\u2019ve heard Henry, felt his warmth against your lonely skin, all you want is to beg forgiveness. Tell him you\u2019re sorry you weren\u2019t stronger.<\/p>\n \u201cArden?\u201d Henry calls through the door, concern a claxon in his voice. \u201cYou okay in there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fine.\u201d You know your voice is ragged, worn as thin as the clothes you wore yesterday, the fabric of your lie just as fragile. \u201cI\u2019ll be out in a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n You scrub your face with a washcloth until the rest of it is as red as the rims of your eyes. You blow your nose, and you breathe and breathe until you\u2019re sure you can face him without crumbling. Memories cascade through you like running water. Henry in a tux, under cherry blossoms, sliding a gold band on your ring finger. Henry holding your hand in a hospital room as you pushed and pushed until Hannah\u2019s first cry pierced the air. Henry pushing Hannah on a rope swing under the willow tree at the lake house. And you remember the call, remember the words Except none of that has happened yet. None of that will ever happen<\/em> if you complete your mission. Casualties of the road less traveled.<\/p>\n Henry\u2019s not smiling anymore. He\u2019s right in front of you, his hand arching up to cup your cheek, and you can\u2019t help it, it\u2019s been so long, your eyes flutter shut. \u201cArden,\u201d he murmurs, half caress and half reproach, \u201cyou\u2019re scaring me.\u201d<\/p>\n You force your eyes open. Twist your lips into a sketch of a smile. Pour humor into your voice like seasoning. \u201cSorry, just had a minor panic attack thinking about the possibility of Alistair Gilby winning tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHeaven forbid,\u201d Henry laughs, limpid as a lake in summer, as he tilts your face up and endeavors to kiss your worries away.<\/p>\n Henry never thought Gilby stood a chance. He scoffed when your colleagues projected that Gilby had a one-in-six-shot at the presidency. After all, Gilby was a third-party candidate, no matter how popular he might have been, he shouldn’t have had a viable path to victory. Still, you told Henry that you still bring an umbrella when there\u2019s a fifteen percent chance of rain, but he just laughed. Maybe<\/em> you do, Arden.<\/em><\/p>\n You didn\u2019t really think he\u2019d win, either, but that didn\u2019t stop you from worrying about it. From writing out against him, every chance you had. He even called you out at a press conference, once, a few weeks before the election. Called you a liar and a slur you\u2019d rather not repeat. Questioned your citizenship, too. You could laugh about it, then, because he didn\u2019t have any power. You thought, if you wrote clear and hard about the clear and present danger he presented to the nation, it would be enough.<\/p>\n It should have been enough.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t bother voting. You did, the first time, of course you did. Wore your I VOTED sticker like a Medal of Freedom. Thought, one day, you\u2019d tell your child about the day you voted for the first Muslim president.<\/p>\n Today, you don\u2019t want to puzzle out whether voting twice on account of temporal displacement counts as voter fraud, and you know your vote won\u2019t count either way. It didn\u2019t count the first time, and you\u2019re no Sisyphus. There\u2019s no point waiting in hour-long lines to push a single boulder up a hill when you know how the story ends–with the boulder careening down the hill and crashing into your face.<\/p>\n Instead, you go to work. You sit in your cubicle at The Post<\/em>, and you shed smiles on people whose funerals you attended. Don your over-ear headphones and blast percussive pop songs you used to hate. Stare at the documents you left open on your laptop but don\u2019t type a single word. Glance up at the flat screens, where pundits on every major news network spell infinite variations on it can\u2019t happen here<\/em>.<\/p>\n You leave at four o\u2019clock, hours before the first polls close.<\/p>\n The first time around, you spent election night at work, of course you did. It was your job; elections are journalists\u2019 Super Bowl, or maybe their Thunderdome. So you spent the night in your cubicle, biting back tears over a cup of instant noodles, and knocking back shots of your editor\u2019s bottom drawer scotch in your tea-stained coffee mug.<\/p>\n This time, you go home. You go home to your Logan Circle apartment to spend the last night before the start of the end of the world with your Let this first point of divergence be yours.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting you,\u201d says Henry when you come home with enough Chinese takeout to outlast a hurricane.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you complaining?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot at all.\u201d Then Henry\u2019s wrapping his arms around you, hugging you tight even though your raincoat is slick with dew and you haven\u2019t had a chance to set down your bags. He buries his face in your sopping wet hair and breathes in the petrichor-sweet scent of you, as if he can\u2019t quite believe you\u2019re real.