Correction: Tonight Is Not the Longest Night in the History of the Earth
Lately, I've enlisted an app on my phone to keep track
of the time that I can't witness—it maps the dark blanket
of missing consciousness, a jagged line. Best night/worst night,
it says, though I remember neither. I have been blessed
with sleep that comes on thick and steadily. Whatever
dreaming enters I don't recall. I wake to snow again—
sheets of static. I admit I have a soft spot
for the apocalypse. Some part of me must be totally rotten. Ever since
you introduced me to The Survivor Library, I've been
plotting disappearing acts—but green screen isn't
a way to go, just a way to fool the light. Blue screen,
on the other hand, the Blue Screen of Death, they call it—covered
in the white scrawl of encoded error. Enumerated,
particular in its lethality. Everyone knows
the only answer is to restart. Restart, yes, like the Survivor Library,
one man's catalogue of industrial development circa 1800-1900, in case
of nuclear detonation, solar flare. It must be true
what they say—that pain produces logic. Only five hours ago,
the Librarian posts about a near miss, a category 2 flare: This could have been
my last post and your last time on the Internet for a generation
or more. And across the ocean,
in Cambridge, the lights are out at the Center
for the Study of Existential Risk. The astrophysicist,
philosopher, and computer programmer that make up its ranks are
still asleep. The good news—Librarian, again—the good news is
we went to the moon with only a slide rule. A slide rule! You can
print one off the Internet, tuck it away in a drawer. And eyes, yes,
no one's seem to work very well anymore. Note: add something
on optometry. If anything, this compendium
is proof of our belief in loneliness, in its power—that what we can make
we can also stop from coming true. The thing is you're probably
asleep by now, but I have no way to verify this without
waking you. Spit in the wind near the ocean and which salt
returns? How to be sure if you've tasted it before? Remind me,
what is it we are still attempting to measure?
The apparatus, I assure you, is faulty. The apparatus barely holds
a charge anymore. The apparatus keeps forgetting
what we've asked it to locate, which universe
we inhabit, whether to start with the good news or the bad news, but
even the good news could only be the kind that comes
with a bad diagnosis. At least you know. At least—
Before the string of codes on the screen, a solid color
signals the fatal condition, a blue I'm learning
to read anew since it was updated from navy to cerulean,
from the Latin caelum for heaven, for nothing but sky.
Copyright Credit: Katie Willingham, "Correction: Tonight Is Not the Longest Night in the History of the Earth" from Unlikely Designs. Copyright © 2017 by Katie Willingham. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Unlikely Designs (The University of Chicago Press, 2017)