The Son Of Electricity

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

The Son of Electricity

Payton lived with his mother in a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. They represented the older residents hanging on, not the newer ones moving in. Their apartment was a small, rent-stabilized one-and-a-half bedroom with two windows that worked and two the management company would never fix because they never fixed anything. The management company wanted Payton and his mother to move so they could rent the place to “some trust-fund douchebag,” or so his mother said. When other things broke around the apartment his mother cursed them and the management company for a few days, and then eventually fixed them herself, if they could be fixed. The windows couldn’t be, they had to be replaced, so they stayed broken. The one in Payton’s tiny room was stuck open half an inch, freezing in winter. Payton had only a few friends, two he ate lunch with at school and one who lived in his building. Aaron, the one who lived by him, had Xbox, and his parents didn’t mind if Payton came over. With his two friends at school, Hector and Edward, he talked mostly about MMA fights, wrestling, and movies. He was ten, the prime age for bullying. The fifteen blocks he walked to school every day usually cost him money, pain, or dignity, on the way there or on the way home, but he never complained to his mother. She had her own problems. He wasn’t very happy most of the time but he wasn’t unhappy either. He had his life and was muddling through it. While he hated almost every particular aspect of it, he didn’t think about his overall happiness or unhappiness except in awful bursts, limping home from an unwanted fight. To keep his books from bullies, most of the time Payton left them at school and did what homework he could in class. He wasn’t a very good student. But the day before a major test on India, Payton decided he needed to bring his World Studies book home. He thought he might be about to fail the class, which in turn might keep him back a whole grade, and it was already late spring so this was about his last chance.

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

As long as he stood near the front-door security guard he was safe, so he waited there for all the other kids to leave. It took nearly an hour. Since the weather had turned warm they hung around outside school much longer. At last he got on a bus, figuring that that way he’d only be exposed for the three blocks between the bus stop and his building. The second he got off, though, he ran straight into a bunch of kids from his school. They’d taken the same hour to meander just that far, punching and yelling at each other the way boys did when they weren’t scared to draw attention. One of them, a chubby light-skinned black kid with reddish hair, immediately stole Payton’s bag. He pressed it to his body with one hand and probed far up his nose with the forefinger of the other until he extracted a giant booger, half dry and half jelly. “Eat it,” he said, extending the finger toward Payton. Payton stood paralyzed. If he lost the book his mom would have to pay for it, but of course he couldn’t eat it and he couldn’t fight. Aaron’s father happened to be passing on his way home from work and rescued him. He retrieved Payton’s bag (to a chorus of “We were just playing”) and walked him the rest of the way to their building. He didn’t offer Payton any advice on the way about how to deal with bullies. In fact he hardly said anything at all.

When his mom came home that night he waited until she’d taken off her white shoes and drunk most of her second glass of wine and then asked how he could reach his own father. She sat back in her easy chair and squinted at him. “Honey, the only man I’ve had anywhere near me for years runs on electricity.” She chuckled. “That’s the daddy you ought to worry about. He’s the one who keeps me happy. Daddy electricity.” This meant nothing to Payton, so he soon forgot the details of what his mother had said and in the weeks to come developed the conviction that his father had been a bolt of electricity, or perhaps Electricity itself. He mentioned this theory to his friends, who naturally didn’t believe it. Hector said that if he were really the son of Electricity he should have electrical powers, and he obviously didn’t. Payton began to imagine himself with such powers in his daydreams. He often replayed his worst moments of being bullied in his head—not that he wanted to, it was 2

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

just something his mind did to him when he was alone and not busy with anything else. If he could shoot lightning from his hands no one would steal from him or try to make him eat snot. Or if he could give a shock by touching someone, like an electric eel. (The electric eel had been the first real thing to come up when he Googled “electric powers,” after pages of power company sites with slogans explaining that they loved the environment more than anyone and therefore burned only the cleanest coal.) He couldn’t ask his mother about it again. The second time he tried, she was tired from the hospital as always and he only got as far as the word “father” before she cut him off. “I get that you’re curious,” she said, “but there’s nothing to tell and I have no idea how to find him. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Which was frustrating because the longer he thought about it, the more questions he had. How had his mother met Electricity? Where did Electricity live? Did Electricity have a penis? If so, how had he put it inside his mother without shocking her, and if not, how had Payton been made? Could Electricity see them from the wall outlets? The last of these was the most important. Payton spent a lot of time contemplating those outlets and wondering if his father was in them even occasionally. Sometimes when his mother wasn’t around he tried shouting into them, but never when she could see him.