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was that for?\u201d you ask when it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n \u201cYou came home.\u201d He smiles, as if it\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t remember how you ever lived without this.<\/p>\n One by one, red and blue states alike turn yellow. The screen flickers like a faulty Etch A Sketch. Sure things change colors like a game of Manhunt, the one Hannah used to play with her friends. The same pundits you watched earlier sputter in disbelief, their commentary as mercurial as the sprinklers on Capitol Hill. The twin candles Henry lit burn down to stumps as the Electoral College sways and tips, a tree listing before it falls, and Henry\u2019s arm turns to timber around your shoulders.<\/p>\n \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d he mutters, alongside a train of expletives you\u2019d rather not repeat. You missed this, the first time, missed the flash boil of his anger and the unadulterated fear in his eyes. You remember only the next morning, when you came home in wrinkled shirtsleeves, two ships crossing paths for mere moments before he went to work, and he reassured you with not-quite-stoic surety that everything was going to be all right. <\/p>\n This time, he fetches two beers, Sam Adams, from the kitchen. He hands you yours without comment, but seldom raises his to his lips. He cradles the sweating bottle in laced hands and worries the water-logged label with his thumbnail until it crumbles, flake by flake. <\/p>\n When they make the call and anoint Gilby President-Elect with polite smiles and staid praises, citing the largest electoral margin in thirty years, Henry plants one last wet kiss on your cheek before he goes to bed in disgust.<\/p>\n He leaves you alone on your mid-century modern sofa, and you crumble, too.<\/p>\n You feel weepy all over again, a leaky faucet in disrepair. Maybe it\u2019s because knowing how the story ends doesn\u2019t make a plot twist any more believable on a second read-through. Or maybe it\u2019s because this body is off T for the first time in five years, just starting fertility treatments so you and Henry can make a family together. So you can make Hannah<\/em>. Your brilliant daughter, who laughed as easily as rain in winter, who loved like an oncoming freight train. Who grew up reading history books filled with screenshots, tweets that started wars, snaps that brought down empires. Who died at nineteen, with jelly bean tumors riddling her malnourished form. Last fall, you were too weak to give her the burial she deserved, so you hauled her lifeless body out to the willow tree with the rope swing. You left her under a white sheet, the only shroud you could find, and left her to the embrace of the cold, cold snow.<\/p>\n The television bathes you in pale blue light, every teardrop a prism, and you sit and sag while the world somehow keeps on turning.<\/p>\n It snows the day Alistair Gilby is inaugurated, powdered sugar sifted over the National Mall. Under a black umbrella, he takes the oath, so help him God.<\/p>\n The army marches down Pennsylvania Avenue in full regalia during the inaugural parade, and the White House summarily blacklists anyone, journalist or politician, who objects.<\/p>\n Later, examined through the blood-stained looking glass of two long decades, it will seem obvious to you that Alistair Gilby did not suddenly take hostage an unwilling nation, as it seemed to you then. Election fraud notwithstanding, his candidacy awoke the murky things that lurked far beneath the surface, along the black of the ocean floor. The eels and anglerfish were always there, but he roused them with the scent of blood. Made mainstream the darkest undercurrents of American ideology, ideas as old as they were ugly.<\/p>\n Which meant the carnage Alistair Gilby wrought did not happen overnight.<\/p>\n However, in the moment, it did feel instantaneous, as if fascism rose as easily as raising a flag at dawn. You awoke one morning to a traitor\u2019s colors uttering over the nation you called home. And when you told yourself, in those first few days, that you would scale any and every flagpole to tear down his banners, you really, truly believed it.<\/p>\n The call comes just as you remember it, thirteen days after the inauguration. Unknown number, digitized voice, impossible to trace. All they give you is a time and an address and an abrupt hang up.<\/p>\n Already, Gilby has closed the nation\u2019s borders and threatened enemies and allies alike with force, all while schilling his xenophobic policies as patriotism of the highest order. Already, police and national guardsmen patrol the streets in riot gear.<\/p>\n Nothing has changed except you. Your war-torn consciousness in a body at its prime. Afflicted with phantom aches and a psychosomatic cough. You are the only variable.