words.
. close to the woman suggests that she may have hyperthiam hyperthymia, a rare condition that programs a person for unusual levels of elation. It’s not known how the condition contributed either to
“Shit,” the psychologist said.
“Mom! Five bucks, Mom.” The delighted boy leaped up and bee-lined for her purse on the dining-room hutch.
Her son beamed. “Ten more!”
The police have released the self-confessed alleged suspect, despite his demand that they
Candace Weld’s field of vision shrank and grayed. Reflux came up her throat. Self-confessed alleged. She lowered herself to the carpet and sat.
The boy set her purse down and crossed back to her. He shook her shoulder, blanching. “Mom? Mom. Never mind. You can keep the money. I don’t need it.”
I see them clearly now: Thassadit Amzwar and her two self-appointed foster guardians, on the verge of that Chicago winter. I assemble the missing bits from out of the reticent archive. I’d dearly love to keep all three tucked away safely in exposition. But they’ve broken out now, despite me, into rising action.
Weld called Stone four times that night. First his line was busy. Then he wouldn’t pick up. She fired off a terse e-mail:
He shoots a message back at five the next morning. It’s frightened and sick with explanations.
They need two more e-mails and a jagged phone call before each settles down.
Weld asks if Thassa is all right. He tells her about the confused exchange he had with the Berber after class, in hushed and painful code, Thassa reassuring
“You didn’t call her last night? After the story ran?”
“I wanted to let her breathe.” After a beat, he adds, “Cowardice.”
Twice, she tells him that he did his best. But they both know: there would have been no
“I’m sorry. I never dreamed the police would sell it to TV.” But of course, television didn’t have to buy it. The media simply exercised eminent domain.
However the word got out, Thassadit Amzwar is an instant creative-nonfiction commodity. Harmon number nine: Harm Averted by Surprising Source. You know this story. Everyone knows this story but her. The Berber wouldn’t know how to read this story for the life of her. No doubt she thinks it’s Harmon number two: Group Misunderstands the Needs of an Outcast.
“The rape is my fault,” Stone tells Candace.
“Of course it is,” she agrees. Two handshakes, half of one ambiguous date, and they’ve been married for years. “This is all about you. You must have planted the idea in the man’s head.”
“If I’d been paying attention She’s a walking target. I should have warned her ”
“Are you serious? Criminal sexual abuse. A class-four felony. And she leaves her attacker so shaken he wants to be sent to jail for a decade. She doesn’t need your protection. You need hers.”
The price of information is falling to zero. You can now have almost all of it, anytime, anywhere, for next to nothing. The great majority of data can’t even be given away.
But meaning is like land: no one is making any more of it. With demand rising and supply stagnant, soon only the dead will be able to afford anything more than the smallest gist.
Minutes after the story airs, the Kabyle woman starts traveling abroad.
Search for:
But for a little while longer, the woman is still as meaningless as any local noise. She stays safely hidden in the million global narrowcast microcommunity headlines hatched every second. Bandwidth itself does not threaten her. Information may travel at light speed. But meaning spreads at the speed of dark.
Hidden in the public static are three items of firsthand knowledge. Charlotte Hullinger adds a comment to
The scene loops through Russell Stone’s head, impossible to edit. It plays against the ceiling of the El train as he slumps in his seat, riding in for the public facedown. He watches his two students, the pleasure of their companionship crossing into animal violence. The scene, in his imagination, stays broad-brushed and dim. Always his downfall in writing: a complete lack of visual resolution. But he needs no great detail to be there. Thornell, the plodding minimalist, as depressed as anyone, electrified by the flash of something godly in the woman. Of course the man tried to force her. Ram himself home. It’s coded into the deep program: fuse your sick genes to whatever
