Unfair Warning

If you're reading this, it's because you subscribed to the magazine. I'm sorry it won't be more professional, or organised. I was an intern. I guess I've been promoted, because no one remembers Grace except me.

Not sure what happens after I write this down. Will you be able to read it, understand it, remember it? Will the words erase themselves as I type them?

Grace Hearn was our Editor-in-Chief. You probably know that, or knew it at one point, because she became a public figure, with that iconic pixie haircut and the huge sunglasses she wore all the time. A few days ago, we broke the card phenomenon story, or, made it mainstream, since it was already all over the place on the internet. Grace is the reason we broke it.

A lot of people thought it was a meme, or a marketing campaign, when we all received our ones a year ago, printed on heavy card stock with embossed gold, in whatever number system makes sense to you. People talked about getting their ones for about a year before the twos started showing up.

That one, two, three rhythm is so entrenched, isn't it? A list doesn't feel complete unless there are at least three items on it.

Grace took an interest in the story a few days ago. Josie and I were in the conference room talking about it, waiting for an editorial team meeting to start. Neither of us had gotten our two cards, but we both knew people who had.

Grace came in. She poured a glass of water, sat back, and glared at us. We'd fallen silent as soon as she appeared in the doorway.

"Carry on," she said. "Meeting hasn't started yet."

Josie and I exchanged a look, the kind that all Grace's employees understood, a should-we-or-shouldn't-we dubious glance. We were worried, naturally, that Grace was going to scoff, tell us we were stupid, or possibly dole out some punishing assignment because we were wasting time.

Grace opened her tablet and began stabbing at it. The silence was as uncomfortable as talking in front of her would be, so I shrugged at Josie and said, "Anyway, most people have given up on the idea that it's viral marketing. A lot of the folks who have gotten twos don't have any purchasing power at all."

Josie raised an eyebrow and grinned a little. Bold move, her look said. "Like who?"

"A bunch of homeless people in Detroit, for example. They've been reclaiming abandoned housing, getting donated materials, building community gardens on a scale comparable to small independent farming. They're on a no-money system, no cash. None of them would be the target of a high-end marketing campaign, unless it's a really dumb one. About twenty of them have gotten their two cards, though."

"So what is it?" Grace said. Her brow furrowed, an expression I would have called worry on anyone else.

I fumbled to answer. "A prank, or a meme? Some people think it's a game."

I side-eyed Josie, who gave a subtle shake of her head. Grace didn't suffer fools gladly.

I decided to ignore her. "There are spookier theories."

"What are they?" Grace asked.

"Oh, they're pretty out there."

"Do tell, Peter? Please."

John and Ravinder, two guys from editorial, appeared in the conference room doorway toting coffees. They exchanged a look, like they weren't sure what they'd just heard.

That please hung in the air. "Be explicit and detailed," Grace added.

"Okay." I had a feeling like I'd hit a bullseye, like maybe Grace would let me team with Josie to write an article. "As far as we can tell, everyone on earth has gotten a one card by now, except anyone under the age of eight. But the twos seem to be rolling out selectively."

Josie slid my tablet a couple of inches closer to my hand.

I continued, "I've been tracking data based on reports from five different online forums, which shows even distribution in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and age worldwide, but the dispersal rate seems more selective this time, a bit clustered in terms of geography, and maybe relationships. Looks like not everyone is going to get a two." I called up one of my slicker-looking graphs, and slid it across the table so she could look at it.

Grace studied it. "Go on."

I scrambled to decide which details I should share next. I was telling a story. I needed it to flow. I needed it to seduce.

"Method of delivery seems to have changed. The ones arrived mostly by mail, or at least, mailbox or mail slot, but the twos have seemed to just appear. Manifesting on a desk, or at a place of work. One man in Zimbabwe reported finding his two tucked into a book that had been on his shelf for at least a year. In Minnesota, a woman discovered her card inside her refrigerator, on top of a carton of eggs."

Grace was watching me. "How many twos have been delivered?"

"Uncertain. The phenomena is probably underreported, but estimates are approximately 10,000 in the US, one tenth of that in Canada."

"Proportionate to the population?"

"Not always. Poland has reported only twenty-eight two cards so far, but their population is about the same as Canada's."

"What about other determinants?" Grace said. "Wealth? Health?"

I called up a graph and slid it across the desk. "Just like I was telling Josie, no wealth demographics that make sense. Health measures—difficult to collect, but no obvious pattern." I cleared my throat. We weren't supposed to access the health demographic databases for personal projects. Given her interest in the data, I hoped Grace would overlook that I'd done some fairly illegal cross-referencing.

"Personality?"

"Reporting on that must be subjective," I said. A slow suspicion rolled in my gut.

"What else?" she asked.

"We have yet to see any threes," I said. "But some people think they're coming soon."