When school let out for summer he was supposed to go to day camp, but often he stayed home instead, and Aaron wasn’t around so much he had a lot of time by himself, bored. He even grew sick of TV. There wasn’t much on the air for kids his age in the middle of the day. One day he used the screwdriver from the junk drawer to open up an outlet and see what was behind the faceplate. The answer was: not much. A little metal box with sockets nested inside. He’d seen his mother fix one of these and knew there was still more behind that, the wires that carried the electricity, but the sockets were affixed in the metal box with Phillips-head screws and he’d only found the flathead screwdriver. He stuck it behind the sockets and wiggled it, and found that he could rock them a little to

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

one side and see a hole in the back of the metal box where the wires came in from the wall. “Can you hear me?” he yelled into the hole. “It’s your son Payton.” He adjusted his grip on the screwdriver, holding it in place behind the sockets with one hand while he pushed on the handle with the other and brought his mouth up close. “Can! You! Hear! ME?” The intercom buzzed. Payton went to the entry hall and pushed the “Talk” button. “Yes, I can hear you,” said the intercom in a voice made of static. “Be downstairs in ten minutes. I’ll send a car.” Payton grabbed his Metrocard, cell phone, and keys and raced downstairs. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get in a car with a stranger, but this was different. Since he knew it was coming, he reasoned, it was really only like taking a car service, like he did on the rare occasions he went home with Edward after school. (Edward’s neighborhood was not safe, according to his mother.) He also knew that if he weren’t back before his mother he’d been in serious trouble, but she had a double shift tonight and wouldn’t be home until late. He was reassured when an actual car service Town Car pulled up in front of the building, the only difference being that the company sticker in the backseat window was a plain circle of reflective silver instead of the usual logo and telephone number. “Is your name Payton?” asked the driver when he climbed in. His skin and hair were albino white but otherwise he had the features and accent of a Mexican or Central American. “Yes,” Payton said. “Are you Electricity?” “No. I’m Manny. Put your seatbelt on.” Payton put on his seatbelt and they got underway. In only a few turns Payton had already lost his bearings. In one sense that wasn’t so unusual. While he could navigate the subway unerringly and walk around the neighborhood perfectly well, he didn’t understand how to get around by car, although he could recognize landmarks on the way to and from places he knew. But this felt like something more than that usual mild disorientation. It seemed like they were on a secret road, hidden among the ones everyone used. They crossed a bridge and as they sailed 4

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

along, through the interstices of girders Payton could see traffic backed up beside them. They cruised along the river, in an empty lane sandwiched between joggers on their left and more stalled traffic on their right, then passed a block-long gnarl of cars all trying to merge into a tunnel. A half-block later they dove into a separate tunnel all their own. “Why does everyone drive the other way if this one’s empty?” Payton asked. “They’d come this way if they could,” said Manny. They emerged from the tunnel and drove through marshes and into forested hills, and Payton began to feel nervous. They’d been traveling a long time already and now they’d not only left Brooklyn, which would be bad enough trouble with his mother, but left the city entirely, which would make her apoplectic. The car was steadily gaining speed, too, carrying him away from home faster and faster. “I need to be home before my mom,” Payton said. “Don’t worry,” said the driver. He did not say, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home in plenty of time,” or, “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.” Payton continued to worry. From Manhattan he could have found his way home if he’d needed to, but out here, wherever that was, his Metrocard wouldn’t even work. He slid his cell phone from his pocket surreptitiously and wrote Aaron a text message: “IF DNT CL 1 HR CL COPS!!!” But when he hit “Send,” the little envelope danced across the screen for a very long time until at last his phone replaced it with “FAILED: MESSAGE NOT SENT.” “It’s the high-tension wires,” said Manny. Payton hadn’t hidden his movements well enough. “You can’t get a signal here.” Payton put the phone back in his pocket, heading from worried to scared. “Hang on for this part,” Manny said, and turned left hard, throwing Payton against the restraint of his shoulder belt. When they straightened he saw that a herd or flock of small, fluffy animals had appeared running alongside them—on both sides of them, surrounding the car. They were round things with tiny, flattened pug faces and stubby limbs, coursing and leaping with improbable agility. They glowed slightly with a pale blue light. Then the car spilled from of the woods and onto a vast, copper-colored plain filled with herds of fuzzy, impossibly fast guinea-pig-like creatures pouring in from all 5

