Radio Sphere by Devin terSteeg Page A

detonations above the clouds 7 people have been strange, Grandpa says, like never before.
    The result of the explosions in the upper atmosphere knocked out most of the electronics as far as Monsantonia, 8 Grandpa knew all about it and most of what devices survived seemed random to me. I didn’t use a lot of electricity, so I never had to worry about using up my power rations, plus I had the hand crank.
    I spent five hours at The Laundromat playing DS, 9 I mean washing clothes, but I finished a ton of Yoshi’s Island 10 and just felt awful accomplished.
    The only remaining washateria in Boston looked like an old homeless city, an outdoor sprawl of rusted machines lit by torches 11 and covered by whatever tarps they could find. The oxidized washers filled the Common 12 in jagged clumps that ran off generators brought in by Logan at the end of each month. A large sign posted exchange prices for goods— ethanol, water at various qualities, grain, fuel and workers. It was difficult to focus on the game at times because this clunker of a dryer sounded like it was popping giant kernels of popcorn. I had to keep getting up to switch loads and fold because I hadn’t washed clothes in three months, kept noticing this guy with sunken eyes in a gaunt face watching me fold as if I were teaching him how; he thought I didn’t notice him studying me until I mistakenly looked up and caught his eye.
    “I’m leaving at three to go pick apples,” 13 he said.
    I returned a self—comforting smile.
    The place alone gave me goosebumps, it had a disquiet that was easy to mistakenly overlook— hundreds of people all around yet alone, so I was glad to have some clean clothes and could leave. That creeper was easy enough to ignore the rest of the time even though I knew he kept staring at me.
    Mom and dad had me over for dinner, I hadn’t seen them in seven months, since moving out, but most importantly Chad would be there. Chad had these pectoral muscles that must have been so comfortable to lean into, to fall asleep on, that he could use to protect me.
    His hair had this one brawny Superman 14 curl that danced around his forehead as he moved and he had that faux—mountainous 15 smell of a clean man. My own One from City of Lost Children. 16
    Chad got along well with my dad ever since his own father passed— which meant he started going over to our house. I could see in dad’s eyes a calm he never had years ago whenever he and Chad had their long mentorus talks in the study. Chad was only four years older than me. Mom, who was pushing 232 years old, and birthed me at 213, grew up with Chad’s dad back before the world changed from blue to brown. We figured mom was among the last still alive— from before the bombs went off— in Boston at least.
    I completed more of Yoshi’s Island, sitting on the duffel of clean clothes, while I waited for the T 17 which came late because it had been stalled by another jumper— 18 people having trouble coping with one thing or another. The trains only ran for three hours in the morning and again for three hours in the evening, so jumpers completely messed up the schedule. Mom once told me that people looted until they realized the TVs they’d stolen wouldn’t work, after that there wasn’t a lot of crime. Mom had said it was better now, that I could live happily, but I could tell she always missed something from before. She almost never spoke about what it was like in her youth. Logan had men there, lifting, moving, hammering; they all wore jumpsuits of mismatched colors— green, orange, blue— and operated in ordered groups of four or five. The colors didn’t seem to correspond to anything at all.
    Nobody spoke to them and they spoke to nobody, the men with guns watched from all corners. The men with guns usually patrolled on foot between, and at, the train stations. From the John courthouse, Boylston, Dartmouth, and down to Union Park the soldiers made triangular patrol routes. You could see