0:00

My

0:01

name is John Kling. Long

0:04

ago, sophomore year of college.

0:07

I took a psychology elective. and

0:10

the professor said something to us

0:12

that was so interesting to me, I I wrote it down.

0:15

He said about once in your

0:17

life, through no real fault

0:19

of your own, you'll find

0:22

you've descended into a situation,

0:25

a moment he called it. that's

0:27

completely insane. So

0:30

insane, it breaks

0:32

your reality.

0:33

Sometimes the moment is potentially

0:36

lethal. He said

0:39

the ones who make it through that

0:41

moment are the ones

0:43

who are quickest to stop disbelieving

0:46

it.

0:46

and start reacting. And

0:49

I think this is a story

0:52

of when that happened to me.

0:55

It was about twenty four years

0:57

ago today when I was thirty

1:00

three, that I first

1:02

set eyes on little Oberon. I

1:05

was doing my morning postal route in the

1:07

northeast quadrant of Grand County,

1:09

Colorado, went

1:10

on Kenanade Road in Beltonridge,

1:13

I

1:13

got caught behind, not one,

1:15

but two of those wide load

1:17

trailers hauling entire

1:19

modular homes on their backs.

1:22

newly minted and shiny. The

1:24

trailers were struggling down the road at

1:26

twenty miles an hour. Both

1:28

of them made a difficult

1:31

lumbering turn onto a semi

1:33

dirt road called educators lane,

1:35

and

1:35

it made their way into the forest a distance. leaving

1:38

me with the aggravation of having fallen

1:40

ten minutes behind on a routine

1:42

that was only ever delayed by heavy

1:45

snow or ice in the winter. I

1:47

assumed someone was finally building

1:49

on the vast lot no one had owned

1:52

since the county decided against preserving

1:54

a two room school house back there.

1:56

a remnant of a small settlement

1:58

of displaced in

1:59

nineteen seventy four. My

2:02

plans for a freight railroad that

2:04

never came to be Next

2:05

thing I knew, I was behind a wide

2:07

load trailer twice a week.

2:10

And my boss was telling me that a

2:12

new development was happening out there.

2:15

and I would be eventually servicing

2:17

it in my mail truck. About

2:19

six months after that first midday

2:22

delay, A silvery

2:24

bank of mailboxes went up, and

2:27

the tiny development was fully

2:29

inhabited. Twelve mailboxes

2:31

at all. standing at the edge of the

2:33

semi paved road leading around a bend

2:35

and out of a site. Somewhere down

2:37

the lane, those modular homes

2:39

squatted together in a mix of woods

2:42

and small open fields far

2:44

away from the nearest

2:46

gas station or grocery store.

2:50

noon ish on a bright day in

2:52

October of a sorting mail into

2:54

those boxes. My truck was

2:56

idling at the edge of the road. and a

2:58

woman appeared at the edge of

3:00

educators lane and gave me friendly

3:02

greeting in a pronounced southern

3:05

accent. This was

3:07

Gwenovir Herman out for

3:09

a stroll. Very

3:12

long prematurely trained hair.

3:14

She was two years older than me. I

3:16

lobed some questions about what brought

3:18

her to this new development, and

3:21

what she told me blew my mind. The

3:23

community had been dreamed up by one

3:25

man. A professor from the University

3:28

of Colorado, a man named doctor Richard

3:30

Madden, PhD. It

3:33

was a permanent retreat of

3:35

sorts for other professors, semi

3:37

retired scientists and other highly

3:40

educated thinkers. Quinavir

3:42

said, yeah, we're we're total eggheads. The

3:45

idea was to form a

3:47

housing collective where people from various

3:49

academic realms get together in a relaxed,

3:52

obligation free setting and challenge

3:54

themselves to think tank

3:56

their way through the world's problems, far away

3:58

from the demands of city

4:00

or even academic life.

4:02

A kind of brainiacs club where

4:04

the members lived and dined

4:06

and talked together most of the year

4:08

maybe writing a paper here and there, but nothing official.

4:11

No grants, no tax payer money, nothing

4:13

like Everyone there was generally

4:16

well off enough to teach maybe part time

4:18

The community was planned to max

4:21

out at fifteen or twenty of these

4:23

modular homes. No kids.

4:26

So far, Guinevere told me,

4:28

the activity had consisted mostly

4:30

of a lot of pot smoking and b

4:32

s ing, but Everyone was still

4:34

getting settled in and the real

4:36

deep dive community think outs

4:38

would get underway soon. Richard

4:41

Madden called the place Little Oberon as

4:43

a silly reference to the space

4:45

station that Charles and Hessons

4:47

cruising around in at the beginning of Planet of

4:49

the apes. Well,

4:51

let me tell you, when

4:52

Gwenavir first explained this all to

4:54

me that day two and a half decades

4:57

ago now, I just about

4:59

died of jealousy. I didn't tell

5:01

her this then, but I'd been in that

5:03

mail truck for the past seven years.

5:05

after bailing out of a master's program in

5:07

history at the University of Chicago,

5:10

moving back home to take care of my father and then

5:12

getting married. And the notion

5:14

of living in a community like

5:16

that, even if it might flop as a lot

5:18

of these things probably did, it

5:20

seemed like heaven. I could see myself

5:22

sitting around a campfire at night, tossing

5:24

ideas back and forth about class

5:27

conflict and mass media and

5:29

getting pleasantly stoned while doing

5:31

it. stuffing s'mores in

5:33

my face. Anyway, Gwen

5:35

and I felt like fast

5:37

friends from that very moment.

5:39

around her, I

5:41

I could slip back into my old

5:43

freshman mindset of

5:45

boundless curiosity and what

5:47

ifs. The mind said I'd sort of let

5:49

slip away as my responsibilities

5:52

in life had mounted. She was an

5:54

emory grad a sociologist with

5:56

a focus on agrarian populations

5:58

and economies in America.

5:59

She'd

6:01

been left a pretty decent fortune by her parents

6:03

and she and her husband, Roger,

6:06

an expert in Penology of all

6:08

things, had now moved

6:10

from a fancy brownstone in Savannah

6:12

to a factory built saltine

6:15

box sitting on glorified cinderblocks

6:17

in the grass. I didn't know

6:19

it just then, but he was pretty

6:21

ill with Gilead Barre

6:23

syndrome. He'd never

6:25

properly emerged from its mostly

6:27

treatable first stages, and

6:30

Gwen spent much for time helping him along

6:32

there is slowly escalating progression

6:34

of symptoms, extreme

6:36

fatigue, muscle weakness, vision

6:38

problems. I welcomed

6:40

her to Beltridge, one of the many

6:43

gateways to Rocky Mountain National Park,

6:46

and seat of the biggest income

6:48

disparities in the state. much

6:50

of which I saw up close on

6:52

my daily postal route. Little

6:54

Oberon itself felt very secluded, but

6:56

was only about two miles away from

6:58

a plethora of struggling farms

7:01

and four miles from the fading

7:03

mill town of Clover Pocket, population

7:06

ninety. I

7:08

was so punctual and predictable

7:11

that Gwen would wait for me at the mailboxes

7:13

once a week or so. She told

7:15

me the community's first real project

7:17

would be to address the question of

7:19

over development in small towns.

7:22

They wanted to conceive radical new

7:24

ideas to keep money flowing into

7:26

struggling places without turning

7:28

them into giant strip malls and

7:30

condo complexes. Notes

7:32

and emails and paper

7:35

would flow from home to home and

7:37

the colonists as I thought

7:39

of them. would all gather in a

7:41

central house once a day, five

7:43

days a week to discuss ideas

7:45

and theories. Food

7:47

apparently was always a big part of these

7:49

gatherings. and we're not talking takeout here.

7:52

Three months after they had all started thinking,

7:55

Gwen put into my hands a first

7:57

draft of what the community had written up

7:59

about a hundred and fifty pages long. I

8:02

asked her, so who's

8:04

this going to? And she just

8:07

shrugged and laughed and said, I

8:09

don't know. She invited

8:11

me to swing by for coffee whenever I felt like

8:13

it, and I told her I would since I was

8:15

definitely curious about the layout of the

8:17

place. but it was a long while

8:19

before our schedule synced up.

8:21

Finally, sometime near Christmas, I

8:23

took the truck after work over to her

8:25

little house. There

8:26

was only so much that the community could

8:28

do to spruce up the land, but to

8:31

me it was still kind of

8:33

idyllic. those little

8:35

modular houses nestled together in

8:37

two's and threes on bumpy

8:39

natural lots. They'd

8:41

vowed to not cut down any trees

8:43

along the educator's lane. The

8:46

lane petered out into a

8:48

wild field just about a mile after the

8:50

turn off from Kenanide road.

8:52

a few hundred yards shy of the old

8:54

abandoned schoolhouse. Gwen

8:57

walks me over to meet a couple of

8:59

her. fellow eggheads who

9:01

were in the middle of weather proofing their

9:03

cheap house a little better. We

9:05

stood around and bemoaned the fate of the

9:07

world and had a few laughs. and I

9:09

left feeling just as jealous as

9:11

before. The colony was about to

9:13

begin work on pondering

9:15

the growing power imbalance

9:18

between humans and animals in the world.

9:21

Good, deep, and through

9:23

posting trash talking. They had

9:25

three ecologists living there already who

9:27

were eager to dig into stuff like

9:29

that. The couple I'd met that afternoon had

9:31

referred to themselves and everyone

9:33

else who lived there as relentless

9:35

tree huggers. Human

9:37

and animal imbalance.

9:39

It sounded like such a huge

9:42

epic thought experiment, I went to

9:44

sleep the next few nights

9:46

pondering just what could result from a

9:48

study like that. I really

9:50

wanted to read it someday. So

9:53

that was little Obran in the

9:56

beginning. My route got

9:58

shifted the following spring, but I

10:00

traded with a fellow postman so I could

10:02

still deliver to the community three days

10:04

a month. I learned everyone's

10:06

names from the envelopes and junk

10:08

mail they got. and I got to

10:10

chat with Gwen at least once a

10:12

month. Sometimes I would even leave her a

10:14

message about when I was going to deliver.

10:17

up educators lane she would

10:19

trudge in shorts and sandals and

10:21

warm weather, and one time

10:23

stomping through six inches of

10:25

snow and a trench coat in boots. Sometimes

10:28

we'd swap classic rock

10:30

LPs. She introduced me

10:32

to Atlanta Rhythm section and I

10:34

introduced her to the mothers of invention.

10:37

And she had a pristine sunset

10:40

from the early sixties that weighed about

10:42

seventy pounds. I'd

10:44

always ask her what everyone was working

10:46

on. The ecologists had

10:48

really gotten a foothold. She said

10:50

one day with no negativity whatsoever.

10:53

they were still managing to kick around touchy

10:55

debates about the nation's

10:57

prison system and drug

10:59

policies. Not too many more

11:01

houses were brought in, and things

11:03

seemed nice and stable for them.

11:06

One time, it was in February.

