the social cycle theory of love & dying

1.

butterflies: it’s only a crush

47 months before it happened, scientists told the news media about the galaxy spinning towards us; it'll pass by our outer edge, they'd said — a "kiss", they'd called it. Starbucks and Hershey's had held special, themed sales the week that first trended. 

*

Hershey’s showstopper had been a chocolate bar speckled with beef jerky. They'd wanted to represent the harmonious collision of different flavor realms. Harmony tasted like vomit and I remember throwing it to the cat on my street. The glow-in-the-dark temporary tattoos Starbucks had given with their Galaxy Marshmallow Latte, however, are still in my room, unopened, enshrined, saved for a rainy day.

My best friend then had never believed in these "capitalistic manipulation tactics" as she called them, but it had been the week of our senior prom, and we were spending too much time together for me not to culture her and for us not to collect the entire variety pack of tattoos Starbucks had.

Back then, I hadn’t used them all simply because there weren’t enough occasions to have neon, glowing stars on my skin. Now, they feel like secret treasure — I run my fingers along their rim every couple of days when I feel like it’s been long enough, that I deserve some extra light, some soft brush with the world we all lost not so long ago. I keep saving them though. Something will come up someday and they’ll be better opened then. I imagine some day, someone will need them in a life-saving way. I want to be able to help.

*

Nobody then had thought it’d turn out like it did. Scientists had called it a miracle, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They'd found mild evidence of life too, from that galaxy. Twitter had a field day with that. Of course, some scientists were adamant the satellite images were ambiguous and called for conspiracy theorists to be flagged. Others pivoted their work to prepare for this chance to establish solid contact with extraterrestrial life. The most optimistic predicted it would happen soon, in 80 years or so. 

80 years, my friends and I had joked at prom night, in 80 years, we should have our highschool reunion on a new planet. We’d snuck out of the sweaty dance room, taken our heels off and climbed onto a fire escape to take in the night breeze and falling stars. It had been a warm, humid breeze. The moon had been so big that night and the atmosphere had made us all philosophers. Imagine if life on the other planet is as advanced as we are. Nah, I bet it’s just microbes or something. No, but that's so sad — then they wouldn’t know they’re about to pass another planet with life too. The moon had been so big, so bright, infallible. It chaperoned us steadily as we left for late-night IHOP until the sun released it from duty when we’d taken our thoughts to the roof. Maybe in 80 years, whatever is there can evolve enough to be able to appreciate passing by humanity. Okay, but maybe in 80 years, global warming will have wiped us out already. We'd laughed and forgotten — none of us were interested in studying astronomy. 

*

It's said that two years before the Wright brothers flew their first powered, heavier-than-air plane, Wilbur Wright told his brother that powered flight must be fifty years away. Even four years after the Wright Flyer took air, intellectuals were still predicting that heavier-than-air flyers were impossible to build. News travels much quicker now, but little else about our foresight has changed apparently. Some 76 years earlier than thought, a planet from that other galaxy swooped in for that kiss, and swept our heart out with it.

2.

falling: don’t know when it became love

Breaking news came a full two weeks before actual impact: something had gone wrong – natural phenomenon, or divine reckoning, or human miscalculation – and the other planet’s movement and mass seemed just a bit more dangerous than previously thought. Still, nobody could agree on what was about to happen. We wouldn’t be hit; enough scientists were confident enough on that. But we might get thrown out of orbit, away from our sun. We might drag the incoming planet and its stars apart, taking an extra sun into our solar system. We are all going to die. We are all going to be perfectly fine. Get your cameras out; the view will be spectacular, major TV channels settled on. Get your 4-years-worth of MREs NOW for 10% off with THIS special code! came bombardments of other ads. Social media trends popped up, with different ways to frame the sky around your face for the best lighting, the most dramatic photo.

