All that remains from the day of the Astral Gate Incident are snippets— fragments of conversations with contexts long forgotten, lost to time, to entropy, to death. A story could be made from these snippets, but it would be incoherent, lacking protagonists, antagonists, and even setting. Attempts have been made in the past to create a narrative of that day, though they rather erroneously try to shape it in terms of the moment of the incident. To define humanity as a series of suffering after suffering after suffering is foolish and benefits only those who gain from human suffering. People too rich to be effected by the fall out of incidents such as the Astral Gate. Suffering builds character, but what kind of character is being built. A servant to the masters we call capitalism. This is not the place for such musings. Here is the story of people caught in a tragedy they were never prepared for. But then, what other kind of tragedy is there…
“So,” says the man with three scars on the back of his neck, “so I say t-to the guy, what do you think I am, a monster? And he look- looks! Looks at me, and he says, well, Yar. Youse covered in blood.” He is drinking at a bar five hours before the incident occurs. The group of friends he is drinking with laughs at his story, believing it to be a long form joke. They’ll all say they get his joke, but in truth they do not. For that would require him to be joking. He will not survive.
“Mama,” says a little girl with blue eyes, red hair, and black skin, “what happened to Dada?” She is four years old, today is her birthday. These are her first coherent sentences. Her mother was a woman with prematurely grey hair and scars hidden beneath the clothing she wears. Her daughter will never see these scars. She will never know what happened to “Dada.” They will not survive.
A billionaire at the age of 25, Johnathan Smith has it all. He earned his fair and square. Sure, his father gave him a little push, a donation or two from the family vault. But then, is that not the job of fathers? To help their sons out when the time comes? Meanwhile, these leaches are asking for a handout. Asking for what he earned fair and square. Why should he help them? They aren’t his. Johnathan returns to the office he owns where he decides to increase prices on a lifesaving pill. It’s his pill after all, he bought it fair and square. He will not survive.
A blind woman sleeps on the street corner. She will not be awake for the incident. She will not survive.
Two officers are beating a black man on the streets. There are five witness, all white. On a normal day, they will file a report that says the black man was caught trespassing on the premises of one of the white people’s house. Evidence for this will be a splotch of blood with the black man’s DNA found three inches away from where he was beaten. The black man will be found guilty and sentenced to an extrubiant amount of time where the police hope to teach him the lesson: be more white. But today was not a normal day. They will not survive.
A queer woman enters a church. The priest, a man of faith for 37 years and of cloth for 40, holds her as she cries about the cruelties done to her. By her parents, by those who claim to be of faith, by those who seek to cure her. The priest holds her as she cries. He introduces her to a woman of faith with different queerness. A smile comes across the faces of the queer women. They talk for what seems like days. The priest cleans the plates of the homeless who sleep in his church. They will not survive.
A man searches the city of Los Angeles for his dog. The dog will not be found. He will not survive.
A bar mitzvah is held three miles outside of London. The boy is being held up in a chair. His sister, a girl with pink hair, violet eyes, and a birthmark on her neck, talks to her girlfriend about moving into their boyfriend’s apartment. The girlfriend is unsure, perhaps not wishing to make such things real. She says none of this to the girl she loves. She looks at her soon to be brother in law, smiling at becoming a man. They will not survive.
In Greenwich, CT, a family of five is moving into a house. The father has a scar on the back of his hand. The mother has the bottom potion of her left ear completely missing. The youngest son broke his arm. The oldest son wears glasses. The daughter wears braces. The family dog is digging in the garden. The house is blue with a red door and lion’s head for a knocker. The flowers are starting to bloom. They will not survive.
A cat wanders the streets of a suburb. She has black fur, green eyes, and blood on her claws. She will not survive.
A baby is born premature. They live for only an hour. In another, an incident occurs.
In a field, a little boy plays fetch with his dog. The dog runs faster than the boy. He is a kind dog, beloved by the boy. Records found on the boy (a note written in crayon, three trading cards with Pocket Monsters on them, and a copy of The Monster at the End of this Book with three nonconsecutive pages missing) show he lived in an abusive household, but ran away three years prior to playing fetch with the dog. The sun shone on the boy’s face as he petted the dog. They did not survive.
In Canada, a polar bear swims to shore, finding hir cubs sleeping against hir’s flake. Hir’s flake awakens to see hir with five salmon in hir’s mouth. Ze smiles a toothy smile and awakens the cubs. They will not survive.