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

directions, crossing, barely missing each other, streaming out again in all directions. Shaggy, midsized sheepdogs ran alongside the herds, baying to keep them in line. Payton watched as two dogs drove their flocks toward each other at right angles—somehow one managed to cross just before the other ran his animals over the same patch of ground, yet neither slowed even a split-second. The sky was crisp blue and speckled with clouds, but there was no sun. A man rode a shining gray horse at the center of it all, galloping back and forth where the beasts came together the thickest and gesticulating with both hands, guiding the horse with his knees. He wore an electrician’s jumpsuit over his cowboy boots; his black hair hung to the middle of his back when it wasn’t flying in all directions; and he had a full, crazy beard like a Hasid. Manny slowed to a halt, hopped out and opened Payton’s door. Payton undid his seat belt and got out too. The rider turned and rode straight for them, both hands still off the reins. Payton realized that the dogs running their herds were all reacting to the rider’s hand signals, and when he came close enough Payton could hear him shouting commands too. When he was within fifty feet the rider dropped one hand to the reins and pulled his horse back to a high-stepping trot and then a walk, and finally stopped where Payton and Manny stood. He and the horse were enormous, as big as bronze statues in the park. “I can’t stop work to talk,” he said apologetically, and reached down a massive hand. “There’s not much room for two in a saddle, but you can sit across my legs and hang on.” Payton took his hand. It was rough and manly. “Now put your foot in the stirrup,” said the rider. Payton tried but couldn’t get his foot that high. Manny offered his cupped hands, and Payton put his foot there instead. He leaned his weight forward and all at once flew into the air and landed in the giant’s lap, belly to belly. “Are you Electricity?” Payton asked. “Yup,” said the man. “Now hold tight.” He touched the horse’s sides with his heels and they were off at a trot. Payton clung to the man’s torso for his life. He’d never ridden a horse before, and it felt a lot more precarious than it looked. They were high above the ground and wobbly, and a horse, unlike a car, could stumble or stop short. If that happened, where would he 6

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

be, with no seat belt to hold him? He kept his gaze fixed on the chest of Electricity’s coveralls and pressed his lips together, waiting for the first rush of fright to pass so he could speak without his voice shaking. He didn’t want Electricity to think he was a coward. “Away to me!” Electricity yelled at a dog. “There!” He wasn’t making the hand gestures anymore. He’d kept the reins in one hand and hugged Payton firmly with the other. When at last his fear receded Payton asked, “Is it true what my mom said? Are you my father?” “Yes, it’s true,” Electricity answered. “I met your mother in the big blackout of the Northeast. Breaker, come-bye!” That last he bellowed at top volume. “Tell me the story,” Payton said. “Let me think.” Electricity paused a moment. “I went down to the city in the afternoon, just as soon as it happened. I went to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge right away, and I was just now trying to remember why. Maybe because it seemed like that’s what everyone else was doing. The whole city had gone outdoors and was walking home. It was like a big party—get back, Fuse! Some people were angry, because it was hot, but most people complained and were still happy, because everybody was stuck. Nobody’s boss expected anyone to do anything. It was a free pass for the whole city. Stand! Stand! Lie down! Goddammit.” He turned the horse to the right and they sped up to a flat-out run for ten seconds, during which Payton was sure he was about to fly off the saddle and break his neck; then, having headed off whatever it was, he eased them back to a canter. “All the way down to the bridge the delis were giving away free ice cream before it melted. And I ended up walking next to your mother. She said she worked at Beth Israel and they’d shut down almost everything and sent most everyone home. I walked her to her neighborhood. Then of course we wanted to stay outside because nothing was air conditioned, so we went to a bar with a backyard. People came down with guitars and drums, and we just stayed out late drinking. It was nice. Your mother was nice, and she didn’t even know who I was. She just thought I was some guy.” “And then what?” asked Payton. 7