Blake and I and Sofia share galaxy eyeshadow tutorials, nihilistic memes, and scientific research papers, respectively. Sofia tells us to be serious. I tell her all this drama will die off, and if the world really is ending, it is what it is. Blake sends a borderline-inappropriate gif. For two weeks before the end of the world or the coolest Manhattanhenge, we held our breath, waited for the universe’s beat drop, and promptly changed nothing about ordinary life.

*

My work at the cafe around the corner continued in the evenings as it always does. We’re not busy often during this time of day, so I use the time to nurse my plants on the counter. The daisies are taking to the LED Grow lights best, while the tulips still refuse to come out of their shells. There’s not much natural light here. The cafe is half-underground, and in the sole window lidding the cozy concrete wall, the stride of drunk students, home-bound employees, and scuttling pets moves light around the metallic coffee machines. It’s here my roommate first got me into her favorite alcoholic coffee drink from home. We unofficially put Rüdesheimer Kaffee on the secret menu, available only when my boss isn’t around to see and fire me. She’d moved back to Germany as soon as she’d heard the impending date.

Sofia had always been the panicker of our dorm. She masked during flu season, and she followed all the news about AI development. At this moment, she needed to get to her family, graduation be damned, she’d insisted. Nobody is protecting us, and the news isn’t telling the truth. She has family friends who are scientists in the Berlin Observatory. This is not good, she tries to instill in us. I tell her there’s no need to sell this so hard to us — we’re not the professors she needs to convince to waive her finals.

You really don’t see it? she asks of this incoming emergency. We don’t, and we play into that because it is our running gag that You really don’t see it? is Sofia’s default statement. When she wears the new jeans and has a problem with how it shapes her butt that nobody else can see. When she develops a massive crush on someone we see as leagues below her. When we open a package of dried fruit she had wanted us to save for the incoming planet “disaster.”

*

She pushes out the door the next day, a hurried twirl of all her college memories packed into two suitcases, one carry-on, and one personal item. I want to have breakfast with her, one last time; she wants me to eat through the food we have in the freezer and fridge in a strategic order in case we lose power to our fridge.

It hits me that she's not joking. She leaves us with a pantry of nonperishables, a list of more to stock, and all her art pieces she can’t take past customs. Remember, she FaceTimes from the airport –– if either of you dare to put a tack into my canvases or God forbid, double-sided tape, I’ll kill you. She gifts me her interpretative study on Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. She gives Blake her abstract portrait of Peppa Pig. 

We crack open a can of ravioli and eat it cold. Is this what Sofia thinks the world will come to? Blake laughs, licking the sauce off the tin lid precariously close to the sharp edge. Why wait? We can enjoy ourselves now. We open 5 more cans to taste different flavors. Because we can.

Blake tongues the last ravioli from the can: I've always wanted to do that. The ravioli tastes enough like cat food as it is without her eating it like that, and I tell her. She feigns upsetness. Oh, she pouts, so we don't care about cats now. When the world ends or whatever, we cultured humans will complain about eating what we would only feed those animals, ostracize people who aren't good enough, and kidnap little aliens from the other planet while the poor kittens fend for themselves. 

Oh, shut up. I shove her ravioli can away. It’s not like that.

She eyes me. Trolly cart problem then: would you shove a Mr. Catty onto the tracks to save 5 people?

Mr. Catty is what we call the stray cat that has been on our street since before we moved in. Sure, there’s sentiment, and I’m an animal-lover, but if it comes to it, we have to save a human, don’t we?

Meow, she imitates sadly, and pretends to curl up and die on her seat.

Piss off, I laugh with her. If choosing between a human and a cat, it’s just the right thing to do. It’s not that deep.

*

I won’t say it’s because all this talk about the world maybe falling apart, but I call home that night. Mom falls into her ramble about her day and the weather and the chickens acting differently than they did this time last year. I can hear Dad’s football game in the background. His snoring soon drowns out the commentary, which tells me harvest must be going well. The farm is large, and while he’ll always be tired after making rounds harvesting all day, he only gives himself the satisfaction of rest when he’s not angry at the yield of his corn. I grew up marking the year by the height of the corn fields. Birthdays and holidays and milestones were organized in my mind around the rising and leveling of the corn stalks I took all my secrets to: boys, temper tantrums, undignified happiness, everything. The thicket of trees around the vast corn field makes it feel a trustworthy place for these. I get impatient every time I call home, because no Mom, I don’t know why the calcium levels are higher in the soil on the west of the farm. But I’ll never stop her because I do actually like hearing about the new scarecrow and new barndoor in my old home.

