The Measure(12)
A third of the staff hadn’t looked in their boxes; the rest seemed fairly content with their findings. After learning about Maura, several coworkers even offered to cover Nina’s desk, should she ever need some time off.
But for Nina there was no such thing.
Surrounded by the news all day, Nina could never escape the strings. She found herself begging Deborah to assign her to some other story, any other story, but it seemed as if there weren’t any. The field of presidential candidates was taking shape and global temperatures were rising, but nothing captivated readers the way the strings could. There was hardly an hour in the day when Nina wasn’t thinking about them, wondering if she would ever know the truth.
Maura often described Nina as a lovable control freak, always needing to store the Tupperware containers with their proper lids, never buying a new skirt unless she already owned a matching top. Part of what Nina loved about being an editor were the rules, the clear and comprehensible laws of grammar and linguistics, and she loved wielding the power of the red pen to enact them. Before her promotion, when she was still trying to prove herself as a reporter, she reveled in seeking out the facts, burying herself in piles of research, charged with the hunt for the truth. But everything about the strings unearthed an even deeper desire for knowledge, for control. The lack of answers—where did the strings come from? why now? do they actually control the future, or simply possess the knowledge of it?—kept Nina from sleeping through the night. Everything was too murky, too gray. She needed things in black-and-white.
And Nina was forced to helplessly watch Maura suffer, because nothing could be done. Any semblance of control had been ripped from them both.
Nina felt powerless, like she was reliving one of the worst days of her life, back in senior year of high school. She had spent an hour, that morning, with the school’s guidance counselor, seeking advice on coming out to her friends, unaware that a catty classmate had been eavesdropping through the door, and by the time that Nina had left the office, she didn’t need to worry about finding the right moment to share. The truth was already out.
Even now, as an adult, Nina could still see the gym’s locker room: the curious glances, the subtle nods, the embarrassed whispers. For someone who refused to let even one sentence be printed in the school newspaper without her explicit editorial sign-off, she had entered a new circle of hell. Nina’s meticulous planning, her weeks of internal debate, everything was scrapped in an instant. All her power, her control, had been stolen away. She had only intended to tell a handful of friends, but word quickly slipped across multiple grades.
Of course, two days later, her news had been eclipsed when half the soccer team was suspended for smoking pot behind the field, and hardly anyone could remember the gossip from before. Except for Nina.
She would always remember.
More than a decade later, living in the apartment she rented with Maura, Nina could still feel the anger and humiliation, could still recall vowing to protect herself from any other agony, from ever losing control again.
Amie and Maura often asked her to be less controlling. To loosen up. To let it go.
But Nina couldn’t let go. Not when she lived in a world of betrayal and heartache, of mysterious boxes and painfully short strings.
If Nina let go, then whatever it was that she was trying to protect—her younger self, her future with Maura—would be left unarmed and vulnerable. Out of her control.
The boxes were now a part of her life, Nina couldn’t change that. But she was determined to regain a sense of power and clarity. And so, in the wee hours when she couldn’t sleep, or when Maura was away from their apartment, Nina found herself scouring the Internet for answers.
What had started as a simple Google search—Where did the boxes come from?—quickly unspooled, after Nina clicked over to Reddit and landed in the middle of a popular new subreddit, r/Strings. She instantly realized there were hundreds of ongoing discussions, all attempting to decipher the mystery of the boxes.
Normally Nina was too private a person, too self-disciplined, to enjoy the public abandon of most social media, but she surprised herself with how easily she could slip into the conversations and suddenly lose two hours online.
Nina landed on one photo posted by gordoncoop531957 of a box illuminated under UV light, fingerprints glowing on the outer casing. “Proof,” the photo was captioned.
Posted by u/Matty 1 hour ago
Proof of wut? That ur an idiot?
Posted by u/TheWatcher 1 hour ago
Definitely extraterrestrial. It’s why the prints are invisible to the naked eye.
Posted by u/NJbro44 2 hours ago
Dude those are probably ur own fingers.
Another user, offdagrid774, posted a picture of his box being kept inside a microwave, urging everyone to do the same: “Don’t let the NSA listen to you!”
Posted by u/ANH 1 day ago
Ur right, the boxes are def bugged. The gov spying not just on Americans but the whole world!! How else would they have ur name and address? Keep it out of ur house!!
Posted by u/Fran_M 1 day ago
Offdagrid774, do you think there’s a camera inside, too?
The religious contingent occupied a smaller corner online, though equally vocal. A Bible verse, shared by RedVelvet_Mama, had recently gone viral as an alleged testament to the boxes’ divine provenance.