<\/p>\n The first time you got the call, your jackrabbit heart beat with as much excitement as trepidation. You saw intrigue and political espionage, glossy and glamorous as a Hollywood spy thriller; you didn\u2019t understand, yet, how much it would cost. <\/p>\n Now, your phone slips from your sweating palm as dread seeps into you like saltwater through the cracked hull of a sinking ship.<\/p>\n The location for the meet is the same as before, a hipster burger joint on the Hill, the kind of greasy spoon that dirties up clean cutlery to give it character, full of bargain-suited interns and tourists in American flag ponchos.<\/p>\n You choose the closest table to the kitchen, the farthest from the windows so you have a view of the whole room and perpendicular to the door so that neither of you will have your back to it. You made different choices the first time, and your contact was twitchy the whole time, her hand never straying from her holster beneath the table. Last time, you also ate the chef\u2019s special burger with the kitschy Americana name, but today, your stomach\u2019s too turbulent for anything solid. So you sip your vanilla malt, and you wait.<\/p>\n Then comes the woman who has haunted your nightmares for the past twenty-two years and sits down across from you with a veggie burger and sweet potato fries. She\u2019s lean, lithe, and butch, in her utility jacket and buzz fade, her skin a deep umber, a few shades darker than Henry\u2019s.<\/p>\n You know as much about her as she knows about you, but you can\u2019t let her know that. Swallow your malt, instead, and ask her, \u201cAre you the one who called me?\u201d When she doesn\u2019t answer right away, tell her, \u201cI\u2019m Arden Chang, but I think you already know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have quite the reputation, Mr. Chang.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the death threats to prove it,\u201d you parry. \u201cHow do I know you\u2019re someone I can trust?\u201d<\/p>\n Wright flashes her FBI badge quick. You don\u2019t spare it so much as a glance, but you did the first time. Stole a momentary glimpse of her name. Looked her up, later, using The Post<\/em>\u2019s databases. Special Agent Kristen Wright, a preacher\u2019s daughter. Served three tours in Afghanistan before she went to Quantico, where she graduated first in her class. You read everything you could about her because you wanted to understand; you needed to know what made her brave.<\/p>\n You never did figure it out.<\/p>\n So Wright tells you, in hushed and coded phrases, about the FBI\u2019s investigation into a private security firm’s tampering with voting machines in two dozen states. She implies, just this side of plausible deniability, that Gilby\u2019s campaign worked with that private security firm, and she suspects that Gilby himself knew. When you ask her why she\u2019s telling you this, she says she has hard evidence of an impeachable offense, but the FBI won\u2019t break Gilby\u2019s gag order. She\u2019s a whistleblower, and she needs you to be her megaphone.<\/p>\n But you already knew that. Just like you know, the first time around, she died two months after you turned her down.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you interested?\u201d<\/p>\n You go to the Capitol Visitor Center, after. You\u2019re only two blocks away, and it\u2019s been so many years. So you go and take a guided tour. Stand in the rotunda with a hundred tourists. Stare up at the murals. Remember that the introductory video called this room, where the country\u2019s most honored dead lie in state, the temple of your democracy<\/em>, as if democracy were a religion that promised eternal salvation.<\/p>\n And you pray.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve never been a religious man.<\/p>\n That Friday, you spend Shabbat at Henry\u2019s parents\u2019 brownstone in Alexandria. His whole family lives and works along the Beltway. His father teaches ethics at GW, and his mother works for the ACLU. His oldest sister clerks for a liberal Supreme Court justice, another lobbies against tobacco, and the youngest studies literature at Georgetown.<\/p>\n Henry holds you tight against him through the prayers, and you break challah with your in-laws for what might be the last time.<\/p>\n You\u2019re quiet during the meal, considering the merits of parables and poetry as you listen to anecdotes and reminiscences. You muster benign pleasantries when they ask you about wedding planning, and you hope they don\u2019t see right through you.<\/p>\n The Haas clan doesn\u2019t, but Henry does. As he drives back into the city on a dark road illuminated only by the distant bulbs of taillights, he steals sideways glances at you while you keep your gaze fixed on the horizon.<\/p>\n For weeks he\u2019s been nagging you to stop by the tailor, the baker, the florist. Preparations for a wedding you won\u2019t live to see. But you remember everything you chose the first time around–white tux, raspberry mousse, cherry blossoms laced with peonies–your dream wedding, on the banks of the Tidal Basin. It was easy, then, because you said no. Threw yourself into wedding planning so you wouldn\u2019t have to think about the guilt. Now, since your meeting with Wright, you can barely bring yourself to go through the motions of normalcy, and you\u2019re drowning in another kind of guilt.