The Silent History: A Novel
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Authors: Eli Horowitz,Matthew Derby,Kevin Moffett
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CONTENTS
Hugh Purcell, Executive Director, Washington, DC, 2044
Theodore Greene, El Cerrito, CA, 2011
Nancy Jernik, Teaneck, NJ, 2011
August Burnham, Newton, MA, 2012
Monica Melendez, Houston, TX, 2014
Francine Chang, Oakland, CA, 2016
David Dietrich, Decatur, GA, 2017
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2017
August Burnham, Newton, MA, 2017
Steven Grenier, New York, NY, 2018
Patti Kern, Pacifica, CA, 2018
Prashant Nuregesan, Atlanta, GA, 2018
Nancy Jernik, Teaneck, NJ, 2019
David Dietrich, Decatur, GA, 2019
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2020
Francine Chang, Oakland, CA, 2020
Kourosh Aalia, Oakland, CA, 2021
Patti Kern, Pacifica, CA, 2021
August Burnham, Newton, MA, 2021
Francine Chang, Oakland, CA, 2022
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2022
Kenule Mitee, Brooklyn, NY, 2022
Steven Grenier, New York, NY, 2023
David Dietrich, Decatur, GA, 2023
Arturo Cordero Garcia, Baltimore, MD, 2024
Prashant Nuregesan, Charlotte, NC, 2025
Nancy Jernik, Brooklyn, NY, 2026
John Parker Conway, Monte Rio, CA, 2026
Francine Chang, Oakland, CA, 2027
Patti Kern, Monte Rio, CA, 2027
Kenule Mitee, Brooklyn, NY, 2027
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2027
David Dietrich, Brooklyn, NY, 2027
Palmer Carlyle, Hoboken, NJ, 2027
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2028
Patti Kern, Monte Rio, CA, 2028
John Parker Conway, Monte Rio, CA, 2028
Terry “Bug” Delarosa, Villa Grande, CA, 2028
Francine Chang, Monte Rio, CA, 2029
Nancy Jernik, Brooklyn, NY, 2029
Yariv Bassani, Floral Park, NY, 2029
August Burnham, Rahway, NJ, 2030
Drake Pope, Brooklyn, NY, 2030
Prashant Nuregesan, Atlanta, GA, 2030
Steven Grenier, Philadelphia, PA, 2031
August Burnham, Rahway, NJ, 2032
Nancy Jernik, Monte Rio, CA, 2032
Francine Chang, Monte Rio, CA, 2032
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2032
Patti Kern, Monte Rio, CA, 2033
Dr. Madeline Sorm, Sebastopol, CA, 2033
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2034
August Burnham, Rahway, NJ, 2034
Steven Grenier, New York, NY, 2035
Calvin Andersen, Newark, NJ, 2036
Prashant Nuregesan, Redwood City, CA, 2037
Kenule Mitee, Brooklyn, NY, 2037
Persephone Goldia, Philadelphia, PA, 2037
Senator Ransford Sweeney, Des Moines, IA, 2038
Zane Noerper, Waldron Island, WA, 2038
Francine Chang, Monte Rio, CA, 2038
John Parker Conway, Monte Rio, CA, 2038
Nancy Jernik, Monte Rio, CA, 2039
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2039
August Burnham, Rahway, NJ, 2039
David Dietrich, Richfield Springs, NY, 2039
Nancy Jernik, Rock Island, IL, 2040
August Burnham, Acadia National Park, ME, 2040
Calvin Andersen, Acadia National Park, ME, 2040
Persephone Goldia, Philadelphia, PA, 2040
Francine Chang, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Theodore Greene, Richmond, CA, 2040
David Dietrich, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Brian Ng, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Patti Kern, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Nancy Jernik, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Theodore Greene, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Francine Chang, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Patti Kern, New Liberty, IA, 2040
David Dietrich, American Highway, 2040
Calvin Andersen, Acadia National Park, ME, 2040
Steven Grenier, Charlottesville, VA, 2040
August Burnham, Portland, ME, 2040
Gorton Vaher, Philadelphia, PA, 2040
Kenule Mitee, Brooklyn, NY, 2040
Calvin Andersen, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Theodore Greene, Rock Island, IL, 2040
Francine Chang, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Patti Kern, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Nancy Jernik, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Francine Chang, New Liberty, IA, 2040
John Parker Conway, Monte Rio, CA, 2040
August Burnham, Portland, ME, 2040
Steven Grenier, New Liberty, IA, 2040
Nancy Jernik, Chicago, IL, 2040
John Parker Conway, Monte Rio, CA, 2040
August Burnham, Chicago, IL, 2040
Kenule Mitee, Lagos, Nigeria, 2041
Francine Chang, Oakland, CA, 2041
Gorton Vaher, Philadelphia, PA, 2041
Patti Kern, Spindletop, KY, 2041
Theodore Greene, Oakland, CA, 2041
Calvin Andersen, Terlingua, TX, 2043
PROLOGUE
HUGH PURCELL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
WASHINGTON, DC
2044
I was twenty-two and desperate for work, desperate for any human contact at all, so when I saw an opening for a junior epidemiological archivist, no experience necessary, I applied on the spot. The listing was vague, just something about “our continuing efforts to better understand the scope of the silent phenomenon.” I got the job on a Friday, and by Monday morning I was already out on the streets of the Charlotte financial district with a list of names and a scripted greeting.
