Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [63]
When I came inside they were all there, in the common room. By all of them I mean not just our crew but the contingent of creatures too, with Pym in tow. Literally in tow: one of the group of large, militaristic-looking warrior beasts had carried Pym in like a shawl over its monstrous shoulders and was only just letting him down. And it was freezing. Whether the heat was even on in this portion of the building I don’t remember, but I did see one of the guards holding open the front doors in a successful effort to make the climate more to their liking. Past my sober-looking cousin, our television projected a black, blank screen onto the unpainted white drywall. This, in my experience, simply didn’t happen: when there was no signal from the satellite, the TV said, “No Signal,” the words slowly bouncing around the screen in an almost taunting manner. If there was a problem with the connection on our end, a blue screen was usually the symptom. But the screen projected was simply black, sucking the light from the space it landed on.
“Why is it doing that? Is the cable loose? Is there a cable loose outside or something?” I asked.
“It’s not the cables, inside or out. That’s what comes in on every station. It ain’t a problem on our end. It’s something up there,” Captain Jaynes said with a nod out to the beyond, and I couldn’t determine if by “up there” he meant the satellite orbiting in the heavens or the rest of the world north of the pole. “Chris, I want you to do something for me, okay?” The others, my crewmates, were staring at me as though I had a grenade in my hand.
“You and Garth, go over to the computers, check your email.”
“What are those boxes of light and text?” Pym said, pointing at the computers as if they were aberrations only he noticed. I don’t know what he found more fantastic, that there were such fantastic inventions in the world or that black people had mastered them.
“The modem’s working. Look, it’s green, you can see the signal light from here,” Garth informed our captain.
“We know, we already checked our accounts. Now just look up your email clients, see if any mail came for you since we went away.”
There were several terminals around the room, each of which had been staked out by us individually. With the connection as unreliable as it was, it was good to have a computer up and attempting to retrieve your mail all day, so that even if a viable signal was present for only a ten-second interval, your letters from the outside world might get through. When I checked, there was one email message waiting for me, although even before I opened it, it appeared odd. First, I have fairly sophisticated junk mail protection, barring emails from all but the most recognized sources, known associates, et cetera. This email, however, was from no one. There was no name listed, only a blank space in the sender’s name category. Even more ominous was the subject line: ARMAGEDDON. That was it, ARMAGEDDON, in all caps, which seemed a bit dramatic and just the type of email you never open lest your computer spontaneously implode. The message itself was blank, whether because the toxic text had been filtered out or because the sender felt the subject heading said it all, I had no idea.
“ ‘Armageddon’? You get this thing, ‘Armageddon’ in your box too?” Garth looked over my shoulder for his answer before I could give it to him.
“Well I’ll be. We all got it,” Captain Jaynes confirmed. “In all of our email accounts. Personal mailboxes, business mailboxes, addresses that in no way should be linked. We all got this one email and nothing more, all day. ‘Armageddon.