Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
So excited to be here.
Thank you, Emilio.
That's a beautiful introduction.
It's like someone played the violin about me
and now I get to play the kazoo.
Don't write the introduction so well.
But thank you for that.
Thanks, Ander, for inviting me.
Like Kristen, I've been a longtime admirer of Ander.
And I feel really lucky to be here, so thank you.
Also hard to follow Kristen.
I don't have any beautiful visuals.
If we can call up some, like, cat GIFs up there, or emojis,
that might help me a little bit.
But unfortunately, I have words, impoverished imagination
that I have.
So I will try this.
By way of preface, I guess I should
say this is what used to be the first chapter of my novel.
And it's not anymore, so I've never read this out loud.
I've read it to myself many times in preparation for this,
but we'll see how it goes.
And we'll take off this jacket too.
Hopefully, that will lower your expectations a little bit.
Fancy.
All right, I'm calling this "Origin Story" now.
First day of summer, this is back when things were good.
They're playing by the pool, the two most powerful beings
in the universe, 9 and 7.
You're over there and we're over here.
We'll save you.
OK.
Thank you.
You're over there and we're over here and in between is lava.
I can walk on lava.
No, you can't.
You can't.
We can, but you can't.
There are rules, a few stated outright, mostly unspoken,
mostly discovered in the moment, with each twist
and turn as the cosmos unfurls.
Which is not to say this is fantasy.
The word is make-believe, as in making something, believing
in it.
It's not a game.
They get angry if you call it a game.
It's more like a story, ongoing, never
stopping, even when they sleep.
Asleep like exhausted lumberjacks deep
in a silent forest, a hundred-year slumber,
they dream.
They sleep-tell their stories.
They wake up and continue.
The story had been going on for some time now,
six months maybe, eight.
Could it be a year?
More?
No one could remember how long.
It seemed like the story had just started or never started,
had always been.
There was once a girl--
hey!-- and a boy--
fine-- and a boy.
There was once a girl and a boy, her little brother.
They were little but it was up to them to save the world.
They weren't allowed to tell anyone
their story, which made it harder to save the world.
They had to save the world and keep it a secret.
Despite the lava, the universe continues its existence
through lunch, sandwiches, crinkled potato chips, glasses
of ice water, then cold cubes of watermelon, geometrically
perfect, surfaces and vertices gem pink, blood red.
The phone rings.
The phone rings and his skin goes cold,
but this is not the call, the capital C call, not the one
that keeps him up at night, the one that starts,
it's about your mother, not that one yet.
It's Karen, their mother, his wife,
soon to be ex, maybe, probably.
Phoebe.
Yeah.
Keep an eye on Billy.
OK.
Why?
I have to go talk to mom.
Mommy's on the phone?
Yeah.
Say hi.
OK.
Tell her I love her.
OK.
Don't drown.
OK, we won't.
He slides the door shut and watches them
through the glass, light and sound filtered, so all
he's getting is a silent play, either a cosmic origin
story or the end of times, it's hard to say.
Skinny legs, chubby cheeks, flush with the 1 o'clock sun,
Karen would never let them swim at this hour.
Hey.
Surprised you picked up.
They're fine.
What's going on over there?
Well, the magic in the world is running out.
That's a new one.
Yeah, I'm interested to see where this goes.
Pause.
Unasked question.
Yes, I fed them lunch.
Yes, we're all staying hydrated.
I-- I didn't even say anything.
Yeah, you did.
Billy's getting tired.
No, he's OK.
Yeah, he's OK, but he's getting tired.
How can she possibly know this through the phone?
But when he takes another look, sees that she's right.
She's like some kind of all-knowing wizard.
They get their omniscience from their mother.
He's never contested that fact.
Her being right wasn't the problem.
He was the beneficiary of having married her.
It was her being so certain about her rightness.
The certainty was what got to him.
What?
You what.
OK, fine.
He looks pooped.
They're both pooped.
Yes, sunscreen.
Trying to keep the irritation out of his voice,
resenting the fact that, again she's right.
It's been close to, oh, shit, four hours
since the last application of sunscreen.
They'll be fine.
They're coming in soon anyway.
The stuff is like SPF 500.
Anything else?
I'm not micromanaging you.
I just wanted to check.
