The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

I left the bathroom without showering. Dyson paced from the kitchen to living room, rearranging objects, decluttering out of impatience.

“What happened to you?” he asked. Threads of dried blood were all over my face.

“Do you wanna watch it or not?” I flopped onto the couch.

Dyson started the clip.

Reporter: “In their thirty-one years of business, Louis and Beverly Hertz were lucky to never face their greatest fear: a robbery. But today their luck has run out.”

Mom, with a microphone in her face: “We feared for our lives.”

Pop, with the microphone in his face: “We really did.”

“We feared for our grandbabies’ lives,” Mom said. “God knows what she’s capable of.”

Reporter: “Beverly and Louis—known as Mom and Pop around this neighborhood—are referring to the disgraced self-help guru Sasha Marcus, who stole over four hundred dollars of merchandise from Hertz Shirts earlier this afternoon.”

“Guru is so dismissive,” I said. “It’s code for scam artist. It’s racist, you know.”

“Marcus is most well-known for bullying Lucas Devry—a father of three and small-town pastor from rural Michigan—into taking his own life last winter.”

“Can we turn this off?” I asked.

“I knew there was something wrong with her,” Mom said. “I felt it in my chest. Her vindictiveness. Her evil. Some people, you just know they’re evil the second you see them.”

Reporter: “Many might be wondering why a disgraced self-help guru like Sasha Marcus would rob a shirt-printing shop in suburban New Jersey. Investigators think her purchase order may offer a clue. Marcus arrived at Hertz Shirts to pick up clothing emblazoned with the phrase”—the newscaster blundered over the name—“The Atmost-per-her-uns,” he said. “Investigators are still determining what The Atmost-per-her-uns are, but if you or someone you know has any information on Sasha Marcus and her connection to The Atmost-per-her-uns, contact our tip line directly.”

Barney hissed at me. Dyson grumbled like a fussy child. “They’re gonna think The Atmosphere’s yours,” he said.

“That’s what you care about?”

“That’s not all I care about. I care about—”

“I might get arrested and you’re only worried you won’t be the face of a cult.”

“You won’t get arrested,” he said.

“Jail. Prison. Drawn and quartered. My parts fed to runaway dogs. It’s yours, Dyson. All yours. Your doctrine, your sheds, your barn, your grass, and your pond. When they put me on trial, I’ll tell the jury it’s your brainchild. That better?” I trembled with spite and anxiety, but when he embraced me, I didn’t bat him away.

His touch was an apology. “It’s okay,” he repeated, rubbing circles on my back.

A new clip played automatically. Dyson stretched to shut the laptop, but I stopped him. Onscreen, a brown-haired woman with burgundy lipstick arranged sheaths of paper on her desk. “Now,” she said, “to the story that has captured the nation’s attention: man hordes.”

“You don’t want to watch this,” said Dyson.

I shushed him. I couldn’t want to watch anything more.

“Last week, a man horde in Bernice, Louisiana, heaved thirty-four bricks through the front window of Fine Finish Nail Salon. Seven customers were treated for injuries. The owner of Fine Finish Nail Salon, Susan Cho, an Asian American resident of Bernice, has joined local activists in calling on the Bernice police to charge the assailants with hate crimes. But police are reluctant to charge the men—all of whom were white—without evidence of premeditation.”

The video cut to a cop at a podium: “These are good men. Men from our community. Men we’ve grown up with. They would never act like this under normal conditions. Something infiltrated their brains.”

The newscaster continued: “As episodes of man hordes increase across the country, researchers are racing to uncover their cause. For Susan Cho, however, cause doesn’t matter.”

Cho, on the sidewalk in front of her boarded-up store: “These men committed a crime. Assault. Destruction of property. Attempted murder. Drunk drivers don’t intend to kill anyone—but when they do? Manslaughter. These men need to be charged for the crimes they committed.”

The camera returned to the newscaster. Five men were sitting beside her at a gray table shaped like a bean. “Man hordes,” she said. “Are they a blessing, or a curse? Tonight we hold a debate.” She listed incidents from that day:

A man horde in Columbus, Ohio, rescued a ten-year-old girl’s kitten from a very tall tree.

A man horde in rural North Carolina carried an elderly woman too old to drive to her doctor’s appointment.

A man horde in Milan, Ohio, toppled a statue of Thomas Edison.

A man horde mowed twenty-six lawns in Drain, Illinois.

A man horde in Plano, Texas, kicked a German shepherd to death.

The debaters included a psychologist, a sociologist, a biologist, a zoologist, and a part-time plumber named Hank who’d been part of a horde. The -ologists speculated on causes and origins: man hordes were the consequences of our nation’s decimated mental health system; man hordes were a social phenomenon unique to a society rife with alienation; bacteria in groundwater aquifers have scrambled the nervous system of melanin-deficient middle-aged males, causing them to lose control of their cognitive agency and horde together for safety; hordes were a natural practice across the animal kingdom and men were returning to their base, animal instincts through hording; hordes were hard to remember.

Hank had little to say—he remembered nothing of his experience—and the others greedily spoke over him. But I kept my attention on him as the -ologists shouted and pointed and scoffed and dramatically laughed at their counterparts. He wore a purple button-down shirt and no jacket. His face was shaved and flaky, eyes squiggled with red, and he kept cracking his knuckles as the others suggested that Hank—who had been part of a horde that broke into cars in a Walmart to change their oil—ought to be imprisoned until the occurrences subsided. Hank dunked his face in his hands and wept. No one acknowledged his crying.

“I can’t watch this anymore,” Dyson said. He closed his browser. I didn’t ask him to clarify: He couldn’t watch such an inane debate, or he couldn’t watch a man weep on TV?

Dyson unzipped the disk case on