How High We Go in the Dark free sample: a vivid sci-fi novel for Station 11 fans

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel The Darkness: How Far We Will Go is the winter’s most ambitious science fiction book: a sequence of interlocked stories that’s drawn comparisons to sagas like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. The story begins in a near-present, where an Arctic expedition accidentally releases a virus that makes people’s bodies mutate and shift form. The stories follow various characters as they evolve and the plague continues to spread. The stories include spaceships and robot dog death hotels, as well as a place that offers euthanasia for children with terminal illnesses. These stories are relatable because they show how ordinary people manage their lives, their relationships and chase their loves.

Polygon has spoken to the author regarding the methods The Darkness: How Far We Will GoIt refers to the most recent, acclaimed series Station 11, how he’s dealing with readers’ pandemic fatigue, and what links his characters across time and space. Below this Q&A is an excerpt from the book’s story “City of Laughter.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This excerpt could you provide? You may find it difficult to appreciate the dark humor, almost absurdist humor, and overall grimness of the chapter.

Sequoia Nagamatsu: This story is about a park that euthanizes children with fatal plague-related illnesses. It is known as the City of Laughter. Obviously when you’re thinking about the death of children, that name doesn’t seem to connect. In my attempt to make it honest, I tried to imagine how corporates would react to the mass deaths in this imaginary pandemic. They’re providing solace and comfort when hospitals and medical facilities aren’t going to be enough. But they’re also making a lot of money off people’s pain. Some of this is evident in our reality right now.

So the question was, “What does capitalism look like when our concept of mortality has shifted to such an extreme degree?” In this chapter, there are nods to funerary corporations that are starting to pop up. People are now buying funerary cryptocurrency, and mortuary businesses have transformed into banks. This idea of corporatization, and capitalist machines around death was something I wanted to emphasize.

But I also wanted to help readers navigate this tragedy through landscapes we’re constantly inhabiting. We all live in commercialized and Disney-tinted places, regardless of whether we realize it. This is what people seek out to escape from pain and provide comfort. This made sense to me as I had written a draft of Chapter 1. Characters would go to Disney to find comfort and to say goodbye to children. You could give them one last chance to believe that things will be fine before you fall asleep.

There are certainly people right now who’ve had enough of pandemic stories. What can you tell them about why they should read this book, what they’re going to get out of it?

As a writer, of course when I hear somebody say, “I’m not ready for this, I’ll buy it next year,” or just “I’ll never read it,” it hurts a little bit. I’m not gonna lie! For somebody who’s been writing this for over 10 years, it does sting. But that’s not their fault, and it’s not my fault. It’s a really unfortunate coincidence that this book is coming out when it is. However, the timing may be advantageous for people seeking catharsis or healing. Every tragedy is different. Some people are going to run away, and they’re going to seek pure escape. These people want romance, thrillers, and beach reading. Others will be more inclined to share their thoughts and to join in on the conversation.

I’ll just note that as I was working on this, I didn’t always know it was going to be this book. The book went through many evolutions. It was pre-COVID, so I believe I avoided many of the obstacles that would have been faced by writers writing COVID books. I’m focusing on relationships and work, focusing on mundane, everyday activities. I’m never privileging the virus in any way — once the initial outbreak happens in the first chapter, it really falls to the background. Even though there are characters who are scientists, and are part of the disease’s larger world and evolution, we don’t get the science, so much as their relationships and how they’re grieving on an interpersonal level. That helps me.

William Morrow

I take my final weird solace in the fact that the plague in this book is much, much worse than the one we’re experiencing. Maybe people can see a bit of themselves in these characters, in terms of how they’ve responded. So for people telling me they don’t want to read a pandemic story, I’ll just clarify that there’s an odd stereotype of what a pandemic or plague story is. I created a list of pandemic stories not long ago for Electric Literature, and I realized that most pandemic or plague stories aren’t really about the disease. Usually they’re more about relationships and people and quieter moments. That’s in everything from the work of José Saramago or Station 11 to very literary works like Kevin Brockmeier’s The Dead: A Short History.