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

Electricity shifted in the saddle and the horse turned to the left. “I don’t think I should get into any details, really.” “I mean what happened after that? How come you never called us?” Payton demanded. “Look around,” Electricity took away the arm that encircled him and held it out wide so Payton could see across the whole of the plain. “You think these electrons herd themselves? Back when all I had to do was make lightning, I had plenty of time to see my kids, but in the past hundred years I’ve gotten so busy I don’t have time for anything. The last minute I had free was when I met your mother. I haven’t even gotten free for a haircut and shave since then. So I’d have loved to see you—away to me! Away to me, Switch! You’re probably the last kid I’m ever going to have, at least until everything breaks down, which might not be that long the way you people are going. Anyway I had to wait for you to come here.” “Bullshit,” Payton muttered. “What’s that?” Payton didn’t answer, just lowered his eyes to his own waist and hunched his shoulders self-protectively. He gave up trying to move with the horse and let himself jounce limply. “I’m serious, boy,” Electricity said. “You don’t believe me?” “You could have called,” Payton grumbled. “You made the intercom work.” He was experiencing a kind of double feeling. On the one hand he really felt disgruntled and angry. But on the other, he did believe Electricity’s excuses and was aware of following an instinct that told him if he played up his anger, he’d keep Electricity’s attention. “You’re probably not even my real dad.” Maybe if they’d met differently Payton would have been more eager to please, but as it was he was fishing for something more. He hadn’t put his finger on what yet. “I am,” protested Electricity. “I don’t believe you,” Payton said. “Prove it.” “Ask me for anything,” Electricity challenged. “Everything in the world goes on my command now. You want money? I’ll fix the bank computers. A nicer apartment? A car? Yours. Just ask and I’ll get it for you.” 8

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

“I can have anything? You swear?” “Sure, I swear…” Electricity trailed off. He released his arm from around Payton and scratched his beard in thought. When he spoke again it was forcefully and with absolute seriousness. “I swear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which no natural force or man can break.” He raised his hand as if swearing in court and intoned, “The integral of delta-Q over T is greater than or equal to zero.” “What is that?” Payton asked. “In simple terms, it’s the law that everything dies someday, even me.” “I guess that’s good enough.” Payton knew what he’d been fishing for now. “I want electrical powers like you. When kids pick on me, I want to shock them.” “You want revenge?” said Electricity. “No problem. I’ll take care of it.” “No!” Payton straightened up as much as he could in his awkward seat. “I want the power. I want to do it.” There was a long silence. The horse dropped to a walk and for the first time since he’d mounted Payton felt safe to take a good look around. They’d gone a long distance from the car. Finally Electricity spoke again. “That’s not a smart idea. I’m not even sure if I could do that, and even if I could you don’t know how to ride. You don’t know how to control the dogs. It’s too dangerous.” “You promised. You swore!” “I know I did, but you should ask for something else. You’ll understand when it’s your kids. Sometimes you need them to let you out of promises. Sometimes you need them to think about what they want because it’s bad for them. This is bad for you.” “It’s what I want,” Payton insisted. Electricity sighed, turned the horse back the way they’d come. “All right,” he said. “I’ll send you home with your own herd of electrons and two dogs to keep them. You’ll take the high-voltage line, the same way you got here. But be careful! You can’t ride a horse so you’ll have to walk the whole way, and you’re just a boy so you’re sure to get tired. But you must not rest. You’ll need to stay alert the whole time and make the dogs mind you. There’ll be other herds running with you, past you, and at you, and if you fall

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

they will run straight through you and stop your heart. If you can control the dogs all the way home you’ll have them to command. But I don’t believe you can make it.” They reached the car. Manny sat behind the wheel reading a magazine. He put it down on the passenger seat and got out. “Payton’s walking home,” Electricity said. “Lend him your map.” Manny nodded, stuck his head into the car, and stretched across to open the glove box. “Down you go,” Electricity said to Payton. He lifted Payton to bring both of his legs to the same side, then clasped his hand and lowered him down the horse’s flank. Manny emerged from the car with a folded map, spread it on the hood, and beckoned to Payton to examine it. It looked nothing like a road map. It was closer to a subway map, except almost all the lines met at right angles and there were no geographical boundaries, and letters and numbers identified what looked like stations instead of place names. Some of the lines were dashed instead of solid, others made curlicues, and still others had zigzags in the middle. Some stations were familiar dots, but others were equals-signs or something like a three-tined rake. Giant triangles and squares also appeared here and there, and some elements were surrounded by big, heavy circles. “So you see we’re here.” Manny laid his finger on the map close to the middle, where the tangle of lines was thickest. “You’re going here.” He put the forefinger of the other hand on a spot near the edge of the paper. “Wait.” He reached into his back pocket for a pen and traced along one route radiating from the center to where another crossed it, along that line to another, and so on all the way to what he’d identified as Payton’s home. “You understand?” “If you don’t understand don’t go,” Electricity said behind them. “There are millions of ways to get lost—and I’m not just saying that. It’s literally millions. Half of them, if you go the wrong way, you ruin people’s lives.” Payton turned to face him. “I understand.” He didn’t understand, of course, and he suspected Electricity knew it. But by now he knew he couldn’t go back as weak and helpless as he’d come. He wanted to be as strong and feared as all the other kids for once. Stronger.

