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to wield the power of our numbers. Our enemies – who are as much a part of us as anathema to us – will enslave us.
    In Rachel’s eyes I see the irony of my actions. I may have delivered a technology with the capability of reshaping a nation into the hands of terrorists. I quite possibly should have presented the research, which had been shown to me by a reliable source, to government officials. It would have been rather simple, since they had been spying on me for years anyway. Not that I minded being spied on. It was better than sneaking around trying to do things unnoticed.
    The “technology,” as I had been referring to it for many months, since my brother Ruben had first uncovered it, has always been an enigma as to what we should do with it. On one hand, the entire project had been accidentally uncovered as part of a corporate funded university project related to the breeding of white rats for lab use, and was largely theoretical in nature. On the other hand, the possible uses for what he and his team had uncovered are limited only to the imagination. Normally I didn’t take much interest in my brother’s work, since it seemed rather mundane research to me – I like to focus on microchips, robots and computing systems – but this was different.
    First of all, it was the kind of engrossing work that took Ruben away from me, and he and I had been best friends our entire lives. He was the best man at my wedding; I was the god-father of his son, who would turn seventeen this August. We told each other everything and talked often. There were no secrets between us – until this.
    He had spent the better part of his adult life researching the life spans of white rats and other “lab creatures,” as I liked to call them, but it wasn’t until the last few years that he crept further into his work and away from the trappings of normal life. He would send Aeron to spend the summers at my parents’ farm, up north, or, more recently, with us. Christmas and Easter, too, would often produce no sign of a man that would normally, even as a single parent, never have sacrificed lab time for family time.
    Last month, I had received a phone call asking me to identify a body at the university hospital. Something in me had broken that day.
    And now, looking inside myself, I still feel the wound, festering away with guilt and doubt about what had actually happened.
    I kiss Rachel and the kids.
    “Be safe, Jonah,” she says to me as I step outside.
    “You too,” I whisper to her, unwilling to stop my outward momentum for fear of losing my nerve.
    …
    The train is crowded; nobody is staying home today, although the looks on most faces tell me that most people feel they should be somewhere else.
    With the news yesterday and today about the rationing of fuel and other resources, I can almost hear the passengers listening for the sounds of the big diesel engine on the locomotive spluttering as its tanks are pumped dry.
    We speed through the fog. I stare through the windows at the translucence over the lake, hiding its depths from view in a white haze of unknowable doubt. I sink into my thoughts.
    Ruben. Fuel. Terrorists. The mayor. Death.
    Ruben fuel terrorists, the mayor, death.
    Dead and gone and gone and dead.
    And Aeron left behind.
    And Jonah and Rachel and Gwyn and Jewel.
    Not dead. Not gone.
    What are they worth to you, Jonah? I ask myself. That you are on a train to this wide city chasing an imaginary thought so that you can feel like you are trying. What is it that takes you from your family at a time like this?
    Habit? The routine of a job that has lasted too long that you can’t even break free of it when you know –
    My thoughts are terminated. The train stops its motion at the station with the usual abruptness and leaves its contents behind to shove their way out.
    I join the cattle and make my outside and into the rain. I have no direction except to escape the torrential downpour, so I dash across the street in my