Page 163 of Cherish

Mode

Five minutes in, I want to call for help, but I’m too busy writing as fast as I possibly can—turns out the pensarespecial and write at inhuman speeds—to take time to reach for my phone.

Ten minutes in, I actually manage to pull my phone out of my pocket, but then I drop it in a rush when a building explodes on the south side of Chicago.

Fifteen minutes in, I’ve forgotten that help actually exists and I’m in full-out write-or-flight mode. I record a death in Ethiopia, an author on climate change signing books in São Paolo, the birth of a child in the Philippines. TV after TV flickers to Technicolor life, and I try to write faster than a god-spelled pen can write.

I assume it’s the same for Macy, but I’m too terrified of what’s going to happen next to risk looking away from the monitors long enough to check on her. But some truly strange noises are coming from her side of the room—squeaks, gasps, and even a couple high-pitched cries that send chills straight down my spine.

“Are you okay?” I manage to say when she lets out another sad-sounding squeak. And then I promptly write those same exact words into the record I’m currently taking of the UN’s latest resolution.

“Damn it,” I mutter as I cross them out, wondering if I’m allowed to cross things out when recording what’s happening, even if it’s obviously a mistake. The last thing I want is to tamper with history, especially when all I’m trying to do is record everything that matters. Although, is it really tampering if I’m crossing out words that should never have been there to begin with?

Then again, maybe Macy and me sitting here and doing this is tampering with history in and of itself. We don’t mean to do it, obviously. In fact, we’re both working as hard as we can to write down as many important things that happen as possible.

But who are we to decide what’s important and what’s not?

Maybe those Indian movie awards I just spent ten seconds recording—the magic pens also allow the recorder to understandandwrite in every language—didn’t deserve more attention than the six seconds I spent recording that kidnapping in England I completely glossed over. Or maybe the explosion in Chicago isn’t nearly as important as the car crash that just happened in Belize.

How are we supposed to know?

Heather, Macy, and I are seventeen and eighteen, and that is not enough living to have the perspective necessary to do this job—to make these decisions. And even our varying points of view and backgrounds aren’t really enough to give a fair accounting ofthe world, are they?

But is our lens any worse than the Curator’s? She’s a god who has been locked up here pretty much from the beginning of time. Yeah, she’s seen everything from this room, but has she actually experienced anything?

The thought makes me sad even as it frustrates—and worries—me. There’s an old saying about history being recorded (unfairly) by the winners. But this somehow feels even worse than that. This feels like history is being recorded by people who’ve never even been on the field.

How is that real history?I wonder as I continue to scribble down information—this time about a rescue mission in a Chilean mine.

But my thoughts are interrupted when Heather makes a high-pitched sound—and then promptly bursts into tears.

“Heather! What is it?” I drop my pen, start to rush over to her. But before I can take more than a step or two, something else explodes on my screens. And because I took my eyes off them for a few seconds, I have absolutely no idea what it was.

I want to say to hell with this, Heather needs me, but the explosion looks important. As does the hurricane currently forming in the Atlantic.

Damn it!

“Are you okay?” I call over to her even as I lean forward to try to see what’s going on with the aftermath of the explosion that is rolling across the suddenly colorized TV screen in front of me. “What happened?”

Heather doesn’t answer, and when I glance over at her, I see she’s still writing even as tears pour down her face.

I take another second I can’t afford to glance at her screens—and as I zero in on the one currently in color, it’s easy to see what has her so upset. There’s been a truly horrible school bus accident in Morocco—one that has badly injured or killed dozens of young children.

“Oh, Heather,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“This job sucks,” she growls. “This whole fucking world sucks! Why the hell are we always working so damn hard to save it?”

She waves a hand at the screens to underscore her point. And I get what she’s saying. God, do I get what she’s saying. Sitting here, watching all these moments, reminds me of a time when I was a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen.

My parents took me to Washington, DC, to see the Smithsonian and a bunch of other really cool museums. One of the museums we went to was called the Newseum, which was dedicated to everything regarding the news. There were a ton of cool exhibits, but the one I remember the most was the one with every Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph ever taken. The very best and very worst of humanity up there on one wall for everyone to see.

These TVs—all these moments on display from all different people from all over the world—are like that. The absolute best and worst of what’s going on in the world, and the people who are making it happen, on the wall in front of us, just waiting to be recorded…or not.

It’s devastating. Not just the bad but the good, too. The best that we as people are capable of, juxtaposed with the very worst. How could it not be completely overwhelming?

No wonder Heather is crying. I’m pretty sure I will be, too, before long.

Except there’s no time for that. A plane just crashed into the waters near Puerto Rico. And an article just came out about a North American leader that will either rock the country with scandal or be completely ignored. Which makes me unsure about what to do with it.

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