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

Electricity shook his head, then curled his lips over his teeth and let out a piercing whistle. Nothing happened at first, but then Payton caught sight of a pair of dogs sprinting toward them, muzzles stretched forward so they were both nearly horizontal. One was all white, the other all black. They ran to Electricity’s horse and barked happily, looking up at him and jumping their front paws off the ground. “These are Anode and Cathode. They’re not like ordinary sheepdogs: get them near a herd of electrons and every last one will run away from Annie and toward Cathy. With most dogs you need to control the lead animal and swing a herd around by degrees, but with these girls the whole herd turns on a dime as soon as you give the command.” And he explained to Payton the commands: “Away-to-me” to tell a dog to circle around to the right; “come-by” to tell her to circle left; “there” to have her advance in a straight line toward the flock; “get back” to have her move away from it; “stand” to make her stop; and “that’ll do” to call her back to him. “Be forceful. If you don’t let them know you’re the boss, they won’t listen. And always use the dog’s name or both of them will do the command.” He made a small gesture with one hand and the dogs dropped their haunches to the ground. “Now call them to you. I want to hear your command voice.” Payton looked at the dogs. They sat smiling at him with tongues dangling as floppy as their ears. “That’ll do!” he yelled, trying to mimic the way Electricity had called out orders earlier. The dogs rose, jogged to him, and lay down flat on their bellies. Electricity nodded approvingly. Payton thought he’d caught something the giant had missed, though: both dogs had glanced at Electricity before they’d decided to obey, checking what their real master wanted. He didn’t think he should say anything, for fear Electricity might use it as an excuse to call the whole thing off. He’d just have to yell at them harder in the future. “There’s already a herd in that pen near where your first line starts.” Electricity pointed across the plain to a pair of ten-foot gray walls rising in parallel, maybe five feet apart. “You can take them.” “Are you sure there’s enough?” These electron-animals were small, but Payton couldn’t imagine more than a few dozen in that space. 11

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

“Trust me,” Electricity laughed, “there’s more than enough.” They all stood there in silence a moment. Payton thought that perhaps he should offer something personal or heartfelt, perhaps find out if he could ever come see Electricity again, but before he could formulate it, Electricity bounced his heels against the horse’s flanks the hardest Payton had yet seen him do, and the horse shot away. Manny got back in his car and drove off, and Payton was left alone. He walked in the direction of those parallel walls and the dogs followed, the white one on his right (he thought that was Cathode), the black one on his left. He hadn’t gone far when he realized that the walls were in fact slabs of metal much taller than he’d thought and much farther away. That pleased him. He was a good walker, and the bigger the pen turned out to be, the more power he’d find there. The sky darkened as he walked. The clouds disappeared, and what was left turned uniformly the purple of the eastern sky at dusk. By the time he finally reached the pen its walls had climbed to the height of apartment buildings and the sky had gone black. The space in the middle, a strip the width of a narrow city street, was mostly empty; the electrons all clung to the inside face of one of the two walls, climbing over and around each other on every square inch of that vast area like bees in a cutaway hive. Together they gave off enough pale blue light to see. He walked all the way around the pen to the far side. From there he had a straight path to the entrance of the first transmission line, a tunnel twice the size of the one that had carried him out of New York, lit faintly by the herds of electrons rushing into it. Just past that spot a cluster of wires rose to the top of a high-tension electrical tower, the first in a line stretching away from him. On the narrow edge of one of the slabs—the one with the electrons—he found an ordinary light switch in the “on” position. He flipped it to “off” and the electrons tumbled to the ground, piling up fast in the narrow space and spilling out the end. The dogs stood up and sat down in place nervously, eager to get to work. Payton hesitated, feeling overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure how to command the dogs. He remembered the words and what they meant, but how should he string them together

