Sheltering in Place: Distance is Relative

And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. But he that curseth his child shall be blessed, for has not the Lord cursed his own children?

Neon Exodus 21:17

- - -

The internet was down, or, more correctly, so jammed full of traffic that entire sections of the world wide web had become completely unavailable. Every person in the country seemed to be trying to constantly make phone calls, text, or open web-pages.

In short: imagine three hundred million people trying to press an elevator button at the same time, all hoping it would do something. But unlike an elevator, which happily ignored the additional button presses, every single futile act by every single person was multiplying together into a torrent of information: most of which failed to send.

Automated algorithms continued retrying to send the original messages, while happily queuing up new ones. The result? A bare trickle of the data got through, and most of it was garbage.

And so, just like during 9/11 it was not a series of explosions that crippled America's communications infrastructure, it was her own people, paralyzed by the inability to talk/chat/video-conference/email and overloading every method of information sharing they could think of.

The WiFi on her phone connected to the local network, but the traffic died there, unable to be sent outwards.

But Hitomi had just been handed a large, brick-like satcom phone that connected directly to one of Japan's quasi-military satellite constellations. She had entered in her mother's cell-phone number and hit the dial button.

And it was ringing. Kind of. It was more like it was making a bunch of weird noises as it negotiated a channel for itself with a passing satellite.

Japan was 13 hours ahead, and since it was nearly 10:30PM in D.C. that meant it was 11:30AM back home, so a day ahead. People must've just been waking up when the Voice or Angel had spoken to the world.

Hitomi wondered what had happened to the people who were asleep, did the Voice wake them up, or did they miss the experience? Did it appear in their dreams?

There was the sound of a light ding, and then her's mom's "Together When" ringtone by Ayumi Hamasaki started playing. Yes!

"Hello? Who is this, please?"

"MOM!"

"H-Hitomi! HITOMI! Oh my precious daughter, how are you calling - no, it doesn't matter," her mother's speech was slurring together in her excitement, "Kaito! Daiichi! It's Hitomi! She's on the phone! She's safe!" Her mother was yelling to her family.

Her family. That meant they were safe! They were OK!

"Mom! Put me on speaker!"

"O-ok, just a second while - there, is that good?"

Hitomi could hear her little brother, who was 15, asking where she was but her dad was talking over everyone else: "Hitomi! Where are you, how are you calling? Are you at the embassy?"

"Yes, that's exactly where I am, I was in the city when everything... happened, and now -"

"That's my girl!" her dad half-yelled, "Good! Stay there! We're hearing terrible things through my work channels, it isn't safe over there."

She gulped, swallowing, and said, "I know, I know, my friends and I were attacked, and... and a soldier tried to help me and - " Hitomi choked up, worrying her family.

"Hitomi? Daughter?" her mother called out, no doubt hovering directly over the phone as Daiichi was trying to push his way closer. "Are you there?"

Her dad seemed to understand something grave had occurred. "Hitomi, a soldier was with you? Why? What happened to him?"

She felt tears and her voice grew thick.

"He... he died. We were running, and there were gunshots, we were so close to the embassy, it's all my fault! He was escorting me and it's all my fault!"

"NO! Hitomi, my first-born wonderful daughter, put it out of your mind. He died doing his duty for our country. He saved my daughter. I will personally visit his family and thank them. He died a hero, sweetheart, our family's hero."

"N-no, father, he wasn't Japanese, he was Latvian, we - oh god, I need to tell the Latvians what happened to him, he's just, his body, it's just - it's out there! On the streets!"

There was a soldier in the room with her, waiting to take back the satcom phone, but he was looking at her with surprise and concern on his face. He pointed at his watch and mimed the number "two" to her with his fingers, then stepped to the door, speaking in hushed whispers to another soldier outside.

She was crying.

"Hitomi, what you're feeling right now, it's called survivor's guilt," her father said calmly but firmly, "I'm sorry you're going through this. Truthfully, everything is upside down here, but the levels of violence we've heard about overseas are well past any of the mass protests here. And this young man, it doesn't matter what country he hailed from, I will contact his family and thank them one way or another. He has done a great service to the Hisakawa family, one of immeasurable worth."

"I... know, I just, he was just trying to save me, and just, it was so quick."

"Sweetie, Hitomi, are they taking care of you, at the embassy?" her mother deflected, turning her daughter's attention to the situation at hand.

"Oh! Oh yes, I mean, I've only just gotten here. I haven't even been able to talk to the Smith's..."

"We'll email them right now, don't worry, they'll get it eventually when things get back to normal, no, but the embassy staff - you can sleep there tonight?"

Hitomi paused. She hadn't actually talked with anyone about anything yet, she had just taken the opportunity to take the phone call and had jumped at it.

"I... think so, I'll find out. My time is almost up with the phone, it's a satellite phone, they need it I think," she said, looking at the soldier who had entered the room again, nodding his head in agreement.

"We love you!" her mother called out.

"Hang in there!" said he little brother.

"Charge your laptop and your phone, I'll be emailing or texting and making arrangements to getting you back home, Hitomi, everything... everything is going to have to be different, now," he told her, no doubt still trying to rationalize everything that had happened himself.

"Mom! Dad!" she said, in a hurry, "The thing is, you need to stay away from any of the religious people - this whole thing, it's affecting them worse, WAY WORSE. They really believe it was a Messenger from God, and... they're killing people here."

