Dahlia Black Read online

  And I have felt that benevolence firsthand. As you may well know, my husband, First Gentleman David Ballard, has been in the hospital. While he was admitted for an acute attack, he appears to be suffering from the Elevation. I’m afraid the outlook is not good. Surely, the days, weeks, months, and years will be challenging for all of us. Not just those who’ve been affected by the Elevation but those of us caring for the ill and those of us who’ve lost jobs or otherwise suffered as a result of this strange upheaval of the status quo . . .

  But what we are facing today, what is at our doorsteps and in our homes, must be seen in the light of history. As a people we have watched empires rise then crumble. We have endured countless plagues, famines, and floods. We have survived brutal wars and crippling illness. At the same time, we have advanced to unprecedented heights, building technologies that save lives, probe the outer reaches of our universe, and map the bottom of our seas. Writing works of literature that defy the ages and creating art that dazzles our senses. As a people, we have achieved so many incredible things. and I know, that with God’s grace, we will accomplish even more.

  Over the last month, we have asked why the Elevation has arrived. For some of us, the answer can be found in religion. This is a test? For others, it is merely a biological process we do not yet understand. I am here tonight to tell you that we have answers. Not all of them but many.

  For the past four weeks, I have been working closely with my senior advisors and the best and brightest scientific minds in our country to study something we call the “Pulse.” A little over a month ago, an astronomer named Dahlia Mitchell intercepted this Pulse and determined it was a radio-transmission from space. This transmission was designed and beamed at our planet by an advanced culture outside of our galaxy. It is a message from an intelligent race and we consider it to be First Contact . . .

  As of this moment, we are no longer alone in the universe.

  We have named them “the Ascendant” and the Pulse is their way of introducing themselves to us. This is, however, a first step. A handshake, if you will. We do not know what the Ascendant want but we do know that they come to us in peace. I can tell you tonight that the Ascendant have a very simple goal in reaching out to us: they want humanity to achieve greatness and the Pulse is our invitation.

  An invitation to what?

  The whole of the universe.

  We can think of the Elevation as their passport. For our planet, our species, to join the Ascendant, we need to evolve and evolve quickly. Physicians and researchers tell me that the Elevation is a process. It works by remapping our minds, strengthening the neural connections we have and making new associations where there were none before.

  We call what happens next “the Finality.”

  At that moment, the Elevated will leave our planet and move into an overlapping reality where the Ascendant wait to welcome them. I realize that much of what I am saying will sound far-fetched. But, as we have seen with the Elevation thus far, everything we thought we knew about our world has needed to shift to make way for a new understanding.

  The Ascendant are a benevolent people.I

  Like us, they believe strongly in peace and altruism. Unlike us, they have achieved a state of mutual beneficence. The Ascendant want us to be a part of that shared openheartedness. It sounds rather sentimental, but they love us both for what we are and what we can be.

  I know that many have died.

  I do not want to downplay the loss that many of you are feeling right now. Those who did not survive the process of the Elevation will always be remembered in our hearts with great fondness. Their deaths were through no fault of their own but merely the vicissitudes of biology and the Ascendant’s advanced technology. I have no doubt that those who succumbed have still gone to a better place—whether that place is by our Lord’s side or with the Ascendant, I do not know.II This event had no equal—there will be casualties and there will be heartbreak—but in the end our world will be transformed for the better . . .

  I realize this is a lot to take in. I’ve just told you that the United States has been contacted by an alien intelligence and that intelligence is behind the Elevation that has been sweeping our country. I want you to know, however, that you are safe and secure. What is happening is happening for a reason—it is being directed by divine providence.

  Some of you may be asking about those left behind after the Finality. Do not worry: we will be Elevated soon as well and join our loved ones. Whether this happens next week, next month, or next year, I do not know. All I ask is that you hold tight, stay the course, and remain focused on the future. For the future of mankind is no longer here on Earth but it is in the stars and the new world that the Ascendant are building for us . . .

  I will end my speech tonight with some words of wisdom. Johann Kaspar Schmidt, a philosopher,III once said: “If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”

  I am asking all of you to do the same: Trust in yourselves and do not fear the Elevation or the Ascendant. They may appear strange and impenetrable, but if we are free in our thinking, if our minds are clear, we will know that they mean only the best for us and that our finest days are yet to come.

  * * *

  I. The use of the word “people” was one of the more controversial parts of President Ballard’s address. It makes sense why she’d say it: no one wants to think a race of neon-colored squid or intelligent fragments of stone are genetically altering humanity. The sci-fi stuff—explaining how alien the aliens might be—never sold well, going over the heads of most people. At the same time, we knew nothing about the Ascendant. We might have assumed they were humanlike because of the fact that the Pulse was designed to alter human minds, but there was no proof of it. Calling the Ascendant “people” made them relatable and it made the Elevation a benign if not beneficial thing. Categorizing them as benevolent, well, that was the spin for you . . .