My duties appeared simple—find people who had come into contact with silents and record their testimony. The streets at dawn were empty, which was mostly a relief, given the infamous state of the neighborhood at that point. My first interview was with a bird rehabber, a weathered man with a severed pinky, who I found as he was raising the steel gate on his shop. I intercepted a pastor ushering a crowd of churchgoers out of a storefront chapel. There was a boy in the square whose brother was a silent. Most of what I recorded was speculative thirdhand info, wispy urban myths about how silence was a plague, or a conspiracy, or some sort of vague metaphor. Some people were convinced it was caused by foodborne toxins, some blamed the parents, some suspected the kids themselves.
I heard the term “mutetard” a lot that day.
By late afternoon, after getting mugged and dry humped by a group of teenage girls in football uniforms, I was beginning to question how much I actually wanted the job. But I had one more interview subject on the list, a repo man who’d been hired by the city to orchestrate a resettlement of silent squatters from the buildings along Trade Street, where they wanted to put in a high-end artisan pet arcade. His name was Camara, but he referred to himself as “the Camara,” and within minutes of me finding him idling in a tan Burgoyne outside a Pulp Hulk he’d already shown me his blowgun collection and offered to give me a Key West salad. He didn’t know much about the silents, aside from a two-day sensitivity training course he’d taken as a condition of his hire. “You don’t need to know much,” he said, chewing on a cone of fruit meat. “People see the Camara coming and they pretty much get that it’s time to move. Even just a shadow tells them this. Just a silhouette of the Camara passing by a window. You don’t need words to tell someone they’re not welcome.” He didn’t know why there were so many of them living in the burned-out center of the city, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in the question. “So long as they don’t have a grenade launcher, it’s easy money.”
We waited in the cab of his truck until the dispatcher called. We were to drive over to the Bank of America building on East Fifth, where we’d meet the contract crew that would go in and take the place by force once Camara had them assembled. I asked if it wasn’t overkill to involve armed men in a resettlement operation, and Camara said, “A home’s a home. That’s basic info, DNA shit. Animal knowledge that even these silents have. When you’ve got a home, you’re going to do whatever it takes to keep it that way.”
We pulled into a lot off a side street about a block from the bank building. The crew of contract soldiers stood around the transport truck that would take the silents to a camp outside the city limits. They hung around smoking fakies and telling dick jokes while Camara spoke with the CO. They were to surround the building while Camara gathered the silents in the lobby. On his signal, they’d enter through the designated access points and get everyone zipped and dipped. The whole thing should take about fifteen minutes, Camara estimated. The CO nodded, and gathered his men to brief them. Camara took a suitcase from behind the passenger seat of his truck. I asked him if it was a weapon case and he made a little wheezing sound. “Hygiene kits, brother,” he said. “Everyone loves a free toothbrush. You ready?”
We walked down the vacant block to the front entrance of the bank building. Camara carefully pried away a sheet of plywood, and we slipped in through the shattered revolving doors.
I’d seen plenty of silents before. There were two in my first-grade class—sullen, withdrawn kids who seemed to exist on another planet. They were eventually pulled from the system, and I think my classmates and I all felt relieved. There was a family down the street that had a silent boy, and another one who folded pizza boxes at a restaurant on the square. In college I’d heard rumors about silent enclaves, groups of them living in the wilderness or abandoned sectors of the city, but I assumed those were trumped-up tales by the same people who told me about the mad heart-eating cult in the financial district. But inside that decaying bank lobby I saw how wrong I’d been about them, about everything.
There must have been fifty of them in the cavernous space, but I’d never have known if I hadn’t been directly observing them from my spot in the shadows of the foyer—they were that quiet. It seemed impossible that so many people in one place could generate so little noise, just the rustling of fabric and the occasional cooing of the pigeons that clung to the massive chandelier.
Camara and I stood in the shadows. I could see him taking a head count, whispering the numbers as he surveyed the area. They were all over, scattered among a curvilinear maze of beat-up chairs and couches that let out onto a circular gathering area underneath the frescoes of human industrial progress. Old whiteboards leaned against the walls, revealing indecipherable, abstract drawings that appeared to be the work of multiple artists. Reams of copy paper were used as a sort of crude papier-mâché to construct oblong containers. In one corner a man was sewing pants out of the coarse gray fabric from old cubicle walls. A young woman took handfuls of twigs from a canvas bag and passed them out to a group gathered in a circle on the floor. They seemed fixated on her. She knelt in the center of the floor and braided some twigs into a sort of rope. Then a man sitting behind her braided his bundle and bound it to the bundle she’d made. The next person did the same, and the next, until they had made a large wreath. They laid it out on the floor and ran their hands along its surface, like it told them some kind of story. The significance of that wreath still mystifies me even today, but at the time I was simply fascinated that they’d been able to collaborate on such a project at all.