Sometimes what you see belongs to another world. Stars. City streets on a movie screen. The remembered face of someone gone. You know it is another world because you cannot touch what you see, or because it cannot see you.
Sometimes, though, the border between this world and the other one seems to blur. An eight-year-old boy and his brother are taken by their mother's friend to the Seattle Aquarium for a sleepover beneath its underwater dome. Sharks swim overhead. Food, the visitors are told, is strictly prohibited, but when the lights dim the mother's friend produces a bag of orange candies:
They seemed to glow in the dark. My brother was thrilled, but I was horrified, maybe because I was so rarely away from my parents at night that I couldn't tolerate any sign of unpredictability in my guardian. Or maybe I thought the ban on eating was crucial for our safety, that if the sharks or rockfish somehow sensed the candies, they'd come after them, slamming their cold smooth bodies again and again into the glass until it cracked and four hundred thousand gallons of water came crashing down upon us.
The dome provides a view without the possibility of contact, a neat division of the familiar from the alien. In the child's mind, though, breaking the aquarium's rules renders that division dangerously contingent: "It must have shocked Shirley when I started to cry, to panic, repeating no, no, no, as she held the small bag toward me."The boy refuses the forbidden fruit and, at least in his adult memory, turns his attention to fortifying his would-be Eden's walls: "I remember a sleepless night, trying to keep the dome intact with the pressure of my gaze, though I probably slept for hours."
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 18, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 18, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
GREAT MIGRATIONS
\"Home\" and \"What Became of Us.\"
SICK, SAD WORLD
What COVID did to fiction.
MOVE IN FOR THE CULL
The complicated calculus of killing some wild creatures to protect others.
EVERYTHING IN HAND
The C.I.A.'s covert ops have mattered-but not in the way that it hoped.
CHICAGO ON THE SEINE CAMILLE BORDAS
I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.”
A SEMBLANCE OF PEACE
How life in a co-living community changed after October 7th.
HIS BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY
Ye bought a masterpiece by Tadao Ando-and gave it a violent remix.
SCREEN GRAB
How CoComelon conquered children's television.
FOND OF FLAGS
My wife is fond of fast food. I am not. My wife is particularly fond of the Wendy’s Baconator. I argue that it’s less expensive to order a Dave’s Double with a side of bacon, then put your own pretzels on top. (I’m fond of the Rold Gold Tiny Twists Original.)
TROPHY ROOM
Going on safari.