It was a quicksilver question that leapt into my head during my morning run: When was the last time that I had actually seen a bird? I wondered. I remembered some chirping and cawing here and there over the past couple of weeks, I was sure; had perhaps even heard some twittering from the bushes near my front door as I’d laced up that morning. But, try as I might, I couldn’t for the life of me recall the last time that I had actually seen one.
As I hung a left onto the boardwalk that ran along the beach, I began looking for seagulls. Today, the sky was as flat and gray as one of those pull-down backgrounds at the cheap photo studios in the strip malls spreading through this part of Florida like metastatic cancer. I searched for a seagull or a pelican, straining to detect a tweet or a twitter from the Barbie-pink azaleas off to my right.
I almost tripped as I registered loud, melodious birdsong coming from the palms that stood sentry by the golf course entrance. Finally found some! I rejoiced, ready to shake off the vague unease that had chafed me like an ill-fitting suit. But as I jerked my head to follow the source of the sound, I spotted a middle-aged woman in a power pantsuit pulling her cell phone from her pocket: It had been a ringtone. As I got closer to home, I studied the tree branches and the ground beneath them for secondary evidence like fallen nests or eggshells. Still no dice; no dice.
FENTANYL KILLS, a sign in stark red-on-black proclaimed as I headed back into the city. They were everywhere these days, these reminders about preventing overdoses with Narcan and avoiding counterfeit prescription drugs. As if on cue, a blaring ambulance passed by, its wailing wo-ah-wo dragged out by the Doppler Effect as it sped away. I was in the final stretch of my run, now: Six miles and not a single bird.
By the time that I returned to my “efficiency” apartment – which wasn’t so much efficient as it was a coffin – my heart was pounding, and not just from the cardio. Still drenched with sweat, I booted up my laptop and scanned my recent Insta photos. I studied pictures from my cousin’s college graduation party in a beachside park; there were photos of starfish and a puppy on a leash, even a dolphin’s fin near the stern of the yacht that those of us who were still able to stand had taken out after the party. However, there were no birds. I searched through another album, this one containing pictures from a weekend that I’d spent camping with friends in the Everglades National Park; it yielded a couple of alligator action shots, but still no birds. When was the last time I was sure that I had seen a bird, goddamnit? I racked my brain as I scanned dozens of photos, none of which showed evidence of avian activity – not so much as a tiny finch or a woodpecker.
After a cool shower and a reminder of how crowded my inbox was, I sat down to research my article on AI-based academic fraud. It wasn’t hard to convince myself that I was being crazy – after all, when was the last time that I was sure I had eaten a hamburger? It was the formulation itself that was the problem, I convinced myself; demanding a detailed memory of that which was inherently unmemorable.
***
During my run the next morning, I couldn’t help but continue my search. At six a.m., the sky was a brooding pewter, threatening downpour at any moment. Without consciously registering what I was doing, I veered away from my usual route, opting for a loop through a large park in the section of the city that I live in. Even here, I couldn’t escape the evidence of the addictive plague that had overtaken the city: There were orange needle caps and empty dime baggies strewn along the side of the path. Once again, I heard the keening of an emergency vehicle in the distance. It was a forlorn song, the soundtrack to a collapsing society.
Finally, about halfway along the path that meandered through the park, I heard it: Bright chirping projecting from the bushes to my right. I paused, parting the knobbly branches of the bougainvillea as I searched for the source of the sound. It came from within a cluster of three bougainvillea bushes, their dense foliage merging into a single canopy at head height. I patiently pushed aside leaves and flowers, soothed by the soft, sweet smell that clung to them. I let out a sharp sigh as I crouched to finish my search: No birds.
Ew-chee, ew-chee: It was the high-pitched warbling of a mockingbird, and it was still coming from the bushes beside me. I circled around behind them, sure that at any moment I would startle the small, gray birds into flight. I dropped to my knees so that I could look up into the branches of the bougainvillea, hoping to sight from below what I couldn’t find head-on. Still, I saw no movement, no nests, no droppings. Just the ew-eee, ew-eee of the birds coming from these bushes. I surveyed the land around the stand of bougainvillea, but for a good five yards in every direction, it was clear: Just emerald grass so lush that I decided to accept its invitation to lay down for a moment.
As I reclined in the grass, gazing up through the bougainvillea at the tentacles of orange creeping through the morning sky, I heard the birdsong again, except closer this time. And was it…? It couldn’t be…? I tilted my head to the side, confirming that the sound was coming not from the bougainvillea bushes themselves, but from underneath them. I crawled forward on my hands and knees, struggling to discern the exact place that the sound was emanating from. Finally, I reached it: Just an ordinary square foot of grass beneath the tallest of the three bougainvillea. I parted the grass, expecting to find a fallen nest. As I did so, the warbling became uncomfortably loud, metallic-y.