Her dad chuckled lightly, "Well, it's a good thing we're all Shinto 'lite', we never had a chance for this 'God' anyway."

Hitomi didn't have the heart to laugh, trying to affirm again: "Dad, I know, it's crazy, it's ridiculous, but the violence is real just like you said. Keep everyone away from, I don't know what to call them, the zealots? It could be any religion, even a Shinto or Buddhist one - I really, I really think how much the people believed before this 'God' rejected them is how badly it affects their faculties."

The soldier was walking over to her, motioning to hand the phone back over, and before her parents could respond she yelled out, "OK I have to go, I love you all, I'll be safe! I'll be back! I'm coming home!"

She pressed the disconnect button.

The soldier took the phone from her without a word, looking at the number in the history and jotting it down in a little notepad he kept in his pocket.

There was a knock on the door, then it opened unceremoniously as a stately looking official flanked by another soldier walked in. The first soldier tore off the page from his notepad and handed it to the man who seemed to be in charge.

With a start, she realized that the soldier who had just entered was holding Mr. Pipe. Why had someone picked it up off the street and brought it inside?

Not that she minded, actually, she had started to miss it.

"Ms. Hisakawa, my name is Ambassador Goromaru, may we speak for a moment?" He bowed to her in a smooth motion, very lightly, and she returned the bow far more deeply, and held it, flustered, as she introduced herself.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Goromaru, I'm Hitomi Hisakawa. I'm in your care."

"It's alright, please, why don't we have a seat?"

She looked up through her hair, seeing him motioning to the couches she had ignored earlier as she paced the room, talking animatedly on the phone with her parents.

"Y-yes!" she said, and quickly sat down, watching him stride over to the next couch and face her.

What a total sense of dejavu. This felt just like when Captain Arpa had interrogated her.

The second soldier placed the pipe down on the table in front of her, and unfolded a laptop in front of the Ambassador.

"Ms. Hisakawa," the ambassador began, "May I call you Hitomi?"

"Of course!" she chirped, staring at Mr. Pipe.

"Hitomi, I couldn't help but overhear, as you were talking with your parents, your rather strong warning about the religious... dimension, of the disorder we're seeing outside."

She nodded, looking up from the pipe and to him, "I saw the angel, or whatever it was, on live TV when it killed the President. I could... feel it's presence, it was so warm, then everything grew cold after he announced the... thing about our 'souls'?"

Hitomi made kagikakko with her fingers without thinking about it, as she said the word 'souls', but realized she had made herself look incredibly childish by doing the L-shaped quotes with her fingers.

"You were carrying this pipe, I'm told, when you approached the perimeter of the embassy?"

"Yes sir, I-um, found it in an alley, with my friends."

"And your friends are?"

"Hurt, sir, one of them, Mr. Josh. They're Americans, and they were helping me get to the embassy safely."

"Ah. It was my understanding, again, I apologize for overhearing, but you were quite loud down the hallway you see, that a soldier had perished in the act of escorting you here."

"Yes sir, sir, he... well, Josh and Hailey - my friends that I had met - they helped me get as far as Sheridan Circle before a group of... crazies, they were crazy, a priest or preacher, he led them to attack us, and we had to -"

She paused, looking for the right words. The ambassador was silent.

"I had to kill some of them, they had guns, there was shooting. But I hit some of them with my pipe. But Mr. Josh, he did most of the work, and Hailey - but they shot him!"

Now her hands were moving as she talked.

"And then the Latvian soldiers came, and invited us in. Oh! Because we killed the men who killed their men. And their captain gave us tea and wrapped up our wounds - they had a doctor."

She put her hands back in her lap.

"By the time I left it was dark, and they had sent a very big soldier with me, a corporal, Iva- Ivanova, but he, we were so close, and I watched, I... we were so close!"

The ambassador had said nothing, letting her explanation play out, simply saying 'yes?' at intervals to encourage her recitation of events.

"I see. Normally, Hitomi, we would send you to your host family, of course, pending a possible evacuation of citizens, but our means of travel are currently limited. You may stay here, of course, we have emergency packs - clothes, toiletries - for stranded citizens, of course, but room is scarce. You may have to take a futon in one of the auxiliary building's hallways. Is that all right with you?"

"Oh! It's more than enough, thank you! I just... I was so scared I would have to leave again, and my father just asked where I would sleep and I didn't know what to tell him."

"Now, before that, I do have a few questions, if you don't mind helping answer them?"

"Of course, ambassador!"

"A curious thing has happened, you see. We, hmm, between you and I, we do not get along very well with the South Korean consulate or the embassy here. Yet, we were forwarded footage of a street skirmish, very much like the one you described, that had been sent via satellite to their home and then to ours and then back to us here."

He spun the laptop around and pressed a button. A video from a security camera jumped into the scene of a crowd of people assailing two soldiers - the Latvians - and then attacked Hitomi and her friends.

From a high, tilted angle she watched herself dive around the field of battle wielding her pipe with precision, speed, and unnatural power.

She was a monster.

Every move perfectly calculated. Every hit seemingly a final for her attackers. But unlike the surreal yet real life moment when it had happened, from the camera she could see the aftermath. The pools of blood, the last twitches of bodies -

It was over.

"Imagine my surprise when the subject of multiple international intelligence reports walked right into my embassy, and it turned out to be a 17 year old exchange student."

Hitomi's stomach dropped.