They're fine.
And, for the record, checking is micromanaging.
As if on cue, one of them is yelling.
The other is crying.
I got to go.
One of the masters of the universe
is having hurt feelings.
Yes, we'll call you after dinner.
Spaghetti.
I'm making it.
She laughs softly.
It's nice to hear her laugh, even now.
What?
Me cooking is funny?
No, that's great.
That's great.
I figured I need to learn eventually.
Even I can't mess up spaghetti.
I have confidence that you can.
You always believed in me, Karen.
He hangs up, waits a beat.
Maybe this latest clash of omnipotent beings
will sort itself out if he just stands here a moment longer.
It's cooler inside, in the air-conditioned condo,
and talking to her still takes it out of him.
She laughed, that's something.
That's not nothing.
They haven't noticed he's off the phone yet.
He might get a few moments before one of them
looks over, a moment of quiet, before they take over the world
again, a temporary, very temporary pocket
outside of their ongoing saga to save the universe.
It used to be he could tell at a glance what the story was,
movement and emotion, rehearsal for later, for real life,
whenever that might start.
The reenactment of something he'd said,
them working through it.
But lately, maybe in the last couple of months,
he'd been finding himself surprised,
baffled, at what they'd come up with,
a word, an idea, some invention added to their cosmology
something that feels too advanced,
conceptual technology he knows had not come from him, probably
from TV.
At the moment, they're explorers,
catching bugs in a cup, dipping a plastic utensil
into the pool, a tablespoon of liquid
filled with millions of life forms not visible
to the human eye.
He has to remember that what he says matters.
How he looks at the world, it all matters.
He forgets that a lot.
Forgets that he knows and they don't, and that knowing
is an immense and terrible power.
And, at the moment of going from not knowing to knowing,
it hurts.
It's scary.
It's all kinds of things.
It has to happen, but how it happens,
that's everything, how he shows them around this planet,
points things out.
They trust him as a guide from the island of not
knowing to the land of knowing.
Two ways of not knowing something, he'd once known it
but had forgotten, which is to say,
he doesn't think about the world that way,
hasn't for who knows how long.
What is equals what is visible, no less and no more.
And even of that set of visible things, not much.
The furniture has become just that, furniture,
faded into the mental background.
They on the other hand, take nothing for granted,
a knife of sun slicing down on top of their hair,
the sharp, cold sweet of a mouthful of vanilla ice cream,
slightly melting, each other, him,
words that come out of his mouth at this point, still
few enough that they've all been stored,
cataloged, a crucial part of the research
file that formed the basis of their project.
The project being, in a nutshell, what is this place?
For now, the backyard, not much, a landscaped rectangle
built to HOA specifications.
In every corner, the requisite drought-resistant
clump of succulents and scrubby plants.
Just that, just their whole world.
Already, he can feel them slipping.
Billy has a couple more years, he figures.
But Phoebe, she's right there at the edge of the great stage.
Billy maybe is dimly aware, maybe, that there's a curtain.
Phoebe has inched up toward the curtain
and soon, any day now, will take a peek behind it.
He alternates between feeling he's wasted their childhood,
hasn't read them enough books or the right books,
hasn't played the right music for them,
their minds have formed, regardless.
And, thanks to their mother, they're
turning out to be good people, smart, perceptive,
conscientious.
Whatever his contribution was supposed to have been,
it turned out smaller, some sprinkling of dad magic,
some ineffable sense of wonder and appreciation of the world,
or so he thought.
He's gotten off easy, he knows, and yet
still thinks that he has something
important to tell them, if only he knew what it was.
He knows this.
He's somehow failed them, is in the process of failing them.
And he'll continue to do it.
He's contributed, all right, but seemingly only the worst
parts of himself, revealing in glimpses, flashes
of anger or pettiness, snatches of language
that he's mortified to hear echoing through their minds
and then, later, out of their mouths.
His children.
"His children," still not quite sounding like it's real.
Billy does a little dance, no audience.
His sister isn't even watching.
She's busy thinking profound thoughts
about how they might get themselves out
of this mess, a quadrillion miles from home with no map.
Billy, in his own little bubble, private.
Now she notices the dance, tells him to stop it.
He does it again and makes her mad.
Now he's dancing with glee.
