7 - Sam
S AM HAD BEEN AT IT for hours. He’d covered the whiteboard walls of the office they’d put him in with worst case scenario lists and arrows connecting items. It was probably good he couldn’t show this to Nico or any of his friends—they’d probably think it was serial-killer weird.
Or maybe it was more like he was with the good guys, hunting down the serial killer and getting all the evidence up on the wall, but with dry erase markers instead of photos and yarn.
Why was it always yarn? Who knitted in all those crime procedurals?
Sam started a new list:
ALIENS TAKE OUT SATELLITES
NOTHING WORKS:
CELL PHONES
CREDIT CARDS→CASH →
Keahilani came through the door without knocking. Noble One was at her side, the usual scowl on his face. What’s with him?
“What have you got for us?” Keahilani asked.
Sam wasn’t sure what she meant.
Keahilani tried the question another way. “What’s the biggest threat?”
“You mean if the aliens aren’t going to blow up the whole planet?”
“Let us go with that assumption.” Noble One was caustic.
Sam was itching to tell him to Zatkniss but decided it was a better strategy to just ignore him and talk to their boss instead: “People.”
“Explain,” Keahilani said.
Sam walked over to the wall where he’d just been working. “Let’s say satellites go down. Without them, cell phones can’t communicate, and they’ll be about as useful as pocket calculators. Credit cards won’t work. So people will have to use cash for everything.”
“Cash works,” Noble One said, not getting what the big deal was.
“But money is only valuable because we all agree it is,” Sam said. “Otherwise it’s just fancy printed paper. People have to believe the social structure of what’s valuable will survive. If they don’t, cash will stop working.”
“So they’ll use gold, and diamonds, things like that?” Keahilani asked.
“For a time,” Sam agreed, adding GOLD after CASH.
“But if things get really bad, even that won’t work.
Which takes us to barter.” Sam drew an arrow from GOLD and then wrote BARTER.
“You have extra apples on your tree, I have extra batteries. We trade… Which works only until people run out of things to barter. Once they’re hungry enough, or their kids are hungry enough… ”
CREDIT CARDS→ CASH→GOLD→BARTER
Sam drew an arrow from BARTER across scenarios and through other lists to the word PANIC. Five other arrows already led to it, from different parts of the room. He circled PANIC.
“The aliens might be a problem, but we’ll probably kill each other off before they even get a chance.”
Noble One looked at Keahilani like Why are we listening to this idiot?
It set Sam’s teeth on edge.
Keahilani whispered to Noble One in Russian.
“Drugoy, vzglyad, vsegda, polezen.” But it didn’t sound like her voice.
Each word felt clipped, like the space in between the words had been erased.
It was deeper too, and oddly resonant, like she was suddenly in a huge, echoey auditorium rather than the small office the three of them were in.
She made an annoyed face and pressed something on her tube-shaped necklace. “I thought we turned that off.” Her voice sounded normal again.
“I will check language triggers,” Noble One told her, then said, “No on oshibayetsya.”
Sam didn’t know what it all meant, but his gears were spinning. They were working on some weird AI voice modification tech. And whatever she’d said in Russian, it was clear she’d been telling Noble One to back off. And she was the one in charge.
Keahilani motioned with her eyes to Sam.
Noble One grunted in frustration. He interlaced his fingers and turned to Sam. “But humanity will come together, no? To fight aliens?”
“That sounds better.” Sam tossed the marker to the table. It clanged against the metal. “Not sure I believe it though.”
Keahilani spun her index fingers around each other. “Keep working through the scenarios. What happens if the aliens cut all the power? Or electromagnetic pulse us?”
“I need to go home.” Sam picked up his backpack from the floor. “Dinner. Homework.”
“Start first thing tomorrow on blackouts,” Keahilani ordered.
Sam shook his head. “I’m going to have to show up at school sometime.”
Noble One mocked him. “We don’t want end of world to interfere with your Valentine’s Day preparations. Fancy chocolates, right?”
A chill went through Sam’s whole body.
He hadn’t told anyone about that but Ari, when they spoke on his break… Which meant they were spying on him !
His cell phone. Ari was always telling him it wasn’t secure.
Sam forced himself to not react.
“I thought you wanted in on this glamorous spy life?” Keahilani said.
Sam was annoyed and didn’t see why he had to hide that. “One of the social structures that will probably go first is people listening to their boss.” Sam pulled the door open. “Anyway, today wasn’t particularly glamorous. I’ll give you another try tomorrow, after school.”