<\/p>\n You haven\u2019t told him. You can\u2019t<\/em> tell him. <\/p>\n \u201cWould you tell me,\u201d murmurs Henry, \u201cif something were wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n The whole world\u2019s gone wrong<\/em>, you don\u2019t tell him. \u201cI\u2019m scared,\u201d you admit. In a story with such a clear-cut antagonist, you don\u2019t think it gives anything away to admit you\u2019re scared of Gilby. As a gay trans man of color, you\u2019d be crazy not to be.<\/p>\n He\u2019s itching to reach out, but he keeps his hands on the wheel. \u201cI won\u2019t let anything happen to you,\u201d he swears.<\/p>\n And your eyes slam shut because you know where that promise leads.<\/p>\n He holds you all through the night, and you don\u2019t sleep a wink. You lie on your side, the heat of him curled around you like a question mark, as you ask yourself, again and again, what the hell you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n Filter pros and cons through a fine mesh sieve as you watch night shadows flicker across your bedroom wall. Pro: you save the world, maybe. Con: you die, probably. How\u2019s that for a cost-benefit analysis?<\/p>\n At dinner Henry\u2019s sister talked about her favorite poems and poets, of futures lost as irretrievably as tennis balls at twilight and wastelands razed in the shadows of valleys of stars. You almost asked her about Frost, but you restrained yourself. In her professional opinion, what the hell is the point of two roads diverging in a wood if they both have the same destination? Why choose one over the other when both converge on your vanishing point? Why walk down either when neither has a happy ending?<\/p>\n Two lives, and neither has a happy ending. In one, you live long and alone, guilt fermenting in you like grapes in a wooden cask. In the other, you\u2019re a tragic hero, at best, and at worst? Nothing changes. There\u2019s no guarantee publishing the article will motivate corrupt congressmen to introduce articles of impeachment. No guarantee Gilby won\u2019t blacklist everyone at The Post<\/em> to punish you before he kills you. No guarantee he won\u2019t still kill the world just to prove he can.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a zero-sum game, and either way, you lose.<\/p>\n You lose Henry. You lose Hannah.<\/p>\n You lose every last inch of the life you fought so hard to build for yourself.<\/p>\n You meet with Wright eight times over the next three weeks. Always in public, always a different location. The last time, you pick the place.<\/p>\n An upscale bakery in Georgetown, all done up in frills and pink lace like a pampered poodle.<\/p>\n Wright reads a draft of the article you might not have the courage to publish. It\u2019s a hard copy, typed on a rusty typewriter, the only way to keep it safe from all-seeing, surveilling eyes.<\/p>\n As she proofs her own story, you nibble at a maple bacon cupcake and try to think about anything but the hieroglyphs she etches in red ink along the margins. Think about the cupcake, instead. Remember you\u2019ll have to brush your teeth before you go home because Henry keeps kosher and won\u2019t kiss you with pork on your breath. Now think about kissing Henry. Think about his rough hands on your skin. Think about the weight of his arms around you. Think about the hickory taste–<\/p>\n Think about the wedding you won\u2019t have. The daughter you won\u2019t conceive. The life you won\u2019t share. \u201cWhat does your editor think?\u201d asks Wright, just in time to distract you.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t, yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Her gaze shutters. \u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n Lie. Lie quickly and convincingly, and don\u2019t ever let her see your doubt. \u201cI wanted your opinion, first. To make sure I got it right.\u201d<\/p>\n That appeases her, but she still leaves in a hurry. Leaves you with your marked-up draft and your stomachache and your doubt, churning in you like butter.<\/p>\n At the counter, you ask the cashier, if, by chance, Esperanza Amador is in.<\/p>\n Moments later, a girl in a chef\u2019s jacket comes out to greet you. Flour dusts her warm brown skin. \u201cCan I help you, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Arden,\u201d you say. \u201cArden Chang-Haas.\u201d<\/p>\n She smiles at you with polite incomprehension. \u201cDid you order something?\u201d<\/p>\n Lie again. Easily, as if it costs you nothing. After all, you\u2019re getting so good at it. \u201cYes, sorry, I was wondering if you did custom wedding cakes.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s young. She\u2019s so young. Reminds you of Hannah, with her easy smiles and unconscious naivety. An ing\u00e9nue, so out of place in a story like this.