The Measure(101)
Jack shared his concerns with Javi’s parents, telling them how their son had encouraged him to fight on behalf of all short-stringers. Perhaps he could do that now, Jack said, by sharing his and Javi’s story.
All three of them knew that exposing the switch risked provoking backlash, but hiding it felt somehow shameful. And Javi’s parents were not ashamed. They were just as proud of their son as they had always been.
With their blessing, Jack drafted a plan.
Jack had requested a reassignment to New York four years earlier, desperate to leave D.C. after his aunt and uncle moved into the White House. He had made a few friends among the computer scientists at his small cyber command outpost, and he dated a handful of pretty girls, though most of them, believing Jack had a short string, only pursued him in the hope of fulfilling some warped Jackie O fantasy, marrying the doomed son of a dynasty. Jack had made a personal pledge to attend any Strung Together events in his city, and he and Javi had mailed each other letters several times a year, Javi’s end of the exchange always infinitely more exciting.
The thrill of defying his uncle had gradually faded, especially after the election, and neither work nor pleasure gave Jack much fulfillment. He had slipped back into his old aimless ways. Without the expectations of his family propping him up, it was surprisingly easy to topple over, to drift through the doldrums of the normal life he once craved.
But now, with a photocopy of Javier’s letter in his hands, Jack finally felt purpose again.
He arrived at the entrance to the brownstone where the Johnson Foundation was headquartered. After losing his presidential bid, Senator Wes Johnson had started the nonprofit to provide resources for short-stringers and promote equality of all string lengths. (Despite the great strides of the Strung Together movement, there was still much to overcome, as the bias against short-stringers proved easier to ingrain than to uproot.)
Jack had been following news of the Johnson Foundation for the past few years, the team working to establish legal protections for short-stringers facing discrimination across numerous fields: job hiring, school admissions, loan applications, health care, adoptions. The list seemed truly boundless. And they had recently launched a new initiative advocating for the right of short-stringers to die on their own terms, pushing for death-with-dignity laws to cover those at the very end of their strings, who would rather pass away peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, than leave their fate up to chance.
When Jack arrived at the Johnson Foundation, an assistant led him upstairs to the office of the newly appointed director of communications, Maura Hill.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Hunter.” Maura leaned casually against the front of her desk, legs crossed at the ankles, while Jack sat down in a leather chair.
“I have to say, I was quite intrigued when I heard that the president’s nephew wanted a meeting,” she said.
Jack gave her a polite nod. “I’m here on behalf of my friend Captain García of the U.S. Army. He was recently killed in action.” Jack took a gulp of water from the glass in front of him, suddenly parched.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Maura said.
Jack cleared his throat and steeled himself. It was the first time that Jack had spoken these next words to a stranger. “The truth is, five years ago we were both second lieutenants in the army, right when the STAR Initiative was announced. My friend Javi had a short string, and I had a long one, but we both knew that he was the one who was meant to be a soldier. To be a hero, really. So we switched our strings, and he was sent overseas in my place.”
Maura’s eyes widened, and she rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. “Holy shit.”
Jack handed her the scanned letter that he had been carrying in a folder. “Javi wrote this, right before he died.”
Jack watched Maura read the letter slowly, taking her time with each line. Her lips parted several times, as if she were about to speak, but she remained silent.
Jack hoped that he had brought the letter to the right place. For the past six months, the foundation had been powerfully backing Anthony’s lead opponent for president, a Pennsylvania senator and vocal short-stringer advocate. Rollins was already bleeding support, especially after last year’s revelation: the scrawled confession found in the cell of his attempted assassin, after she passed away in prison. The world had been wrong, five years ago. She was not driven mad by her string. She had never even opened her box, never seen what was inside. She was instead a grieving sister, still heartbroken after thirty years, angered by the ascendance of one of the men she blamed for the death of her brother. The woman had known, of course, that she couldn’t murder Anthony—she had seen his long string on TV—but she still wanted to punish him somehow. To mete out the justice that had long been withheld. When an innocent man, Hank, got caught in the crossfire, she lost her will to come forward, forever silenced by her guilt.
After the true motive for the shooting was discovered, there were calls for impeachment, of course, but it was impossible to prove that Anthony knew anything more than the public knew. He denied any firsthand involvement in the death of her half brother, and as for his campaign’s defamation of the woman, he had just assumed—like everyone else—that her string was to blame for her actions.
But now, in the most recent poll, the race for Anthony’s reelection looked excruciatingly tight. It might only take one more weight to finally tip the scale.