The Word Exchange (39 page)

Health officials’ initial fear—soon shared by many others—was that everyone with aphasia had word flu, which was life-threatening, and that because of the way it appeared to spread, nearly everyone was vulnerable. That fear accounted for the paranoia that had slowly been growing even before the mass infections on December 7. It was the reason for the headphones and dirty looks in the train, the language therapy and speech hygiene campaigns that by early December had just started to
get under way. And, notably, it was also a driving impetus for the work of the Society.

But some people weren’t only wearing earplugs and avoiding “unnecessary linguistic transactions”; they’d also taken to using masks, washing hands, avoiding going out in public, measures clearly expressing the fear that the virus was moving not through words but germs. It was an understandable anxiety, Dr. Barouch said. The most terrifying possibility, the one many of them feared (and that some people, like Doug, had worried about for years), was that the virus could recombine again—this time with a biologic pathogen, like influenza. Then it
would
spread through germs—to anyone. The chances were extremely low but not zero.

Before December 7, even with warnings and rising public panic, the prevalence of aphasia had been steadily increasing. On the night of the gala, though, everything changed: the virus slipped its reins.

The number of sick people soon skyrocketed. Emergency rooms filled; antivirals, already running low, were quickly in direly short supply. Signs on hospital doors instructed noncritical patients to go home and self-quarantine. In some parts of the country, demand for doctors, nurses, anyone who could administer first aid, was so great that calls were put out for volunteers, who were promised antivirals if they’d be willing to help. (It wasn’t always explained that because S0111 was a novel virus, the medicine wouldn’t necessarily work.)

By then it had also been observed that some groups seemed less aphasic, and active efforts were undertaken by community organizers to find and enlist them. They sought the inured in specific places. Those in the deaf community who’d chosen to forgo cochlear implants appeared less likely to be infected. Likewise the small, outlying segment of the populace who considered themselves scholars, and the multilingual. Other groups had been almost entirely spared, most notably those with little access to technology, e.g., the Amish, some pockets of the Orthodox and Quakers, select subsets of the elderly and those in rural enclaves. But the recruiters who managed to find seemingly immune able-bodied adults were faced with another challenge: convincing those who’d intentionally renounced mainstream culture to help people with whom they felt little kinship.

Still, many did come forward, among them members of the Diachronic Society. But in most cases there wasn’t much they could do.
Dispense pain medicine. Say something soothing. Help patrol quarantines. Sometimes they stoically suffered through the task of helping tape the mouths of the wailing sick.

By the week before Christmas, deaths across the United States for those with S0111 had reached more than four thousand. And that didn’t include people killed in violent incidents unrelated to word flu. On the night of the gala, infected devices were commandeered as “zombies” and used in botnets that began a series of widespread infrastructure attacks. The websites of major news organizations, newspapers, and blogs froze or were off-lined. The Library of Congress’s digital archives were jammed. Attempted assaults were made on more secure networks—the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense, parts of the U.S. power grid. And a virus that in some ways resembled the Germ began moving through cyberspace, corrupting English “word-based content” at lightning speed. Many documents simply vanished: emails, medical records, court papers, deeds. Whole libraries gone instantly.

Of course, in those first days we knew almost nothing. Phineas insisted that we shelter in place. Not use Internet, phone, or any screens. It was unbearable. I spent hours pacing his apartment in a nomadic agony of worry about my mother, my friends, Bart. Doug. And after some shreds of news did get through, I wanted to go out and help. “You won’t be much help,” Phineas reminded me, “if the people who seem to be looking for you find you.”

What little we pieced together was stolen from brief, analog transmissions: hearsay, a few harried calls, reports on the BBC. (That was before Phineas, surprisingly swayed by anecdotes about the virus’s spoken transmissibility even though he didn’t use a Nautilus or Meme, decided that even landlines, cells, and the radio were too risky. “Can we be infected that way?” I asked, incredulous. “No,” he admitted. Then: “I don’t know. No.”) We also received some messages by pneumatic tube. It was from Susan that we learned of the surge in deaths, and of what has since become known as Silencing, a troubling and inexplicable muteness that strikes some of the sick after the aphasia runs its course.

