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rap sheet, her history of child abuse, they made her sound like an unfairly treated, distraught mother who was trying to cope with her child’s disease. Burglary, drug use, drug dealing, obstructing a police investigation—she had done it all. The only thing that was reported on the news, though, was that a mother said her healthy baby had suddenly become a Block.
    Afterwards, there were similar stories every few months, with each one causing another wave of hysteria until people eventually regained their senses. No one wanted to believe bad things could happen to good people: “There must be a mistake! It’s not the end of man, it’s just a sickness!” Others liked blaming the silent masses for their problems even though a silent body, a motionless body, couldn’t do anything to cause anyone any problems at all.
    In Australia, a python suffocated a baby. In a crazy world, it made perfect sense that the parents refused to blame the python. Surely, they said, their baby would have cried for help as the monster wrapped itself around the baby’s little body… unless it too had become a Block! People all around the world took their healthy children to the doctor’s office to see if their child might be next.
    The population found a way to blame any normal baby’s death on it having turned into a Block. A normal baby was said to have turned into a Block baby right before it died in a house fire. No matter how many scientists said there were no confirmed cases of this, no matter how many autopsies disproved these theories, people went on believing the Blocks were victims of a sickness, a plague, rather than accepting that it was simply the way the world was working. Those dedicated to a life of faith told anyone who would listen: “God wouldn’t create man just to have him go extinct this way. This has to be a mistake. There has to be something we can do!”
    Just a year earlier, as Jeffrey ate his cereal next to Galen, a news report had recounted how a teenager was found inside the remains of an imploded convention center in New Orleans. News footage of the implosion showed a single silhouette standing on the sixth floor of the building, doing nothing but staring out the windows in the seconds leading up to the explosions. The news kept saying that the only reason someone would ignore all of the warnings, alarms, and the loud countdown to the detonation was if they had become a Block. Jeffrey had groaned and, as he always did, turned the TV off. But when he went to work that day one of the other officers was asking everyone what kind of chemicals were used in the construction of the convention center that might have caused someone to change from being a normal person to a Block. And how many other buildings had used those same chemicals?
    Sliding away from his sleeping wife, he turned and walked down the hall to Galen’s room. His son was in the same position as earlier, the same position he would be in when the morning arrived and Jeffrey and Katherine woke up. His boy’s eyes were open, staring at the blank ceiling in a way that reminded Jeffrey of a dead body, so he leaned over and swiped his fingertips across them so they were closed again. Katherine never failed to chide him for continuing with the pointless motion—it was, after all, only for Jeffrey’s own benefit—but he liked the feeling it gave him, even if it was false, that he could put his son to bed properly.
    The boy’s room was as different from Jeffrey’s room when he was Galen’s age as Jeffrey’s room had been from his father’s at the same age. But the changes weren’t because of the times they lived in or the hobbies they enjoyed. Jeffrey’s father had grown up with posters of sports stars on his walls while Jeffrey had posters of popular bands. But Galen had no hobbies. There were no singers he liked more than others. Nor were there any sports trophies or academic ribbons. Katherine had once said that a child’s room without any