<\/p>\n The Esperanza you roomed with in New Mexico was kind but hard, glazed and brittle like the surface of a cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e. This isn\u2019t her.<\/p>\n Fletcher must have sent her to a different, later point in the timeline.<\/p>\n Or maybe the choices you\u2019ve made–all the divergences you\u2019ve hoarded so selfishly–have already irrevocably severed this timeline from the original. Maybe your mistakes have made it impossible for them to send anyone else because you\u2019ve erased the future from whence you came, winked it out like so many stars at twilight.<\/p>\n In which case the entire future of humanity hinges on you and you alone.<\/p>\n In bed, in the dark, you\u2019re brave enough to ask Henry the question you\u2019ve wanted to ask him for weeks. \u201cIf you knew there was something you could do that would save lives, even if it meant sacrificing everything you held dear, would you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n He says yes<\/em> before the ink of your question mark is dry.<\/p>\n Stupid question. Henry runs into burning buildings. He suits up in futuristic gear like the superheroes in all your favorite comics. And he enlisted. As soon as he decided Gilby\u2019s extracurricular military activities jeopardized homeland security, he said it was his civic duty as an able-bodied, red-blooded American to fight to defend it. To defend you, his sisters, the elderly woman and her yowling cat who live in the apartment above you. He died for a war he didn\u2019t believe in because that\u2019s the kind of person he is. Heroism, stitched into his skin, the very fabric of who he is.<\/p>\n It\u2019s ironic, because everyone used to tell you you were so brave. For being trans, for coming out, for transitioning. Every step you took toward living as the person you already were, people told you that you were brave. Family, friends, strangers the moment after they clocked you. But it wasn\u2019t bravery; it was a survival tactic.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve always been good at doing what you had to, to survive.<\/p>\n Even when you shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n He turns to you, his eyes catching the glint of the streetlight like matches. \u201cWhat\u2019s this about, Arden?\u201d<\/p>\n Search for a lie and come up short. Tell the truth–about the story, not the time travel. Talk him down from his fears while downplaying your own. Say impeachment<\/em> and protective custody<\/em> as if they\u2019re sure things rather than pipe dreams.<\/p>\n So you rest your head on his shoulder for what might be the last time, and you let him hold you as if you\u2019re about to disappear.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you sure?\u201d your editor asks you the next morning.<\/p>\n Dev Chandrasekhar is a Hindu man, devout when it suits him and judiciously agnostic when it doesn\u2019t, who told you, once, the news was like the universe, endlessly destroyed and recreated, the same old stories eternally reincarnated as stars birthed in nebulas formed from the ashes of their ancestors. No news<\/em>, he told you, is ever really new<\/em>, but he dared you to prove him wrong.<\/p>\n You think of Hannah, seven years old when she found a box of back copies of The Post<\/em> in your closet, telling you so earnestly that she wanted to grow up to be just like you. <\/p>\n You want to be the kind of man your daughter would be proud of, even if she never lives to see it.<\/p>\n Set your hands flat on his desk to stop the shaking. Tell him, \u201cYes,\u201d you\u2019re sure.<\/p>\n Hannah Charlotte Chang-Haas is born in spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the halcyon days of that final fall, when you worried in the abstract about the havoc Alistair Gilby might wreak on the off chance he were elected, you never thought about the silence. Nuclear winter, of course. The cold and the dying of a withering world, but in those nightmares you imagined a death …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/79211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139471,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107598\/revisions\/139471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\u201cYou\u2019re sure this isn\u2019t just a glorified electric chair?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nThe power ballad jolts you to consciousness. All at once, sensory overload, a million forgotten sensations. A warm comforter draped over you, a solid body at your back, and music, honest-to-god music<\/em> in your ears.<\/p>\n
\nSo you open the door, and you look at Henry Charles Haas for the first time in seventeen years. Your husband<\/strike> fianc\u00e9. Smiling at you with dusky lips and pellucid hazel eyes. Dressed only in boxers and a Henley.<\/p>\nkilled in action<\/strike> that stopped your heart.<\/p>\n
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\nhusband<\/strike> fianc\u00e9.<\/p>\n
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\nThe cupcake is a sticky, cloying thing in your stomach.<\/p>\n
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