9/11 is a day of remembrance for many Americans. Some strive for solidarity and unity—and I wish that’s all it would be—but many people just make it just another opportunity to spew their bigotry and their contempt for people who aren’t like them. They target the wrong people while supporting someone far worse than those they’re demonizing.
I find myself wanting to rant about that last group of people, but not yet. I actually want to take the opportunity to actually remember some stuff first. Some of the happiest times of my life were baked into a very hard time. I know from reading and writing about Tolkien that joy can eventually spring from sorrow.
I met my future wife at Borders Books and Music in the World Trade Center. This was, of course, a few years before online book sales (and Borders’ own poor executive management) brought the chain down. It was a good retail job to have, and I ended up eventually getting assigned to the Science Fiction section on the ground floor (meaning I kept it in order, restocked it, that sort of thing). I was shelving there, in fact, when the first plane hit the North Tower (WTC 1), and I heard, felt, the massive boom.
I’ll admit, it was cool working in such a famous location. Especially as I look back now all these years later. Marisa and I took full advantage of the spectacle of the place, the bustle and activity of Lower Manhattan. The sheer fame of that location. We were working in retail, so we weren’t earning very much money, but we were surviving and this was an iconic location in one of the world’s most iconic cities. I commuted from Brooklyn, Marisa commuted from the Bronx.
Interestingly: There were three Borders locations in Manhattan in those days. Back when I was at Borders in Novi, Michigan, and was still seeking the transfer to New York (where my brother lived), I remember looking at the three named locations in the Borders brochure of other locations. I didn’t really know the difference between Park Avenue, Kip’s Bay, or the World Trade Center . . . but I at least knew what the World Trade Center was by name alone. What a difference it might have been had I chosen one of the others ones. But I didn’t. I picked that one out of name recognition and the fact that it looked closer to where I’d be living.
And, well, that Borders is where I got to meet a bunch of touring authors and musicians. Some I’d make a point to meet, like Bruce Campbell or Máire Brennan. Others I just sort of observed but didn’t speak with, like Orson Scott Card or Ray Bradbury. I was shyer in those days. But not so much that I didn’t make some friends, especially the very talkative Marisa (who shelved the Religion section).
The World Trade Center is a complex of buildings. The North and South Towers were buildings 1 and 2. Borders Books was in 5 WTC. Between them all was the plaza. For us, it was a common hangout, a place to sit and eat lunch (from nearby restaurants or food trucks), where we could looking at that weird but cool giant [Koenig] Sphere sculpture in the central fountain. And talk and goof off. I even remembering one lunch hour, when we sat and listened to the Brian Regan Live CD using my discman and one of those splitters so we could each plug in with headphones. We were cracking up nonstop. There were some free music festivals held in that plaza, too. I saw Phillip Glass there.
Marisa became my best friend fast in those days, then one day she was my girlfriend. I won’t say life was simple for us, but we were young enough to still be figuring out the world, and what we wanted to try to do. It was always hard to plan far ahead. Hell, it still is. I don’t have many photos from that time, but this is one of them:
On September 9, 2001, Marisa and I got to attend a special event because our manager gave us tickets to it: a preview of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. It wasn’t like a full screening of the movie (I believe they were still putting it together!, but they did show behind-the-scenes footage and the not-quite-completed version of the Balin’s tomb sequence and the cave troll! Super exciting. Some producers were there to talk about it.
Additionally, Elijah Wood, Sean Bean, and the not-yet-famous Orlando Bloom were also there to talk a little bit about it. Afterwards, in the men’s room, I saw Elijah and Orland make a “speak friend and enter” joke with each other over a door stall. I got the joke, but the film wasn’t out yet and, really, only book readers who know about mellon.
But two days later was September 11th. When I heard and felt the BOOM hit shortly after 8am as I was standing in the Science Fiction section, I looked out the massive store windows on the ground floor and saw thousands upon thousands of office papers fluttering down from the sky above. My mind rationalized that there must have been some kind of gas explosion somewhere nearby and above, or some horrible construction accident. It wasn’t clear for quite a long time that this was an act of terrorism. But still, that boom sound was deep, and it send a disturbing vibration through everything. It was a primal feeling. For a few years after that, I was spooked by any deep sound.
Everyone exited the store with relative calm but undeniable anxiety. There was no time to go back to the break room lockers and get my stuff. No one got their stuff, really. We all just left. The managers and other employees made sure to get the customers out. They did a good job. We were being told to go and get out. I stayed at the bottom of the stairs there on the ground floor (the store had three levels, ground level, second level, and a basement level). I wouldn’t leave until I saw Marisa was leaving, too. I saw people coming down from upstairs, but I needed to make sure she was one of them. Once she did come down, we got out together and just started to walk swiftly away. Southeast, toward Broadway.
We had no real idea what was going on and it wasn’t until we got about a block away that we could look up and see the hideous black smoke and gaping hole in the North Tower. Still no inkling this was terrorism. But we did hear someone say they’d seen a plane. Even then, the mind rationalizes. Obviously some kind of accidental collision.
But every minute that went by felt more dangerous. Was more dangerous. We were absolutely clueless about what really happened. At home, people watching TV were at least getting speculations and footage from afar. People generally knew a passenger plane had hit the building, but people close to ground zero did not.
