Martin’s father was a lawyer. He understood laws.
Martin’s dad was a doctor. He understood medicine.
Martin’s sister was fond of animals. She was studied in biology.
Martin’s brother was into sports. He knew about baseball.
Martin was fascinated by disasters. He was prepared for them.
That was fine. His family understood that what mattered was your interest in something, not its monetary or social value.
The problem was the sort of disasters Martin was prepared for.
***
It began when Martin was very young – one of his first memories, from somewhere in age four. Water winged and concentrating intently on his footing, he was so busy climbing the steps into the pool that he lost the sound of crying in the murmur of the crowd until its bawling source was carried by him.
“-it’s okay there aren’t any-“
“-don’t LIE I don’t WANT to swim with SHARKS-”
Martin stopped, hand still clutching the railing. “Are there sharks?” he asked his father.
“No,” said Martin’s father. “Sharks don’t swim in pools. They’re full of chlorine, it’d be very unhealthy for them.”
“Oh,” said Martin. And he said no more of it, but he descended the steps extra slow the rest of the way – because for the very first time in his life his mind was elsewhere than his body, and whirring even more furiously than his stubby legs as he kicked and splashed. All the way from the pool to a dip in the hot tub to the showers he pondered, and it was in the car home that he made his decision.
“I’d use the pool noodle,” he told his father as they left the parking lot.
“Pardon?”
“I’d use the pool noodle to stop the shark,” he explained patiently. “I’d wave it around until it bites it, then I’d get out of my water wings, and I’d swim away while it attacked them, since they’re bright and floaty. I’d sneak.”
“You’d sink,” said Martin’s father with devastating graciousness. “Don’t ever take off your water wings without talking to me or another adult.”
“But the shark –”
“Sharks can’t swim in pools.”
“But what if one DID.”
“It wouldn’t.”
“But what if one did,” traitorously mused Martin, and so on and so forth until bedtime and the day after, when Martin’s father had forgotten it and assumed the same of his son.
Foolish man! Children don’t forget anything; the hard part is making them understand which parts they should remember as being important.
***
At age nine Martin went to the museum on a school field trip, and a grand time was anticipated to be had by all, except for those who would be bored because they weren’t interested, or bored because they already knew everything, or bored because they were exhausted and couldn’t focus, or those who were just bored.
And Martin, who was having trouble passing through the downstairs gallery hall.
“Martin,” said Mrs. Hollis, a thin, sun-scarred woman of infinite sufferance and infinity plus one suffering. “You’re holding up the tour. C’mon. Let’s go.”
“It’s dangerous,” said Martin, lurking stubbornly behind a support column in a way that would let him juke left and right without much trouble should someone try to grab him.
“The whole place got renovated eight years back, it’s safe.”
“But what if the skeletons come alive?” he argued, pointing up up up at the gallery’s centerpiece and sole attraction: forty-five foot of Tyrannosaurus rex.
“They can’t, Martin,” said Mrs. Hollis. “They aren’t alive.”
“But what if they came alive?”
“Skeletons are dead. And that isn’t a skeleton, actually – it’s a cast of one recreated using actual fossilized bones as the models for moulds. And the fossilized bones are almost entirely casts themselves made from nonorganic mineral seepage slowly replacing the actual skeleton of the animal. There is nothing here to come alive on multiple levels.”
“Wow,” said Martin.
“Yep. Now c’mon.”
“Can I have one minute?”
“You can have until Alvin comes out of the bathroom.”
Martin knew this was a better deal than he could expect, and so took it uncomplainingly. “Okay,” he said, as a toilet flushed in the near distance. “I’m fine now.”
“Good to hear. Do you feel okay?”
“I have a plan,” he told her. “If the skeletons come alive, I’ll run for the bathroom, then wait until it’s chasing someone else. Then I’ll sneak out the rear exit near the cafeteria.”
“Okay,” said Mrs. Hollis. “Why not leave through the lobby though? It’s closer.”
“Because I’ve been here before and I know that the lobby is right next to the big stairs, and the main dinosaur hall is right next to those on the second floor, and the Albertosaurus skeleton is right next to its entrance, and I think it’s small enough to use the big stairs and come downstairs and catch me.”
“Makes sense,” she agreed. “But it won’t do that.”
“But what if it DID?” asked Martin plaintively, only to be swept up in the charge as Alvin returned to the herd and it began to move as one uncaring and ponderous beast into the swirl of the museum.
Much learning was had. Many experiences were cherished. Lifelong impressions were made.
Martin already had one of those. It deepened.
***
When Martin was set to graduate, he refused to go to the graduation party.
“C’mon,” Seth chanted at him. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Everyone’s going.”
“And that’ll help,” said Martin irritably. “But it won’t be good enough.”
“What, more than everyone being there for the last time with a lot of food, music, and some spiked drinks? Man, even Ben’s gonna be coming and he barely showed up for anything that wasn’t an exam in the last two years.”
“It’s in the main auditorium, and they got rid of the balcony seats last fall,” explained Martin.
“So?”
“So my entire plan for what to do if gravity suddenly reverses is shot. Before I just had to stay underneath a balcony and the farthest I’d fall would be maybe eight feet; now I’m dropping over twenty – farther if I’m too close to the stage. Even if I have good reflexes and end up landing on top of a bunch of other people, I’ll probably break limbs if not my spine, and then I’m stuck with no way to climb back up to the rest of the halls on ground level. I’d just starve to death.”
