The Promethean had been founded in 2015 to provide context to current events. We did background digging to help readers better understand our world. We focused on the why rather than the what. We took great pride in fitting somewhere between breaking news reports and birdcage lining. My interior-of-the-Interior story, for example, was actually part of a series I was writing about the billions of taxpayer dollars wasted annually. We weren’t set up to report breaking news beyond doing wraparounds, brief summaries of known facts. We didn’t have a budget to physically cover events, so we gathered details from numerous other sources—twelve TV networks, for example—added our own in-depth reporting, and then tried to make sense of it.

Howie took it all in, considered the possibilities, then decided with a dismissive wave, “Fuck it! You guys know what to do. Do it.” Get on the phones. Dig up your contacts. Use every source you’ve ever developed. Do journalism.

Over the next hour we all began filling in the details. I clicked among the different stations and internet sites, making notes while reaching out to my sources to try to find something, anything, I could turn into a story. It looked like the actual attacks had ended, although in New York cars were still burning in the tunnel, and in Louisiana the flood damage continued spreading. The scope of damage was beyond easy comprehension. New York had lost a vital connection to New Jersey and beyond. In Louisiana, the Mississippi River had cut a new course to the Gulf, destroying everything that had stood in its path.

But from the muddle, some basic facts were emerging. The first attack had begun at approximately twenty after eight in Oahu, just after the Navy-operated ferry carrying an estimated 130 passengers had arrived at the USS Arizona memorial …

I could visualize the place. I had rotated through Pearl several times during Special Ops training. I’d paid my respects at that memorial. I’d been to New York too, paid my respects there too. I’d driven through the Lincoln Tunnel, the gateway to everywhere that is not New York, at least a dozen times. At that scene, a female reporter was pushed back against a brick wall, glasses perched on the tip of her nose. As she spoke, she leafed through loose pages. I thought she was doing a good job in a really difficult situation. Screeching sirens forced her to hold the mic against her mouth to be heard. She was dressed casually, in pants and a glittering gold Harmony Street T-shirt, as if she had rushed to the site. Descriptions of the terrorists varied, she said, but several survivors described them as “Middle Eastern looking.”

Maybe, I thought, probably, but expectations always color memory.

The reflection of flashing emergency lights bouncing off the wall and the shadows of people rushing in different directions made it look like a scene from a David Lynch movie. She read from her notes, talking to an anchor named Bill. The terrorists had taken automatic weapons from the back of the van. They began firing indiscriminately into the trapped vehicles.