A short story writer prepares to work on a science fiction narrative about an alien dystopian empire that wishes to enslave humanity, but is constantly foiled by the hands of Clark Jones, Two-Fisted Space Adventurer. An idea strikes him to give the aliens nontraditional pronouns to highlight their alien nature. He considers using the pronoun “Ze” for the alien commander who tries to bed Clark Jones. He will not survive.
A lean man stalks the streets of a city. A slimy sneer oozes onto his face with the ease of a snake in the garden. A block away walks a woman, alone at night. The man has known the woman for many years, and time and time again she has refused his advances. “I can’t be with you. I’m with someone else,” she’ll say. “I don’t love you!” “Stop following me!!” And all those other lies. He’ll make her learn one way or the other. At least, that was the plan. But then, plans tend to fail when clashed with reality, especially when the woman has mace in her purse. He will not survive.
A nonbinary person wanders the streets with a golf club. Hir eyes are covered in purple contacts. Hir long black hair is covered by elvish ears and a blonde wig knotted into a long ponytail. In hir pocket is a card that says “SPELL.” Hir is dressed in a long, somewhat impractical robe. Beneath the robe is a tee-shirt riffing on the movie Akira with a character from the comic book series The Simpsons. Hir will not survive.
Jane Marks finishes shooting her latest motion picture. What footage remains tells the story of a bisexual man (Patrick Mann) having his life torn apart by discovering his sexuality. His girlfriend (Jane Marks) leaves him because she finds the people he’s with to be toxic. The man he falls in love with (Sean Smith III) refuses to be with him unless he rejects his attraction to women. His parents disown him for being gay and his father nearly beats him to death. The scene being filmed involves Jane’s character getting a phone call from Patrick’s informing her that he’s dying of AIDS and probably won’t see the week. She tries to get him to go back to the way things were when he was straight, but he hangs up on her. The movie was expected to receive a bunch of awards for its straight director (Max Landis). They will not survive.
A nonbinary kid was reading a book. She didn’t like the book and threw it against the wall, which caused five pages to be flung out. She will not survive.
“We have to hurry or we’ll miss the train,” said the man with one leg to the woman with short blonde hair. She smiles as he drags her along. The sun shines across her face, almost blinding her to the world around. But the indent the light makes inside her eyes has an abstract beauty to it. They miss the train and the man makes a performative shout of frustration before quickly calming down and discussing their plans with the woman. They will not survive.
It’s noted mobster Vinnie St. John’s 45th birthday. The family is planning a celebration in his honor. Among their plans, two plot to have him wacked, one schemes to take over a rival family’s territory, and one opts to announce his decision to leave the business. Vinnie St. John, for his part, simply sits on the porch while his three daughters run around in the garden. A slight pain hits his left arm, and he collapses. He will not survive.
Ida and Carmine DeVita have been retired for many decades. Their children have had children and some are expecting grandchildren. Carmine is a stout man, nearing the sunset of his life. His short white hair is shaped to a point. Ida has more years within her than Carmine, though her frail body would say otherwise. She dyes her greying hair brown. They are walking in the woods, looking for mushrooms for a recipe they’ll serve their family for Thanksgiving. They hold each other as the sun begins to set. They will not survive.
The sun beats down on the world as a man with a grungy beard (thicker around the lips where a goatee once rested than the rest of the face) walks to the spaceport. He dreams of leaving the Earth he once called home. To him, having tasted the world outside, it is more like a small town than a planet. And small towns, to him, feel more like cages than anything else. To escape, then, would be his greatest desire. He has spent the past five years saving money for his escape. He put all of his resources, all his energy in leaving. He alienated his family, his friends, even burnt some bridges with work opportunities. But, in the end, he got his wish. He was heading for Mars that very day. All he’d have to do was breach the Astral Gate, and he’d be free at last, free at last. He thought of his brother, still on Earth. Still content with the cage. But not for long. He will not survive.
On a misty day on a field in Scotland, where the cows graze lazily, a young boy is given a harmonica by his father. The wind silently bustles the grass with ease and calm, like breath on the back of your neck from someone standing right behind you. He plays the harmonica atop a rock to his family. The boy is wearing white sneakers, khakis, and a light blue polo shirt. He has short brown hair that slightly covers the tops of his closed green eyes. His mother’s hair blows in the wind like grass. The sky turns green as light shaped like life giving sperm rains down the heavens like water in an ocean. The world turns sepia. He will survive.
Who Can Be Saved…
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