Mom whispers suddenly, Government people came today. She pauses expectantly, though official check-ins to farms aren’t unheard of.

Like the Department of Agriculture? I probe.

And someone from NIFA, And some other person. She hesitates again, and I have started absently fiddling with Sofia’s art, designing the collage I’ll make above my desk before Mom continues. They said not to tell anyone, but it was strange. They were asking about the farm and they wanted to purchase new seeds for us to plant—some new strand that the big GMO company made.

Are you going to? 

No. You know what your father thinks of these GMOs. She pauses again as if weighing the cost of another secret message she shouldn't say. Be careful up there, she finally concedes. I saw the news yesterday about another college student killed in New York City.

I’m fine, Mom. But make sure you have it in writing whatever your decision with those seeds is. You know how bad the government is with making sure information is organized. We’d had an administrative issue a couple years back with subsidies we should have received. I learned then how slowly and effectively the government is,

Don’t worry about things you shouldn’t worry about. Focus on studying.

Yeah, Mom, I know.

Be careful.

I know, I know.

No really, I think this has to do with all the news about the other planet coming. Jeffrey's mom says she read —

Mom isn’t on Facebook, but her mom friends have their own way of sharing conspiracies and pseudoscience. I actually do zone these out. I’m making my way through Sophia’s sketches and doodles, and while Mom talks about astro energy indicating the planet really is coming, I'm coming to the centerpiece they have all been heralded for: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. I don’t even see him at first; it really is a landscape first and foremost. I hold it up to the window, and the evening glow reveals a poem transcribed on the back in looped letters, evidently some classic poem inspired by the original painting.

…how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water…

Mom, I say. I have to go now. Don’t worry about me though, and stop worrying about the government’s scheme making super corn—love you. Make sure you and Dad keep taking those vitamins I sent.

I hang up and start rearranging the pictures in front of me. I’ve just seen a perfect layout. I’m going to make the sunlight from my window frame my arrangement perfectly when I hang these on the wall.

…and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

3.

irreversible: gave you all my firsts

The day it happens, I go to work just the same. I don’t have class on Thursdays, so I’ve taken the 11am shift. Lunch rush has just about ended when it starts. I remember the warmth. The brightest palette of soft colors danced through the narrow window. It was during my lunch break; I was perched on the stools by the window, nursing my drink of choice, a concoction of leftover drips that wouldn’t fit into every drink made earlier. The other planet and its star windowshop, slowly spinning by and staining the sky hues unattainable with just our humble moon and sun. The window framed them perfectly to be a work of manicured art in my perfectly-lit selfie. Who would have thought the natural light could look like this? 

It didn’t look unimaginable. In fact, it seemed completely imaginable, like a dozen screen wallpapers I’d used already. People ran in to buy our pink macaroons and pumpkin spice lattes. For the vibes, I understood. The light didn’t fully leave for another hour, as the planet passed us by. The pale blueberry flew by, however many hundreds of billions of miles away, taking with it everything it came with. And then some.

So half the world learned that afternoon, with me: even as the sun ushers us away without so much as a halfhearted goodbye, light stays a while still, unable to abort its journey to our leaves for the final push of photosynthesis they don’t know is their last. We learned there are plenty of YouTube videos and speculative articles about what happens if the sun disappears, none of which end the way we want. The other half woke up to the headlines.

