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Text copyright © 2018 by Big Text, Inc., Jess Walter All rights reserved.
eISBN: 9781542042321
Chapter 1:
Impending Doom in the Golden Triangle
The skies open as if a seam has torn.
Snow in Central Mississippi? In March?
“Stop crying, kid, it ain’t the end of the world.” But what if it is?
Chapter 2:
Intrepid Scientist Anna Molson Must Warn...
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All day, people in Starkville have been saying how crazy and unseasonal this storm is, something that she, of all people, doesn’t need to be told.
Do you not see what’s happening? Melting polar ice, deforestation, acidifying oceans, calving of glaciers, sea levels rising, epochal floods and storms, mass extinctions, ancient diseases released from the permafrost. It is a complete collapse of delicate environmental systems on every level and front.
No, she is a hydrogeologist, working until two weeks ago on a research project in the Arctic. She’s here interviewing for an assistant professorship in the Geosciences Department.
She offers her hand. “Anna Molson.”
“I mean, do you sometimes ask yourself, Why go on?”
Does she sometimes ask herself, Why go on? No. She asks that question every day.
“Rowan,” he says, “Rowan Eastman.”
Screw you, impending doom.
“And so,” she says, “here I am.” “Here you are.” She takes a drink of her Irish coffee. “In a certain time and place.” “Yes. Interviewing for a job in Mississippi because it’s as close as I could get to my boyfriend in Florida.” “It’s like a country song,” Rowan says. “Movin’ to Starkville for the man what cheated on ya.” Anna thinks again about the imprecision of words—had Bashir cheated? He would argue that he acted within the basic parameters of their agreement. Any missteps, he’d say, were missteps of volume, not substance.
“No way I’m gonna get this job. Apparently they interviewed some guy with twice as much teaching experience as me.” The man with the beard finishes pouring the last of the whiskey into their cups. He waves the empty flask. “Yeah, we-e-e-ell—” He stretches the word out, speaking now without any trace whatsoever of that Mississippi drawl. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that guy.”
Chapter 3:
Rowan Eastman Survives and Scaven...
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His dinner companions that night were an old-school geology prof, a nerd from geological information systems, and an attractive, ridiculously cheerful woman who taught meteorological broadcasting.
Dr. Weather Girl also brought her boyfriend, an English prof and sulking novelist with two last names, something like Anderson Henderson or Dickerson Gunderson. The novelist kept a hand on Dr. Weather Girl at all times and watched Rowan with suspicion, as if he was afraid Rowan might steal his cheerful girlfriend—which made Rowan want to get the job so he could steal the novelist’s cheerful girlfriend.
And then, the next morning, in his last interview, with an officious associate dean, Rowan blew the whole thing. They were talking about Rowan’s research project on declining whale birth rates when the associate dean muttered that he didn’t want to bring in “a climate zealot.” “Zealot?” Rowan said before he could stop himself. “What’s that mean?”
Rowan tried to save the ball from going out of bounds. “I’m here to teach science, not political science.” But it was too late. He’d blown it. Like always. And he needed this job.
He’d left a tenure-track position at UMass in 2012 to go to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, studying the effects of warming seawater on northeast whale populations. He measured acidity and temperature levels in the traditional breeding waters of right whales, Eubalaena glacialis, one of the rarest baleens left in the world, hunted to near extinction. The research had been physical—careening around in boats, scuba diving—the most fulfilling work of his life. But then in 2016, his mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (proving the veracity if not the efficacy
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His mother died.
This devastated him in a way he couldn’t explain. He felt bereft, his entire being altered, a moon without its planet.
This was the fifth university job he’d interviewed for, and he’d blown all five.
He decided to try his accent on her—“Guessin’ y’all ain’t from Starkville—” Only to find out she was here interviewing for his job.
“So . . . you’re the guy who interviewed for my job?” she asks. “Well, technically, I was here first, so you interviewed for my job.”
The fake drawl comes back. “Well, Miss Molson, I don’t suppose y’all would wanna follow me back to the Butler Guest House and have some more whiskey, maybe even a sloppy make-out session before your faculty dinner?” She smiles. “I should tell you something, Mr. Eastman,” she says. “Y’all is typically used only for plural second person. For a group. So if you were obnoxiously propositioning a group of people, it would be, ‘Do y’all wanna go make out.’ But to proposition just one person you would say, ‘Do you wanna go make out?’” She pauses. “And yeah, why not.”
Chapter 4:
Jeremiah Seals Offers Refuge to a Pack of Des...
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analytical, careful, a rule follower, which is probably why it took him all of high school and nearly three years of college to admit, even to himself, that he is gay. Raised Baptist in a small Louisiana town, he grew up assuming he’d be married before having sex of any kind. And while the religion has mostly fallen away, he’s not quite ready to go full-bathhouse yet.
When the parade permit was rejected, Jeremiah had felt demoralized. He’d wondered if it wasn’t a sign that he should’ve waited until he graduated to come out, if he should’ve stayed fake-straight. Statistically, at least, he’s done better that way, having kissed three girls in his life and only one guy, the aforementioned Trevor Blankenship—who isn’t even allowed to talk to him now because of Trevor’s insecure boyfriend. (Seventy-nine gay people on campus and he’s already alienated two?) At least as a fake-straight, he got some good high school dance pictures out of the whole deal. So far,
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Marvin Gaye + Do Not Disturb = middle-aged people having sex.
Weather is climate in a certain time and place. In this time and place, two mildly depressed scientists interviewing for the same job have been caught in some kind of perverted envirosexdeath party by an overlooked genius of southern literature (his grotesque, generationally damaged characters speaking to themes of a perverted historical America) and a meteorology prof who teaches her students to stand in front of a green screen and cheerfully narrate the death of a planet.
In the middle, like the referee at a wrestling match, or the host at a swingers’ club, stands young Jeremiah Seals, who thinks: My God, I really am the only person on the planet not having sex.
Chapt...
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Civilization Dissolves into a Debauc...
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Anna explains how she and Rowan met and were drinking together to blow off steam, and how they eventually invented the game Strip Name That Tune, Environmental Edition, and that Rowan was losing badly, having failed to identify seven songs so that Anna had to go easy on him.
By this time, the adults are what could only be called polluted. Jeremiah sits out at the Desk of Ungodly Patience doing homework for an hour after his shift ends before finally asking them to wind down the party. He doesn’t want to lose his job. He’s gotten in trouble only once at the BGH, and that was when a group of visiting football recruits got hold of some beer and broke a few windows after he went home, his supervisor Lame Jimmy explaining that his shift doesn’t end until “Lights-out” and all is quiet.
All is definitely not quiet, but there is no precedent for this night. Since two faculty members are here, he hopes he won’t get in trouble for leaving. Back at the Desk of What the Hell Does It Matter Anyway, Jeremiah fills out his last log report. He shuts down the computer and sits quietly for a moment, thinking about the night. He feels sick, like a kid who has heard more than he was supposed to hear. It’s one thing to hear adults say there’s no Santa. But to hear there’s no Future? Swift kick to the soul.
Jeremiah glances once more through the window across the courtyard. He can’t quite see what’s going on, just bodies moving, dancing, or maybe it’s devolved into something else, something he doesn’t want to know, like coming across some channel of twisted professor porn. Do not go see that, he thinks. It cannot be unseen. Finally, he leaves the Desk of Blissful Ignorance.
Jeremiah thinks that word hopeless again. He stands outside. Stares up at the endless sky.
Chapter 6:
Johnny Cash Inexplicably Appears in an Otherwise Dystopian C...
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Chapter 7:
With a Whimper and a Bang
