The Measure(4)

And yet no one could find concrete evidence to trust that these strings were anything more than strands of ordinary thread.



Despite the nagging rumors, the mounting testimonials, Nina still refused to look at her string. She thought that she and Maura should keep their boxes closed until they knew more about them. She didn’t even want them in the apartment.

But Maura was more adventurous and impetuous than Nina.

“Come on,” Maura groaned. “Are you worried they’re gonna catch fire? Or blow up?”

“I know you’re making fun of me, but nobody really knows what the hell could happen,” Nina said. “What if this is like those anthrax mailings on a massive scale?”

“I haven’t heard of anyone getting sick from opening them,” Maura said.

“Maybe we could just leave them out on the fire escape for now?”

“Then somebody might steal them!” Maura warned. “At the very least, they’ll be covered in pigeon crap.”

So they settled on storing them under the bed and waiting for more information.

But it was the waiting part that riled Maura.

“What if it’s real?” Maura asked Nina. “The whole ‘measure of your life’ thing?”

“It just can’t be,” Nina insisted. “There’s no scientific way for some piece of string to know the future.”

Maura looked at Nina solemnly. “Aren’t there just some things in this world that can’t be explained by facts or science?”

Nina didn’t know what to say to that.

“And what if this box can really tell you how long you’ll live? My god, Nina, isn’t the curiosity killing you?”

“Of course it is,” Nina conceded, “but being curious about something doesn’t mean we should rush into it blindly. Either it’s not real, and it’s not worth freaking ourselves out over nothing, or it is real, and we need to be absolutely certain what we want to do. There could be a lot of pain waiting inside that box, too.”



When Nina convened with her fellow editors and a few reporters at the conference room table to discuss the upcoming magazine issue, the chief political correspondent said what everyone was thinking. “I guess we have to scrap everything and start over now.”

The issue had initially been planned as a series of interviews with the new presidential candidates, after most had announced their campaigns that winter. But the events of March had far eclipsed any interest in a presidential race that suddenly seemed eons away.

“I mean, it’s gotta be these strings, right?” the correspondent asked. “That’s all anyone’s talking about, so it has to be our lead story. The election’s still a year and a half away. Who knows what the world will even look like by then?”

“I agree, but if we don’t have any actual facts, then we risk just adding to the noise,” said Nina.

“Or fearmongering,” said another.

“Everyone’s already afraid,” one of the writers interjected. “Some people have tried checking their security cameras on the night the boxes appeared, but nobody’s been able to get a good look at what happened. It seems kinda shadowy, and then once the footage clears, the box is just there. It’s fucking crazy.”

“And the boxes still haven’t appeared for anyone under twenty-two, right? That’s the youngest age I’ve heard.”

“Yeah, me too. Seems a little unfair that the kids aren’t exempt from dying, just from knowing about it in advance.”

“Well, we still don’t know for sure that they predict when you’ll die.”

“At least we’re just as in the dark as everybody else.” The correspondent raised his hands in defeat. “The easiest article would probably be to ask a bunch of people what they’re doing about it, whether they’re building bunkers for the apocalypse or just ignoring everything.”

“I saw a story about couples who’ve split up based on different beliefs about the strings.”

“We’re a newsmagazine, not a gossip rag. And I think most people have enough of their own drama right now, they don’t need to read about everyone else’s,” said Nina. “They want answers.”

“Well, we can’t come up with answers if there aren’t any.” Deborah Caine, the editor-in-chief, spoke in the same calm tone as always. “But the people deserve to know what their leaders are doing about this, and that’s something we can actually tell them.”



Predictably, government offices at every level and in every nation had been dealing with an onslaught of frantic phone calls since the very first boxes arrived.

A cadre of financial leaders from the Federal Reserve and the IMF, as well as the world’s most powerful banks and multinational corporations, had immediately assembled, just days after the arrival, to shore up the global economy, hoping that a familiar combination of methods—lowered interest rates, tax rebates, discount loans to banks—might fend off any instability stemming from a very unfamiliar threat.

At the same time, the politicians, faced with a growing number of questions, turned to the scientists for answers. And, since the boxes had appeared all over the world, the scientists turned to each other.

At hospitals and universities on every continent, samples of the strings were chemically analyzed, while the material of the boxes themselves, so like mahogany in appearance, was simultaneously tested. But neither substance proved a match for any known matter in the laboratories’ databases. And though the strings resembled common fibers, they were bafflingly resilient, unable to be cut by even the sharpest of tools.