Y

The Y appeared looking like an upside-down Mercedes Benz logo without the circle, seemingly some splashy new branding gimmick. Except who’d want to market human misery?

Not that folks throughout the ages hadn’t exploited human misery for their own purposes from time immemorial. But to brand hunger, disease, homelessness, murder, torture, rape, racism, oppression, alienation, persecution—extant human misery—that took some serious ball-biting nerve.

The very first Y appeared on Google Maps marking the location of a food bank in Queens that had been looted and vandalized. The red Y tag then spread like wildfire to mark the physical location of all kinds of crimes, injustices, outrages, and suffering across the country.

Clicking on the Y linked a user to a news account of the misery involved. Sometimes it was as routine and maddening as a drunk driver killing or maiming a pedestrian. Sometimes it was as disturbing as a child beaten cruelly by a parent.

It was clear by the volume and rapidity of the spreading red Ys across Google Maps, that a single person was not capable of mapping the growing misery of our nation. Theories centered on a host of botnets using a sophisticated algorithm that keyed off newsfeeds and social media posts. As the public attention grew, so did the Y of human misery.

Officials wanted to know who was behind it. The masses were stunned by the sheer volume of it. Drilling down to street level on Google Maps the Ys were your neighbors. They were you.

Misery was everywhere. Food we did not have to eat. Nights we could find nowhere to sleep. Medical care we could not afford. Strangers that robbed us. Friends and family who betrayed us. Politicians who abandoned us.

We’d always known the world was a difficult place. That children suffered, minorities were oppressed, the masses demoralized. But not like this. Not next door, or right on our doorsteps.

Google’s programmers could not get rid of the Ys. It dogged them for months, until it seemed on their maps that not a single community was to be spared the bloody Y.

Then, the very first Y denoting the food bank in Queens turned green, and the link now took users to the story of a young woman who’d rallied her community to restore and re-open the burned and burglarized building.

In the following weeks, more of the red Ys began to turn green. Though not at the rate they’d first appeared in red. There was still much more bad news reported than good. But there was good to be found. The green Ys showed that. Human misery was often met by compassion and concern and love. It wasn’t all horror. There were now hints of hope. And that seemed to turn the tide.

Six months after the first green Y had appeared. All of the Ys vanished, both red and green. Some users were disappointed. Some were relieved. Some felt compelled to find an answer.

Who could say why?