The Anomaly

“Egg-normally?” uttered the boy.

“Anomaly, Fitzgerald”, I responded, enunciating the word deliberately to the small group of children before me.

“I want to be called Fitzy”, the boy piped back. Peterson, standing a few meters away, glared narrowly at me.

“You know how it is kid, your name is your surname,” I advised loudly so all of them could hear, which appeared to satisfy Peterson as she gave a curt nod.

“But I want to be—“, I cut the boy off abruptly.

“Look Fitzgerald, at least your last name isn’t Snot.”

The children started to chuckle and I took my leave, starting towards Peterson and carefully avoiding the makeshift drips hooked up to Fitzgerald and his blissfully merry congregation of fellow sickly comrades.

Peterson looked at me sympathetically. Her eyes, usually hard, for a moment took on a softer appearance. “You know the reason why they need to be called by their surnames, Stephenson.”

“Yeah, I get it”, I replied. “One anomaly has managed to domino into a wealth of others.” She absent-mindedly clutched the gold heart-shaped locket on her neck. Seeing her clasp her fingers protectively around the small gold heart, I felt a sharp stab of anguish inside me. I walked over to my stretcher, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

Christina, sitting next to me on the bus, gently prodded an ambiguous blob on the back of the ripped seat in front of her, with a hair pin. “This is not quite the holiday I envisioned”, she announced staring quizzically at the blob.

“There’s a waterfall and penguins”, I responded. “What’s not to love? It’ll make a great story to tell Talia one day. How her mum went on a death-defying adventure on a relic of a bus, just to see the last colony of penguins in the world.”

“Yeah, but it’s illegal. The government banned all tours. How is it that I’m having to counsel the lawyer in this conversation.”

“Maybe it’s not entirely above board, but, when are you ever going to see penguins again? When is anyone ever going to see them again?”

The shoddy tour bus hit a pothole at full-speed and Christina’s head bumped into the blob.

“Lola!”

I couldn’t contain my laughter. Christina whipped out her compact mirror to inspect her forehead and started to chuckle herself, “Okay, as long as I don’t get hepatitis from what as it turns out is only ketchup, then yes, it will make a great story to tell Talia when she’s older.”

Climbing over the wet rocks, we were all filled with a sense of danger and excitement. The last known penguin population. We were about to see it. The “tour guide” we had located through the hotel bartender, was hurrying us along to reach the ocean’s edge before the next tide arrived. Finally we reached the water’s edge. Everyone was ready. The waves started to swell, and our excitement grew. People started to pull their phones out of pockets; cameras out for the perfect photo. The tide started to swell more. I started to feel slightly agitated. Those waves looked less like waves and more like mountains creeping along the horizon. Christina was next to me, carefully navigating her camera settings through a zip lock bag. She watched me roll my eyes and responded, “Talia’s favourite animal is a penguin. I want her to remember what they look like when they’re gone. I’m going to start referring to you as Godmother Killjoy.”

“Hey, I’m just appreciating the moment with my eyes and not a phone screen. Besides, Talia is barely 2. She’ll have a new favourite animal next week.” I jested back.

Those waves were really starting to swell, coming closer. Fast. “Hey Christina, wanna go back a few metres, might be a better view”, I asked cautiously, keeping my eyes on the swell.

I had forgotten my phone was even in my pocket when I suddenly started to feel it jerk forward through my jacket in the direction of the sea.

“What the…”. There was a clatter of metallic items all crashing into one another as every device suddenly ripped out to sea and into the goliath wall of seawater climbing above us.

Like an old movie, everything slowed down. All I could hear was my heartbeat. Pounding. The tugging in my pocket became a force unto itself. I looked over at Christina who was staring confused at her now empty hands with blood seeping down her wrist where her bracelet used to be. I grabbed the back of Christina’s jacket and yelled, “RUN!”.

With the first step into my sprint, my brain determined that my hand could no longer feel the wool of Christina’s jacket, and instead only a faint, metallic material. My eyes darted to both sides, finding no Christina. I could feel the adrenaline charging through my limbs, all thought having abandoned me, unable to stop running. I kept running until I finally stumbled, hearing a loud crack as my leg collapsed beneath me. I found I was in a barren field, not a glimpse of the ocean in sight. I finally looked into my hand to find I was holding Christina’s golden heart-shaped locket, the chain stained with blood.

I woke with a start. I was determined to try this teacher thing again.

“The South Atlantic Anomaly, kids.”

“The what?”, squeaked back the ten year old Mia without a hair on her head, hoarsely.