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

to start moving this disordered flock toward the tunnel? It wasn’t as simple as just telling them “that way” and pointing. The electrons continued to pour out, beginning to disperse at the edges, scattering in all directions. Payton shook himself into action. “Cathy, get back!” The white dog leapt to her feet and ran away from him. The electrons snapped into a line following her. “Away-to-me! Cathy!” She wheeled to the right and the herd followed. “Now get back! Get back!” he yelled when they were on line with the tunnel mouth, sending Cathy straight toward it with the herd strung out behind her. He told Annie to lie down and set off jogging alongside them. He kept looking back until he saw that nearly all the electrons had fallen from the pen and into line, and then called out, “Annie! There!” The black dog sprang forward and drove the herd before her. Cathy disappeared into the tunnel, Annie was coming up fast behind him, and Payton was already getting winded. “Slow down!” he cried. “Annie! Cathy! Stand!” Annie stopped in her tracks. Cathy he couldn’t see, but the flock slowed to a walk so she must have heard. He walked beside the animals into the tunnel, a plain copper tube two stories tall. Cathy wasn’t far ahead, standing still with electrons clustering around her. “Cathy, get back!” She turned and ran down the tunnel at top speed. “Annie, there!” The black dog came speeding to meet him, the flock surging ahead of her. He kept them moving that way for a while, making the dogs run forward and then stop, run forward and then stop. It went okay at first, but soon he noticed the dogs testing him. When he told Annie to stop she stopped, but then crept forward on her belly. When he ordered Cathy to stop she ignored him until the second command, and then the third the time after that. Also, as Electricity had warned, Cathy kept overtaking slower herds, and at the back faster ones caught up to Annie, and it seemed like the dogs were wrangling all those new electrons into Payton’s herd instead of letting them go their way. At first Payton only suspected it—it was hard to tell for sure with the little beasts stretched along this endless tunnel that kept rising and falling, always gently but far enough so the ceiling or the floor cut off his view of the front or back of the flock. At last, 13

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

though, he caught Annie in the act. As a flock approached she turned on a dime and launched straight into it, scattering electrons in all directions. They made a crackling baa as they flew apart. Then she turned again, just as suddenly, and zigzagged from one side of the tunnel to the other, gathering them all and forcing them to join the rear of Payton’s flock. “Stop that!” Payton ordered, but Annie paid no attention. The tunnel fell away abruptly, starting a tight downward spiral like a parking garage ramp. His electrons crowded over each other trying to descend it, and the way they packed together drove up the temperature in the tight space. He couldn’t see Cathy, but heard her barking somewhere outside the tunnel; he felt the tunnel wall to investigate and discovered he could pass right through it. He poked his head through and saw another coil of tunnel-wire lying parallel, not a foot away, so he backed up a couple of steps and with a running start leapt across the gap. Here a massive flock of electrons was climbing its own parking-garage spiral, Cathy already out front, leading them down a distinctly narrower tunnel. There was an acrid smell of something chemical burning, but he jogged along with the herd and soon they left it behind. Annie jumped across the gap to bring up the rear. The dogs kept adding to the flock. He couldn’t stop them. At least in this narrower tunnel the electrons tended to get jammed, which slowed them enough for Payton to keep up. Cathy and Annie no longer listened to his commands to lie down. Side tunnels began to crop up, and Payton unfolded part of Manny’s map to try to figure out which one led home. But before he could decipher anything Cathy, entirely on her own, darted down a side connection at random, and the whole herd flowed after her. Payton ran with them, calling her back, but it was useless. From there things only got worse. Annie and Cathy ran ahead, disappeared far behind, vanished down side trails, but always reappeared close to him with fresh additions to the herd. And despite all that leaving and returning, somehow they kept the main body of the flock traveling along. Sometimes they listened to his commands to turn, but more often they didn’t. An hour into it he gave up and tried to go home, but when he turned around the little electron bodies jostled his shins and knees so hard he almost fell, and Electricity had said that if he fell the current would kill him. He was stuck. 14

