Tethered

Prologue

I like the stars because they represent something to everyone. Nobody has the exact same idea about the stars, but we're all looking up, trying to see them through the fog and mist. Or, if you're in New York like me, the ever present smog.

Stars connect people, and I've found that out by watching them. The greatest conversation in the world can start with something so simple: "Have you ever thought about what's out there?"

What's out there? Well, I know a little something about what's out there. But we'll get to that.

They ask this question, this huge imposing question, and then they just let it dangle there in the air like maybe it'll answer itself. Or maybe they're in awe, staring up and thinking about the endless possibilities.

I've spent the last six months in museums and science wings at Columbia, NYU, briefly at Harvard but that was a dead end. Those guys really don't know what's going on, and that's coming from someone who definitely does not know what is going on.

NASA was hard to break into, but not impossible. Those guys have crazy egos, but they're focusing on the wrong thing. It's always about "How do we get up there?" and never "What are the consequences for getting up there?"

Because there are consequences. There's the part where you have to be alone, floating through space, waiting for your eventual crash to earth. Those guys don't get that—the gravity of it all. There isn't much more to say on the matter. Whether or not we want to be, we're all tethered to the Earth. Tethered to it because we need it, we breathe in life from its core and it is the only thing holding us all together. That is the thing that is most clear to me. Whether or not we get up there is irrelevant because we will always come back down.

It is one of the most important scientific principles, but we've lost sight of that in trying to play god.

Quite frankly, it's not our place to commune with the cosmos. I don't plan on doing it again, but I can't deny a certain fascination, an obsession with what humans are finding out. The way that we obsess over it, think about it constantly and just generally refuse to let it go. It's a testament to humanity. We're stubborn. Incredibly, stupidly stubborn. I like that about us.

But on a nice clear night like this, I have the extraordinary pleasure of looking down while everyone is looking up. They are peering at the constellations that we attempted to draw in the sky while I look down at the much more impressive array of constellations: the real ones. The people.

I've been able to see the connections for a while now. Whatever happened, I don't remember it due to its super traumatic nature, it changed something in me. It's a small power, and not the superpower I would've asked for. Very lame, honestly. But I can see each connection that people have. They're like little blue strings. Some of these connections are strong, like siblings or spouses. Others are weak: first dates, your local barista who you kind of know, that one homeless person on the corner that you give a dollar to on Friday. Connections that you've made, but not cemented.

Those connections are the easiest to break. And I can do that too: break the connections. Siblings, spouses, strangers, I can connect them to each other and I can disconnect them. The stronger the bond, the harder it is, but I've only ever had to destroy one sibling bond.

Most times, you get to see the superhero story from the beginning. From when they figure it out to when they go through the huge downfall. We're going to have to skip that part. It's a little too hard for me.

We'll start now. It's been six months since the sky rained hellfire. I broke everyone's connection with the invaders. The others—the real superheroes—they figured out how to send them back into space, far from our orbit. While they were doing that, I was watching chaos reign. I turned down a phone call from my mom, and she wanted milk. It was so ordinary for her. She couldn't see what I could see.

The connections are the most important thing. I am connected to her and the heroes and the villains and everyone. Everyone must believe in me in order for me to protect them. Or that's what the heroes said. I broke those connections. For a moment, it was like I was a ball of light, so many people connecting into me.

I broke all of those. I break them now before they even fully connect. The heroes don't remember me, at least not who I am or what I'm like. They remember what I do. They write about me as if I'm dead. I don't think they know.

My mother and brother, well, that was harder. The strangers disconnected easily, but they held on tighter. They fought me on it. It took days of sitting on the fire escape, untangling them from me, breaking every new stronghold, waiting for them to be asleep so that I could take away the pictures, the memorabilia of my life. Destroy it. They stopped fighting eventually. They let me go.

Everybody let me go, and that was for the best.

Only thing is, now there's millions of people underneath my feet who are connected to each other and to their homes and, most importantly, to the Earth. They're all tethered here. My only remaining tether is to the Earth. And there's one string that appeared three days ago that's tethered somewhere out into the ether. He's not one of the heroes. They've cut their ties. He's new. Most worryingly: he's flying under the radar.