11:09

I stayed at the central mail branch in Granby

11:11

until perhaps midnight after part of

11:13

the roof there collapsed from the

11:15

previous night's snow. and I

11:17

got detoured down candidate road on my

11:19

way home because of plowing. I

11:22

pulled over, you know, the Bank of Mailboxes

11:24

outside a little Obran, and I

11:26

decided to enjoy late night

11:28

walk in. The

11:30

colonists had bought their own plow because

11:32

the county didn't maintain educators'

11:34

lane. Apparently, the guy

11:36

who knew how to work at best and cleared the road

11:38

whenever it was necessary, was

11:41

once shortlisted for a Nobel Prize

11:43

in Economics. I always love

11:45

to tell people at work this fact. I don't know

11:47

why. So I strolled

11:49

on packed snow down the lane,

11:51

past the modular houses, happy as

11:53

can be. Still more than

11:55

a few lights on that light as

11:57

the thinkers stayed up. And, of in

11:59

my mind, they weren't just watching Jeopardy

12:02

or cleaning. They were all in

12:04

deep thought, studying

12:06

and writing at roll top

12:08

desks until dawn. The

12:10

sky was full of

12:12

stars, and I walked all the way down to the

12:14

field near where the schoolhouse

12:16

was. but there were eight inches of snow

12:18

there and that's as far as I could go.

12:20

I watched about a dozen deer

12:22

walk across the field. completely

12:25

confident in their separation from

12:27

humankind. And I

12:29

watched a big fox investigating

12:32

the strange, cold, white

12:34

phenomenon all around, like, it had never

12:36

seen snow before. one

12:38

of my fondest memories is

12:41

heading back toward my truck and seeing

12:43

someone coming down the lane,

12:46

bundled up, walking a dog, and

12:49

realizing it was Gwen herself. She was

12:51

walking her neighbor's irritating poodle

12:53

while he was away at a conference. And

12:55

both of us wondered what the hell

12:57

the other was doing out here so late.

12:59

And we laughed like we were

13:01

college kids with our whole lives ahead

13:03

of us. I never

13:05

did tell her that there was always a

13:07

poignant tug for me when I

13:09

was on educator's lane. I'd

13:12

realized at some point as an

13:14

adult that the real

13:16

reason I dropped out of college

13:19

was because I really thought back then that

13:21

I was smarter than

13:23

everyone else. I thought there was

13:25

nothing anyone could teach

13:27

me. I didn't need their lessons

13:29

or their rules. And

13:31

those chances, those

13:33

open roads, I once had in the

13:35

palm of my hand felt

13:38

gone now. All I

13:40

felt I had left of those

13:42

days was occasionally using

13:44

big words to sound like I was super

13:46

educated, plus the

13:49

academia fantasies walking in

13:51

little Oberon gave me.

13:53

I hope I'm not using big words

13:55

obnoxiously too much in

13:57

this story. Anyway,

14:00

the time crept by

14:02

as it does, my

14:05

wife had a baby which

14:07

we'd conceived a little unexpectedly, and

14:11

Gwen dove into writing a book

14:13

about water conservation. in

14:15

addition to hitting up a lot of the community's

14:17

work and traveling to do research. And

14:19

we sort of lost touch a little, but

14:22

There were random times when she still

14:24

appeared at the mailboxes, keeping an

14:26

eye out for me. Around

14:28

the fall of two thousand and

14:30

eight, I think it was. I noticed

14:33

that there had been more turnover

14:35

than usual in the names on the

14:37

mailboxes. In a one day

14:39

when Gwen caught me at the right time,

14:41

we stood looking out over candidate road

14:43

discussing it. Frankly,

14:46

she said a couple of the more

14:48

recent arrivals had brought a bit of a

14:50

dark cloud with them. Unlike

14:52

Richard Madden and most of the original

14:54

founders of the colony, these

14:56

folks were pretty

14:58

pessimistic about the fate of the world and human

15:00

beings in general. And some

15:02

of their more dour theories brought

15:05

them into conflict with some of the other

15:07

thinkers. there had been a recent civilized

15:10

falling out or too, hence the turnover.

15:13

Gwen and her husband were still committed to the

15:15

ideals of pure

15:17

thought and intellectual expression that had

15:19

kept little Obalon cozy for

15:21

years. And she seemed

15:23

excited when she told me about some of the papers

15:25

they produced. I even remember the title of

15:27

one, wildlife domain

15:30

survival among the American

15:32

superhighway system. There

15:35

were about

15:36

ten fewer people there overall in

15:38

two thousand eight, down from

15:40

the original thirty five or so.

15:43

I happened to meet Little Oberon's

15:45

founder, Richard Madden himself,

15:47

about a year later. When

15:50

I was sorting mail into the boxes and

15:52

sneaking a little Christmas card in there for

15:54

Gwen, I saw a jeep with an

15:56

almost completely severed muffler

15:58

near the edge of the lane. a very

16:00

tall, stocky

16:02

man with shoulder length gray hair and

16:04

a gray beard was looking at it kind of

16:06

the funneled. he just hit one

16:08

of educators' lanes, many

16:10

potholes, and shaking his muffler

16:12

free. Fixing those holes wasn't

16:14

easy, and they weren't doing such a great job keeping

16:16

on top of them. He said,

16:18

oh, he must be Gwen's rock

16:20

friend. Told me he was thinking of getting an

16:22

LP player himself now after Gwen

16:24

and Roger had played Chelsea Girl

16:26

for him. Nice guy

16:28

took the muffler thing and stride. Looked like

16:30

he should be out hunting Elk somewhere,

16:32

a real mountain type

16:34

physically. He had some

16:36

unfortunate news to impart that

16:38

day, which was that he

16:40

was leaving a little over on

16:42

sometime in the next few weeks. I

16:44

couldn't help but ask him why.

16:46

He said, oh, maybe the idea

16:48

just had a shelf life.

16:51

I took that to me and everyone was packing up and

16:53

he said, no, no, just me at the

16:55

moment.

16:56

Then I remember he

16:58

looked up at that cold winter

17:01

sky looking sad. And

17:03

he said, or maybe I

17:05

just don't understand people the

17:07

way I thought. So

17:09

there it was about six years

17:11

after he'd founded the colony, he was

17:13

finally headed out. We shook hands and

17:15

I told him I was truly impressed with

17:18

his original idea

17:20

however it wound up. I thought it

17:22

would be the

17:24

only time I'd ever see him,

17:26

but I was wrong. In

17:28

two thousand ten, just

17:31

before I lost even the part time

17:33

aspect of the Khanate road

17:35

route. A new name appeared on

17:37

one of those mailboxes. I saw it only

17:39

because I went out of my way to drive by a

17:41

little Obran. It had just been

17:43

so long since I did back.

17:46

The name was doctor Sebastian

17:49

Berkel. One of the last

17:51

times I saw a Gwen during

17:53

that period She told me Merkel

17:55

was kind of a polarizing figure

17:57

in the scientific realm.

17:59

Some people, like Richard Madden,

18:02

considered him a visionary genius.

18:04

Other people thought he was a bit of a fraud.

18:06

There'd been some controversy about

18:09

Cornell not offering him tenure a

18:11

couple of years before, leading to his

18:13

premature retirement and relocation

18:16

west. Within two weeks

18:18

of settling there, Gwen said, he'd

18:20

already spoken up on some very

18:22

different ideas about what problems the

18:24

colony should be focusing on.

18:26

and

18:26

about getting more practical with their work. She

18:29

thought more

18:29

people would probably be leaving before the

18:32

place became a real think

18:34

tank. obligated to take their ideas

18:36

public or God forbid,

18:38

make literal sense of the crazy

18:40

quilt of ideas they brought together.

18:44

She perked herself out by insisting I come

18:46

over to the house for a few minutes

18:48

to try out a new molasses

18:50

cookie recipe she'd been torturing her

18:52

husband with. I went, Roger

18:54

was there looking

18:57

thin and weak because of

18:59

his chronic illness, but cheerful

19:01

enough. The

19:02

cookies were not

19:04

great, but

19:06

the company was

19:08

pretty

19:08

priceless. It

19:11

was true. People began to leave a little

19:13

Oberon kind of en masse

19:15

after that. On my way

19:17

to my kid's new school sometimes, I

19:20

would drive past the mailboxes and some

19:22

of them were simply taken down

19:24

little by little as if

19:26

someone had realized the population of

19:28

little Oberon wouldn't ever be coming

19:30

back to its old level. Gwen

19:33

stayed though, thank god.

19:35

I thought her leaving would have

19:38

been too sad a thought for me to deal with.

19:40

You see,

19:41

somehow she'd

19:43

wound up being my only real

19:46

adult friend. When

19:48

you're in college or in

19:50

your twenties, it seems impossible that you

19:52

could wind up a little

19:55

lonely even with a happy

19:57

marriage going on, but I'm here to

19:59

tell you. Even the

20:00

friends you used to be closest

20:02

with get

20:03

slowly drawn away into

20:05

their own kingdoms because

20:08

whose kingdoms need such tending.

20:12

By twenty twelve or so,

20:14

with Gwen and I both

20:17

ensconced in the temperate

20:19

prairie of our forties.

20:21

There were only about twelve

20:23

mailboxes left in the colony, and only about six

20:25

of the residents were part of the original

20:28

group. We're all

20:30

human and animal power balance all

20:33

the time now. Gwen told me before

20:35

what I didn't know then was about to be a

20:37

very long time of being out of

20:39

contact with her. We're on the

20:41

phone and called her to see how she was

20:43

doing digging out after the big storm

20:45

of twenty fourteen. twenty

20:47

two inches of snow dumped on those little

20:51

houses. She and everyone else had dug

20:53

out okay, but she

20:55

clearly wasn't very happy with some of the

20:57

people who had come in. She used

20:59

terms like bunker

21:01

mentality. and called some of their

21:04

writing

21:04

defeatism porn. She

21:06

said, Sebastian gets obsessed

21:09

with these cataclysmic ecological

21:12

scenarios. This is what got him guided

21:14

not so gently out of Cornell.

21:17

She wanted me to read one of the colony's

21:20

latest monographs, so

21:22

she dropped a PDF to me in

21:24

an email. I noticed how

21:26

she used the word there,

21:28

not hour. I

21:31

read most of the thing. one

21:33

hundred and eighty pages of fairly dire

21:35

stuff about well intentioned conservation

21:38

designs throughout history that had gone

21:41

nowhere. very well written and

21:43

reasoned, plenty of references

21:45

to academic texts

21:47

I'd never heard of. They'd all

21:49

spent months shuffling around to each other's

21:51

houses debating the reality of

21:53

the sixth mass extinction.

21:55

Into the monograph ended on a

21:58

dark note. envisioning a world

21:59

where global warming, industrialization

22:02

and simple

22:05

human selfishness. might bring about the

22:07

destruction of so many animal species

22:09

that humans would go

22:11

power mad with their own dominance of the

22:13

animal kingdom itself. using

22:16

technology to essentially turn the planet

22:18

into a giant hyper

22:20

controlled zoo. Most

22:22

everyone in Little Obran had appended their names to the

22:24

front page of this monograph like they usually

22:27

did. Sebastian Merkel's

22:29

name was at the top. in

22:31

a larger font than anyone else.

22:33

The whole thing did have a very

22:35

different tone than seemed in keeping

22:38

with the what? The free spiritedness

22:40

I'd felt in the colony in the early days

22:42

a decade before. Hell,

22:44

Richard Madden would even occasionally draw

22:47

these crude little single panel

22:50

cartoons in the first monographs they'd

22:52

produced just because, but

22:54

that was then and this

22:57

was now.