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

A little while longer and he lost his place on the map and stopped even trying to give commands. ******************************** From his plain at the heart of the grid, Electricity could see down every wire, through every digital camera and electric eye in the world, and his favorite view of Payton’s unfolding disaster came from weather satellites. It was a relatively cloud-free night over the Northeast, and in the lake of lights that was eastern America, Payton showed as a dark, silent wake, a negative contrail against a sky full of stars. That would be the dogs zigzagging back and forth as fast as a radio wave, drawing all the power around them into their surge, so that the towns to both sides of Payton’s vector flickered and went dark. Down the center line there remained a scar, too fine to see from space but one Electricity could feel, where Payton and his ever-growing flock had passed and burned out every transformer, circuit board, and electric motor. These fine lines grew into a net as Payton and the dogs crossed and recrossed the map, shading it in lightly drawn crosshatching. The country shuddered. A part of everything relied on electricity somewhere, from the container scanners at the Port of Long Beach, to the switches of freight rail lines, to the diesel pumps of truck stops, to the refrigeration compressors in supermarket warehouses, to the smaller compressors in home refrigerators, to the sewage pumps. New York City came to see him first, clad as usual in the green copper flesh of the Statue of Liberty. “What are you trying to do to me?” she demanded. Electricity told her the problem. “Then you gotta call those dogs back. I’ve got ten million people roasting in summer heat down there and they’re all stuck, not one of them can go anywhere even with a car because we got no gas. Please!” “I can’t,” Electricity lied. He could, but if he did Payton’s flock would turn around with the dogs and the boy would surely die. A sudden reversal like that would knock him off his feet and the electrons would all run through him. New York left but other cities followed to ask more or less the same thing: fat Chicago, silicone-inflated L.A., rhinestoned Reno, and Washington D.C., a gay Republican lobbyist with no sense of humor. He gave them all the same answer.

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Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

So much for the children. But some old, old friends dropped by too, and they were in a much better mood. The Appalachians came to say thanks: with the country’s power plants mostly gone dormant, he was getting a momentary break from coal extraction. “When they were just doing drift mining, that was bad enough, having bugs digging into your guts to feed on you,” he said. “But since they went to strip mining they’re breaking off the points of my spine to get at the marrow.” The Sky came to see if Electricity wanted to go dancing, like they had for millennia, just the two of them, before he’d had to go to work. Even if it was just the one day, in one part of the world, she said she felt so much better not to have to eat as much. “I know I need to lose weight,” she said, drawing some clouds around her to hide the fact that she had gotten thicker and heavier in recent years. “I don’t like myself this fat, it’s like I’m sweating all the time. But you don’t know what it’s like to be stuck in a relationship with a Feeder.” He said yes, he’d love to, and went off with her to play in her mesospheric lightning, dancing from her to the edge of the vacuum and back. When he returned to the plain, he found Money waiting for him, a hulking man in a perfectly tailored suit who always gave the impression that he’d rather be doing something more important. Not so long ago he’d been an ugly American, but nowadays he had a Pan-Asian cast to his features, like a stocky Keanu Reeves. “What is this crap?” he demanded. “You need to fix this right fucking now.” Electricity bristled. “Don’t talk to me like that. I’m a natural force. I’ve been here since the Earth began, and you’re just an epiphenomenon of human society. Show some respect.” “A natural force!” Money barked out a laugh. “You were about as important as Snow or a Rainbow. I raised you up and I’m remaking the whole world, and I don’t have time for your bullshit. You can call them back or I will.” He stuck two fingers in his mouth, locking them around his tongue. “Wait!” Electricity said. “Give me one minute.” ************************** Payton had figured out early on that his cell phone would never work and had given up trying to call his mom to come rescue him. He’d shut it off to save the battery. If he ever did get out of here, he knew he’d need to call to be picked up. 16

Joshua Malbin 307 12th St. Apt. 8 Brooklyn NY 11215

He had no idea how long he’d been running. He was hungry and thirsty, and his mind ached for sleep, but his body felt like it could run forever. Sometimes he believed he slept while running, though it was next to impossible to tell for sure. When his phone rang he thought it was a dream, and in that dream he took it from his pocket and answered it even though he knew the power was off. “Hello?” he said. The phone spoke in static, just like his intercom. “It’s not your fault,” Electricity said. “It’s just as much mine for offering you anything you wanted when I’m old enough to know better. I guess that’s the play we natural forces always act out with you people: you take more than you can handle from us and we don’t stop you, even though we’ve seen you long enough to know you’re all hell-bent on burning yourselves up. You always have the best reasons, too. You’re in danger and you need to be safe.” There came a very long pause. “I’ve very glad I got the chance to meet you at least once.” The phone went dead and a piercing whistle came echoing down the wire.

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