*

It takes a few hours for it to really sink in that our sun is gone. Blake had already drafted her cute pictures into a post when she sat in the dark of our kitchen table, thumbing through the pictures. Would it be terrible to post? She really likes how her calves look in this one, but is it insensitive? Actually, insensitive to who? The world is ending for all of us. Eventually, apparently there is a decision that Blake bandwagons on to post the pictures. It hadn’t felt like the world was ending as we took them, and even after the severity of being a planet displaced from orbit had rang out, the pictures had to be posted - if not for solidarity, then for memorialization.

*

We were told to stay indoors. The exact report was that temperatures would soon be unsurvivable, and international governments have a plan for insulating houses while working on saving the atmosphere. Nobody marched – the fact that the sun was gone was probably a scary enough deterrent – but protesting opinions did spring up online in the hour before most sites were shut off for the power to be better used elsewhere.

I stare out the dark window of my room for a long time. It just looks like a cloudy night — the streetlights on this side of the building had been broken for a while already, so I never could see much anyway. There are still shades and movement in the black I think I see. Maybe I even see Mr. Catty by the bench. I’m trying various ways of squinting and staring, thinking I’ll catch something, when Blake knocks.

We…I have a problem. She sits on my rug, picking at the fur strands, and addresses all her stress to them, occasionally looking up to include me in too. Her grandmother is undocumented. That means her grandmother won’t be allocated any resources the government sends to help people. Her parents want to send her grandma up to our dorm because our housing seems better than theirs. Blake is holding her breath by the end, having a staring contest with the corner of my rug.

I sit next to her. We’ll work this out. We don’t know what/when the government will send, and taking in her grandmother would mean we don’t get what the government thinks we need to survive. And we live on the 16th floor — the elevators will be shut off soon. And traveling anywhere now is probably insane. And the more I think about it, this is a difficult thing to pull off, so is there anywhere else your grandma can go? Maybe somewhere closer to her? Or could we help get your parents anything while they take care of your grandma?

We say we’ll think about what to do while taking inventory of what we have. We find that counting cans in the dark is difficult because they’re all shaped the same. We also find that we hadn’t been conservative with our canned food. I ration what we need to finish from our fridge now, calculate how long these cans will last us, and decide we really shouldn’t take in her grandmother – not because we can’t afford to fit her in, but truly because of how difficult it would be for her to make her way here safely, I convince Blake.

*

I think half the homeless population in America and most unpreserved freshwater life died before everyone who could be inside was made to understand to stay inside. Still, we learn from listening to the one public radio channel left open for official news that the insulation rolled out remarkably quickly, and more than 45% of freshwater had already been silently prepared earlier. Apparently there were people that had planned thoroughly for this.

Granted, nobody saw it quickly enough to be able to completely fix the 80-year-schedule originally given to any preparations. But some work had been done. The scientists, who had, for some reason, spent their lives researching this obscure situation, suddenly became leading experts on overcoming extinction.

Blake and I learn quickly about how to save water and maintain our internal temperature in the cold and make sacrifices. We learn to pass the time. We pray for our families. We learn the 2-week warning had only been a leak, the calculations done much earlier and unreleased, because what could mass panic do but harm? At the same time, it hadn’t seemed like panic was entirely warranted: a lot of the math in the year prior seemed to point to a significant chance we obtain the other planet’s sun into our gravitational pull.

The White House unclassified the reports they had been given in previous years. There were hundreds of pages describing the unprecedented opportunities Earth would have with two nearby stars: the solar resource, the scientific experiments that could run, the astrophysical breakthroughs that could be explored, the environmental gift this was. There wouldn’t be natural nighttime, but there was plenty science and technology could do about that. 

There were also quite a few pages also preparing for the possibility our sun would get swept away. But many others convinced that political decisions needed to take into account millions of other factors. Page 32 of the newest report was written 6 months before the merging, determining with 74% likelihood our sun would be drawn out of orbit.

Nobody sounded the alarm more urgently. Nobody wanted to be that one. My psychology degree felt particularly useless right now, but I remembered that Latane and Darley study in 1968, about how people react to a room filling up with smoke when others in the room don’t react: they don’t. When actors feign apathy, subjects stayed in that room most of the time, even as the smoke became dense and induced coughing. We all act calm while watching others to see how they react. All the while, others are of course, acting calm as well.

