BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: SUMMER 2001

Jakob is up early on Tuesday, on campus before the planes even hit. In his office, reading, one last time, over the Eco essay he'd assigned for the day. There is no radio or television in the office. It is a quiet morning: xeroxed pages of words, a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, a scone from a paper bag. Crinkle. He doesn't know that anything has happened until he leaves his office. In the bright light of morning he hears: One also hit the Pentagon. There's going to be a war over this. He keeps walking, but the words have unsettled him: he tries to figure out what they might mean, seeking some context that might render them banal. He can come up with no jest into which they fit.

The air on campus seems thick with some hum that he can only detect peripherally. Telepathic buzz.

His students, however, are using their cell phones to compare notes with people elsewhere, and some by now have already seen the first wave of reports on TV: by the time Jakob walks in the buzz has swelled into clamor. A knowledgebase is under construction, with each student contributing whatever bit they've heard. The resultant heap of information is incomplete and contradictory, but potent enough for Jakob to know that something real is happening, something big. He looks out at the students: some look visibly shaken, others a bit thrilled. Concern spreads. Someone worries aloud that the CTA might be shut down, stranding the commuters on campus. Jakob hears someone speak the words Sears Tower. They can see it out the window. Its quiet solidity suddenly seems ominous. Students ask him if they can go home, if they can go use the phone to call a friend in New York, an uncle. Jakob cancels class and watches them go.

He spends the morning wandering around campus, in something of a daze. The day is beautiful: sunny and clear, slightly chilly, autumn just beginning to nibble at summer's edge. He walks through the indistinct edges of dozens of conversations, eavesdropping, catching messages as he passes.

He hears that planes have hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He hears that the Pentagon was not hit by a plane, but that a bomb went off there.

He hears that smoke has been seen rising from the West Wing of the White House.

He hears that a car bomb has gone off at the State Department.

He hears that all domestic flights have been canceled, but that there are still planes up in the air.

He hears that another plane has crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

He hears that another plane has crashed at Camp David.

He hears that the total number of hijacked planes is eight.

He hears that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down by the military.

He hears that the World Trade Centers have collapsed.

This last rumor he has verified by footage: he is walking through the student center where a crowd has gathered to watch TV, and he sees taped footage of them going down, collapsing down into their own fundament. The vantage point changes and they collapse again. Over and over. It is like he has come unstuck in time. He stands there for a minute, performing preliminary psychic surgery on his mental picture of New York. He remembers that Baudrillard has written, somewhere, that a collapsing building is a match for the fireworks displays of our childhood.

He listens to the newscasters updating the story, stumbling through what they know, correcting earlier reports. Some are visibly upset. After a few minutes it is clear how little information they have, but he grows increasingly interested in what they are saying, drawn in by the unscriptedness of it. He realizes that on some level he enjoys moments of national chaos: he enjoys the opportunity to hear the data before people have an opportunity to calculate some spin. He felt the same thing in November, during the elections. He stayed up all night, fascinated by seeing information in this raw form, watching it bleeding in through the screen. (Later in the week his sister will tell him that her boyfriend's father, a financial planner, disappeared into the wreckage, and he will remember his small enjoyment and feel ashamed.)

He heads outside again, and he looks up at the clear cold sky, and he has the terrible thought that perhaps these attacks are only the precursor to something else, something even worse: that perhaps they have a strategic value of plunging us into chaos so that we miss the arrival of some coup de grace. He remembers reports he's heard of missing plutonium, and he suddenly half-expects to look up and see some rouge nuclear missile cleaving a path across the sky. He thinks, rather calmly, I could die today. And he finds himself struck with the desire to be with Freya. Jakob doesn't have a cell phone; neither does Freya; she hates them. But he wishes suddenly that he could open up some channel and hear her voice.

The sky is quiet and blank. There are no planes in it any longer. And yet it teems with messages.

Further Reading ::
Information Prose : A Manifesto In 47 Points ::

A manifesto, outlining some of the aesthetic goals behind Imaginary Year, can now be read here.