“Martin,” said Seth, “my buddy. You have got to organize your life in a way that isn’t based around gravity reversing. It’s just not happening.”
“But what if it DID?”
“What if squirrels kidnapped you and bit your knees off?”
Martin considered this. “No,” he decided. “I think I’d be okay. I made a plan for what to do if birds do that, and that’s not that different.”
The noogie that followed was memorable for him, but the message conveyed by it was not.
***
Martin was in a cubicle (or half a cubicle: a whole cubicle was a relic of the ancient past). Martin was filling out forms. Martin was listening to Stephanie complain.
“And the worst part is the total lack of care,” she explained to him. “Sick leave? Nah.”
“Yup,” said Martin. Click. Type. Click. Type. Click.
“ Paid overtime? Nah.”
“Yup,” said Martin. Type type type. Click click. Type. Click.
“I’m amazed they have even have a plan to get us out of the building in case of fire – and even then, it relies on the sprinklers working, and those things are older than my goddamned parents.”
“Right!” said Martin. “Right. No emergency preparedness. That’s why I had to come up with my own solutions.” He pulled open his desk drawer and held aloft a small canister. “Oxygen tank and respirator. And goggles. Heat-treated.”
“Jesus,” said Stephanie as she ran her fingers over the seals. “High-quality stuff, I’m impressed – but fuck, if the company’s doing such a shitty job keeping us alive that you feel like we should all buy this sort of thing just to stay alive in a fire-”
“Oh, they’re not for fires,” explained Martin. “They’re for if the ceiling turns into taffy. It’d be quite warm, but the main danger would be suffocation, since it’s nearly impossible to swim or move through. The tank would keep me alive long enough to get to the stairwell and break a door, which would drain it all out of the offices and get us some breathing space.”
Stephanie looked at him with an unreadable expression.
“So I don’t think you’ll need the goggles. Just a tank each.”
The expression hardened around the edges, like old bones buried deep.
“You can borrow mine if you want to know the manufacturer. But whatever you do, don’t confuse it with the other bottle. That one is the bear spray.”
“You have bear spray in your desk.”
“Yes. In case our boss turns into a bear.”
She turned and left.
“But what if she DID?” Martin called after her.
Her stride accelerated. He remembered that happening, but didn’t understand why.
***
“That’s strike two,” said Jane as she helped Martin load the rest of his stuff into the back of her van. It was warm and spacious and smelled slightly of wildlife urine.
“I didn’t make a big deal of it,” he pointed out. “I didn’t ask my boss about their plans. I just tried to help a coworker.”
“You were keeping bear spray in your desk.”
“They confiscated it,” he complained.
“Good, because it isn’t getting in my car. Couldn’t you get fired on a day where yours wasn’t in the shop? Bonds of siblinghood aside, I just helped you move – ask Davie next time this happens, it’s his turn.”
“I didn’t plan on getting fired,” he explained as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Why not? It’s better odds than the bear thing.” Tick tick goes the turn signal.
“But what if it did happen?” Vroom, slow acceleration.
“It won’t.” Low grumble and lurch to a stop at the light.
“But what if it-”
“Martin,” said Jane with the endless impatience and perfect understanding of a sister, “life is full of things that can happen. Why not think about them, instead of things that won’t?”
“But,” began Martin, as they pulled forwards into the intersection, which was when the man came through the red light.
He was looking at something that wasn’t the light. Maybe it was his phone? Or the floor. Or a sandwich.
He was moving very fast.
He was going to hit them.
Then they were probably going to hit other people.
What did you do in a car accident?
Martin knew what to do if an asteroid landed off the east coast of Mexico. He knew what to do if housepets across the world rose up and tried to kill humanity. He knew what to do if the floor was made of lava (as long as it wasn’t too hot). He knew what to do if a blizzard happened in July. He knew what to do if trees became conscious and vengeful. And he didn’t know what to do in a car accident.
But, his hindbrain, spine, and arms all helpfully communicated to him, he DID know what to do someplace else.
So he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, wrenched it through a remarkable series of events, and didn’t blink until everything stopped moving around.
***
Davie drove them hope. It was, as Jane reminded him, his turn.
“That was very, very, very, very lucky,” she said. Again.
“Probably,” said Martin. Again.
“I mean, what were the chances of that?”
“A spaceship crashing in front of us, or the chances of me remembering what to do if a spaceship crashes in front of us, or the chances of me remembering what to do if a spaceship crashes in front of us and doing that when a car is about to crash into us?”
“The last one.”
“Dunno. One hundred percent? It’s happened once.”
Jane gently tipped forwards with a groan and tapped her forehead against the dashboard.
“Sit up,” said Davie. “What if you have whiplash?”
“Better doctors than you have already checked and said nope,” she muttered from below. “Not a scratch – not on me, not on Marty, not on anything but a long, long streak of asphalt and half my van. And besides, I don’t wanna look at the road right now. Just makes me paranoid.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll go slow, put on some music – nice, dumb stuff from your old mix CDs, so it’ll keep you too irritated to be jumpy. You doing okay back there, man?”
“Sure,” said Martin.
“Really?”
“All of that stuff was an unprecedented and inexplicable fluke,” said Martin. “It happening again seems pretty unlikely, so why worry?”
Jane turned up the volume.
Martin remembered that. But he wasn’t sure why it happened.
He was used to that.