I set out two small metal pieces before them on the ground so they could all see.

“Okay, these are called magnets. Now watch this.”

I placed the metal pieces a foot apart, slowly, gradually moving them closer to each other until one suddenly snapped onto the other.

“Ooooooh!” I heard the joint rumbling of shock and awe from the children.

“That’s called magnetism.” Seeing the look of confusion on young Maitland’s face I continued, “Anomaly. Magnetism. Same. Same.”

“Ahhhhh”, was the learned response from my pre-pubescent colleagues.

I continued, “In a nutshell,--“.

“What’s a nutshell?” I took a deep breath.

“Once upon a time…” that seemed to have the desired effect without any backlash, “… the Earth had a north pole“, I said pointing my finger in an upwards direction, “…and a South Pole”, pointing my other finger downwards.

“The Anomaly caused these to swap”, I moved my fingers in the opposite direction as their attentive eyes watched.

“Remember what those 2 little bits of metal did?”

“The magnets?”, called out Maitland who I decided had just become my favourite student in the cohort.

“Yes, Maitland! The magnets. Well the ocean became magnetized much more quickly than the scientists expected.”

“What happened to the scientists?”, chirped one boy.

“Peterson is a scientist, she’s right there”, piped up another voice in reply.

“No, Peterson is a doctor”, yelled back another.

“Peterson does both”, said a different child matter-of-factly.

“What do you do Stephenson?” asked Maitland.

“I was a lawyer.”

“What’s a lawyer?” Maitland diligently responded, instantly dropping his status to my least favourite student.

“Peterson, perhaps you could take over and explain what the law is and how there is no such thing anymore?”

Peterson, ever elegant with these things, swiftly moved in and advised the children it was time to move into the “Vitamin D room”, scolding me as she walked past.

I returned to my stretcher, contemplating my teaching dilemma. I tried to get my thoughts in order. The Anomaly was apparently borne out of a sudden enormous surge in the magnetic fields created by ocean tides. The magnetic fields had always been there but they were small, barely discernable. Five years ago something changed and the magnetic fields amplified globally and apparently instantaneously. Radio-communications went down. Electricity grids malfunctioned. Mobile phones became immediate relics.

Panic arose when the internet stopped working. Everywhere. Then terror ensued when people began to comprehend the full impact. Currency was dead. Traditional banking had spent the prior decade transitioning entirely into the realm of cryptocurrency. This new monetary deity, had been embraced and was adopted the world over. All of a sudden, there was no internet. Therefore there was no currency. And so there was chaos.

People hoarded the supplies they had on hand, and returned to their historical roots – trading gold. And then it then trading food. Or at least that’s the story I’ve been told. I was at that time lying drugged up in a remote field hospital recovering from having snapped my femur in half running away from the ocean, from the monstrous nightmare that took my oldest friend.

When I finally came to weeks later, I was greeted by a bunch of bald kids, staring at my hospital bed, making enquiries amongst themselves as to who would get my blanket if I was in fact dead. In the weeks that followed I learned I was in a remote field hospital which primarily catered for young cancer survivors. They didn’t like to be called patients because they were in remission and the hospital felt positive reinforcement was an important element of their continued recovery. There were few adults, and most were not staff at all but were travelers who had set upon the hospital in search of a back-up generator to be their savior. Most of the information we knew had been gathered from these transients. With any new traveler who arrived there came a guarded desperation to hear more information and a heightened caution in case the nomad had darker sentiments.

Gold and food were the two most highly valued trade tokens in our society now. We have been fortunate in having a semi-sustainable ‘camp’ here in the hospital but there will come a time, soon, where we will need to leave and will need to trade for food to survive. We have only item of currency left. The golden heart-shaped locket that Peterson wears around her neck. Christina’s necklace.

I try to stop my thoughts from churning inside my skull but hopelessness engulfs me like a black hole. All of the progress humankind had made has been set back centuries. Perhaps more than centuries. The internet held the cornucopia of mankind’s progress and it was no more. Books were following a similar fate, but for a different reason. When there the choice is before you to choose between knowledge for the future or warmth to live through the present, the decision is primal. Books have become kindling and our history, ash. The children were called by their surnames so we knew which medical records not to burn.

I found myself standing at the doorway of the Vitamin D room, catching a glance of Maitland’s shaking hands and trying to smother helplessness I could feel inside. Our future lies in their hands, hands whose very resilience is compromised by their own bodies. We are trying to teach these children about a past they don’t remember, and how to survive a present reality that they may not live long enough into the future to forget.

“Alright kids. We need to keep going.”