I spread the thick, eight-inch-high grass down to the ground and found nothing. I dug my fingers into the earth in frustration, wanting to scream. As I did so, I felt something hard and square-edged. Without thinking, I began digging, yanking out the grass as I scraped an inch of dirt off of whatever was buried there. The chirping was louder and louder, and my pace became frenzied. Finally, I dislodged it from where it had been buried: A black, plastic cube, about four inches on a side, with square mesh in its center, from which the call of mockingbirds rang.
What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? Some way to make this part of the state seem less bombed-out, more scenic and family-friendly? I examined the box for further clues and found little, just a rectangular tab marked KS Systems, Inc. After twelve hours, it stopped making noise; battery failure, I presumed. Over the next two days, I uncovered three identical boxes: One in the sand by the boardwalk, one set into the rocks ringing a koi pond in my apartment complex, and the final one buried in a pile of rubble in the corner of a derelict urban garden near where I worked.
Who was responsible for this? If it had just been the box that I found in my apartment complex, I would’ve believed that it was a simple beautification hack on the part of the property development company. Likewise with the unit that I had uncovered by the boardwalk. But what about the box that I had discovered in the urban garden, in the middle of one of the rougher parts of the city? Was it the government that was planting them? Some feeble attempt to offset all of the sirens these days? If so, what branch or division was responsible? As an investigative journalist, I was hooked.
“No idea, Kyle,” my friend Grace responded when I asked her for her input. “Better just leave it alone,” she cautioned me; she knew about my obsessive tendencies.
“It’s a puzzle, Mr. Simmons. Never seen anything like that myself.” Apparently the landscaper in my community, a middle-aged man named Josh who reeked of an entire top shelf of liquor at three in the afternoon, didn’t have the answer, either.
***
I pulled up to —– —– —–, the address listed for KS Systems, Incorporated. It had taken me hours to locate it; with no address available online, I had had to resort to state tax records. On the drive here, I had kept one eye on the road, one on the sky: 72 hours and still not a single bird. I stepped out of my car, locking it as I tucked one of the speaker units that I had found into my shoulder bag.
It was a rectangular, four-story building with a sulky facade, not so different in appearance from the boxes that I had dug up. As I entered the lobby, I heard the beep-beep-beep of another emergency vehicle passing by. Goddamn, this city is like a warzone these days.
I approached the receptionist, whose platinum blonde hair was swept back into a practical ponytail. She had a prominent nose; sensual, coral lips; and kind eyes of a watery blue that made her seem a little world-weary.
“Hello, Mr. Simmons,” she greeted me in a silky soprano.
What the fuck? I hadn’t called ahead. No one other than Grace even knew that I was investigating these boxes.
“Umm,” I answered. “I’m here to inquire about some speaker units that I’ve found in various locations around the city,” I continued, sticking to the script that I had prepared despite the sudden, ominous dryness of my mouth.
“We’ve been expecting you, Kyle,” she said as she stood up and stepped out from behind the desk, leading me toward the elevators on the far side of the lobby. “I’m Jennifer, by the way.”
We stepped into the elevator, and Jennifer pressed “4.”
“I know that this might be a little scary for you, Kyle, but try to breathe through it,” she reassured me as the elevator began ascending. My heartbeat quickened, becoming a wild, tribal tattoo that boomed all the way from my shaking fingertips to my suddenly dizzy temples.
What the hell was going on? The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, a clarion ding notifying us that the doors were preparing to open. From behind them, I heard another siren, wahh-wahh-wahh. It had to be outside, of course, but how the hell could the sound still be so loud in here?
“I’ve um, I’m not sure –”
“Just give it a moment, Kyle, okay? Go with the flow,” Jennifer advised with a small smile as she led me out into a warren of identical cubicles separated by chest-high partitions covered in gray fabric.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded, now convinced that this was some elaborate prank. I waited for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind a partition, film crew in tow to capture my startled expression.
“We’re here to help, Kyle, I promise,” Jennifer calmed me, placing a warm hand on my forearm as she searched my face.
“Think about it, Kyle,” she continued. “You already know.”
“Know what?” Something about her voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“What the hell is –”
“KS Systems,” Jennifer sighed patiently as she rubbed my shoulder. “KS are your initials.”
The room began to glitch and tremble: Jennifer’s face warped, the top half sliding to the left, so that her nose and upper lip were now shifted four inches from the bottom half of her face and the rest of her body. I screamed, turning around to run, but there were no elevator doors behind me any longer: Just a booming beep-beep-beep that came from nowhere and everywhere at once – simple enough that it had to be true, loud enough to drown out my crescendoing horror.
***
“You’ve been asleep for a bit, now, Kyle,” the velvety voice greeted me. “Try to take it easy.”
“Easy, now,” it continued as I opened my eyes and saw a blurry vision of a pretty blonde woman in mauve surgical scrubs.
“What’s going on?” I croaked from my rust-coated throat.
“You don’t remember anything, huh? You had an overdose, Kyle, and it was a bad one. You’ve been in a coma for six months. Dr. Grace should be in shortly, and she’ll be able to fill you in. For now, just relax. I’m Jennifer, by the way, and I’ll be your nurse today.”