Seven Degrees to Disaster

At once, all the lights go out and the TV goes dead. On the dark screen, ghostly afterimages linger for another moment before they, too, dissipate, plunging us into darkness.

“For real?” Beside me, Somyung balls her fists at her sides and squeals with a nervous laugh.

My brother Ongi sighs softly with wonder.

“The news was on point . . .”

It was just minutes ago that News at 9 announced an imminent power outage for District 1, our home district, located on the east side of Snowglobe—­the domed, temperature-­controlled city where we live, and the only warm refuge in our otherwise-­frozen world. Inside the dome, a record-­setting heat wave has been raging for five days straight, with tropical conditions continuing into the nights without remit, resulting in round-­the-­clock use of air conditioning and fans everywhere by people seeking relief. Needless to say, this has put a major strain on our electrical grids. All week, experts have been warning us of shortages and blackouts, but we ignored them. What else could we do? Roast ourselves alive? And now here we are, dealing with the first outage of the season.

On the table, a small desk clock dutifully ticks on. Nineteen past nine, according to its luminescent dial. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark, when heat and humidity begin pressing from all sides. Overhead, the fan stops completely, finally losing the last of its momentum, and it doesn’t matter if all it did was chop uselessly at the ovenlike air settling thick over us. Our discomfort is absolute.

“Damn, it’s hot,” Somyung mutters. Beneath her short hair, her face is identical to mine—­as both she and I are identical to Haeri, the onetime megastar of Snowglobe’s most popular reality show. It seems like only recently that I saw her for the first time in the break room of the Ja-­B-­6 plant in the open world; that the two of us, along with others, realized we were integral parts of the sinister Director Cha’s plot to create the perfect TV heroine.

That the Haeri we grew up watching on our screens never existed . . . at least, not in the way we thought she did.

We might as well have kept the air on all afternoon instead of doing our part as responsible citizens and trying to conserve energy. That’s probably what everyone else did, maximize consumption, believing that if they didn’t do it, someone else would anyway.

Then the third of us, Shinae, quips, while fumbling in the dark for a handheld fan, “Ha! Running out of electricity because people are trying desperately to cool down? What a concept!”

This induces a chuckle from everyone—­everyone but Hyang, that is, who glares at us, unimpressed, from where she is sitting. For the rest of us non-­natives who are used to an annual temperature of negative fifty degrees, Snowglobe’s sizzling summer is at once intimidating and kind of amazing. But for Hyang, who grew up in luxury as Director Cha’s sister and a onetime director herself before being exiled to the retirees’ village where I met her, this heat must be a familiar foe.

Hyang and Miryu, another former Snowglobe actor whose show—­a brutal murder program starring Miryu herself as the merciless killer—­also resulted in her ostracization and banishment before she and Hyang reunited recently, move deftly through the dark, lighting candles, drawing a huge pitcher of ice water, and even getting ice pops from the freezer. Meanwhile, all Shinae and I can do is lie plastered to the wooden floor while fanning ourselves. Ongi and Somyung head off to cool down with cold showers in the first-­ and second-­floor bathrooms, respectively.

“Man, it’s hot!” I cry out for the dozenth time, crunching ice cubes between my teeth, but the cool relief they offer stays with me for all of a few seconds before escaping through my sweating pores. I know from experience, it’s the same with cold showers. Just moments after you step out and towel off, the warm, waterlogged air welcomes you back into its sticky embrace. Outside the wide-­open windows of the living room, cars and trucks zip by, kicking up gusts of heat and exhaust into our already boiling house.

“Ugh . . . Should we forget the candles? They’ve gotta be adding to the heat,” Shinae suggests, squinting at the tiny flames. Like me, she was raised in the open world, completely unaware that the people she thought were her parents were in fact just foster parents—­that she, also like me, was conceived as one of a number of Haeri clones. It still sickens me to think of it. How Director Cha introduced the world to Haeri as a baby, then created a host of stand-­ins to swap out when her perfect star started acting less-­than-­perfect. I myself was brought in only after the previous “Haeri”—­whose true name was Jo Yeosu—­took her own life. And even then, I was only meant to reside in Snowglobe for a short time, as a replacement for the intended replacement, Serin, while Serin underwent surgery to remove childhood scars.

But Director Cha didn’t realize her creations could fight back. She didn’t think any of us, if given the chance, would turn down the opportunity to become Haeri—­Snowglobe’s most famous girl—­even if it meant stepping over one another.

She was wrong.

Suddenly, Hyang springs to her feet and claps her hands in sudden excitement, bringing me back to the present.

