Mandelbrot: Event Zero

“Candyland”

“Shenanigans”

“Parcheesi”

Vinnie Genzianna tapped the wobbling master fuse on his chin lamp, and the tiny amber bulb crackled out, then on again, more brightly, casting a faint, jewel-like glow on the objects. He wiped from the remaining stacks of charred boxes the soot and dust that was consequent of Mandelbrot: Event Zero. He quietly scoffed at the obsolescence and frivolity of the moldering toys and games, then felt a subtle churn of nausea swell in his belly.

Event Zero: October 12, 1957. An electromagnetic catastrophe so concussive, so totally devastating to earth, that the luckiest of the dead (numbering over one billion) never knew what hit them. Man-made, and fractal in its comportment, the MEZ spread across the globe faster than sound, deafening to all but the dead. In 90 seconds (by our best estimate), it had done us in, leaving all of humanity deaf, dead, or dying, with no in-between. All above-ground bodies of water turned to scalding, simmering cauldrons, sparing not a single mollusk, microorganism, or sponge. Likewise, forests, valleys, and jungles were all completely ravaged in the ensuing electrical fires, and the lives of even the heartiest species were instantly extinguished.

Moving swiftly through the toppled aisles of “Kids World”, onto the crumbling remains of Brighton Beach Ave., the sunlight fell stark through the blackened rails of the El, onto his squinting eyes, & he was reminded suddenly of the beach.

Gull cries, car horns; shouts of balloon sellers & children were all trapped in pockets; electromagnetic “echo chambers”, left in the event’s wake. Ghosts of perpetual sound, with no one to hear them. The sound waves were confined within the discrete areas whence they were emitted, when Day Zero struck, preserving them all in an eternal tape-loop of jollities, long past.

Vinnie glanced toward the back of his gloved hand, at the dancing blue diodes behind the craquelure screen embedded there, as they visually translated sound signatures his ears had long forgotten. Delicate, braided filaments, coiled up around his cuff, trembled in sync with the leaping scintillons, thereby lending a sort of tactility; some small proprioception to the ocular feedback.

He stopped to lean against the dilapidated ruins of a corner newsstand, and found himself lapsing into the reverie of those leisure-filled days. America stood at the zenith of innovation and prosperity, with the International Geophysical Year launching that summer of 1957, heralding the end of the cold war, and the sweet smell of ocean air was made sweeter by the optimism of the age. All those dreams and possibilities; all the giants of the world were wiped out with a single, ear-splitting crack.

As the intense radiation of the August sun hammered down through a threadbare ozone, made worse by the oppressive bulk of his burlap toggery, Vinnie Genzianna felt the weight of his years, coupled with the hopelessness of his prospects, grinding him down. He wondered for a moment, in his saturnine weariness, if maybe it wasn't his time to stop moving. To sleep, and to never again wake up.

Suddenly, the voice of Alan Freed lanced 25 years of stone-deaf silence, and the impact of the obstreperous blast sent Vinnie stumbling backwards, falling to the sidewalk.

“This one goes out to Lou and Rachel.”

Scrambling to his feet, Vinnie made a left, and broke into a marathon stride down Brighton First Rd., past the remains of Brighton Beach Library, toward the imagined source of this warped & distant broadcast.

At the end of the street, he reached the remains of the Riegelmann Boardwalk, and swept back the few remaining vestiges of the tattered canvas sheeting. He again tightened the fuse on his chin lamp, and scuttled into the cavity. Once inside, he breathlessly surveyed the umbral columns, and the dancing shadows that played upon them, from the scant illumination of the tiny brown bulb.

Finding, finally, that small apse beneath the splintered planking, he shouldered aside fetid handfuls of guano and potash, unearthing the crushed red "Dumont" transistor radio that she'd given him, along with her pledge, only the night before; twenty-five years before. His recollection of those old disc jockeys, exuberant in their tone; redolent with the promises of youth, excitement and possibility had dwindled, once more, to the silent depths of mere memory. He tenderly lifted the heart-shaped locket, dangling above the sand, from its rusted nail.

As he read the inscription, one last time, he knew he’d been saved.

“To Vinnie, from Rozzie, with undying love.”