Phoebe stops her allegory abruptly.
Billy, glad for the opening, takes up
the controls of the spaceship and changes
course, a giggle, a momentary lapse
by his commanding officer.
Phoebe looks at him, watching him watch her.
Through the glass, she may be reading his thoughts.
She may know everything about him.
Someday, she will.
He wants to tell her, mouth something to her,
make a funny face.
It can't be said in words.
If in this moment he could just show her,
do that one perfect, fatherly thing.
He slides the door open, a portal back
out into their world, blast of sunlight and noise.
What's happening now?
We're on a mission.
We're on the surface of a planet.
OK, cool.
Drink a lot of water.
We can't.
Why not?
Our helmets, they don't have holes in them.
She's older by almost two whole years
so she generally sets the agenda.
There are rules.
And if he is to exist in their world,
wants to continue existing here, then he needs to play his part.
You're over there, and we're over here.
Well, how do I get across the lava?
You can't.
The lava is hardening.
It has turned into rock.
Well, then, I can walk across the rock.
No, you can't.
Here, the younger one pipes up.
Why-- why can't he?
I think he can.
At seven, the age of reason, he's
reached a threshold in his own powers,
second to his older sister, still
exploring the range of his abilities
to manipulate space and time.
She's set the agenda, framed the problem.
And he usually goes along with it.
Whatever veto power he has, he exercises selectively.
He can't walk across the lava because there's a crack in it.
Do you not see the crack?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there.
I see it now.
Dad, I'm so sorry.
We're going to do what we can to help you.
That's the boy, seven years old and full of suppositions.
Billy, not William, not Will, but willing to go along
with Phoebe's version of their story, for now.
We're on the surface of the planet.
It's scary.
A look crosses Billy's face.
He wants to say it.
He's wanted to say it, wanted to the first time she said it
earlier in the day.
He's like this, secretly smart.
Everyone knows his sister is the A student.
Lost in that is the fact that, so is he.
But no, everyone has their slot.
He's funny guy.
He's the silly guy.
He's not the smart guy.
Catches her in errors but takes great pleasure
in them, something deeply satisfying, important for him
to do so.
In the creation of their reality,
he can help if she'll let him, if she'll listen,
if he can get up the courage to point out to his sister
the weirdness of what she's saying.
The question is, will he?
It's killing him a little.
At risk of life and limb, he ventures.
We're always on the surface of a planet.
What?
Uh-oh.
Sometimes he shrinks from her, but this time he
lets her have it.
Often, she's right.
And even when she's not, she can confuse him
long enough to effectively win the argument
through his silence.
Not this time though.
This time, he stands his ground.
On Earth, we're on the surface of a planet.
I mean, we are.
No we're not.
Yeah, we-- we are.
No, no, but this is different.
Here, we're on the surface of a planet.
We're in space.
Earth is in space too.
What?
No, it's not.
Yes, yes, Earth is in space.
A moment, an infinity, who knows.
He's right.
Little brother has caught her in an error.
She gracefully pivots out, not giving him
the full satisfaction, though he gets some small joy
from the victory nonetheless.
Just her moment of hesitation is enough.
He looks over my way to get the smallest
invisible smile of approval.
And this is the father's dilemma.
I don't want to embarrass her, but I can't deny him
his moment either.
The real confirmation is how she moves on,
incorporating the new truth.
OK, yeah, we're on the surface of a planet.
OK, he says, ratifying this reality.
The rift has healed and they can move on,
secure in the integrity of their shared creation.
Dad is over there, and we are over here.
And in between, there is no more lava,
but there is something worse.
In between is nothing.
In between used to be a tunnel through space, but now
the tunnel is stretching, pulling apart
like two parts of a piece of chewing gum.
The connector piece getting skinny,
skinnier until it's too thin.
And then it breaks.
And then what?
Billy looks worried.
What happens when the gum bridge breaks?
When the bridge breaks, she explains calmly,
with unnerving patience, and here everyone
is listening intently, even the birds have gone silent
and the hum of the pool motor has dimmed down
to a low murmur, then we won't be able to get to Dad anymore.
They used to ask him for stories, and he'd sigh.
Now they don't ask him anymore.
They don't need his stories.
And he sighs.
Thank you.