The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

knows the screen is only the map, not the territory. Behind it, there are lives about to change, Resonant and baseliner. Emmeline’s. His.

Around lunch, the story begins to move of its own accord. It looks nothing like a virus. It looks like fireworks. Someone with a significant number of followers posts the story, and there’s a burst. Another over there, in some fiefdom of the Internet. Responses are stunned or mocking. WTAF? and Did you see this? Posters ask if the Trib’s been bought out by Weekly World News or if it’s possible for a newspaper to straight up lose its collective mind.

Then people start to post sightings, confirmations. To give a thing a name is to call it into being, bring it forth into people’s consciousness. Avi read an article once about Homer’s persistent description of the Aegean as “the wine-dark sea,” referring to the sky as bronze no matter the time of day. A linguist theorized that at the time the Iliad and the Odyssey were written, there was no Greek word for blue. In most languages, blue is one of the youngest color words. Without a word to describe it, the ancient Greeks didn’t perceive things as blue. Their sky was bronze, their sea a deep and frothing purple. The word Resonant illuminates a blank space in people’s minds, and #Resonant begins to yield results. A little girl in Omaha who flew away from schoolyard bullies and never came back. The man in Durham who was arrested for simultaneously robbing two banks on opposite sides of the city, then bailed out by an identical twin records showed he didn’t have. A schoolteacher in Cincinnati who healed a kid’s broken arm by the laying on of hands. People had seen things, but without a word to attach to them, a conceptual hashtag, they filed them as miracles and hallucinations. Now they know better.

Another strain arises along with the sightings. People coming out. People admitting who and what they are to the world. Some of the responses to this are terrible, hateful things, death threats and rape threats. Those who step forward are called freaks and monstrosities. But there’s support, too, and something like religious awe. And there are aspirants, wannabes. You’re amazing, they say. How do I become like you?

Avi’s first call is from CNN. They want him on the air that night or the next morning. It’s clear they’re settling for him. What they want is an actual Resonant, someone to do tricks live on air. “Can you bring anyone with you?” the segment producer asks. Not yet, Avi thinks. All of this has been planned out, timed. First him, then them. He does a phone interview with Lakshmi Rameswaram, an NPR host he knows from Chicago media functions back when he attended such things. Her questions are vague. Most of them amount to, Is this happening? He assures her he’s met dozens of Resonants and they are very much real. We should have laid more groundwork ahead of time, he thinks. We should have been more prepared. There was no way to know. Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon.

It turns out other people were ready. The Kindred Network, a consortium of right-wing television and radio stations, bumps one of its AM radio wingnuts up to the television side. Jefferson Hargrave has a camera ready in his studio, which looks like it’s been set up in a supply closet.

“I’ve been warning people for years,” he says in the frothing patter of a manic street preacher. “You can check the archives on my website. I’ve devoted hours of my program. I wasn’t collaborating at the level of this reporter.” He slaps a folded copy of the Trib he’s using as a prop. It’s yesterday’s edition, but the effect is the same. “I didn’t know there was a fancy name for it. I didn’t have the kind of documentation he does. But I had the knowledge. I had the testimony of honest Americans about what they saw. And I think the thing left out of this little article is what do they want? Why step forward now? I saw the piece in the paper with that headline, ‘They Walk Among Us,’ but what I read was ‘We Come in Peace.’ And we’ve all seen movies where the aliens who look just like us show up and claim they come in peace. When they claim they want to work alongside us for the betterment of humanity even though they themselves aren’t human. We know the two ways that movie ends. It ends up with the humans in concentration camps and cattle pens. Or it ends with a group of humans, maybe only a couple, rising up to stop whatever these things are from taking what’s ours.”

Avi opens his in-box. It was empty a week ago, but the number of messages is climbing through the low thousands. He goes downstairs to fix himself something to eat before diving in.

Kay’s in the living room. She looks surprised when he comes down the stairs. “I called for you,” she says. “I thought you were out.” She has a copy of the Trib in her hand, rolled like she’s about to swat something with it.

“I must not have heard you,” he says.

She nods, collecting herself. Avi sees what’s coming before she speaks. Maybe I’m like them, he thinks. Maybe I can see the future.

“You need to tell me about this,” she says, tapping the newspaper. “You need to tell me about our daughter right now.”

“I know,” says Avi.

“Did you think you could keep it secret?” Kay says. “It’s on the front page of the fucking Trib.”

“She’s not mentioned—”

“Anyone who’s not an idiot can read her in here,” says Kay. “My mother will know.”

“I didn’t know where to start,” Avi says.

“Start with Emmeline.”

“She’s one of them,” he says. “A Resonant.”

“How long?”

“I think they’re born that way,” he says. “But Emmeline—”

“How long have you known?”

“A month,” he says. “Two months.”

“You both kept it