Shadowbahn(27)
rune
People jabber at the car in tongues, runic utterances of vague and undefined horrors that Parker and Zema don’t understand: katyperry! coldplay! “What’s the matter with all of you?” Parker cries. With their Camry stalled, he starts rolling down the window to reason with them, but Zema pleads from the passenger seat, “Don’t roll down the window!” locking her door. To the glass beside her, people press their faces or ears. “We’re not a jukebox!” Parker tries to tell them. “It’s just our dad’s old playlist!”
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A woman in her seventies sticks her head in the car through Parker’s rolled-down window. “What’s that?” she says to the song she hears from the car. Here come the planes, so you better . . . Turning to her white-haired husband in outrage, she feels violated that this should be the first music she’s heard in days. “Why would anyone listen to a song like this?” the wife demands of her husband, who pays her no attention but looks at Parker and opens his mouth wide to let something slither out, gratefuldead uncoiling hideously from his lips.
treason
It isn’t clear to Parker and Zema whether the flags along the road running through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska fly over territory officially ruptured, “official” being a misnomer since none of the declarations of Disunion are recognized by anyone other than those who make them. This underscores that no one comprehends what’s happening other than that no one believes in the same country anymore and probably never has. Crossing state lines, Parker has heard of people presenting passports and in some cases compelled to sign Disunion pledges considered in other states felonious and potentially treasonable.
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That the president X’d out on the flags hasn’t been president for five years doesn’t devalue his currency as a figure who rallies those who hate him. To the Rupture he embodies Year Zero, his successor counting as no more or less relevant than Year One or maybe Year One Point Five. There’s no dismissing the public-relations value of the former president’s color, the same as Parker’s African sister; that Zema makes no mention of the flags doesn’t mean she doesn’t note them. On the highway she sinks down in her seat and Parker stays out of the fast lane, where he fears the silver Camry is most conspicuous.
the fugitive song
By North Platte they’re fugitives of a kind, though they’ve broken no law and no highway patrol is in pursuit. No APB is out on them. To the contrary, their music crosses boundaries with impunity; entering the Rupture, where Parker expects time and again to be stopped, the car is waved on by border guards. Soon Parker realizes, They know it’s us and have been told to let us through.
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When Parker’s girlfriend was institutionalized in Vancouver and then prohibited from contact with the outside world, her texts ended. Undeterred, Parker shared his membership to a music-streaming site with her, communicating by telltale song titles. “When will I be loved?” he asked. “Reach out, I’ll be there,” she assured him. “Where did our love go?” he called from a melody in flight, growing distant. “Somewhere,” was all she had time to speculate, “over the rainbow.”
caravan
Now, with all the songs gone, this means of contact vanishes as well. Their relationship fades into either a narrow escape or a forever-lost moment of happiness—Parker won’t know which for years. Nomads for whom west has swallowed up all other quadrants, with growing futility he and his sister try to stay one town ahead of urban legend and word of mouth. Filling once–Top Forty airtime with reports of Parker and Zema’s progress, DJs announce excitedly, “Kids, Supersonik is on the move!” The siblings’ trajectory becomes anticipated: “We project they’ll hit the state line by tomorrow eve! So keep us posted on all your latest sightings.”
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Behind them grows a caravan. Other cars pull alongside in the next lane, drivers and passengers leaning out, motioning for Parker and Zema to roll down their windows. Helicopters follow. Slipping pursuit and stopping to sleep, the brother and sister park the increasingly notorious Camry in the darkest corners of motel lots. For meals they slide the car into the darkest alley; at various eateries along U.S. 83, Zema waits in the car as Parker gets takeout. When radio isn’t obsessed with the brother and sister, or a sheriff who went into the South Tower not to be seen again, it reports that the Towers disappear in thin air and reappear: two big silver Post-its from God, thinks Parker, that She’s not f*cking around anymore.
dust to dust
Aerial dusting where the Towers were/are is undertaken to determine if they still stand. In video shot by those who no longer see the buildings, dust rains down, covering the ground, while video shot by those who still see them reveals dusty buildings. Some suggest that maybe one of the planes no longer showing structures on its radar should fly through the space to determine the true extent of their absence, but most find the idea of flying a plane into the Twin Towers—even into space where Towers might no longer be—offensive and intolerable on any level, psychological or symbolic.
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In the meantime the music that America sings flees. It flees American lips and American ears, particularly that America which claims to be most American by desecrating everything America is supposed to be. When Parker and Zema drive past Rupture flags, when they roll by the barbed wire of Disunion, there rise from the ground swarms of aural detritivores, a monstrous termite sound that feasts on music-death and leaves a pall. Deafened earth rolls before the siblings, one horizon of sedition and perfidy following another, strafed by those who most proclaim America’s embrace.