  II. What can I say about this statement? Clearly, an entire book could be written about the concept of these dead Elevated souls going to a heaven inhabited or designed by the Ascendant. Clearly the inference here is that the Ascendant might be considered angels of a sort, the Elevation being an act of God transmitted through the actions of an alien species. Convoluted thinking, to be sure, but understandable, given how little we know and how badly the government didn’t want the populace to panic. As President Ballard later told me, she never imagined herself giving a speech like this but came to believe it was the right thing for the country.

  III. Schmidt (1806–1856) was better known under the pseudonym Max Stirner. He was a German philosopher seen as a foundational figure in existentialism and psychoanalytic theory. He is perhaps best remembered today for his philosophy of uncompromising individualism.

  38

  PRESIDENT VANESSA BALLARD

  DETROIT, MI

  SEPTEMBER 18, 2025

  President Ballard and I finish our conversation on her front porch.

  Large storm clouds have blossomed to the west, sending their anvil heads up into the night sky and blotting out the myriad stars. In the distance I see the flicker of lights in the city, and it takes me a few minutes to realize they’re not electric lights but fires. President Ballard tells me there are squatters in a lot of the abandoned skyscrapers. She’s seen photos on the local news of office building floors that have been cleared of debris—desks, file cabinets, computers—to make room for gardens. These urban farmers have found success in growing mushrooms and crickets.

  The President is in a reflective mood, which is no surprise, given our long conversation, but not necessarily nostalgic.

  I said what I said because I believed it was true.

  I couldn’t go out there and tell the world, let alone the American people, that we had made First Con
tact with an alien intelligence that didn’t give a rat’s ass about us. An intelligence that had beamed us a message that meant nothing in the long run. No, I believe that would have doomed our country and we would not be in the position of growth that we find ourselves in now.

  The Elevated are gone.

  The Ascendant have not returned.

  They likely will not.

  This doesn’t mean that my message to the American people was false. I still believe that the Ascendant wanted us to experience what we’re living through now. I trust that the Finality happened for a reason. I do not know if the Elevated are running through beautiful fields in another dimension right now. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are not. The one truth that we must come to terms with if we are to move forward successfully is this: we will never know and that is okay.

  I will tell you that my speech was well received. Ratings were excellent and I think a lot of the tension that had been roiling the country subsided soon afterwards. People look to their leaders for strength and comfort. I think that in a time of great crisis, of unprecedented challenges, I provided both.

  After I stepped away from the cameras and lights, Terry pulled me aside and gave me the news. David had passed away while I was speaking. Losing my husband of twenty-seven years was difficult, it was crushing, but knowing that he passed then brought me some measure of comfort. I actually synced up the times once—looking at the video of my speech and strips from David’s heart monitors—and the moment that he died was when I said, “Those who have succumbed have gone to a better place.” Can you believe that? Gives me chills just remembering it.

  So that’s your answer: there is order in the universe.

  I will say that my message brought a lot of hope to most of our people. It did not, however, bring hope to all of us. There were some who saw the Elevation as the culmination of a doom-filled prophecy. As you well know, there were suicides. Many. There were even attacks on the Elevated. Some, like the hideous events in Indiana, will never be forgotten or forgiven.

  39

  JEAN-PIERRE BRACK, JOURNALIST

  SOUTH DUNE, IN

  MARCH 19, 2026

  I arrive in South Dune, Indiana, to find a thick fog has settled over the area.

  This small town on the edge of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore bore witness to the worst Elevation-related atrocity in the United States. At one point it was home to roughly 15,000 people but today there are only a few hundred. One of them is Jean-Pierre Brack, a thirty-two-year-old Frenchman who moved here two years ago.

  Drawn to the area because of its natural beauty and current “off-the-grid” status, Jean-Pierre enjoys roughing it on the shores of Lake Michigan, spending much of his time exploring the hundreds of abandoned vessels that have washed ashore here.

  While Jean-Pierre was born in Paris, he went to graduate school in the States. His English is excellent and before the Elevation he worked as a journalist for the New York Times and, later, the Boston Herald. Today, his writing appears online in various historical journals devoted to documenting some of the lesser-known stories of the Elevation and the Finality.

  Jean-Pierre was one of the first people outside of South Dune to hear of the events that befell a community known as Elevation Camp. He documented Elevation Camp’s creation and destruction in a series of social media posts that were then syndicated worldwide. Rather than reprint them here, I asked Jean-Pierre to recount the story as we walked through what remains of Elevation Camp. I should warn some of the more sensitive readers that what follows is quite disturbing, though I think recording this history is essential to understanding how the Elevation affected various segments of the American population.

  We begin on the dunes overlooking Lake Michigan. From this vantage point we can see the Chicago skyline sparkling across the lake, but Jean-Pierre pulls my attention to a series of dilapidated Quonset huts half buried in sand a half mile to the north. This, he tells me, was Elevation Camp.

  The founder of Elevation Camp was a woman named Beth Corrado.

  Came down with the Elevation and got sick quick.

  Seeing things, hearing things, she could taste with her fingertips the way a fly does. Nuts, right?

