Cover

Part One

1

No person saw the doors appear; that honor was reserved for a polar bear crunching a seal bloody, a murmuration making its clouds in the sky above the earth, a pair of black kites searching out grasshoppers in the soon-to-be kindling grass, a coati who had been asleep in the midday’s heat with its paws on its black snout, and a dog preoccupied with finding the rotting carcass it couldn’t stop smelling. The animals, not understanding these things were doors, yet understanding they were not of this world, quickly left the area. Later, different people would go on television so intoxicated by the attention they were receiving that they were able to smile wide as they exaggerated and spewed out conflicting details. Some claimed to have heard a great voice coming from the air, encouraging them to announce the arrival. Others saw burning bushes singing loud the end of days. And one man, a farmer from mid-Michigan, was blunt and matter-of-fact in his perfidy. He was fertilizing soybeans, and then there was a door. It would not open. It would not burn. The door itself was a rich blue some days, one time silver, although no one else ever saw it that way, and sometimes, it wasn’t even there at all.

In the days that followed the appearance, each country handled things differently. Four of the doors, because they were in not densely populated places, were unknown for years to people outside those countries. When they were found later, it was to some people’s great annoyance. Because three had originally been sighted and collectively acknowledged—one in Michigan, one in Australia, one in Germany—they had given the sense that, finally, here it was, the end of days. Things in threes were always a warning. Despite arrests, despite violence, despite calls for common sense and patience, people surged around the doors. Ad hoc towns grew around them, sermons and prayers were held regularly, the surrounding grass and crops were destroyed by the pressure of thousands kneeling and waiting to see what all of this meant.

And for those who did not have faith, there was a swirling of opinions. Aliens! They were always pulling stunts on people, and here was another one, a step further from the flashing lights in the sky and sucking people up in tractor beams. Or maybe, finally, here was proof that we were all living in a vast, sick game of The Sims: See, the user had put the wrong thing in the wrong place, and here was proof that nothing mattered. Life did not make sense because we were pixels and blobs meant to be observed and tormented. Articles and theories and think pieces abounded. Maybe the doors were a trendy artist’s conceptual piece. We would find out that each one of these stupid, overdiscussed portals was valued at a million dollars.