And he walked out.
1631
In a camping supply store, Sam grabbed a double-walled vacuum-insulated metal thermos off the display shelf. Keahilani’s had given him the idea. At the register, he opened his wallet, checking how much cash he had. Only a few hundred dollars. He handed over four twenties.
Outside on the sidewalk, he opened the thermos and dropped his cell phone inside, screwing the cap tight.
1637
Sam stopped at a bank machine and took out the maximum daily withdrawal: $800.
1648
In a Midtown bodega on Eleventh Avenue, Sam used cash to buy a prepaid cell phone and SIM card from behind the counter.
Outside, he called Ari on the burner phone. “Hey, it’s me. Sam.”
“You’re calling from a weird number.”
“Yeah, long story,” Sam said, but as the words came out he remembered he couldn’t tell Ari the truth after all. He’d have to come up with a good lie, or just avoid the subject entirely. “Meet you at the condo at six?”
1651
He texted Frida. It’s Sam - calling in sec - pick up? He hit call as he walked east.
Frida answered before it even rang. “Sam?”
“Hey. I know it’s not my normal phone, but distract me, will you? How’s your final day of campaigning going?”
“I’m the only candidate talking about fossil fuel divestment, or anything serious. Cindy’s platform is basically just a pun.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “ It would be a sin to not vote for Cindy is kind of just a bad rhyme.”
“Crank Shaft really wants to cross out not on her posters,” Frida said. “ It would be a sin to vote for Cindy scans much better.”
“You’re talking about yourself in the third person again,” Sam pointed out.
“When you have two identities, let’s see how well you navigate the grammar,” Frida shot back.
It rankled that Sam’s other identity was “the Knitter.” So not Bond-worthy. And he couldn’t say anything about it.
As Frida went on about the student government election tomorrow, Sam thought about how it was really important to Frida, but in the grand scheme of things not that important if the Earth was actually about to be invaded by aliens.
Sam kind of wished he didn’t know about the possibility of aliens either. It would have made everything so much simpler.
1725
With the pastel green envelope from his savta between his teeth and his hands full, Sam struggled to unlock the condo door.
He hustled to the kitchen island to set down the three bags stuffed with ingredients and supplies from the Ecuadorian Nacional Cacao boutique and pulled the card from his mouth.
The cartoon hearts gave away it was for Valentine’s Day.
It was still two days away, but Sam tore the envelope open.
This year it was two cartoon squirrels whose tails curved into a heart shape between them.
The words G UESS W HO L OVES A S PECIAL G RANDSON?
floated in the center of the tail heart.
He opened the card, and the inside read, M E!
She’d written “For Samika”—the nickname his grandmother called him—at the top, and signed it “Savta.” It was sweet of her to do this every year, but the Happy Valentine’s Day to a Special Grandson cards hadn’t grown up with him. He was married now!
As he put the little-kid card back in its envelope, his eye caught on the kitchen’s graphite-and-chrome built-in coffee system.
There were so many things you could program it to do, but there was no get your husband to finally make you a latte button.
Well, after this training, maybe Nico would be ready to make him one—and just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Sam took out the thermos from his backpack and unscrewed the top to grab his regular cell phone. He needed to keep using it so Keahilani and Noble One wouldn’t know he was on to them spying on him.
And if there was a chance this alien thing was real, while he couldn’t tell them about it, he did kind of want to talk to his parents. They were two hours ahead, off the coast of Chile. He tried a video call.
On the second ring, his dad picked up. “Honey, it’s Sam. Hey, Michelangelo, hello from Isla Magdalena!”
Sam’s dad was on a rocky path marked off with rope that sloped down a small hill. Late afternoon sun and his dad’s long-sleeve T-shirt reminded Sam it was summertime in the Southern Hemisphere.
“Danica!” That was Yolanda, calling out Sam’s mom’s name. So honey hadn’t been for Sam’s mom.
Of course it hadn’t. Sam didn’t know why he was surprised.
He could see Yolanda’s arm motion her over. “Sam’s on the phone.”
His mom came into frame. “Sam!” she giggled, which was not usual for Danica Solomon. “You should see these fluffy baby penguins. I’m not even into adorable and they’re ridiculously adorable.”
“Your not being able to contain yourself about how adorable they are is pretty adorable, actually.” That gravelly voice was Jesse, Sam’s mom’s other guy. “Hey Sam.”
The four of them stood there like it was some spring break selfie. God, did their second-string romances have to be right there all the time? “Can I just talk with my parents, please?”