The disaster also had other implications. A note Dr. Thwaite received from Tommy Keach read: “Go
now
to your safe-deposit box. Take an escort.” The banking system, he wrote, was in almost total disarray;
virtually no one could log on to accounts, including tellers—most of whom, of course, had long since been replaced by machines. On the rare occasions when a person could gain system entry, he didn’t want it: whole columns of his cash might have vanished overnight. Banks floundered to find precedent, deduce if they were on the hook. Inflation soon soared—suddenly bread was $28, $37, $55 a loaf. The value of the dollar dropped off a cliff, and exporters couldn’t exploit the fall: the borders had been more or less sealed off, because of both contagion risks and the new dangers of travel.

At least one plane crash was attributed to complications of the virus and cyberattacks. Black-box recordings haven’t yet confirmed the cause—a problem with the plane’s computer, faulty air-traffic control information, the negligence of a pilot sick with word flu—but 173 people died. All flights were grounded, at least at first. Airlines scrambled to find old, even dangerously outmoded planes, reinstate long-defunct traffic-control systems, and locate uninfected air and ground crews with the necessary experience. Airports hastened to set up new security measures. It was days before any flights resumed, and some unlucky souls tried getting out by boat. During just the second week of December, more than eighteen stowaways were found dead in container ships anchored offshore.

There were other casualties. Hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed in traffic accidents as cars dangerously accelerated, ran stop signs, veered off roads. There was a frenzy for precomputerized models; across the country, gas stations were stormed. Trains and subways were brought to a halt amid worries that faulty signals could cause derailments or crashes. New Yorkers had to brave grossly overstuffed buses or walk, sometimes eighty, ninety blocks. Ancient yellow cabs with actual drivers were impossibly hard to find.

Security systems were also faltering. All kinds of thefts—of homes, cars, identities—were proliferating. As were raids. Fighting. Homicides and riots. Hired guards and police patrolled wealthy neighborhoods like Phineas’s, but the Bronx was burning. Power and water were still in place—no one knew for how long. Phones flickered on and off. And that was just the news that had managed to trickle out from the nearly dismantled press.

Those were the reasons I couldn’t leave. Why I was stuck at Phineas’s for two weeks, cut off, quickly going crazy. I spent more time than
seemed possible doing almost nothing, listening anxiously to any jarring sounds on the street—shouting, squealing tires, barking dogs. Phineas lived very near the UN, and there were a number of embassies in the surrounding blocks. During the first days it seemed like there was a constant storm of slamming doors, alarms, thrumming activity. After that, though, there was mostly a cold, unholy quiet, like living inside snow. I listened in whenever Phineas talked through the door to neighbors, or on occasion invited them inside to share rumors and news or confer about security.

But there was just so much time to fill. And it was impossible to be in the same state of ragged anxiety at every moment. I did whatever I could to try to cure myself of worry. I spent hours drawing. Practiced kata and falling. Took some fitful naps with Canon. Read Phineas’s books: part of a Samuel Johnson biography, Larkin, Mark Twain, art books and catalogs: Charles Sheeler, Titian. Once Phineas hauled out an old black-and-white TV and we tried to focus on some Preston Sturges films he had on VHS tapes. We played a few distracted games of cribbage and chess. I thought of Christmas mornings, playing chess with Doug. Drinking Drambuie from tiny blue glasses. Vera reading us Dickens aloud.

It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world
, said Alice.
If this is the world at all
.

Twice I broke protocol and spoke to Vera, who said she was okay. That she’d be staying on Long Island for the time being, where things seemed relatively safe. At first she wanted me to try to join her, but then she agreed I should stay where I was; traveling seemed more dangerous than stasis.

I eventually managed to reach Theo and Coco, too, who were both all right. When I heard Coco’s voice, and that she was speaking clearly, I was so relieved that I had to bite my lip before I could talk.

“Cocoon,” I whispered. “I was so worried. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,
mignonne
,” Coco said, her words just as clotted with feeling as mine. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

But my consolation was short-lived. I couldn’t reach any of our other friends, and Coco told me that Audrey had gone into the hospital; she didn’t know which one. No one had heard anything about Ramona.