So many facts run through my head. I feel empty and hollow, like there is a room of smoke inside of me.

4.

forgetting: sorries and promises and of course i forgive you

It has been a week now. It is miraculous how quickly humanity can act in the face of a crisis.

The global average temperature should have dropped below 0 Fahrenheit by now, but science pulled through. The daily presidential broadcasts gave an overview of all the scientific breakthroughs being pushed out, all the joules and fission, nuclear and geothermal energy, the learning from Iceland, using the Earth’s core, and harnessing volcanic heat. We are calculating when we might reach another star system; we are working on how to keep the atmosphere from freezing before that; we have started studying in earnest the phenomenon of natural eternal flames.

We had finished the canned ravioli before we really needed them, so since lockdown has started, we’ve organized the cans in a strict timeline, alternating between the meh ones and the ones we kind of look forward to tasting. Friday is chicken noodle soup and sweet corn day — we have to hold onto those small things that make us happy. The soup is the trashy, salty kind Blake thrives on, and the corn reminds me of home.

At the same time, we got lucky. Electricity, heat, and food allocated for homes has been limited, but administrative work didn’t catch that Sophie had left earlier, so Blake and I are getting extra rations. We debated donating some of our extras yesterday when we received the rations.

How must people in less developed countries be faring right now as we weigh the moral dilemma of our extra bread? This wouldn’t reach them anyway. But what about the shelters overflowing with people? Blake ventures. Logistics must be a disaster for those shelters. Someone there will have good use for food, and we don’t need it. We don’t. 

We keep the extras anyway. We decide the cost to ship things around is probably higher than the value, and we can always find a need for extra supplies. We say we’ll give back to the community once we’re out. I'll pledge $50 of my birthday money to some charity — that’s more than this bread. I’m sure I’ll find a good one when this is all over.

*

If nothing else, it is a good opportunity to flush out my habits and have a lifestyle revamp. I imagine I can work through all the books I keep on the shelf as decor. This is the perfect time to actually take up meditation and yoga seriously. And I’ve always wanted to try a raw diet. This will be good. I imagine becoming my most fit, healthiest self. Life is surprisingly fine. We probably could have taken in Blake’s grandmother. I haven’t asked how her parents are either; mine are doing well.

I call Mom today for the first time since they shut off commercial use of telephone service. The crops all died pretty quickly after we lost the sun, but the government is working with them on the GMO crops developed to survive and grow at astronomical rates. All things considered, they're very lucky, and as critical workers, very respected. The workers who pick up our produce leave letters from people thanking us. I can hear her beaming. The world is not so bad after all.

*

I make sure to be in bed by midnight still – they broadcast the time on the sole social media platform left. They all merged or came to some agreement in order to not be redundant. It’s not open for ordinary accounts to spam, but official channels are able to get their message of all the amazing technology they’re testing to push out, and to highlight altruistic actions. I’ve cut my phone time threefold already, since I don’t want to waste the electricity charging my phone. So I lay in bed, phone at a good 52%, and watch the dark change outside my window.

I will wake up a little earlier than Blake tomorrow, tiptoe into the kitchen, and slice a little sliver of the spam off to bring back here. She won't know about my secret for a many more weeks, but some of our extra resources are being used well.

4.

misaligned: it's not you, it's me

Months later, they open the city back up. They’ve done something to make it safe, although the air still seems to have a bite to it, tickling my arms like unripe kiwi does to the throat. I don’t know what they did—the updates became indistinguishable, the president started wearing the same suit, the digital numbers telling the time blurred meaninglessly into each other. All I know is back in the age of normal life, I'd never seen the streetlights outside my window work properly, and seeing them shine now is more foreign and jarring than any statistic about global deaths and temperature.

Blake and I should have both heard the announcement that we can open windows, go outside, breathe fresh air. I don't know which of us knocked on the other's door to silently propose the truce over this good news.

