To Rage, Rage Against the Dying of Earth

I’m in a crowd once more. But those that surround me are no longer tourists—they’re purple-haired college students and hippies in tie-dyes, eco-warriors and tree-huggers, and they smell dank as fuck.

I hopped the chain link fence as soon as I passed my phone on to Jericho. I take a circuitous route when I visit Jericho, even though the vast majority of the time, I’m doing nothing more damning than hanging out with a hobo. That’s because the Inspector always catches up. I might have lost him for a few minutes back at Times Square, but he can always triangulate my location from my phone’s signals.

Since I tend to take my time at Jericho’s, Inspector Vidocq posts up in a nearby Starbucks, spending the hours on his phone, waiting for me to leave. He no longer bothers to physically check that I’m there. He thinks, because I’m so sneaky on the way there, that what I’m trying to hide is the fact that I’m hanging out with Jericho. And most of the time, he’s right.

But not today.

“Sick sign, brother,” a white guy, paler than printer paper, says to me. It’s a cardboard thing that I can hold up and wave around. In thick block letters, I’ve written out a message: “Remember, Remember, the World Burns to Ember.”

“Love yours too,” I say, giving him a soft clap on the back. He’s got a laminated poster board that looks like it’s seen its fair share of rallies—“Don’t Be A Fossil Fool” it proclaims, and I wonder how much time they spend coming up with these witty lines.

For the past half hour, our crowd of fifty has been marching through the streets, making noise and urging passersby to “Make Love, Not Emissions!”, something which I personally would be all too happy to do. Two coordinators in the front, dressed in bright green shirts that declare “There Is No Planet B,” have been leading us through slogans and chants, and we now stomp our feet and chant our way down Madison Avenue, much to the chagrin of the regular business-people who just want their day to be fucking over already.

As we approach 50th street, I begin to hear voices in the distance—sounds that remind of an agitated mob, indistinct words with the pitched rumblings of anger. I look over at the organizers, but one of them is on their phone, while the other is waving her Earth-flag high in the air, leading us in yet another round of “Switch to Lean\ Switch to Green\We want all our sources Clean!” Pale white guy next to me seems to not have noticed the distant noises, so I go along with it, continuing onwards.

It’s only when we see them at the other end of 52nd street that I realise what the noises are: it’s another group of climate protesters, a hundred-fifty strong, making their way straight for us. At first, I panic for a second, thinking there’s going to be some kind of internecine civil war when we collide, but then I see the figure leading the second group, and I forget how to even think for a second.

She’s dressed in pure white, with skintight white jeans that show off her shapely legs and a snow-white suit jacket that makes it clear to everyone that she’s the one in charge. It does little to hide her rack, but it’s her face that I’m drawn to. Perfect almond brown eyes, a dainty nose, bangs styled to the side, a cute bun done up in the back, and a smile that stops my heart while she rallies her people on. She raises a hand, and the chants, the songs, even the taxis honking their horns—all falls silent.

This is Scarlet Najbreit, my half-sister, and she is flanked by three bodyguards.