This Is Salvaged by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Unknown Unknowns

ITOLD OUR SON I had something to tell him that would blow his mind: By the time he’s old enough to drive, I said, there wouldn’t be such a thing as driving anymore. Cars, I said, would drive themselves. I really thought he’d find that exciting. He was four and loved inventions. But he found it boring. Autonomous vehicles, he said, as if the phrase were a punch line. Our driverless future, he said. This was several years ago. My God, we didn’t know the half of it yet—that, before long, the world’s richest man would be mining space for trillion-dollar asteroids, would be dotting the night sky with internet satellites, would be hatching a plan to leave this planet behind and colonize another, that the universe didn’t stand a chance against such progress. Back then, all seemed salvageable yet. That afternoon, our son got my husband to promise to save our car for him. The next morning, he got my mom to do the same. But what are you going to do with two old cars, I said, in our driverless future? I’m going to drive them, of course, he said. I’m going to drive them across the world. What about the ocean? I said. What about it? he said. Do you know about the United Arab Emirates? Do you believe in the Burj Khalifa?

THE QUESTION of belief—of the gap between knowing and not knowing—interested him. Do you believe in Santa Claus? he asked. To hedge, I said I wasn’t sure one way or another. He told me he had two questions to help me think through it. Have you ever woken up on Christmas morning, he said, and seen a huge pile of presents? I told him I had—what about them? Ask yourself, he said. Who put them there? Also, have you ever seen an old man with a long white beard? I told him I had. Ask yourself, he said. Who is that man?

THAT MAN was Bernie, who was upset with someone. That one was Joe, who looked like a good grandfather. That woman was Kamala, who looked like me, and that other man was Julian, who looked like him—but they didn’t stand a chance. The colors Elizabeth wore were wrong—the fact that she wore colors at all, and not black, like the others. Pete? Who is Pete? Who is that man? It didn’t matter who won this round, he said, because Donald Trump would beat that person in the next one, no matter what. I love Donald Trump, he said. I love villains. Come on, I said. Guns, he said. Come on, I said. Guns, he said. Guns, guns, guns—fire.

* * *

FIRE INTERESTED him. My husband and I were worried, however, about using our fireplace. It was the first house we’d had with a fireplace. It wasn’t about the fire. It was the question of how to know whether the gas valve was open or closed. We knew it was closed at the time, but

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