The Measure(2)

That morning, she didn’t even have a chance to start. As soon as she unlocked the home screen, Nina knew something was wrong. She had three missed calls from friends, and the texts had been piling up for hours, mostly from her fellow editors in their group message.

WTF IS HAPPENING?!

Did everyone get one???

They’re EVERYWHERE. Like the whole world. Holy FUCK.

Is the inscription for real?

Do NOT open until we know more.

But inside is just a string, right???



Nina felt her chest constrict, her head tingling with dizziness, as she tried to piece together the full story. She clicked over to Twitter, then to Facebook, and it was all the same, filled with question marks and all-caps panic. But this time, there were photos. Hundreds of users posting pictures of small brown boxes outside their doors. And not just in New York, where she lived. Everywhere.

Nina could make out the inscription in a few of the photos. The measure of your life lies within. What the hell did that mean?

Her heart was beating alarmingly fast, keeping pace with the questions in her head. Most of the people online, faced with the same obscure message on the box, had quickly rallied around a single, terrifying conclusion: Whatever was waiting inside that box claimed to know just how long your life would last. The time you’d been allotted, by whatever powers may be.

Nina was about to scream and wake up Maura, when she realized that they must have received them, too.

She dropped her phone on the couch, fingers trembling, and stood up. She walked to the front door of the apartment, a little woozy on her feet, then took a deep breath and peered through the peephole, but she couldn’t see down to the floor. So she slowly unhooked the double lock and timidly opened the door, as if a stranger were waiting on the other side, asking to be let in.

The boxes were there.

Sitting on the doormat with the Bob Dylan quote that Maura insisted upon bringing with her when she moved into Nina’s place. “Be groovy or leave, man.” Nina probably would have preferred something simpler, a neutral lattice mat, but that quote always made Maura smile, and after weeks of trudging home to it, Nina had grown to love it, too.

Covering most of the cursive blue lettering on the mat sat a pair of wooden-looking chests. One for each of them, apparently.

Nina looked down the hall and saw an identical box waiting for their neighbor in 3B, an elderly widower who only came out once a day to toss his trash. She wondered if she should alert him. But what would she possibly say?

Nina was still staring at the boxes at her feet, too nervous to touch them, yet too shocked to leave, when the whistle of the kettle roused her from her trance and reminded her that Maura still didn’t know.





Ben




Ben, too, was asleep when the boxes arrived, only he wasn’t at home.

He wriggled in his narrow economy seat, eyes squeezed shut against the glow of his neighbor’s laptop, while millions of boxes swept across the country like a fog, thirty-six thousand feet beneath him.

Ben’s three-day architectural conference in San Francisco had concluded in the early evening, and he had boarded the red-eye to New York before any sign of the boxes had reached the Bay. His plane departed just before midnight in the West and landed just after sunrise in the East, none of the passengers, nor the crew, aware of what had transpired during those dark hours in between.

But when the seat belt sign clicked off, and the cell phones of every traveler turned on all at once, they were instantly made aware.



Inside the airport, crowds formed around the base of the giant televisions, each network offering a different spin.

mystery boxes appear all over globe.

where did they come from?

boxes purport to predict the future.

what does your string really mean?

All upcoming flights were delayed.

A father standing near Ben was trying to calm his three children while arguing on the phone. “We just got here!” he said. “What should we do? Come back?”

A businesswoman staring at her iPad had taken to informing fellow passengers of the latest news online. “Apparently they only came for adults,” she announced aloud, to nobody in particular. “No kids have gotten them so far.”

But most people were screaming the same question into their phones: “Did I get one, too?”

Ben was still squinting at the neon screens above, his eyes dry and sore from an uneasy sleep. Flying, to Ben, always felt like sidestepping time, the hours on an airplane existing outside the normal continuum of life below. But never before had he so clearly exited one world and returned to another.

As he started walking quickly toward the AirTrain to reach the subway, Ben dialed his girlfriend, Claire, but she didn’t pick up. Then he called his parents at home.

“We’re okay, we’re fine,” his mother assured him. “Don’t worry about us, just get back safely.”

“But . . . you did get them?” Ben asked.

“Yes,” his mother whispered, as if someone might be listening. “Your father put them in the hall closet for now.” She paused. “We haven’t opened them yet.”



The subway into the city was distinctly empty, especially for the morning rush hour. Ben was one of only five in the car, his carry-on luggage tucked between his legs. Wasn’t anyone going in to work that day?