  Beth was a lawyer from Chicago. And within a few days of getting ill, everyone around her freaked out. Sounds really rough, but there had been so much about the Elevation in the media. People were treating it like leprosy. Beth lost her job, her husband left her, and he took the kids. She was left with nothing.

  All this over the course of only two weeks.

  What I was told was she jumped into her Subaru with her dog, a lab named Max, and drove out here, to the dunes, to just get away from everything. She camped and suffered in silence and posted pictures on her social media feeds. That brought more Elevated people. Within a few days, there were five other Elevated folks down here with her. All of them camping, bonding over their rejection, and going through the stages of the Elevation together.I

  It was in that environment, the pressure cooker of people living right up against each other, that the idea of Elevation Camp started. My understanding is that at first it was just a place for the Elevated to be Elevated together. Safe from prying eyes and people trying to get them help they didn’t need. Word spread. More Elevated came. Some guy brought in the Quonset huts and, almost overnight, you had this community out here. Fifty people strong.

  That’s when it became more than a place to escape to.

  It became a state apart.

  You’d have to study how religions get their starts. From what I’ve read, it usually begins with a visionary. I suppose Beth was that for Elevation Camp. She had this vision of the Elevated living apart, away from the hateful glares and the persecution they perceived in the wider society. Not being sent to quarantine camps like they were doing in some states or hospitalized or herded into adult day care facilities. Out here, among the birds and waves, they could be free to transform. To go through the stages to wherever they would lead. You need to remember, no one had reached the final stage yet. People didn’t know where the Elevation was going.

  We don’t know much about what went on inside Elevation Camp.

  Beth and the others stopped posting on social media soon after the Quonset huts were built. But a few bits of information trickled out. A lot of it is so colored by what was going on at the time that it’s hard to parse it. There were rumors that the people living in Elevation Camp were able to move things with their minds. People said they’d stopped talking and communicated with telepathy. From what we know about the Elevation now, that stuff sounds pretty bogus, but those were the rumors. Well, those were the good rumors.

  There were bad rumors too.

  The people behind you, back in South Dune, were particularly concerned about the bad rumors going around. The way the townspeople saw it, Elevation Camp was a blight. Not only was it an illegal encampment that the government wasn’t clearing up—with good reason: the government was in tatters by this point and almost all the National Guard were up at the border with CanadaII—but it was also a population the locals didn’t exactly want nearby. No one knew what was going to become of the Elevated. There were some online theories that these people might transform into a threat. Tensions built up.

  A month after Beth arrived at the dunes, only five days before the Finality, the people in South Dune had had enough. I don’t know what exactly set them off, but I’ve heard it was a post on a town message board. Someone posted a doctored picture of Beth drinking blood from a cut on an Elevated person’s arm. I’ve seen this photo: it’s very clearly a fake, and was likely made by someone outside the state as a prank. Regardless, once it hit the town message board, people got really upset.III

  There was a town meeting. Some residents showed up with guns.

  The mayor, Rosemary Cunning, spent the evening riling up the crowd. She was a religious woman and saw the Elevation as a curse from God. This wasn’t unusual. There were a lot of rural preachers who condemn
ed the Elevated as being servants of the devil, accusing them of bringing on their illness due to licentious behavior. That sort of stuff spread rapidly over social media. People were scared. And when people are scared, the worst of them bubbles to the surface.

  The residents of South Dune were terrified. The world was changing so rapidly around them: the government falling apart, the military weakened, power going out at night, phone service down, Internet spotty, hospitals overcrowded, medicine running low, food overpriced, fuel in short supply, and the idea that there were Elevated weirdos camping in their backyard . . .

  That fear needed an outlet.

  There is a video recording of what happened that night. Someone shot it on their cell phone. It’s pretty grainy and a lot of it is hard to make out, but I’ve seen that video and I never want to see it again. I think calling it a mob is correct. I’ve also heard people refer to the tragedy as a lynching; that’s correct too.

  At ten p.m. two hundred residents of South Dune marched up to the dune with shotguns, axes, and kitchen knives—whatever they could get their hands on. They stormed into Elevation Camp and rounded everyone up. Beth Corrado tried to talk the angry mob down, but she was the first to be killed. A man in a baseball cap shot her in the face with a revolver.

  Screams tore through the camp as the Elevated tried to run, but there was nowhere to go, with the lake on one side and the dunes on another. Fifty against two hundred aren’t very good odds. What happened thankfully happened quickly. But I have to tell you that it was barbaric. Men, women, and eight children were butchered; in some cases they were set alight while they were still screaming. The worst was the young man . . . His eyes . . . They tore his eyes . . .

  Jean-Pierre pauses here, emotional, then recovers and continues.

  When it was over, the mob burned the Quonset huts out. I don’t know if it was done to cover up their actions, hoping the flames would singe away the evidence. Or if it was by accident, a burning body setting the place on fire. Regardless, if you look just over there you can see what is left: nothing but a few burned-out shells. The people who committed this atrocity were never prosecuted. This was only a few days before the Finality. Today, many of them still live in South Dune.