The Ghosts in Their Boroughs

Chapter 5

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“What do you mean—a pack of animals? You mean, like, dogs?”

I looked at Madsen in the rear-view mirror, wishing I hadn’t spilled. “No—not like dogs.”

“Or racoons?” Sylvia looked up from her broken camera. “I’ve seen racoons in the park.”

“It wasn’t racoons. Look, I told you, these were big; like, the size of a deer. And they weren’t mammals—more like birds, but with smaller feathers. And I don’t mean an ostrich, or an emu. These were predators, carnivores—they had teeth. And they were pack-hunters. I mean, it was clear by the way they—”

“Cassowaries can reach nearly six feet in height and are omnivores,” said Pratt. “They’ve even been known to kill humans. Isn’t it at least possible they escaped from the zoo? What color were they?”

“Black,” I said, watching the trees fly past. “They were black; with, like, red snouts. Beaks. Whatever. I didn’t really get a very—”

“Enter the Black Swan—quite literally, in this case.” The professor laughed. “Killer cassowaries in Central Park. Who knew?”

Sylvia wiped the hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Pratt shrugged. “I jest. I mean, cassowaries are black, with brightly colored beaks, as are black swans, but that isn’t what I meant. No, I was referring to the event; the phenomenon—also called a Black Swan—in which something happens that is both unpredictable and unforeseen (although it may seem to have been predictable in retrospect), and usually results in severe, widespread, even devastating consequences. The 9/11 terrorist attacks are a good example. So—I would argue—is this; this whatever it is that’s happened to New York. This—vanishing, for lack of a—”

Madsen snorted. “It was totally predictable. You just haven’t been paying attention. What did you think Agenda 21 was? Or the SPP? How about the Denver Airport, or the FEMA death camps—the World Jewish Congress, the HAARP² Array in Los Angeles?”

“Myths—of course. Just like your predilection for prediction.”

“Yeah? Well, with all due respect—doctor, how would you know that?”

“Because prediction itself is a myth,” said Pratt. “Because what we know of the past—which is where all predictions come from—is a myth. Look, it’s all well and good to predict an outcome in a system with minimal inputs; the so-called ‘experts’ do it all the time. The problem comes when you multiply those inputs by say, five-hundred billion—where then are your gifts as a seer? Likewise, because any event can be affected by billions of others, we cannot ever really know the past. We see a puddle on the table and look for leaks; yet who’s to say it wasn’t just a cube of ice?”

Madsen harumphed. “I saw blue helmets on Main Street, that’s what I saw. And being a refugee in my own country. And death. You can make it as complicated as you want. I read the tea leaves, or the innards, or the f*****g chemtrails, and knew what was coming. And then I planned for it. It’s as simple as that.”

The truck rocked; Pratt looked out his window. “Then where are they, Mr. Madsen? Where are the men in blue helmets?”

But I was no longer listening; I’d focused instead on the hulk-jammed road and a faded Miata convertible: a convertible with its top down, which seemed rather unseasonable. “Hold up. Slow, slow.”

We slowed and pulled alongside the thing—even as Sylvia’s breath hitched and I sat up to get a better view—saw the tattered remains of the car’s vinyl roof and the mangled ribcage of its top-frame. “Lou, tell me that’s not what I think it is. Even if it’s a lie.”

I looked at the formerly white upholstery and the sickening Grand Guignol it had become; like a Jackson Pollock artwork made from gore. “No; it’s nothing. Some kind of traffic accident. Don’t look at it.” I nudged the back of Madsen’s seat. “Get us out of here.”

But Madsen didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe. Like a slab.

“I said get us out of here; she doesn’t want to look at that.” I shoved against his seat, hard. “The barge, remember? It’s just sitting there. Like, right out in the open.”

“Just sitting there,” he whispered at length, blankly, dazedly. He ground the truck’s gears. “We don’t have time for this. We have to go.”

And so we did; finally, rattling up the 65th Street Transverse and under West Drive Arch toward Tavern on the Green (and its reserves of vegetable oil, which the truck could run on). Rumbling up the crowded road as Sylvia looked back at me and I looked at the professor—who only frowned, circumspectly, gravely.

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“So you’re saying that because prediction is impossible, no one should ever prepare for, like, anything?” Sylvia frowned. “That’s an awful belief.”

“On the contrary, Miss Sylvia—I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that in preparing for the expected we often forget the unexpected, and to our peril. What I’m saying is that it’s our certitude itself—or rather our resistance to uncertainty—that breeds fragility; and that the antidote to the Black Swan is not more strength or even robustness but rather an ability to be the tea and not the teacup. Which is to say, fluid, mutable; antifragile.”

We pulled up to the Tavern on the Green’s eminent red awning and stopped; after which we just sat there, silent, morose.