I also tried to reach Max, but without luck. I even made myself call his mother. “I guess you haven’t heard from him?” she asked, voice
betraying a thin meniscus of warmth. But when I said no, she replied, “Why am I not surprised,” and hung up.

We couldn’t get through to Vernon either (one of few calls Phineas had approved), and soon we found out why: on the morning of the sixth day, December 11, Clara Strange sent a note explaining that the U.K. and several other countries had temporarily blocked calls to and from the United States. As Phineas read the note aloud, I cut him off. Started to say, “How—” but my voice cracked. Canon chucked his wet nose into my palm.

“Don’t worry, chère Alice,” Phineas said, patting my knee. “We’ll get you there.” But I didn’t believe him. And my patience was running low faster than the cans in his pantry.

That night I did something Phineas had forbidden under threat of eviction: I sneaked out. Even more verboten: I went to see Bart. I’d tried calling him many times since arriving on Beekman Place; even before that, we hadn’t talked in days. But his phone hardly ever even rang. When it did, he didn’t answer, which put me in a panic. The few messages he’d left for me, though, were almost worse: it was nearly impossible to decipher what he meant. And by that sixth day he sounded not only aphasic but very sick.

When I finally reached him, the call was short. “Bart?” I said. “Are you all right?” And I could tell from the tone of his reply that he was trying to reassure me. But the sounds he made weren’t at all soothing.

“Please tell me the absolute truth,” I said firmly. “And remember how much I appreciate your honesty. Do you have a headache or fever?” I clenched my jaw. “Do you have the virus, Bart?” There was a terrible moment of silence. I closed my fist around my omnipresent tube of pills. Later I found out he’d been infected for four days.

“Tell me where you are,” I said. He tried not to give me his address, but when I reminded him that I could get it other ways—by going to the Dictionary or Doug’s, neither of which seemed very safe—he relented and told me. He had to repeat it half a dozen times.

I waited until after Phineas had gone to sleep; then, before I crept out through the darkroom door, I used a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer to cut my hair very short. I borrowed an old coat of Phineas’s. Took someone’s bike from the basement. And I made my way up—nearly 140 blocks—to Bart.

It was a hard and harrowing ride. Some blocks were so dark that
they looked like they’d lost power, but then I’d see a glowing
LIQUOR
marquee on a corner, or the paper-lantern light of a late-night bodega. On Broadway more windows glowed. But even some of those seemed to have the soft, liquid flicker of candlelight. Heaps of trash narrowed the sidewalks; it billowed in the streets. But it seemed like the trash of ghosts—I saw almost no one. And the few people I glimpsed did look like phantoms. Silhouetted in windows. Staring dark-eyed from under awnings. And Manhattan’s silence was like nothing I’d known. There were sounds—yowling cats; thrumming generators; things clattering in alleys; the lonely, heart-piercing scream of ambulance sirens. But it wasn’t the sound of my city.

Of the handful of cars I saw, nearly all drove very slowly, and even though I knew it was because the drivers were worried about other cars on the road, I felt each time as if I were being watched. Or followed. I wondered where the drivers had to go that was so important, burning up electricity or gas. And it made me pedal so fast my legs began to sting; the scab on my knee cracked open. But maybe even more frightening were the cars that careered like jets through intersections, with almost the same whine and roar. As they blew past, the back of my neck felt exposed and colder, my head too light without the shield of my hair.

But still I felt very focused—almost high. I went as fast as I could, eyes on the road, and arrived at Bart’s building near one in the morning.

I was two hours later than I’d said I’d be. And he didn’t answer the door. I pressed the button again and again, and soon I started to feel frantic. Imagined him stretched on the floor, unmoving. I jammed his buzzer a final time, then punched all of them. Nothing.

I got breathless; my ears began to ring. And even though I saw no one around, I thought I felt someone watching me. Out of desperation and fear, I finally tried the door. It opened with a loud click—the buzzer and lock both broken. I hauled the bike inside and ran up to Bart’s floor.