Most plague fiction I’ve come across doesn’t sensationalize death. It’s almost the exact opposite. So I would provide this context: This isn’t what you’re thinking. But I also understand that some people may need to wait, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Everybody has different experiences and reactions to this moment, and I don’t want to needlessly trigger them, if this book is going to do that. But I’ve read Emily St. John Mandel’s Station 11, and I’ve been following the adaptation, and people’s reactions to it, because I imagine I’m going to be having lots of similar conversations with readers and interviewers in the future. Some people really dive into the topic. Station 11 adaptation and loving how beautiful it is, how it’s about people. And other people are saying, “Yeah, I get that, but not right now.” I think I have a similar reaction to Mandel’s Station 11. I understand that reaction, and I’m very empathetic of it.

The timing of the book’s launch isn’t ideal, but it’s certainly much better than it would have been had it come out in 2020. As we enter year three of the pandemic people realize we must talk about it, that we have to reflect on this and then articulate our future. What does it mean to be normal? Are we looking to be back in the same place we were before this pandemic or are we trying to envision something different? How has our conception of death and mortality changed? How has our understanding of ourselves and of the world changed, how have we viewed our families, society, and ourselves? Those are a lot of the questions I’m wrestling with in this novel, and I think we’re at a place right now where people are willing to have those conversations.

So much science fiction feels like a warning: “If we keep going in our current direction, this bad thing could happen.” Do you see this book as more of a guideline for hope?

Before COVID I made sure each story had hope. Even if there wasn’t much, it gave the characters something to strive for. It might be difficult for them to express it but they needed it. That’s something we don’t always see in our reality — I think it’s not easy for us to see the hope. I think it’s very easy for us to turn on the news and say, “The world sucks, and the future doesn’t have much to offer us.” That’s a pretty dismal way of going about life. Many horrible things happen in this world and many people are horrible. But if you can’t hold onto a little bit of hope, what’s the point of moving forward?

Hope in my novel takes a particular form — it’s often in characters recognizing the connections they have with others. This often comes in the form of community. We’re not quite there yet in our reality, in terms of being as empathetic as we could about other communities. But that’s something I hope readers take away from my novel, is this idea of thinking deeply about how you’re connected with others, and how other people’s plights that may be invisible to you do still matter.

Photo Credit: Sequoia Yamamatsu

When I arrived at work half an hour late, my manager looked at the time.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. Just some personal stuff.”

But instead of a lecture, he warned me about a family who’d been red-flagged this morning as a flight risk. Kayla McNamara was a six year old girl with open pustules. She was dressed in a CDC-approved pink hazmat suit and a teddy bear-print pink hazmat suit. While symptomatic transmission to adults was rare, the park didn’t want to take any chances, especially when an employee might pass the virus to kids in their family. The mother was incredibly devout and believed solely in prayer, so the girl hadn’t been treated with any of the drug cocktails administered to most infected children. She refused to leave her child when she was instructed to attend the Learning Land Room. He instructed me to be attentive to her, but not to interfere.

“Call me directly if it escalates,” he continued. “We want to avoid a spectacle. The illusion must be maintained for the children. The father will join them this afternoon.”

While I observed the high-risk family, I was also juggling bean bag swag. The costume has a fan that keeps me cool, which is what I normally have. But the battery died on this particular day. My face was scalded by sweat. The liquid clung tightly to my skin. The air rushed through my head as I raised the costume’s headpiece. Kayla pointed at a kiosk, an icecream stand and the bumper cars. I focused my attention on Kayla. She ignored her mother. If this girl was lucky, she’d last the day without collapsing. I felt lightheaded and the heat made my legs ache. I wanted to stop Kayla’s mother from ruining her daughter’s final day. As the little girl listened, I thought of Fitch. He was brave even when his lungs were burning and his stomach was so sore that he couldn’t eat liquids. “Dance of the Little Swans” played from the loudspeakers as Mrs. McNamara held on to Kayla in line for the Dipsy Doodle boat ride, furtively scanning the crowd from behind her oversize sunglasses. As she looked in my direction I started dancing wild, dipping deep into the character.

“Just let the poor girl go on the damn ride,” I whispered inside my costume. I wondered what Kayla dreamed about—maybe she wanted to go to space like Fitch. “Just let her have this one thing.”

Just as Kayla and her mother were getting ready to board a boat, Kayla’s mom slipped off the line. She pulled Kayla along behind her.

“We have a runner,” I said into the radio, alerting my manager and security. “Repeat, we have a runner. I headed east towards the Laughateria. Requesting immediate assistance.” I tried to keep up with Kayla and her mother, uncertain when security would arrive, afraid one of the tower guards might take a shot if they noticed them. I glanced at the fence and saw two black men scanning the park using the scopes of the rifles.