22:59

When I brought a

22:59

tin of Christmas cookies to Gwen in

23:01

twenty fifteen, there was

23:03

to my surprise,

23:05

a gate in front of the entrance

23:08

to educators lane. Not a

23:10

locked gate, not an

23:12

attended gate. just a swinging thing

23:14

about three feet high, anyone

23:16

could easily push through its long metal

23:18

arms if they wanted. But I

23:20

wondered why it should even be

23:22

there. I got out of my car and pushed it open and drove through

23:25

it. A half mile past the

23:27

bend, Gwen, jokingly called dead

23:29

man's curve, There

23:31

was a note on the door of her house. It was

23:33

actually intended for one of her neighbors,

23:35

saying she and Roger were in Santa Fe

23:37

for a couple of days at CHRISTUS

23:39

St. Vincent Hospital. So I left

23:41

the cookies on her step. Looking

23:44

around, everything

23:46

seemed so quiet. In

23:48

the distance, the cloud cover had withdrawn enough so I

23:50

could see the mountains and all

23:53

their intimidating glory. With

23:56

fewer and fewer people in little

23:58

Obalon now, it's isolation didn't

24:01

feel at least to an outsider

24:04

like me. like the

24:06

convivial campground, and it

24:08

seemed like when I'd first driven into it

24:10

so many years before. It

24:12

was after all technically in

24:14

the wilderness, and it felt

24:17

lonely to me now. I

24:19

drove back to the little entrance gate,

24:22

but smugly, I didn't get out

24:24

and swing the arms closed behind

24:26

me. It not

24:29

to. In

24:32

January of twenty

24:34

sixteen, My

24:36

son was swallowing pool water

24:38

in the junior swimming championships in

24:41

Colorado Springs, and

24:43

my new daughter was

24:45

already changing these settings on her mom's

24:47

iPad. I hadn't

24:48

been to educators lane

24:50

in a long time. having

24:52

moved to Walden after Vanessa's birth,

24:55

going to die

24:56

at exchanged Christmas

24:58

cards and very occasional texts

25:01

since then. Adding

25:02

a little note to each one about how we were doing, but nothing

25:05

more. She hinted that these

25:06

would likely be her last day as a little

25:09

Obrahn, but change

25:11

of address never seemed to come.

25:13

I understood a thing or two about nesting,

25:16

the

25:16

pull of the comforting

25:18

and familiar when the years start to

25:20

mount up. One cold,

25:23

bleak day I was asleep on my

25:25

sofa in a living room at

25:27

about noon. The

25:27

kids were at school, buying Castorama, and steamboat

25:30

daytime. My wife was in

25:31

her workspace downstairs, and I was

25:33

resting from kind of a grueling day on

25:36

the job. My phone

25:38

rang. To my

25:38

great surprise, it was Gwen. The

25:41

first time we'd actually spoken

25:43

in years, We

25:45

didn't have much in the way of preliminaries

25:47

because she sounded a

25:49

little hurried and a little

25:51

upset. After asking about

25:53

Jennifer and the kids, she asked me right off if

25:55

I could maybe meet her in Craig,

25:57

about ten miles

25:58

from Little

25:59

Oberon. because there was some

26:00

stuff she wanted to tell me about the

26:03

colony, stuff she really wanted to

26:05

get off her back. I

26:07

said, sure. How about I just come all the way to

26:10

you? And she said, no, not such a

26:12

great idea at the moment. And so

26:14

I drove to Craig. dive

26:16

bar there called the silver hammer.

26:19

Worried about Gwen's tone on the

26:21

phone. I'd never heard her be so

26:23

serious it was unsettling. It

26:25

started

26:25

to sleep just as I got to the

26:28

bar. There were absolutely no

26:30

customers in the place except to go in

26:32

herself. There she was.

26:34

totally gray now. Having made no

26:36

effort to dye her hair or anything, that wasn't

26:38

her style.

26:40

looking Looking a little frail and

26:42

tired, but otherwise, Much the same as

26:44

I remembered her from our first introduction,

26:48

thirteen years before. Big

26:50

smile when I sat down, big

26:52

hug, just like she used to do. She had a

26:54

funny thing where she would put her hands on the

26:56

back of your head when she hugged, like she wanted to

26:58

give your skull a little feel.

27:00

It was just after we spent a couple of minutes

27:03

with niceties that the

27:04

cloud came over her and stayed

27:06

there for a full hour and

27:09

a half And she began to tell me the

27:11

story of all that had happened after the

27:13

arrival of Sebastian Merkel,

27:15

a little Obran. Let's see if

27:17

I can remember all the details she

27:19

gave me that afternoon and not

27:21

just the vivid memories of

27:23

the Gallagher Machine in the bathroom

27:26

and England Dan and John Ford Colley playing

27:28

on the speaker above us and

27:30

sleep tapping at the window behind

27:32

Quinn's head. the

27:34

window with the big black sticker in the

27:36

corner, a silhouette of

27:38

a grizzly bear.

27:40

Since two thousand twelve, the

27:43

Berkeleyists, as Gwen called

27:45

them,

27:45

had exerted an ever stronger influence

27:47

on the papers the community produced.

27:49

I already knew that. It

27:51

wasn't too long before the sole focus

27:54

of the scholars who still lived there

27:56

was to figure out a way to actively

27:59

correct the

27:59

power

27:59

relationship between humans and

28:02

animals before the

28:04

latter's enslavement. Gwen

28:06

had still been able to pull some of little

28:09

Obran's sharpest minds into her own

28:11

ruminations and monographs

28:13

on agricultural sustainability,

28:15

but less and less. Until

28:18

Sebastian Merkel himself had sat her

28:20

down and asked her

28:22

to please devote herself full time to

28:24

the core thought work he thought they

28:26

should be doing, as it involved a

28:29

lot of rigorous reeducation

28:31

for the scholars there who had come in

28:33

with less grounding in the sciences.

28:36

The balance and expertise and

28:38

little LeBron had shifted greatly.

28:40

No longer was there a smattering

28:42

of PhDs in political

28:44

science or sociology? ecologists

28:47

and chemists and even

28:49

a prominent meteorologist. That was who

28:51

made up a little Obran after twenty

28:54

fourteen. real problem

28:55

for Gwen wasn't what they wanted to work

28:57

on. It was the tone of the work.

28:59

Some of these

28:59

people, she said, may have been among

29:01

the top minds in their fields.

29:04

but they seemed to have come to the colony

29:06

after professional difficulties elsewhere

29:09

and their views leaned toward

29:11

the extreme. One professor from

29:13

Penn State had self

29:15

published a couple of very unusual

29:17

and dubious books about the concept

29:19

of tectonic warfare.

29:22

something I heard of. And someone else,

29:24

a PhD in zoology,

29:26

had left the University of Minnesota

29:28

after starting a website openly

29:31

decrying their allegedly

29:33

narrow views on global

29:35

species extinction. Kind of

29:37

a crude and classless maneuver

29:39

in Gwen's view. And then there was

29:42

Sebastian Merkel, undoubtedly

29:44

brilliant, but seemingly

29:46

unable

29:46

to see any good in

29:48

anyone. any

29:50

human system.

29:51

Always convinced that slow

29:54

progress across generations was

29:56

a course doomed for corruption.

29:58

he

29:58

believed and wrote

29:59

extensively that drastic

30:02

actions were what changed

30:04

history, revolutions, shock

30:07

tactics, even failed ones. These

30:09

were what it took to really

30:11

shift thought paradigms.

30:14

Scientific martyrdom, Gwen

30:17

called it. It was wearying to her

30:19

into the original colonists of Little

30:21

Oberon. The debates between them

30:23

and the Berkeleyists just didn't seem to

30:25

go anywhere.

30:26

Berkelists were shouters. Gwen

30:30

said, staring into her chin at the silver

30:32

hammer. She and

30:33

her old friends were

30:35

not. So the Berkeleys

30:37

more or less to control,

30:39

and they seem to slowly

30:41

forget the notion of pure thought

30:43

and the beauty of ideas without

30:46

consequence, they wanted to

30:49

do something. do

30:51

something to save the

30:53

world. I told her

30:55

I'd spotted

30:56

Sebastian Berkel in a hardware store

30:59

over a nanny sit a few years before. I'd

31:01

been near the counter and I looked up

31:03

kind of startled when he gave his name to

31:05

the cashier for a pickup of

31:07

what looked like special padlock,

31:10

an electronic padlock, came to like

31:12

three hundred bucks. That night, I'd

31:14

look them up online, including a

31:16

couple of photos, I told

31:19

Gwen my impression was that he hadn't

31:21

aged so well since about two thousand

31:23

five, which was when he'd last

31:25

been on the faculty at Cornell.

31:28

said

31:28

his face struck me in

31:30

a very particular way like

31:32

he'd become

31:32

a heavy drinker, to be honest.

31:35

Gwen nodded. Yeah.

31:37

She

31:37

said, he drank a lot, but he never

31:39

seemed drunk, never got

31:41

upset himself. That

31:44

was

31:44

more more Enrique,

31:46

she said. She was referring to

31:48

a very young biology wizard who'd gotten

31:50

there in twenty fifteen. Inrique

31:52

Coesta, young in

31:54

a fiery, a genius

31:56

who

31:56

had no interest in staying

31:58

attached a very long to

32:01

any one university or

32:03

even human relationship. The

32:05

way she referred to

32:07

him throughout her telling of the story, I

32:09

got this sense that just maybe

32:12

she'd had some kind of unspoken,

32:14

unconsummated

32:16

thing with him. and it had

32:19

affected her. After

32:20

one particular series of discussions on

32:23

the sixth extinction had

32:25

gotten much to apocalyptic for

32:27

Gwen's taste. She told

32:29

Sebastian Merkel that she was going to be taking a

32:31

year off from the group. she intended

32:34

to stay in

32:34

her house and pay more

32:36

attention to what her husband needed. Roger

32:39

by that time was mostly confined to a

32:42

wheelchair. frustrating the legions of doctors

32:44

who tried to help him recover from

32:46

Guyan Baray, which had been

32:48

exacerbated by a case of

32:50

Lyme disease. She needed

32:52

to cocoon herself from the stress of

32:54

a splintering community and lie low

32:56

for a while. Merkel said that, of

32:58

course, Quinn was free to do as

33:00

she choose. Gwen

33:01

realized then that Merkel didn't want

33:03

her there at all, really. She

33:05

thought her

33:05

presence made him and some of

33:08

the others uncomfortable. Literally

33:12

two days after Gwen told him of

33:14

her intentions, there was a freak

33:16

occurrence that somehow changed

33:18

things for the worse. At

33:20

four

33:20

o'clock, one afternoon, Sandra

33:23

Mehta, forty

33:24

years old, little

33:25

Oberon resident since twenty twelve,

33:28

A

33:28

wonder kind surgeon who had later become a

33:30

scholar of animal physiology, came

33:33

stumbling down educators' lane from

33:35

the direction of the experiment trail.

33:38

yelling and terror and pounding on the door of

33:40

the first modular house she came to.

33:43

When she was safe inside

33:44

at her wounds had been tended

33:47

to, She

33:47

told everyone she'd out walking the trail when she

33:49

heard a whooping sound nearby.

33:52

There was a rush of wings and

33:54

suddenly something had hooked

33:57

violently into the back of

33:59

her neck. After a flash

34:01

of pain, her whole body was knocked

34:03

off balance and everything went dark as

34:05

something's body. ingulked her

34:07

head. She felt herself dragged

34:10

forward, losing control before the

34:12

talons of

34:14

an owl. lost

34:15

their grip on her head, and

34:17

it flew off. Blood was

34:19

flowing freely down her neck.

34:21

She

34:21

started to run, but theowl

34:24

swooped back delivering an audible hooting warning, but

34:26

then arcing down right into her

34:28

face, talons

34:30

out. Her

34:32

left eyebrow was torn and she frantically pounded the

34:34

owl away tearing off down the trail,

34:36

coming out near the old school house.

34:39

It was kind of

34:40

thing that simply could happen there

34:42

at the base of the mountains.

34:44

Santra Mehta confided

34:45

to Gwen that she

34:47

was especially affected because it mimicked a dream she'd had

34:49

for years about death coming for her in the

34:52

forest when she'd made a bad

34:54

decision to

34:56

be there. Sebastian

34:57

Burkel seemed to give this unusual

35:00

attack a significance

35:03

Gwen didn't understand. He

35:05

excused

35:05

himself from that week's series of

35:08

discussions and became strangely

35:10

secluded for a while. At

35:12

some point, he revealed from Wales,

35:15

named Broaderic Davith, to

35:17

live in

35:18

the community. and

35:21

he talked about this man's research ecology as if it

35:23

were the most important thing the world

35:25

had ever seen. Here came

35:27

broader davith just two

35:30

weeks later. He was about seventy

35:32

then, not at all friendly.

35:33

He intended to live separately from

35:35

the community on a parcel of land just

35:37

to the east.

35:40

twelve acres, Sebastian had bought a couple of years before,

35:42

as an investment he'd said.

35:44

Aside from that, Davith

35:47

wasn't talked about much. he

35:49

was almost never seen. Gwen

35:52

would watch for the man's weird,

35:54

tough, of screaming, red hair. He

35:56

insisted on dying

35:58

it intensely. In twenty sixteen, Gwen

35:59

and Roger became the

36:00

last of the original colonists as

36:03

her old neighbors, the

36:05

ones I'd met, had left

36:08

somewhat hastily, and seeing no

36:10

words about how disturbed they were at the

36:12

direction things had taken.

36:14

After they were gone, the scheduled

36:16

meetings and wrap sessions

36:18

gradually ceased. No new

36:20

projects were formed, and

36:22

the place became very quietly

36:25

nothing more than a dozen or so people

36:27

living their own lives and communicating

36:29

in ones and twos about things

36:31

that weren't freely shared. Upkeep

36:33

on the property itself continued to

36:36

fade. The place felt

36:37

like it had died.

36:40

Gwen said, And the broader Acadafeth

36:42

worried her. She told me, it was the

36:44

first time she'd used a word

36:45

like that, not confused or

36:48

frustrated, but

36:50

worried. outwardly, he seemed like

36:51

one of those impenetrable scholars

36:54

who felt safer just shutting down

36:56

on human beings, unable to deal

36:58

with them.

37:00

but there

37:01

was a secrecy and an evasiveness that

37:03

he and Sebastian Berkel had

37:05

cultivated in a

37:08

little over that made her think they were working together on something they even

37:10

tell some of the other Berkeleyists about.

37:12

The other property that

37:14

Merkel had bought

37:16

a half hour hike down the Spirit Trail was alluded

37:18

to as where Davith lived and worked

37:20

in seclusion, but no one but Merkel

37:22

ever seemed to be invited there.

37:26

Gwen, stop talking about community projects anymore,

37:28

wouldn't even inquire about them

37:30

on the most general level.

37:33

The

37:33

Berkeley seemed to sense her

37:36

uneasiness, but instead of trying to make her feel

37:38

better about it, they'd only

37:40

withdrawn from her. treated

37:41

her like someone to be

37:43

endured a burden. I finally said

37:45

to her there in the bar, let

37:47

me help you get out of there.

37:49

but she told me about a complication

37:51

that was keeping her in

37:54

place.

37:54

Sandra made her had

37:56

some time ago expressed an interest in Roger's

37:59

medical case. He'd become depressed

38:01

over the years trying various treatments

38:03

for his illness traveling

38:06

the west for consultation after consultation and

38:08

he was exhausted from it, wanting only

38:10

to live

38:10

out his days inside the house in

38:13

the most peaceful setting possible. a

38:15

tragic attitude from someone just to fifty

38:17

five or so. Doctor

38:20

Mehta, who was a serious

38:22

practitioner of holistic medicine had started him on an

38:24

experimental series of herbal

38:26

treatments based mostly on root

38:28

of turmeric,

38:30

kudzu

38:31

extract and very low doses of

38:33

arsenic, augmented by an

38:35

unusual course of sonic

38:38

vibration therapy

38:40

based partially on the research of none other than broderick

38:44

Daffith,

38:44

who Gwen still almost never

38:46

saw. At

38:48

first, Gwen had fought against this program, but

38:51

Roger had responded to it

38:53

slowly at first, then

38:56

almost stunningly well over the course

38:58

of six months. It had almost

39:00

made Gwen rethink her understanding of

39:04

traditional medicine. And if the

39:06

new stress of living in little Oberon came with this continuing

39:08

benefit, she didn't quite want

39:10

to mess that up yet. She

39:14

apologized for being so dramatic. She

39:16

just wanted a friendly face to talk to

39:18

about it all. She talked on the phone a lot with

39:20

her sister in Georgia, but it wasn't quite

39:23

the same. I assured her

39:26

I'd swing by within the

39:28

month, but she was firm that I

39:30

not do that that I go back to

39:32

my routine and she'd call me if she really needed the company.

39:34

She said there in the bar,

39:37

We're not twenty one, and we're not even thirty

39:40

five. And I'm not going

39:41

to add to a fellow

39:43

adults daily mental

39:46

load. I

39:47

think the best present friends can

39:49

give each other in

39:50

big adult life

39:52

is just

39:53

goodwill without

39:56

obligation. I

39:57

knew what she was saying. I didn't even deny

39:59

good will without obligation.

40:03

I had one kid with concerning

40:06

emotional problems and another with

40:08

a newly diagnosed hearing

40:10

handicap, and I had my

40:12

hands full. most days were just about keeping

40:14

that tiny little paper

40:16

boat

40:16

upright on the river

40:18

of life. You know what I mean?

40:21

Before we left

40:22

the bar, Gwen

40:24

didn't make me laugh with her dramatic

40:26

recap of the awful

40:29

new reality shows. She kept succumbing to.

40:31

We hope to goodbye, and

40:32

after we picked up our lives, it would

40:35

only be very occasional texts

40:38

between us. I'll pretty

40:40

upbeat

40:41

you sure and reassurance

40:42

and time slipping

40:45

by slipping by with

40:47

no

40:47

invitation to come to little Obrond to

40:50

say hi, pop in

40:51

for hot cocoa, debate to

40:53

the merits of the white

40:56

album maybe. That never did

40:58

come. Gwen

40:59

never asked to meet up again so she

41:01

could fill me in on what was

41:03

happening in the colony. So I began

41:05

to assume everything had down. I'd been promoted out of the

41:07

mail truck and into

41:09

full time management. and

41:12

I no longer drove down candidate road even once in a while.

41:14

It was kind of far away.

41:16

Finally,

41:17

in twenty eighteen, came

41:19

an text

41:20

message with a smiley face emoji.

41:22

We're moving

41:23

Gwen tight. Off to

41:25

a borderline

41:26

commune situation in Fort

41:28

Collins, but with ignorant youngens

41:30

this time, lots of terrible

41:32

poetry probably couldn't

41:34

be more excited.

41:36

Roger is doing well.

41:38

I

41:38

got a postcard from her when she settled in I sent her a

41:41

bottle of wine my wife picked out.

41:43

At the bottom of

41:45

my welcome card, I made

41:47

an offhand jokey reference to

41:50

a local news story I'd noticed

41:52

just a

41:54

month before. Doctor Sebastian Berkel had been

41:56

arrested for drunk and

41:58

disorderly conduct in clover

42:00

pocket after an altercation on the

42:02

street with.

42:04

Dr. Sandra Mehta. No charges actually

42:08

filed. Strangely, Gwen never

42:10

responded to

42:12

that. then I thought, well, I shouldn't have even mentioned it.

42:14

Little Obran was officially in

42:16

the past for her and for myself

42:20

too. until

42:21

November twenty fifth two thousand

42:23

twenty

42:26

two. It was about

42:28

ten o'clock Friday night and I

42:30

was sitting in my living room watching the price's

42:32

right of all things. Jennifer

42:34

and the kids had stayed in Ohio after

42:36

Thanksgiving Day and I'd flown back

42:38

to go right back to work in the weekend.

42:41

The alone time

42:41

was kind of delightful, of course, five

42:43

days to myself. But

42:46

just before the showcase showdown, my phone

42:49

began to chime once every

42:51

five or six seconds. I

42:54

walked into the kitchen to track it down a little alarmed because the chimes

42:57

just did not stop. Someone

42:59

was sending me a big

43:01

block of texts. It

43:04

was Gwen, the first time I'd

43:06

even heard from her in four years

43:08

since her moved to Fort Collins,

43:11

We just drifted revocably

43:14

apart, no harm, no

43:16

foul, no blame.

43:18

Her very texts after that

43:21

long drought of communication said, it's

43:23

you know who. Let's get

43:25

together later later this week

43:28

this I'm paying a visit to Little Oberon

43:30

tomorrow, first time and

43:32

forever. Then the next

43:33

one said, much more

43:35

to tell later.

43:37

something bad is happening.

43:40

On the

43:40

heels of this came photos

43:43

that had been sent

43:45

to her unexpectedly by Enrique Coesta,

43:47

some weeks before, Enrique

43:50

Coesta, the brash overconfident

43:52

genius she'd mentioned to me

43:56

and had long since fallen out of touch with.

43:58

He'd once been a devout

43:59

breakfast, but I learned

44:02

later he'd left the

44:04

colony quietly. six months

44:06

before. I texted

44:07

Gwen back. Awesome to know you're

44:10

still conquering the universe.

44:12

I can go with you tomorrow if you

44:14

want. but

44:15

to this response was,

44:17

nah, it's not your fight. I'll

44:19

be cool. There

44:22

were no captions for the four

44:24

photos of Little Obran as it stood

44:26

when they'd been taken, no, commentary.

44:29

Two of them were just wide

44:31

shots of the few remaining modular

44:34

houses. The colonists had long ago all entered an agreement

44:36

not to sell to outsiders, to

44:38

buy cheaply instead, sell

44:41

only to other academics wanted

44:43

to replace them in the community

44:45

and responsibly raise if the

44:47

time came. There had been a

44:49

lot of raising in the past six

44:52

years looked like. I

44:54

wondered

44:54

at first why Gwen had bothered to forward

44:56

me these photos, but later I figured

44:59

out that Just

44:59

like Enrique Costa had done for

45:02

her, she was trying to

45:04

paint a silent picture for me as

45:06

best as

45:08

she could. Those innocuous photos were so

45:10

visceral somehow. Much

45:12

more to tell later. something

45:15

bad is

45:18

happening. The lack

45:18

of explanation for the last two

45:21

photos was especially troubling. One

45:22

showed a cheap looking warehouse type of building erected in

45:25

the middle of an unfamiliar clearing.

45:27

The place had the

45:30

look of an

45:31

auto body shop but completely unlocked

45:33

in the windows. The very

45:36

last picture had, for whatever reason, zoomed in on the

45:38

front door of this place to focus mostly

45:40

on the

45:41

stout electronic keylock

45:44

that barred

45:44

entry into the building. It was something

45:47

a fair bit more sophisticated catered and

45:49

secure than the one I'd seen Sebastian Merkel purchase

45:52

ten years

45:54

before. I was distracted

45:56

and unsettled all the next

45:58

day. I decided not

45:59

to go into work and just pay the

46:02

price later. A fair amount

46:03

of snow was supposed to be coming that night and

46:06

I busied myself as best I could putting

46:08

salt down on the drive and

46:10

putting my new snow tires in

46:12

the car At around noon, I decided to

46:14

text Gwen, asking her

46:16

how the trip was going.

46:19

I didn't get any

46:20

answer. An hour later,

46:22

I thought, what's the Harmon

46:24

calling? But there was no

46:26

no answer still answer still. the

46:28

nervous energy I was feeling wasn't going to go away. I

46:30

wanted to go out there

46:32

just an

46:33

hour and drive. I tried

46:35

to tell myself that it was just a friendly thing to do

46:37

and maybe a nice surprise for to

46:40

drop in honor there even

46:42

before

46:42

we met up later in the

46:44

week. I could

46:45

maybe walk down educators lane just to take a look

46:47

in case I was not welcomed

46:49

by whoever

46:50

was left there.

46:53

by

46:53

then surely, Gwen would have texted

46:56

back. Why not just

46:58

go? What was

47:00

the harm? I was

47:01

useless doing anything else that day, not knowing. I

47:04

drove toward Kennenade Road alone.

47:08

There

47:08

had been some noticeable development around

47:10

Beltridge in the nineteen years since

47:12

Little Obran was born,

47:14

two new housing communities. One

47:17

of them, an especially depressing and

47:20

treeless McManchin affair,

47:22

had sprung up near the colony, along

47:24

with a grocery store and a gas station.

47:27

and a little strip mall. But

47:30

mostly, it

47:30

was still quiet and unspoiled.

47:33

I forget the Western writer who wrote,

47:35

please God be kind to the lonely

47:38

places that will always be

47:40

smaller than the sky

47:42

above them. Before

47:44

I begin to tell

47:47

you some things beyond

47:49

my firsthand observations

47:51

of that day, I

47:53

will

47:53

tell you that most of the information

47:55

I wasn't privy to in

47:57

those hours quickly came from

47:59

the

47:59

police and investigations

48:02

that followed. but

48:02

some of it I had to find out or recall through

48:04

reading one of the several

48:06

books since published about

48:09

everything that happened. including the

48:11

one whose writing I cooperated

48:14

with and in which I'm

48:16

quoted. It's called

48:17

the curse of

48:20

scientific and personal madness

48:22

in Little

48:23

Oberon by an

48:25

author named Susan Roth. I

48:28

pulled up outside the old bank of mailboxes. It just passed

48:31

three. There were only six

48:33

boxes now and oddly none of them

48:35

had the names of

48:38

individuals. no pieces of sticky tape identifying their owners.

48:40

Just one had the

48:42

address, 104 educators lane

48:46

on it. in the kind of

48:48

reflective and personal block letters you'd

48:49

buy at a hardware store. The

48:51

old gate was still there

48:53

in bad shape.

48:56

Its arms were wide open. I left

48:58

my old Volvo sitting in a wide

49:01

spot beside the mailboxes and

49:04

stepped out into the two inches of fresh snow that had fallen that

49:06

morning, the precursor to the

49:08

larger front that would be arriving in Grand

49:10

County in another few hours.

49:13

I wanted

49:14

to walk in

49:16

partially

49:16

because of nostalgia, partially

49:19

because I thought I'd be

49:21

seen as less

49:23

aggressive that way somehow.

49:26

Twisted Canyon Road was

49:28

very quiet, which made sense.

49:30

one tractor trailer headed north, rolled past me,

49:33

but nothing else. I turned and started

49:35

to head on foot into

49:38

Little Oberon down educators lane. That

49:41

first part that stroll

49:43

down the pocket marked

49:45

road before it took sharper

49:47

curve was

49:49

as picturesque as it had

49:51

ever been. Nice, thin blanket of near

49:53

snow in the trees. It looked like the cover of

49:55

an album of new

49:57

age music. The

49:59

effect

49:59

effect though was

50:00

corrupted by a sound I'd never

50:03

heard out here. It was

50:05

a very low semi

50:10

electric, like

50:10

from distant power lines,

50:13

so soft that if I hadn't

50:15

paused to stop and kneel to tie my boot laces, I wouldn't have heard it

50:17

at all for a while. A smooth

50:20

with a kind of ripple

50:22

to it. seeming to

50:23

come from close by and

50:25

far away at the same time.

50:27

Even the

50:28

gentle rising and falling of the wind

50:30

obscured it almost to the point of being

50:32

inaudible.

50:33

artificial. Yeah. Something not

50:36

created by nature, but delicate

50:38

enough to make it seem

50:40

so. I kept walking

50:42

immediately finding it irrationally

50:43

aggravating. As I walked, the

50:46

volume

50:46

remained strangely consistent.

50:50

Around the bend, the first modular

50:52

homes came

50:53

into view. No cars in front

50:55

of the first two I saw and

50:57

no signs of abutation. The

51:00

windows all seemed kind of dirty. Same with

51:03

the next group. A couple of empty

51:05

trash cans were lying on their

51:07

sides in the snow. From

51:09

my

51:09

distant memory of the layout, I could tell that

51:12

one cluster of houses had been removed

51:14

entirely, leaving a

51:15

scraped money

51:18

gap before the trees fell away for a stretch.

51:20

Vacate lots

51:21

with perfect snow cover,

51:23

no human footsteps. no

51:26

footprints. I reminded

51:27

myself how many years it had been

51:29

since I'd been here. Since even

51:31

Gwen had been here. and

51:33

how much could happen in a span

51:35

like that? Only

51:36

at 104 educators lane,

51:39

did it seem like there may

51:41

have been an actual resident? I

51:42

remembered now that 104 used to house a professor named

51:45

Vasco. That was where he used to live

51:47

back in two thousand five or so. Not

51:49

sure when he left. He

51:52

was one of the first to go, I think. The car parked in

51:54

front of it

51:55

now was a Chevy pickup with a messy

51:57

stack of loose fencing in the

51:59

back, wire fencing.

52:00

fencing Across

52:02

educators lane parked mostly on the pavement

52:04

to avoid problems with the snow. It

52:06

was a gray Toyota

52:08

I recognized right away.

52:12

It

52:12

was Gwen's. Since I'd actually

52:14

pointed

52:14

out the listing for it to

52:16

her, she'd been as devoted to that pile

52:18

of junk as she was to her collection of

52:22

pretenders. albums. I texted Gwen that I

52:23

was here just outside 104

52:27

but the signal never strong

52:29

to begin without there was

52:31

non existent. I didn't

52:33

know then that the subtle

52:35

sonic of vibration all around

52:37

me was dampening it beyond hope.

52:40

No surface. My

52:41

phone insisted again

52:44

and again. I

52:46

crunched

52:46

down the icy stone walkway that led to the

52:48

front door of the house. I wrapped

52:50

twice on the cheap glass of

52:52

the outer door. Nobody came.

52:55

lather rinse repeat, and

52:57

then I backed up into the

52:59

tiny slice of front yard and just

53:01

looked at the house perfectly

53:03

still and silent. I

53:06

listened

53:06

to the

53:07

mysterious that sounded just as

53:09

close and just as far away

53:11

as when I'd first pulled up

53:13

beside the mailboxes. The

53:16

colony had the atmosphere of

53:18

cemetery. No relatives came

53:20

to and no

53:21

caretakers tended. the

53:24

calendar told them it was

53:26

time. I walked over

53:28

to Gwen's Toyota and peered in

53:31

Her purse was

53:31

there on the passenger's seat. Something was leaning

53:33

against it. A thick

53:37

bunch of paper document about

53:40

a hundred pages long straining the

53:42

capacity limits of a single oversized

53:46

paper clip. I pulled on the driver's side door opened.

53:48

I sat myself down on the driver's seat,

53:50

one leg still hanging outside.

53:54

and looked more closely at this document. There

53:56

was a receipt for its printing from one

53:58

of those FedEx office

53:59

places in

54:02

Fort Collins. The

54:03

original PDF I learned much

54:06

later had been stitched together from a dozen

54:08

different files and emailed

54:10

to Gwen surreptitiously. by Enrique Couesta, a

54:13

few days before when he finally

54:15

felt compelled to tell someone

54:17

what he knew. Gwen had then brought

54:19

the printout with her to the colony that day.

54:22

One of the first sections drew

54:24

me

54:24

in because of a title

54:26

page taken from a paper

54:28

whose contents were only partially

54:30

reproduced in this document.

54:32

Three

54:32

names were on top. Doctor

54:35

Sebastian Merkel, doctor Sandra

54:38

Mehta, and doctor Roderick

54:40

Davith. The name of

54:42

that paper of that paper dated

54:44

eighteen months previous was case

54:46

studies of interspecies cooperation

54:50

during duress. Another title

54:52

page dated just six

54:54

months previous. For

54:56

the name,

54:57

responses to Olympic

54:59

system provocations via auditory sessions A1B1C1

55:04

Go

55:04

ahead only printed out the

55:06

first five pages of that report.

55:10

Getting very cold, I closed

55:12

the driver's side door. Nothing

55:14

moved inside 104

55:15

educators lane or anywhere

55:17

else on the

55:19

road. I began to flip

55:20

through the document collage my

55:23

hands more seriously. The files

55:25

were full of scientific

55:28

data charts

55:29

I couldn't assembled by

55:31

advanced scientific minds,

55:34

obviously. An unfamiliar

55:36

name appeared again and again

55:38

in that document's pages. It

55:40

was the name of an organization that

55:43

had offered input direction and

55:46

money into

55:46

the research, into that

55:48

here. The name

55:51

was region ten.

55:52

region ten I

55:55

knew

55:55

nothing of who they were on that day. There were kind of

55:57

a dark, touchy

55:58

subject to law abiding

56:00

to

56:01

animal rights defenders. Gwen

56:04

included. A lot of people

56:06

wanted

56:06

to forget Regent Penn's history.

56:08

They'd worked out

56:10

of Guam. and classified

56:12

by the FBI as a domestic

56:14

echo terrorist group in nineteen

56:16

sixty nine.

56:18

At

56:19

the height of their brief existence, Regentown was

56:21

comprised of all of six people, all of

56:23

them young scientists.

56:24

young scientists They'd

56:26

all been put in jail for life, for

56:29

arranging a

56:29

Serengas attack on the

56:32

CEO of a lumber company.

56:35

in Central Mexico. Region

56:38

ten believed that humankind

56:41

itself was an evolutionary

56:43

error that needed to

56:45

be not just corrected, but expunged,

56:47

so that what they believed was the

56:49

natural design of earth's psychology

56:52

could play

56:54

out. they'd all died in prison, all of them, too,

56:57

by suicide. Yet,

56:59

here was

56:59

that name

57:02

again in

57:02

twenty twenty two, in black and white. In paper

57:04

is written by Sebastian Berkel,

57:08

Sandra

57:09

hunter made her Mehta. and

57:10

broader daphne to be read and

57:12

discussed by, well,

57:15

that wasn't

57:17

that clear clear. The intention

57:19

of my

57:19

skimming was just to get a snapshot

57:21

of what the last of the Berkeleyists

57:24

were

57:25

involved with. only

57:27

about ten minutes after I started,

57:29

I

57:29

was convinced that one or all

57:31

of them had lost their

57:33

grip on reality. I

57:35

understood why Gwen had felt the need to

57:37

come here, why Enrique Questa,

57:40

after

57:40

he had abandoned Little Obrond, had

57:43

eventually reached out to her.

57:45

I got out of

57:46

the car leaving the document

57:49

inside, the

57:50

thought of trying to call the police

57:52

crossed my mind. But even if

57:54

I had driven out to catch a

57:56

cell signal. I wasn't sure

57:58

what kind of crime I'd be

58:01

describing to them or if Technically, the

58:03

papers in Gwen's car showed that any crime was

58:05

being committed. Just a little

58:07

more looking

58:08

around, I told

58:10

myself, I had

58:11

a destination in mind and I needed

58:13

to find Gwen.

58:16

I walked further down

58:17

educators lane. In two hundred

58:20

yards, I'd left the nest

58:22

of more abundant houses behind

58:24

and headed off into the big field

58:26

beyond them, already a

58:28

little winded. having

58:28

been unable to ever completely give up smoking. I

58:32

trudged over a slight rise and on the other

58:34

side was the old two

58:36

room schoolhouse. Still

58:38

mostly

58:38

intact now, thanks to the

58:41

informal preservation efforts of the

58:43

original little Obalon colonists.

58:46

They'd removed about half the IV I remembered, but

58:48

they hadn't painted or anything. Someone

58:51

had replaced the one

58:53

window facing east that

58:56

to me a long time ago,

58:58

but the slightly crooked front door

59:00

leading in was still split

59:04

diagonally. and there was no saving that foundation that was

59:06

cracked all over. About

59:08

a hundred yards past that

59:11

field, the trees closed in,

59:14

tight again,

59:14

all around. You

59:16

had to be observant to notice the

59:18

tiny gap in the underbrush that

59:20

signify the beginning of the spearment trail. I

59:23

only vaguely knew where the entrance was because

59:25

of the story I'd gotten if Sondra

59:27

made his nature encounter

59:29

with the owl. I

59:32

started

59:32

down the trail which would in about

59:34

a mile according to what Gwen had told

59:36

me back at the silver hammer years before.

59:39

lead me

59:39

near the patch of land Sebastian

59:42

Berkley had bought long

59:44

ago. The

59:44

aggravating sonic strangeness

59:47

that was that subauditory both

59:50

followed me and led

59:52

me. Its source may

59:54

have been located a thousand feet

59:56

up in sky for all the

59:58

clues I could glean about where it was coming

59:59

from, but at least

1:00:01

now I thought from my reading

1:00:03

that I knew what

1:00:06

it meant. It was

1:00:07

about a quarter to Except for the wind to

1:00:09

the trees,

1:00:10

the trail itself was completely

1:00:14

silent. no occasional rustling of unseen

1:00:16

small animals, no disturbing

1:00:18

indications of larger ones, It

1:00:22

was tough to follow the trail some times because the recent

1:00:25

snow cover effectively blotted it

1:00:27

out. And once I started heading off

1:00:29

in the wrong direction where

1:00:32

realized that the footprints I've been

1:00:34

roughly following, mostly filled

1:00:36

in by snow, making them less

1:00:38

distinct or

1:00:40

gone.

1:00:40

After I

1:00:41

found them again, I was

1:00:43

more careful. I stopped before I

1:00:46

got to the end of the

1:00:48

trail and

1:00:48

I thought of Gwen.

1:00:50

Go

1:00:51

back. I thought, what

1:00:52

is your obligation

1:00:53

to her? Compared to your obligation

1:00:55

at home to Jennifer,

1:00:57

Vanessa, and Ben.

1:01:00

Gwen slipped

1:01:01

away years ago. There's not

1:01:03

even a photo of you

1:01:05

two together. Not one.

1:01:09

Go back. but I was worried for

1:01:11

her. One look at the end of the trail, one look

1:01:13

in the night backpedal all the way

1:01:15

and eventually get through

1:01:17

to the police I'd apologize to

1:01:19

them for being so paranoid, but just a courtesy look around was all I'd ask

1:01:22

for. A welfare check

1:01:24

was what I think it

1:01:26

was called. friend

1:01:28

of mine had typed something

1:01:30

bad is happening, and

1:01:33

then nothing more. before she

1:01:35

felt the need to return to a place where years had come and

1:01:37

gone, almost totally unnoticed

1:01:40

by the outside

1:01:42

world.

1:01:44

The trail passed through

1:01:45

a clearing, which had

1:01:47

been made artificially wider

1:01:50

sometime in the past decade, wide

1:01:52

enough

1:01:52

wide enough to hold to hold a

1:01:54

small white trailer, something cheaper,

1:01:56

not as nice as the modular houses

1:01:58

of the main colony, and

1:02:01

two other buildings.

1:02:04

one of which I recognized

1:02:06

from Enrique Costas photos. The other being

1:02:08

long, squat, and rectangular,

1:02:12

the woods hugged at this clearing very tight on

1:02:14

all sides. The sound of

1:02:16

an

1:02:16

electrical generator drowned out

1:02:19

the lesser, ghostly for the

1:02:22

moment. The generator was housed in a

1:02:24

shed jutting off awkwardly

1:02:26

from that

1:02:28

rectangular building. The footprints

1:02:30

I tried to follow scattered

1:02:32

in several directions now and

1:02:34

had outlived their usefulness to

1:02:37

me. I knocked on the door of

1:02:39

the trailer first. Predictably,

1:02:40

I got no response. The

1:02:42

door was unlocked though, so

1:02:45

I went in. The interior

1:02:47

had

1:02:47

mostly become a workspace through

1:02:50

necessity, more

1:02:52

than design, Three

1:02:54

oversized computer monitors, blinked

1:02:56

with activity fed from

1:02:58

a pair of expensive looking laptops

1:03:00

sit on a folding card table.

1:03:03

Books and papers were stacked on most

1:03:05

other available spaces. An

1:03:08

open bottle of Johnny Walker

1:03:10

was set neatly on top of a

1:03:12

shelf packed with arcane

1:03:14

but modern textbooks.

1:03:16

The

1:03:17

monitors were tracking some sort

1:03:19

of live ongoing

1:03:22

process. mechanical or digital producing progressive

1:03:24

seismic

1:03:25

line graphs across the

1:03:27

screens along with

1:03:30

slowly changing statistics corresponding

1:03:32

to various unknowable acronyms.

1:03:36

I stepped past the work area

1:03:39

and went down the thin short hallway that led

1:03:41

back to a small group of

1:03:44

doors. The creaky floor was made so

1:03:46

cheaply. I can almost feel it give under my

1:03:48

feet with every step that tracked snow further

1:03:50

in. There was a bathroom,

1:03:52

a niche with a stacked washer

1:03:54

and dryer, And

1:03:56

then what I assumed was the bedroom closed. I

1:03:58

tapped on the door

1:04:00

and then opened it.

1:04:02

The

1:04:03

bed was unmade. Recently,

1:04:06

slumped in. No real

1:04:08

personal effects around to tell me who stayed here

1:04:10

beyond some stray

1:04:11

clothing piled about,

1:04:14

men's clothing. I

1:04:14

saw a clipboard on the nightstand, holding a small

1:04:16

stack of pages together. These

1:04:18

comprised a kind of chart spread

1:04:21

across multiple pages and drawn

1:04:24

crudely by hand. Four

1:04:26

columns, all of them filled

1:04:28

with handwritten data

1:04:30

in black pen. The

1:04:32

columns remarked time

1:04:34

and date,

1:04:35

strength of

1:04:38

cage signal, Fed,

1:04:38

not Fed.

1:04:40

Fifteen pages of

1:04:42

this dating back a month.

1:04:46

The

1:04:46

columns marked strength of cage signal,

1:04:48

showed gradually escalating numbers

1:04:51

with unusual

1:04:53

fractions. There were

1:04:55

many notes in the margins, but in

1:04:58

writing so tiny, I simply couldn't

1:05:00

decipher them without my reading

1:05:02

glasses. I'd loved them at home. The

1:05:04

compilation of the data had ended

1:05:06

two days before. Under

1:05:08

that last

1:05:08

row of handwritten times

1:05:12

and numbers, someone

1:05:13

had added in

1:05:16

strikingly larger letters, an

1:05:18

ominous stand alone s

1:05:22

and s are dead. Region

1:05:26

ten has gone into the mountains.

1:05:29

I'm going to end what part of this I

1:05:32

can. I'm letting

1:05:34

Endronicus out.

1:05:37

I have nothing more to

1:05:40

say

1:05:40

or

1:05:42

be. I left the

1:05:43

trailer and crossed

1:05:46

to that greenhouse shaped building, which was about a

1:05:48

hundred

1:05:48

feet long. A gust of

1:05:50

wind caught

1:05:51

me off guard and snow

1:05:53

blew off its roof and into my

1:05:56

eyes. The light was

1:05:58

starting to fade from the sky

1:05:59

and that made

1:06:02

me nervous. the lock

1:06:03

on the big sliding door that allowed entry into

1:06:06

the building, which I

1:06:07

am sure I'd seen

1:06:09

Sebastian Merkel purchase. had been

1:06:12

left unsaid unsaid.

1:06:14

The

1:06:14

door was already a jar

1:06:16

by about eight inches. I slid

1:06:18

at two more feet along a thin

1:06:20

metal rail. to allow myself in

1:06:23

producing

1:06:23

a shuttering scrape with a

1:06:25

slight echo. Even though

1:06:27

the mechanism that was later proven

1:06:30

to be producing the weird humming sound all

1:06:32

around

1:06:32

the area was now standing

1:06:34

directly in front of me.

1:06:37

The sound was still not one

1:06:40

decibel, louder, or softer.

1:06:42

A sonic phenomenon

1:06:44

still being studied

1:06:46

today. one which had taken

1:06:48

thirty years of research to master.

1:06:51

The mechanism, his

1:06:53

parts stretched for about twenty yards

1:06:55

and rose off the floor by about

1:06:57

nine feet, didn't look

1:06:59

like much. A

1:07:01

million computer cables sneaking among

1:07:03

what looked like marching

1:07:05

towers of servers. all wired

1:07:08

to silent cooling fans,

1:07:10

and then onward to a

1:07:12

series of interlocking steel pipes

1:07:14

that disappeared on the ground. The

1:07:18

book, the curse of

1:07:20

intention, explains in detail

1:07:22

how the pipes tunneled

1:07:24

two hundred yards to the north. were

1:07:26

the first of two dozen weather proofed transmitters had been

1:07:29

embedded in the earth the

1:07:32

year before. eighteen

1:07:34

inches deep buried

1:07:35

under thin fiberglass,

1:07:38

spread out over an area

1:07:40

two and a half miles wide.

1:07:43

By

1:07:43

then, having skimmed the paper as

1:07:46

Gwen had brought with her to a little Obran

1:07:48

that day, I

1:07:49

sort of knew what I

1:07:51

was looking at. and

1:07:52

what it was meant to do. But I

1:07:54

didn't know how to interrupt the process.

1:07:56

And I wouldn't have tried based

1:07:59

on how ridiculous its premise

1:08:02

was. The computers kept feeding

1:08:03

data and the machinery kept

1:08:06

producing that

1:08:08

inexplicable.

1:08:08

fanning out

1:08:10

into the forest all around

1:08:12

Beltridge. Stopping it could wait

1:08:14

for someone who knew exactly what they were dealing with.

1:08:18

The

1:08:19

interior area beyond the

1:08:21

giant sound

1:08:22

apparatus was full

1:08:24

of

1:08:24

stray computer and construction

1:08:27

equipment. everything from

1:08:27

bags of topsoil to more laptops

1:08:30

in various states of

1:08:32

assembly to

1:08:33

a small bulldozer with

1:08:35

Japanese markings on it, flare guns even,

1:08:38

and three big

1:08:39

collapsed tents

1:08:43

that looked like they'd been taken down clumsily and

1:08:45

just dumped there and

1:08:47

lying precariously on

1:08:49

top of a

1:08:51

small dorm fridge. It's

1:08:52

a shotgun, Remington.

1:08:53

My father had bought

1:08:54

me one when I was nineteen. I

1:08:58

opened that fridge least twenty

1:09:00

tiny loose bottles

1:09:02

of liquid,

1:09:03

rust colored liquid. H

1:09:07

bottle

1:09:07

with a rubber stopper, all neatly

1:09:09

arranged

1:09:09

in rows of

1:09:12

five. Small white labels

1:09:14

held the name of the liquid. which

1:09:16

was xylazine, an animal tranquilizer. None of

1:09:18

the seals and the bottles

1:09:20

had been

1:09:24

broken I left the building. I figured

1:09:26

there was no way

1:09:27

to get into the taller structure,

1:09:29

the one with

1:09:31

the more sophisticated electronic

1:09:34

lock. The windowless exterior of the place was built

1:09:35

from cheap metal. It was

1:09:38

a big

1:09:39

glorified shed. but

1:09:42

I went around to its front side just

1:09:44

in case, just in case.

1:09:46

And there I

1:09:47

saw that the door was

1:09:50

wide open. a

1:09:50

good dusting of snow had collected just within,

1:09:53

which told me

1:09:54

it had been open for quite

1:09:57

a while. Taking those

1:09:58

steps across the threshold into the last unexplored building of

1:09:59

that compound, introduced

1:10:02

me more tangibly to

1:10:04

the introduced me more tangibly

1:10:06

to the breakdown of

1:10:07

sanity which he'd developed at this place.

1:10:09

The papers, Enrique

1:10:11

Coste had snuck

1:10:13

out, give a

1:10:15

snapshot version of broader davath's work over

1:10:18

thirty years with inducing panic and atypical aggression.

1:10:21

a typical aggression into

1:10:23

various animal species through

1:10:26

carefully crafted sonic disturbances.

1:10:30

some

1:10:30

of these disturbances could

1:10:32

cue defense mechanisms in the

1:10:34

amygdala that were uncontrollable, and that

1:10:37

in some cases led to

1:10:39

something truly inexplicable, interspecies

1:10:41

cooperation in reacting

1:10:47

to perceived threat. And

1:10:49

so, Sebastian Merkel and unknown elements of

1:10:51

a group still calling themselves region

1:10:56

ten had decided upon a very

1:10:58

secret experiment in the mountains of Grand County at the edge of

1:11:03

the Rockies. The purpose was to

1:11:04

empower the animals living

1:11:05

within the forest from miles

1:11:08

around into

1:11:11

one chaotic but orchestrated moment

1:11:13

of possibly violent rebellion.

1:11:15

There was no better

1:11:17

way to refer

1:11:18

to the process than mass hypnosis.

1:11:21

The hope allegedly was to force attention to the wrongful

1:11:24

power imbalance human beings continued

1:11:26

to create in the natural world.

1:11:31

And after that one moment of shock

1:11:34

was achieved, its creators would

1:11:36

disappear. and

1:11:39

the studies would continue somewhere unknown and

1:11:42

to

1:11:42

continue and continue.

1:11:44

continue

1:11:45

The results findings passed on to

1:11:48

the next generation of

1:11:50

radical scientists who wanted

1:11:52

to save the animal

1:11:54

kingdom from its gradual enslavement. even

1:11:57

if traumatic tactics were necessary.

1:11:59

It was

1:11:59

madness, yes,

1:12:01

and it couldn't

1:12:03

possibly work despite broader

1:12:06

davits, self proclaimed success in two thousand seven with triggering baboons

1:12:09

and antelope

1:12:12

in Angola, into a

1:12:14

crazed assault on a group of protected armed kept

1:12:17

detailed notes on

1:12:20

it all. poorly

1:12:21

locked in his secluded trailer in

1:12:23

Grand County, Colorado. History was filled with scientific

1:12:26

lunacies slowly forgotten amidst.

1:12:31

rationality, reason and hard data.

1:12:33

No

1:12:33

one had anything real

1:12:36

to fear

1:12:39

from this aberrant idea

1:12:39

saved for the animals themselves, so poorly

1:12:42

manipulated by these people's

1:12:45

cynicism

1:12:47

and garbled complexes. The

1:12:49

giant machine next door pumping

1:12:51

out megawatts of sonic provocation was

1:12:53

nothing more than

1:12:55

a big misguided appliance

1:12:58

whose plugs could be somehow pulled. But inside that last

1:13:04

building where not

1:13:06

even Merkel or Mehta or Enrique Costa knew precisely what was happening.

1:13:08

That's where the lunacy

1:13:10

had resulted in a more

1:13:14

tactile, nightmare, more so

1:13:16

even than those cryptic words,

1:13:19

s and s are

1:13:22

dead. lights were on in there, cold

1:13:24

industrial lights shining down,

1:13:27

a

1:13:27

huge opaque

1:13:30

cage, took

1:13:31

up half the interior, ten feet

1:13:33

high.

1:13:33

Two layers of

1:13:35

the thickest black canvas had

1:13:37

been stretched across metal

1:13:39

bars all around. inside that, a

1:13:42

four inch layer of soundproofing. The door to the cage

1:13:45

too was

1:13:48

wide open. I moved very

1:13:50

cautiously toward the entrance trying to peer in from a safe distance.

1:13:52

Inside the floor

1:13:55

bore nothing but loose

1:13:58

straw sticks

1:14:00

and loose soil.

1:14:02

A forty

1:14:03

five degree shoot connected

1:14:06

to a Rollaway stairwell beside the cage

1:14:08

had been used to dump

1:14:10

food into a trough. The

1:14:12

air was tinged with the

1:14:15

smell of spoiled meat. In one corner

1:14:17

of the dark cage was a trilvel stack

1:14:19

of perplexing machinery, and opposite

1:14:22

on

1:14:22

the other side, a

1:14:25

single oversized black machine whose face,

1:14:27

a slotted vent, like

1:14:29

advance was

1:14:32

angled toward the center of the

1:14:34

enclosure. People smarter than I would later confirm what I did suspect

1:14:39

right away which was that I was looking at the remains

1:14:41

of a more focused, more

1:14:44

intimate

1:14:44

version of the greater

1:14:47

experiment going on in these

1:14:49

woods to get any closer,

1:14:51

to see any

1:14:54

more detail, I would have had to step past

1:14:56

a thin fan

1:14:57

of blood on the

1:14:59

floor, five five feet across

1:15:02

feet across. It

1:15:02

looked dry. Drag marks

1:15:05

extended

1:15:05

from the pool right up

1:15:07

to the building the doorway.

1:15:10

As if whatever had fallen,

1:15:12

or been killed there,

1:15:14

had subsequently been pulled outside

1:15:18

into the cold. but

1:15:21

the snow was mostly undisturbed beyond

1:15:23

the threshold, which meant it must happened before

1:15:27

that morning's snowfall. I

1:15:30

had almost

1:15:31

made it to the trailhead at the

1:15:33

edge of the clearing by the time I

1:15:35

remembered the shotgun on the dorm

1:15:37

fridge far behind me. in that long cavern of

1:15:40

a building that housed the sound

1:15:42

generator. I'm not sure I would

1:15:44

have

1:15:44

had the courage to detour

1:15:46

to it anyway. so I went

1:15:47

back to the colony unarmed. I had no chance

1:15:49

of getting

1:15:50

all the way back to educators

1:15:52

lane moving as fast as my legs would

1:15:55

carry me. I began my escape at a trot, reducing even

1:15:57

that to a fast walk when

1:15:59

I realized how much of a

1:16:01

slippery effort a skinny and

1:16:03

winding trail represented making

1:16:06

any pace more ambitious of fantasy despite my growing panic.

1:16:09

The white woods

1:16:12

hid little The

1:16:14

branches of every tree on all sides were completely bare. I tried not to look

1:16:16

left and right,

1:16:19

but the sounds of winter's

1:16:23

hands cracking through timber falls

1:16:25

and shaking ice crystals

1:16:27

free to fall to the

1:16:29

earth, those sounds which had been so

1:16:31

easy to ignore on my way to the clearing were now

1:16:33

thick with thick and in my head turned toward everyone to

1:16:36

try to spot

1:16:39

what might be hiding nearby or even

1:16:41

tracking me. My

1:16:43

breath came in shorter and

1:16:45

shorter spurts and tiny jabs

1:16:47

of cold pains started to thump

1:16:49

in my lungs. My fingers and the keypad of my phone were almost none,

1:16:51

but still I persisted in

1:16:54

trying to send a signal

1:16:56

out. every

1:16:58

thirty seconds or so, creating a ritual

1:17:00

to keep me calm. Send.

1:17:02

Send. When I was startled by

1:17:05

a thick batch of snow

1:17:07

descending from hall branch just a foot my left because of a chance

1:17:09

wind gust. I finally started to

1:17:11

truly accelerate slipping badly

1:17:14

once but staying upright. following

1:17:17

the human footprints as best I

1:17:19

could. If there were inhuman ones that intertwined

1:17:20

with them

1:17:23

at any point, my

1:17:26

conscious mind never processed them

1:17:28

correctly. photograph

1:17:29

of the experiment trail published

1:17:31

later showed some though. You

1:17:33

showed some know

1:17:34

Yes. One

1:17:36

and

1:17:36

two tenths of a mile and

1:17:38

then the trees broke. I was

1:17:40

back in the open field

1:17:42

behind the colony, and I was running across five hundred

1:17:44

yards to the schoolhouse. I'd never

1:17:46

gone there before, but I saw

1:17:48

it from so far away through the

1:17:51

gloom of the growing dusk. that

1:17:53

the backdoor was partially open. Instinctively, but

1:17:55

uselessly, I yelled out Gwen's

1:17:58

name, and I think

1:18:00

i think Maybe

1:18:01

only the first half of

1:18:04

it actually escaped my lungs. The

1:18:06

other half drowned in exhaustion. I stumbled

1:18:08

forward

1:18:08

absolutely sure

1:18:10

that there was no safety in that dark place, that nothing good could be found there, and certainly

1:18:13

no one to

1:18:16

help me. but

1:18:18

I felt horribly exposed, so I went towards it anyway. Inside was simply better than

1:18:20

outside. The

1:18:25

back door swung inward so easily. It felt like

1:18:27

the rotting hinges were about to simply break off. The

1:18:31

schoolhouse's

1:18:31

main room still

1:18:34

had two rows of desks the be

1:18:36

too decrepit by

1:18:38

local scavengers, I guess. the

1:18:43

cracked,

1:18:43

slimy windows looked in on nothing

1:18:45

else. Nothing else at all except

1:18:48

some ripped,

1:18:50

crumbling, post that had never been fully removed. One

1:18:53

listed a long array

1:18:55

of weights and measures. and

1:18:58

another ripped

1:19:00

and faded,

1:19:02

but still

1:19:03

usable depicted

1:19:04

the periodic table

1:19:07

of the elements. The last of

1:19:09

the daylight struggled to get into the room, tinted a thick yellow

1:19:11

by the

1:19:12

grime on

1:19:16

the glass. weeds growth of

1:19:18

the warped floorboards. Every step I took produced a subsequent

1:19:20

slight rattle from a

1:19:22

wooden surface unknown to me.

