The Christmas Crazy, it was called, though it had begun earlier. The Season of Hope, as some faiths called it, had taken a very grim turn.
The world was on edge. The world was baffled and frightened but still somewhat amused, as it was only prominent people being affected by whatever bizarre syndrome was occurring.
But then a tenth-grade teacher in Larkspur, California, began attacking students with a knife. Five injured, one critically.
And a soldier at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, grabbed h
is AR-15 and began shooting up the officer’s club. Seven dead, three critically wounded.
The word was out: listen for people who claim to suddenly be seeing things in their head. Especially if they claim to be seeing strange insects.
Grab them, restrain them immediately, or at least get the hell out of the vicinity.
All over the world events were being postponed or canceled. All over the world people eyed each other with suspicion bordering on paranoia.
Then … nothing. For twenty-four hours.
Some dared to hope that it—whatever it was—was over.
Others wondered if whoever was behind this—aliens were the top choice—was just taking a break in order to build up to something even more unsettling.
The Centers for Disease Control and counterparts all over the world were in panic mode, searching for the cause, or at least the common thread. But it was a business consultant, who worked frequently with major medical clients, who made the tentative connection on his blog.
This person, David Schiller, sixty-three, suggested that, based on limited available data, it seemed those affected were more likely than the norm to have had lab work done. Medical tests. Blood tests. Urine samples.
He wrote this up on his blog. The dozen or so readers who saw the post wrote in comments that they would be very interested to see this developed further.
Sadly Schiller was unable to post a follow-up, as six hours after he published his blog post he was arrested by Chicago police for barbecuing one of his beloved Samoyeds on a fire he built in his front yard.
His blog was hacked and deleted.
The world was frightened. On edge. Desperate for some peace or some explanation.
The world was ready.
And so was Lear.
TWENTY-TWO
“I don’t know how I feel,” Plath said. “I feel …”
“It’s probably weird,” Keats said.
“Hollow.”
They had walked out of the safe house, both feeling that there was too little air in the place, both needing to be reassured that the outside world still existed.
They looked at each other, and Keats knew that a vast distance had opened up between them. He had wanted nothing so much as to close the much smaller distance that had persisted, even during the idyll on Île Sainte-Marie. Instead, he had dug the Grand Canyon and now looked at her across it.
She had not raged at him. She seemed too tired to be very angry that he had unwired her without permission, in fact in direct rejection of her wishes. The temperature of their conversation was cold, not hot. She stood with her hands down at her sides. Her eyes were as big as ever, but now they seemed to be looking just past him, refusing to make eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No. You did the right thing,” she said. There was no reassurance in her tone.
“Brains are complicated,” Keats said pointlessly.
“Mmm. Yeah. Complicated.”