*

We'd fought a lot in our time together. 

Hanukkah had passed at some point, and Blake and I had sparred another of our tired arguments. It’s important we do the right thing during such a critical time. You know what they say about personal use of flame. Yes, Blake understood what it meant to Hold Back for Humanity, but surely, one one candle for Hanukkah would be fine? What a useless use of fire though. We didn't talk for the rest of the holiday.

We had fought consistently about the shower and "fair" water usage. You showered so much longer than we agreed today, and now I can't boil these tomatoes.

I take shorter showers than you everyday. I get to have a longer shower now for all the water I've saved this week.

That's not how this works — we used last week's together for other things. The problem is today's. We're out of today's water because of you.

Draw from tomorrow's. I'm not washing my hair again every day, like some people.

What the fuck. You don't wash your hair constantly because your hair doesn't need it. Why are you blaming me for my genetics?

Oh, so I'm the racist one now? The other day, you — I don't want to rehash this again. Who boils tomatoes anyways? Just eat them raw.

She had already been walking into her room. My parents did. I yell at her back. And their parents before them. Don't disparage my —

Yeah, you can shut up about grandparents. She slams her door.

Oh, yeah.

We had fought a lot when her grandmother had died. Or rather, it wasn't so much that her grandmother had died as it was she came to talk to me after hearing the news, and found me crouched in my closet nursing the cat with scraps of spam and fish and precious water. 

I'd been startled and didn't have my excuses ready, so I got mad at her for barging into my room. She got mad about my raising a cat when I'd argued it wouldn't be convenient to take in her grandmother. A living, human, person. She had screamed. Or was. She's dead now because you didn't care about me and her more than a stupid cat. My grandmother is dead because of you.

The cat had projectile-vomited right then. And Blake had looked at me in disgust and locked herself away for a week. I'd spent that time helping the cat recover from food poisoning. The dark lockdown had drawn out into a rough, long fever dream — I would forget days have passed, forget when the canned tuna had been opened, and the cat would food poisoning again. I'd spent that time trying to come up with justification for myself.

I still don't have a real answer for Blake. When she came out, she told me, I know you didn't actually kill my grandmother. Maybe she has come to peace with this and has internalized this belief. I still can't though. Because I don't know why I opened my window and let the chill in that day when I saw Mr. Catty curled outside. I put all of us in danger, didn't even know if I would be able to do anything, used essential resources on this cat, and didn't even pay enough attention to ensure he didn't get sick and need to waste even more resources. It's stupid, stupid, stupid. I kick myself. But at the same time, it was a non-choice. I wouldn't have left the cat out there when I saw it curling in on itself in the cold. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what I want. I never really told Blake about any of this. We just circled each other around the dorm — her, me, this cat that stole her grandmother's chance.

*

But today, we walk together to the cafe. It’s close enough to feel safe as a first destination outside. Blake stops at the park across the street from the cafe and wants a moment. She’d really liked climbing up one particular tree to read a book, and we can see the rotting stump that’s left. I want a moment to soak things in alone too, so we wave each other away, probably more crassly than we would if we hadn’t been cooped together all this time.

The cafe’s door feels soft, and the lock must have warped, but I bust it open anyways, and the creaky swing sends dust scuttling against the wall. In the dark, I see my plants, dead now, under my LED Glow light, still plugged in. I remember all those hours caring for my flower. I remember the hours of scrolling I spent researching the best light to buy and the best price for it. It feels like memories from an alien world, right under my hands. It would have turned off when nonessential electricity was cut, but access has opened again, and if I were to click the light on, it would.

It does. It’s mesmerizing.

And stupid. I rip the cord out of the wall, or I try, but it’s stuck, so it takes an extra five seconds for my guilty fingers to fumble for the light switch. What a stupid, useless waste of indulgence.

The dust has scattered to make body tape making my crimes. I brush evidence of the scuffle away, and of thick dust cling to my hands. 

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