"None of this is a theory, Peter," Grace said. "What are people saying this is all for?"

Josie raised her hand. "The nastiest speculation is that they're counting strikes."

"Strikes?"

"As in, three strikes and—"

"Oh." Grace sat back in her chair and rubbed her upper lip. "Who's writing about it?"

I looked around the room. John and Ravinder exchanged a concerned look.

"What papers, what magazines?" Grace prompted. "I haven't seen this covered anywhere."

"None of them. There was a flippant piece in the Daily Mail a while back." I pulled up the article and passed my tablet to her again. It featured an unflattering picture of an older man taken with a fisheye lens, his round fingers pushing a one card toward the camera. "Everyone made fun of it."

"Everyone who?"

"The online forums where they've been talking about this since the one cards first came out. Mainly conspiracy hubs. They're really hyped about it. It's the kind of thing groups like that were made for."

Grace's expression was grim. "What are they saying about it?"

"The usual. Shadow governments. Aliens. Reptilian aliens."

Ravinder laughed, and shook his head. "Really."

I shrugged, smiling a little. "It goes with the territory."

"Anything else?"

"No one knows. No one has been able to catch anyone delivering the cards. There's a good video of someone opening a mailbox, showing that it's empty, and then closing and opening it again, and the card is in there."

Ravinder scoffed. "Easy enough to fake."

I tried to keep my tone even. "Technically fake-able, yeah." Watching the card appear had freaked me out so much I couldn't sleep.

John said, "Excuse me, but are we really going to believe this bullshit?"

Grace had her head down, and was digging around in her purse, a little frantically.

She pulled a white card out of her purse, and passed it to me. Three.

"I found that on my coffee table a week ago," Grace said. "I'm greenlighting this story. We're writing about this. We're writing about it for this month's issue."

"And your two card?" My voice shook. Grace was as far removed from anything I would be personally interested in as a person could be, but here we were.

"Weeks ago, I think," she said. "I threw it out." Her eyes locked on mine. "That's the meeting," she said. "We're doing a special issue on this. John, Josie, Ravinder, I want three pitches from each of you by end of day. Peter, you're with me for now."

The other three shuffled out of the room as fast as people can shuffle.

When they were gone, Grace pulled another card from her purse. It was black, rough-edged, with no message printed on it.

"Earlier today," she told me. "Same spot as the other one." She looked terrified. "This is going to make an amazing story."

***

We put the issue together in three days. We called it endgame. The cover featured Grace's black card in a memento mori display, with a human skull and rotting fruit. The New Yorker and The Atlantic ran pieces of their own, but neither of them went down the same rabbit hole, exploring the weirder online takes, or writing about the card phenomenon like Josie did, from a phenomenology-as-art perspective.

"It's a ticking clock." We quoted one of the forum members, who wrote under the name bucksh0t. "Each tick, or second, is shorter than the last, exponentially." He'd gotten his three a couple days before the issue came out.

We ended with a quote from Grace. "Is it a threat? It feels like one. But what can I do except wait and see what happens?"

Soon after, a forum user called langolyric42, bucksh0t's girlfriend, reported him missing.

He's gone, she wrote, in the post that was to become briefly famous, before people started forgetting. He left for work this morning. He never made it. I called his office manager. She didn't remember him. I tried his phone. Nothing. He's been disappeared. Worse than disappeared: forgotten.

There were no replies to the post. By the time I scrolled back up to copy it, it was gone. What I just wrote was from memory, but its traces are fading.

Grace approached work with incredible vigour. We put everything we had into live coverage of events as they unfolded. I've never written so hard in my life, never worked on so much adrenaline. It was partly Grace's: her energy, her vibrancy.

Some of the people who disappeared were known names, but most were private people. I can't remember them now. I remember Grace, though. I remember her sitting beside me.

She's a faded outline. Do you remember her hair? The way she wore it? Her personality, her opinions?

This morning I stood at the window of her office, looking out at the sky, which was just starting to brighten with the golden light of sunrise. Grace was at her desk behind me, talking about one of the recent disappearances, and trying to sort out why anyone would target—I don't remember the details.

I was thinking I would walk into hell with her, no question.

The lights flickered, and a blank space appeared, like she'd paused in the middle of a sentence. Maybe I got dizzy, maybe I passed out and woke up again. I was by myself, after.

I found a webcam in the corner of this office. There was no footage, nothing recorded. Just us, coming in here and setting up shop, me and Josie, Ravinder, and John.

The mood is euphoric. We've always worked without a Chief. When I think about the word Chief now, I don't see anyone in my mind's eye. Did I, once?

If I scroll up to the beginning of this document, I can't read what I've written. My eyes won't track the words on the page, and I feel so tired, and I feel lucky, but I don't understand why.