Winter Games by Daniel Church

Author:Daniel Church [Church, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

18

Mom, kids at school said Dad’s gonna be on TV.”

“Well, that’s true,” Amy said. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out this conversation was coming. Their older daughter, Molly, and she were in the kitchen.

“They said Dad’s a bad scientist.” Molly, thirteen, was aca-demically inclined, at least as much as her two parents were.

Whit chose not to saddle her with his views on climate, though she knew the bare bones of what his parents had experienced.

“That part is not true,” Amy said.

“I know it’s not, but they said it,” Molly said. “A lot of them said it.”

“A lot of people say a lot of things,” Amy said.

“That’s not all they said.”

“What else?”

“They said Dad gets money from the oil companies and that only fools and evil people think climate change isn’t real.”

“You maybe should talk to your dad about that.”

“He’s in New York, Mom!”

“He might have time to FaceTime with you.”

“I shouldn’t distract him,” Molly said.

“He can’t be distracted.”

“I’ll call.”

There was a reason Whit Thorgason was in New York: Erica

128

DANIEL CHURCH

Nagle had come through. It didn’t mean anyone in power at NBC thought he was less than crazy and evil, but the Fifty-Niners had been remarkably good for ratings, which the executives called “truth.” Incredibly, the network had given the green light to a one-hour, moderated debate between Whit and Nigel Jones for Thursday, May 27th—two days away.

The network was putting him up at The Plaza, and he had flown to JFK, first class. He sensed that he was a lamb that un-seen forces were fattening for slaughter. But if it was indeed Jones debating him, it shouldn’t be as bad as all that. He should do fine. At times, even so, it was hard to believe that things were playing out this way. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at a darkened, lifeless TV screen. Could he save the world by what he would say to people through boxes like this? Probably not, but he would try. His phone made the sound it did when one of the kids wanted to video chat. It was Molly. When he pressed accept, her face flickered onto his iPhone. His daughter was wearing the beat-up crimson hooded sweatshirt she wore whenever she needed comfort and sat on the edge of her bed in her room.

“Hey, love, what’s up?” Whit said.

“Kids at school.”

“Well, we both knew that was coming, right?”

“Kind of,” Molly said. “You’ve told me a couple of things about why you think what you do. But I don’t honestly understand.”

“It’s not your fight,” he said.

“That’s what you always said, but it kind of is now.”

“I get that,” Whit said.

“They’ve been teaching me about global warming since, like, kindergarten.”

WINTER GAMES

129

“That’s the perfect age to teach it to,” he said.

“Dad!”

“Sorry.”

“And there’s no way that so many scientists could all be wrong about something this important,” Molly said.

“The first scientists concerned about it weren’t wrong,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“But once we learned more about different feedbacks in the system and

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