“Tell the watchtower security to stand down,” I radioed to my manager. “I still have the family in sight.”

“A Roller Daze Security Squad is on the way,” my manager said.

They slowed down to walk. They slowed to a walk and I followed them. The fences around their perimeter were electrified, despite signs warning about injury or death by high voltage.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, slowly approaching, “but you’re entering an off-limits area. Kayla, are you alright? Do you want to go on a ride?”

I was the first to look at her. She tried to catch her breath, but her little chest swelled and fell.

“You don’t understand,” Mrs. McNamara said, crying. “They’re trying to take her away. This was something I believed I could accomplish. But I can’t let her go.” The little girl leaned on her mother, barely able to stand.

“It’s okay,” I said, reaching out my arms like some kind of savior. This mother was a terrible person. Although the park was more than an overrun hospital, or warehouse converted into a plague-ward, it still felt like a home. “I’m here to help. Take my hand, Kayla.”

Then I moved closer. I was nearly an arm’s length away when something knocked the air out of me and I found myself on the ground, head throbbing. The man punched me in my stomach. My mouse head was torn off and he told me not to touch his family. He could have been grabbed by his legs and pulled him to the ground, but entertainment staff members can be disciplined for inappropriate touching. When he spit in my face, I shut my eyes and said sorry. He pulled his right hand back for a right-hook, and I winced. Then, in a blurred of blue sequins the Rollerblades security team whisked my entire family off to safety.

***

“I don’t understand why you didn’t at least try to block him,” Dorrie said as she examined my scrapes and bruises. She told me the girl’s mother had collapsed in her arms when Dorrie gave her the urn filled with her daughter’s ashes, and the father apologized for hitting the mouse before they left.

“I’ve never been in a fight,” I said. I could hear the low hum of the nebulizer machine in Fitch’s room, the wet breaths he took as he inhaled medicated mist into his lungs.

“Fitch was calling for you today, by the way. He’s been bad since this morning. He has a headache and he’s struggling to breathe. The doctors said we’ll start to see other problems, since we’re weaning him off the drugs. There’s another trial next month at Johns Hopkins. His father was a good actor, I believed. He tried, but he hasn’t made any progress.”

I picked up a sketch that was sitting on the table—Dorrie, Fitch, and someone I assumed to be Fitch’s father in front of a lake. I could feel her studying me, as if I had stepped into a part of her world that she’d never intended to share with me.

“We barely had any time at all. “My husband. I suppose I should call him my ex. He’ been saying he’s close to getting Fitch another lung, a heart, but he’s been saying that for months. I don’t know. I’m just so tired of this, Skip.”

Dorrie walked over to the glass partition that separated us from Fitch’s room, stood in the doorway. I went to the kitchen, poured her a glass of wine, marveled at the organization of her fridge and freezer: a week of meals in Tupperware, all of Fitch’s medicine labeled and separated. I came behind her, and gave her the glass. Half of the glass was gone in one swallow by her. She drank the whole thing in one gulp. I was left pondering who it was she required me to become at this moment. The lights from the ma-chines around her son were dazzling stars, as the toy planetarium projector projected them across the ceiling. He struggled to breathe. Fitch wouldn’t survive without medical help, but we knew this.

Fitch’s crying woke us up at four the next morning. Fitch complained that his head was pounding and his stomach burning. Dorrie was unable to get the vomit out of his bed by the time she washed her hands and put on gloves and a mask. The pounding was getting worse, he said.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll take care of him. I’ve already alerted the medical office. Just wait outside for the on-call doctor.”

The lights, which ran along the length of Osiris, looked like lightning bolts. I was sitting on the porch and staring at them. He left. Dorrie told me Fitch had settled down, and I was able to stay outside through the night.

“So, he’s okay for now?” I asked.

Dorrie turned her back to the house and considered asking the question. As the sun began to shine through, Dorrie looked back at her house. It signalled a new day for The City of Laughter. We were caught in silence for a moment. This was the kind of gravity that the park tried to conceal.

“I don’t think he was ever really going to be okay,” she said.

What a high place to go in the dark

Price at publishing time.

“Haunting and luminous, The Darkness: How Far We Will Go orchestrates its multitude of memorable voices into beautifulAnd lucid science fiction. An astonishing debut.”  — Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta