How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

she was just trying to keep track of it all because it didn’t seem like anybody else noticed or cared that we kept making the same mistakes, that hate in a neighborhood or injustice in a state ran like poison through veins, until another ice shelf collapsed or another animal went extinct. Everything is connected, she’d say. And I’d tell her, You’re only one person and you only have one life.

mainstream news outlets called Annie “Another Missing Link” and “The Wonder Girl of Ancient Siberia” after the analysis of her genome was completed. Part Neanderthal and part something only superficially human, she possessed genetic traits similar to those of a starfish or octopus.

In the real world, people comfort themselves with ignorance, politics, and faith, but here in the domes only hard numbers matter.

“And remember,” the voice said, “what is laughter but a moment of release where pain and memory are washed away? When we laugh, we are stronger. When we laugh, we heal the world.”

She curled into me, and I thought about all the nights these past nine months that ended just like this one—never acknowledging the future, desperately wanting to forget the past—taking small comfort in the equilibrium that we both knew couldn’t last forever.

It was the one hobby I’d shared with my little brother, eventually amassing nearly three thousand issues. Comics let us see a brighter world, forget our troubles, allowed us to dream. And I wanted this for Fitch. He deserved another world.