The News: No Exit

Wednesday's Child Is Full of Woe

An anthropologist from Mars, a brain in a jar, and a time-travelling historian from two centuries in the future meet up. They’re following their own Star of Bethlehem: two news stories from the week of April 17th, 2023: a Black teenager shot by an 84-year old white man because he came to the white man’s house by mistake and a 20-year old woman killed because she was in a car that went up the wrong driveway and the homeowner shot at the car as it turned around to leave. They want to bring the gift of explanation to the world, coming as they do to these incidents with no prior investment in them.

Why did an elderly man shoot an honors student who was sent to fetch his brothers, why did a man shoot at a car that was driving away? (Just as they start out on their journey, they see the news that two cheerleaders in Texas were shot after accidentally trying to get in the wrong car, but they decide to stay focused.)

The time-traveller isn’t allowed to tell the other two what happens next, but he can explain some of the basic background and facts as he understands them. He’s curious about this now-remote time, whose daily details are mostly unknown to the future. The Martian anthropologist doesn’t know the culture at all, but she thinks she understands some cultural fundamentals. The brain in the jar knows what it is to think, but not to have embodied emotions.