“I have an idea,” she says, and tapping Somyung, who’s lying listlessly on the floor, snow-­angel style, with her foot. “Get up! Let’s go!”

Somyung looks up at her in annoyance, but then her eyes light up in the next moment, and she’s suddenly on her feet, crying, “You’re right! Why didn’t we think of it before? We’ll go to a district with electricity!”

She stares at Hyang with breathless expectation, which Hyang returns with an exaggerated look of pity. Being older than us, and the only adult along with Miryu, she’s taken on the role of our de facto guardian since we’ve been in Snowglobe. Tut-­tutting with her tongue, Hyang shuffles to the entry­way closet and fishes out a large picnic basket.

“Electricity?” she huffs. “Let me show you how to cool off in style.”

Then, as we watch her with curiosity, she goes around the house, stuffing the basket with a variety of items. When she casually suggests that someone should go upstairs and get Serin, Shinae and I just exchange a glance.

It’s been about a month since we moved out of the Yibonn estate—­home to the founding family and guardians of Snowglobe, as well as the heads of all its programming—­and into this two-­story house we share. Like us, Serin is a Haeri clone—­ the clone I was meant to act as a stand-­in for, until unknown to me, Director Cha decided to make my role as Haeri permanent. But unlike the rest of us, Serin would have done anything to keep the Haeri illusion up. She resents us for revealing the truth behind Cha’s plot, and though Serin’s white-­hot hatred and animosity toward us might have cooled a bit over the past weeks, she still keeps her distance. Apparently, even the outage isn’t enough to drive her from her room in search of comfort in our company.

We continue to stall as Hyang urges, “Come on, girls. We’re not going to let Serin roast in the dark house by ­herself.”

Serin’s resentment of us is profound. In her mind, we swooped in with our exposé to rob her of her life as Haeri, which she had earned tooth-­and-­claw. And how have we been dealing with her? Sad to admit, but none of us seems especially capable of loving thy enemy or of blessing those who curse you, not in the face of her daily venomous attitude.

“I’ll go get her.” Ongi, back from the showers, voluntarily steps in and heads for the stairs, always the peacemaker. I appreciate my brother’s joviality even more now.

I have the impulse to go help Hyang gather this and that in the kitchen just so I have an excuse not to join them, but after seeing Somyung and Shinae join Hyang, I cave under pressure and drag myself up the stairs.

You, Me, and Us, the hottest new Snowglobe show in which we all star, breaks the age-­old mold in many aspects, the most notable of which is that it’s available to residents of Snowglobe, rather than just being filmed here and streamed to the outer world as all other Snowglobe programming is. Since all shows are reality-­based and most actors live their roles, allowing the stars to watch their own programs could result in spoilers—­something that directors avoid at all costs. As the only actors with access to their own show, we have watched a total of four episodes so far.

After each viewing, the three of us invariably find ourselves asking each other, “Is it just me, or do we come across as . . . kind of mean to Serin?”

We’re not mean to Serin, of course not. At least not intentionally. It’s Serin who chooses to ostracize herself in her self-­sabotaging contempt for us; and Hyang, our director, doesn’t engage in the kind of editorial cutting and manipulating that other directors use to twist that truth into a streamlined story. Funny thing is, though, the Serin in our show does seem lone­lier and sadder than the Serin full-­of-­barbs we all know in real life.

For instance, in the show, Serin would be all alone in her darkened room, lying in her bed and staring vacantly at the ceiling as gales of merry laughter drift up from downstairs. And when she’d blink—­slowly and dramatically—­tears would release from her liquid eyes and roll down her temples, which the high-­power lenses of Snowglobe cameras would capture with crystalline clarity even in the low light.

I admit that I never imagined a sad, lonely, or vulnerable Serin until I saw her in our own show. And though it’s entirely possible that it’s pure playacting for the camera, what if she’s indeed sad, lonely, and struggling to reach out to us because of some stupid pride or fear of rejection? If so, I’m willing to extend the olive branch. I just need to know.

And yet I’m already feeling tense, nearing Serin’s room in the hallway. Thank god for my brother’s presence, which tends to soften the hostile air between her and me.

“Go where?” Serin’s voice flows out of her room, meek and anxious.

Creeping up to her open doorway, I peek in to see her sitting crouched on her bed against the headboard with her knees drawn to her chest, her empty gaze fixed on a spot on the comforter. Ongi sits on the edge of the far end with one foot on the floor.

“I don’t know. Hyang knows a place, apparently. She says it’s real nice,” Ongi answers cheerfully, his voice full of warmth.

But Serin sits frozen in her chronic sourness, refusing to even glance up at him. Ongi dips his head to one side and tries to catch her eye.