Sole Survivor

considering the singular historical importance of this child's life, should be a name that resonates.
        They are seated across the aisle from a mother and her two daughters, who are returning home to Los Angeles -Michelle, Chrissie, and Nina Carpenter.
        Nina, who is approximately 21-21's age and size, is playing with a hand-held electronic game called Pigs and Princes, designed for preschoolers. From across the aisle, 21-21 becomes fascinated by the sounds and the images on the small screen. Seeing this, Nina asks “Mary” to move with her to a nearby pair of empty seats where they can play the game together. Rose is hesitant to allow this-but she knows that 21-21 is intelligent far beyond her years and is aware of the need for discretion, so she relents. This is the first unstructured play time in 21-21's life, the first genuine play she has ever known. Nina is a child of enormous charm, sweet and gregarious. Although 21-21 is a genius with the reading skills of a college freshman, a healer with miraculous powers, and literally the hope of the world, she is soon enraptured by Nina, wants to be Nina, as totally cool as Nina, and unconsciously she begins imitating Nina's gestures and manner of speaking.
        Theirs is a late flight out of New York, and after a couple of hours, Nina is fading. She hugs 21-21, and with the permission of Michelle, she gives Pigs and Princes to her new friend before returning to sit with her mother and sister, where she falls asleep.
        Transported by delight, 21-21 returns to her seat beside Rose, hugging the small electronic game to her breast as though it is a treasure beyond value. Now she won't even play with it because she is afraid that she might break it, and she wants it to remain always exactly as Nina gave it to her.
        West of the town of Running Lake, still many miles from Big Bear Lake, following ridgelines past the canyons where the wind was born, bombarded by thrashing conifers hurling cones at the pavement, Joe refused to consider the implications of Pigs and Princes. Listening to Rose tell the story, he had barely found sufficient self-control to repress his rage. He knew that he had no reason to be furious with this woman or with the child who had a concentration-camp name, but he was livid nonetheless-perhaps because he knew how to function well in anger, as he had done throughout his youth, and not well at all in grief.
        Turning the subject away from little girls at play, he said, “How does Horton Nellor fit into this-aside from owning a big chunk of Teknologik, which is deep in Project Ninety-nine?”
        “Just that well-connected bastards like him… are the wave of the future.” She was holding the can of Pepsi between her knees, clawing at the pull tab with her right hand. She had barely enough strength and coordination to get it open. “The wave of the future unless Nina… unless she changes everything.”
        “Big business, big government, and big media-all one beast now, united to exploit the rest of us. Is that it? Radical talk.”
        The aluminum can rattled against her teeth, and a trickle of Pepsi dribbled down her chin. “Nothing but power matters to them. They don't believe… in good and evil.”
        “There are only events.”
        Though she had just taken a long swallow of Pepsi, her throat sounded dry. Her voice cracked. “And what those events mean…”
        “… depends only on what spin you put on them.”
        He remained blindly angry with her because of what she insisted that he believe about Nina, but he could not bear to glance at her again and see her growing weaker. He blinked at the road ahead, where showers of pine needles stitched together billowing sheets of dust, and he eased down on the accelerator, driving as fast as he dared.
        The soda can slipped out of her hand, dropped on the floor, and rolled under her seat, spilling the remainder of the Pepsi. “Losin' it, Joe.”
        “Not long now.”
        “Got to tell you how it was… when the plane went in.”
        Four miles down, gathering speed all the way, engines shrieking, wings creaking, fuselage thrumming. Screaming passengers are pressed so hard into their seats by the accumulating gravities that many are unable to lift their heads some praying, some vomiting, weeping, cursing, calling out the many names of God, calling out to loved ones present and far away. An eternity of plunging, four miles but