The reaction surprised me. I expected most journalists to be outraged. And in fact some news outlets did object, pointing out that government officials would be empowered to designate stories as real news or opinion. In response, to help viewers and readers understand the objectives of this system, those officials gave these complaints the very first O rating.

While people like Howie were furious, to my surprise many outlets accepted it, even praising the administration for its efforts to combat the concept of fake news. They were okay with it, so long as the government did not impose any restrictions on what to report. When Chuck Schumer warned in a tweet, “He who controls the media controls the American people,” he actually received more responses correcting his misuse of gender—“It should read ‘He or she who…’”—than criticizing the policy.

4

I liked to walk to work. The combination of my handicapped placard and D.C. journalist plates would have allowed me to park Van on the White House lawn if I wanted to, but unless the weather was awful, I put it in a garage that formed the third point of a triangle with the gym and the office. That morning ramble, with Cher playing soft music through Chair’s speakers, gave me time to sort out my thoughts, plan the day, and make sure I kept in touch with the street.

In the desert, it had been essential to maintain contact with the so-called Arab streets. We gathered considerable intelligence from watching and listening and noticing even the small changes. Who had disappeared from a stall? Why was the price of figs going down? Where did a fruit peddler find the money to fix his truck? It was a learned habit that I’d carried with me through the years.

I tried to take a slightly different route every day to sample as many streets as possible. I’d gotten to know the area well. I knew the shops and their keepers; I had befriended the homeless and knew what spots they’d staked out—once even mediating a turf dispute over rights to a warm Metro grating. When I was on schedule, I got to know people on a similar schedule, and over time I had developed a sense of the Washington street. It got to a point where I could identify what street I was on by the scents from the stands and shops. Even sometimes by the cracks and divots in the sidewalks that rattled Mighty Chair.

In the days following the attacks, the streets turned cold. It was like an old friend avoiding me. People averted their eyes, mumbled a few words, and shook their head in response to a familiar greeting or simply turned their back to me to avoid contact. There was nothing to say. The audacity of the attacks, their success, the relentlessly mounting toll of dead and wounded, the endless photographs of known victims and those who were still missing, the reports of funerals, the stories of miraculous survivors and those who missed their fate by a seemingly innocuous decision—all of this shattered the last fragile hope that Wrightman could somehow bring America together. The dark, quiet anxiety that had been hanging over the country finally settled down as completely as if someone had simply put the lid on a Crock-Pot.