1:19:26

There was a body on

1:19:29

the floor centered between

1:19:30

the walls, north and

1:19:33

south, east, and west. the

1:19:35

body of a man with overdied red

1:19:37

hair, pure gray at

1:19:39

the temples, elderly. dressed

1:19:43

in a thick black hoodie and

1:19:45

jeans. He was faced down.

1:19:47

Even

1:19:47

if he wasn't, I wouldn't

1:19:49

have been able to. confidently identify

1:19:51

him. I'd never seen

1:19:53

a photograph of Broderick

1:19:55

Davath before.

1:19:56

data before

1:19:58

His head was twisted at

1:20:00

an angle so extreme. It looked like a child

1:20:02

to become bored

1:20:03

with the doll and gotten frustrated trying

1:20:05

to hear it popping that

1:20:07

head off, which sound

1:20:10

like. The neck was a dark pulpy mass of no definable

1:20:16

shape. and

1:20:17

most of the fingers of the

1:20:19

man's left hand were nowhere to be seen. There

1:20:21

were only the

1:20:24

faintest marks underneath

1:20:26

the body and around to show how it had been dragged into the building

1:20:28

more than a

1:20:29

mile from

1:20:30

where this man had last. taken

1:20:35

in breath. The hair on the

1:20:37

back of my neck began to

1:20:39

tingle strangely. My senses

1:20:42

hyper aware, I

1:20:43

turned around. Through the wide

1:20:45

open door at the rear entrance to the schoolhouse, I could

1:20:47

see back into the gently

1:20:50

sloping field I'd come from.

1:20:54

A large animal stood

1:20:56

in the distance, perfectly framed

1:20:59

by the doorway. At first, not

1:21:01

much

1:21:01

more than a dark

1:21:03

smudge against the white of the snow where

1:21:06

it left heavy paw

1:21:08

prints. It turned in

1:21:10

my direction because of a

1:21:12

shout. from the

1:21:14

far away, a female shout. The beast started to move immediately.

1:21:16

It broke

1:21:19

into a gallop

1:21:20

almost

1:21:22

as soon as I understood what it

1:21:24

was. And I saw that I would not

1:21:26

be able to make it to either door

1:21:28

in front of me or well behind me.

1:21:30

in time to escape it.

1:21:33

It was a mountain

1:21:34

lion, a dark, reddish

1:21:38

brown, cuckered

1:21:38

about three feet high, and

1:21:41

I'd say more than eight feet

1:21:43

long, thick with muscle. And

1:21:46

I think the demented weaponization

1:21:48

process broader cadaver had made it suffer through

1:21:50

in the name of science and turned it into something crazed

1:21:55

and lacking control. In contradiction to the

1:21:57

normal habits of its species, it screamed

1:22:00

fabulously. As it ran toward the

1:22:02

threshold of the doorway, I could see

1:22:04

how in

1:22:06

that one moment when I believe I

1:22:08

had accepted my death. Its

1:22:11

hind legs rose in

1:22:13

such an exaggerated, but graceful

1:22:15

way off the earth with

1:22:17

each leaping stretch forward.

1:22:19

The hearing in my

1:22:21

right ear temporarily failed when two rapid

1:22:24

gunshots erupted from behind

1:22:26

me. In reaction, the

1:22:28

animal did something both

1:22:31

horrifying and awe inspiring. instead

1:22:33

of bolting to the left or right to veer off its

1:22:35

path and evade the attack by vanishing around the side of

1:22:39

the schoolhouse. It leaped.

1:22:41

I saw the full stretched underside of its body

1:22:43

and an instant moving vertically.

1:22:48

It was probably twelve feet up to the first

1:22:50

tier of the roof. I heard the animals wait to connect with

1:22:53

the snow cover there

1:22:55

with a thump. and a skittering

1:22:57

sound as it struggled to bring that weight to a stop. I turned

1:23:00

to see

1:23:04

Richard Madden Many years older than

1:23:06

I'd last seen him holding a pistol stunned

1:23:08

by the unfamiliar

1:23:11

power of its recoil. advancing

1:23:13

deeper into the room from the front entrance. He shouted at me to run for the

1:23:16

far door and

1:23:19

get it shut. I snapped

1:23:21

out of my shock, did so. I had to extend my body

1:23:23

outside to grab the old door

1:23:26

handle and wrench it back

1:23:28

towards The wind

1:23:30

was on my face for one scary second and then heavy wood was

1:23:33

connected with the

1:23:36

frame awkwardly. There

1:23:38

was no way to keep it firmly shut. It was just in

1:23:40

too bad a shape, but the animal

1:23:43

likely couldn't get in. Its

1:23:45

motion upon the roof manifested itself in just one

1:23:48

more transitory sound, a

1:23:50

heavy shifting as it

1:23:52

crossed what was

1:23:54

likely the meridian up

1:23:56

there. When I turned around

1:23:58

again, I saw that Gwen had shut the diagonally split

1:24:00

main door from which

1:24:02

they both entered the room.

1:24:05

She was wearing, I remember, a a bright red coat that gelled too perfectly

1:24:07

with a certain fairy

1:24:12

tale. she ran forward and

1:24:14

stopped, staring down at David's body, grimace. Then she knelt

1:24:16

and checked for a pulse,

1:24:19

something I hadn't even bothered

1:24:22

to do. The damage to

1:24:24

Davith just seemed too awful,

1:24:27

and he seemed so

1:24:29

frail. I'd guessed right. For

1:24:31

a moment, all of us

1:24:32

only listened. If the animal

1:24:34

was still on the roof,

1:24:36

we couldn't

1:24:38

hear it. If it had

1:24:39

jumped down already, the windows along the

1:24:41

west wall were set too high

1:24:43

to show what might

1:24:45

be hiding or even stalking. just outside. We

1:24:47

could only see beyond past the field.

1:24:50

Visually, we didn't have enough information

1:24:53

to either move

1:24:56

or stay. I whispered to

1:24:58

Richard, we can't

1:24:58

call for help here. He looked

1:25:02

you look last lost. utterly

1:25:04

overwhelmed. He was staring closely

1:25:06

at Davith's wounds as if

1:25:08

not understanding how human

1:25:10

tissue could be made into

1:25:14

something like that.

1:25:16

The gun whose origin I didn't yet

1:25:18

understand stayed gripped tight in his

1:25:20

right hand. he

1:25:21

mouthed back silently. We know. Go ahead and got to her

1:25:24

feet

1:25:24

go

1:25:26

when got to her feet again again.

1:25:28

She

1:25:28

had come here alone that day, and only upon getting

1:25:30

a very bad

1:25:31

vibe when no one answered her knocks at one of four

1:25:33

educators lane, did she walk back down the

1:25:35

road in search of cell

1:25:38

signal. It kept evading her, so

1:25:41

she kept walking all the way

1:25:43

to candidate road. Then becoming

1:25:45

afraid a half mile down to the service

1:25:47

station, which wasn't there when she'd lived in Little Oberon. unable to connect too,

1:25:49

so she'd asked to use

1:25:51

their office phone. and

1:25:54

she'd used it to call Richard Madden, hoping

1:25:56

he could drive over from the University

1:25:59

of Colorado right

1:25:59

then to accompany her

1:26:02

back in. he'd picked

1:26:03

her up just a half hour before. I'd been the

1:26:05

only living person in the colony

1:26:07

until they came

1:26:09

and were promptly delayed by an

1:26:12

investigation of house number 104

1:26:14

that was more thorough than mine

1:26:17

had been. Richard now told

1:26:18

me in a low voice that we were all going out in the direction

1:26:23

of the houses.

1:26:24

the house It was the

1:26:26

only course that made sense. Gwen and

1:26:29

I

1:26:29

followed him to the broken

1:26:31

front door.

1:26:32

Every step made

1:26:35

so much Richard pressed his

1:26:37

ear against the door briefly, holding a hand up to

1:26:39

us to make sure we stayed

1:26:43

so absolutely silent. The wind

1:26:45

whistled to the gap in the wood, a gap

1:26:47

probably growing wider every year as

1:26:49

the elements continue to

1:26:51

erase that solemn suffering

1:26:54

little building. Richard

1:26:56

seemed to hear something outside,

1:26:58

which made him hesitate, so

1:27:00

he

1:27:01

tried peering through the gap,

1:27:03

but it was fruitless. I'll look back

1:27:05

once more at Davoth's body, desks on either

1:27:08

side of them, the

1:27:10

ghost of an old, long

1:27:12

chalkboard. haunting

1:27:14

the wall well behind him. In

1:27:17

that ghost space,

1:27:20

black, blocky letters, two feet high

1:27:22

had been painted with a thick Page

1:27:24

two hundred twenty of Susan Roth's book

1:27:26

reveals it to be the credo adopted

1:27:31

in nineteen seventy. by the

1:27:34

echo terrorists calling themselves region ten. No man left

1:27:37

to defile

1:27:40

the earth. someone

1:27:42

had put it there very

1:27:44

recently. Richard finally seemed satisfied that

1:27:46

it was time to go out.

1:27:50

he pushed the door open. Its

1:27:52

creek was mortifyingly loud.

1:27:54

He took one step into

1:27:57

the open air. Gwen and I

1:27:59

right behind him. Don't run

1:28:01

unless I start to. He

1:28:03

whispered to us. He

1:28:05

went forward more boldly. seeming to have a gut

1:28:07

feeling that our right side was the one

1:28:10

we needed to pay most attention

1:28:12

to. That's where most

1:28:14

of his focus was clearly

1:28:16

directed. I didn't take my

1:28:18

eyes off the roof behind us. Five yards to the snow and

1:28:20

ten

1:28:24

yards. It

1:28:24

was almost full darkness

1:28:27

and

1:28:27

visibility was poor. Go

1:28:28

or ahead,

1:28:30

slow Richard told us.

1:28:33

and he stood in place

1:28:35

and gestured us, passed him turning

1:28:37

back toward the schoolhouse, raising the pistol in

1:28:39

expectation that something might happen. We

1:28:43

were twenty yards out of the schoolhouse and

1:28:46

feeling no safer when Gwen and

1:28:48

I winced at the

1:28:50

sound of Richard's third shot.

1:28:52

We spun around but saw nothing. Our

1:28:55

eyes moving frantically from point to point, up, down, both

1:28:58

sides of the schoolhouse.

1:29:00

Richard, tensing up, had decided to fire a warning

1:29:02

shot in the hopes the cat would never

1:29:05

come closer from

1:29:07

wherever it was. We

1:29:09

stopped in our tracks

1:29:11

and listened. There, Gwen

1:29:12

said, she'd spotted

1:29:14

something on the roof

1:29:15

of the building. partially

1:29:18

obscured by small

1:29:20

swirls of snow being blown

1:29:23

around it. The large

1:29:26

angular head of the mountain lion could be made out

1:29:28

than its shoulders. It

1:29:30

was still up there

1:29:33

watching us. The gunshot did not send

1:29:35

it away, but it did not jump down towards us either. The sky

1:29:37

beyond it was now

1:29:40

tinged with

1:29:40

orange,

1:29:43

blue, purple. Richard had the

1:29:45

courage then

1:29:45

to release a series of

1:29:48

angry shouts in the animals

1:29:50

direction. simultaneously waving back at us to

1:29:52

keep moving as he retreated.

1:29:54

The cat, nothing more than

1:29:57

a shadow. Thirty yards

1:29:59

away was

1:29:59

perfectly still looking like

1:30:01

a garic oil. We never did run, but

1:30:03

Richard never did lower the gun. We trusted

1:30:04

him to keep the lookout