The sickening feeling you can get whenever you look too long at the footage of the black, smoke-spewing holes in the towers was definitely present. I didn’t know that the explosion was a deliberate act of terrorism and mass murder, but whenever I looked up at the tower, I imagined the horror for anywhere up there. It was very sobering. It was hellish. Once the South Tower was struck, people on the street watching around us started crying and screaming, and shouting that they’d seen a plane hit the second building—THEN it was apparent this was an act of malice and intent. Then it got scary.
The whole day then had this undercurrent of evil running through it. Worse, down on the street, no one’s primitive 2001 cell phones worked. We were actually getting in lines at phone booths (they existed still!) to try to make contact with family. I left a voicemail for for my brother. That was around the time of the second plane. So then we kept moving.
Evil is real. That was the undercurrent going through my mind, as if I’d had any doubt before. It’s not just a hyperbolic term, not just a movie or book concept. We started to hear people saying things. Something about the Pentagon. Suddenly the whole event was scaling up. It was coordinated. What else would happen? People were fleeing toward the bridges, like wanting to escape the whole island city. But I kept thinking: what if all the bridges out of Manhattan were rigged to explode? What if once they were full of people, they’d collapse? Had I seen too many movies to be imagining this? Yes and no, I guess.
Evil. But then Marisa and I saw the humanitarian counterpoint. People were helping each other. It was not “every man for himself” in NYC that day. People who would either ignore or curse each other out on a normal Tuesday were openly weeping and holding each other. Helping one another along. Strangers were picking up people who were sitting on the ground. Honestly, so much of that part is a blur to me now. I think Marisa remembers more of that than I do. I know there were shop owners running out trying to give things to people, to help them. Shoes and clothing. This was before the towers actually came down, but there was still dust and smoke about. Not nearly as much as there was going to be.
I remember a view vivid scenes in my head as we turned north and walked uptown to where Marisa’s brother had an apartment. That became our only plan: Not to try to leave the city but get to a safer place within it. I remember passing a young businessman walking toward the World Trade Center on the phone (probably trying to get through to someone in vain) absolutely bawling. I still tear up when I think about any of it for more than a few seconds at a time.
We were almost at Greenwich Village, many blocks away, when the first tower crumbled. We turned and saw it. I remember having this stupid thought that I probably was saying out loud, always trying to rationalize what I was seeing. I thought, maybe they (the authorities? who?) were doing something to deliberately make the building collapse straight down so that it couldn’t possibly fall sideways and do more damage. But no, that’s stupid. That makes no sense. There’s no way all the people in the towers were evacuated before the collapse.
We ended the day at my future brother-in-law’s apartment. We finally got to a TV and heard what everyone else had been hearing since the start of it. More and more of the truth. In the end, 5 WTC was severely damaged but never actually fell on its own. And I’m pretty sure everyone in that building survived. But many of the people there, many of our own coworkers, stayed way too close to the towers to watch. I know some of them so more horrific things than we did. Such as the jumpers.
I believe in both good and evil today as I did back then, but age and experience has given me a lot more context. But I still believe both forces were at work on 9/11 in the things we saw. The best really came out of New Yorkers. That’s not an exaggeration when you hear locals talk about it. God was there, reacting to the evils his own children inflicted one another.
But in the years since, the worst has also come out of people. As a species, we haven’t really learned the lessons that we could have. Since about 2015, things have gotten so much worse, spiritually, here in New York and everywhere. It’s discouraging. Even today, listening to some of the speeches on TV, I’m reminded of the rot that’s weakening American society.
So I’m going to pivot. This might seem like a non sequitur to some, but not to me.
I want to bring up two movie moments that I think about whenever I’m reminded of the sickening and slavish devotion so many people still have for real-life criminals in high places. Criminals who who don’t give a damn about Americans on the whole but do give a damn about their own status, wealth, and pride, and would just as soon see another 9/11 take place if they could benefit from it somehow. Criminals who have already used the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to platform their rhetoric. Some of them are the corrupt billionaire variety of criminals, while others are in positions of great political power here in 2026.
The first film is Air Force One.
Even the most outrageous action films usually have one or two memorable lines. Anyone who knows this movie thinks probably thinks first of its famous one-liner, “Get off my plane!” When President Harrison Ford shoves terrorist Gary Oldman out the back of the aircraft.
But I think of the quieter moment when the unquestionably evil Korshunov (Oldman) does spout one bit of truth. Speaking to the president’s daughter, who he’s taken hostage, says, “Your father, he has also killed. Is he a bad man?”
The girl answers, “It’s not true.”
“Why? Because he does it in a tuxedo and a telephone call and a smart bomb?”
That’s the only good point Oldman’s character makes, whether it really applies to Ford’s version of the president or not. (I think most of us like the idea of a likeable president who’d beat up bad guys if they had to.)
I do think this applies to many presidents, though, even the not-so-terrible ones. Telephone calls, legislative signatures, and a whole lot of inaction destroys millions of lives in this country (and, frankly, other countries), often slowly. This is especially the case with the worst of presidents, like the one we’ve got now. It’s all far, far worse than just the commander-in-chief ordering bombs dropped (even though that’s true, too). The butterfly effects of his immoral leadership and actual are unfathomable, to say nothing of the continuous laundry list of personal sins. And it’s all the more disheartening because of how many citizens chose him and made it all possible. They’re all complicit.
But, moving on.
The other movie scene I think about is from 2000’s The 6th Day. In many respects, it’s a goofy Schwarzenegger sci-fi film, but it’s actually not half bad and it has a few interesting ideas to put forth. Sure, it steals a little bit from other films in the genre. It takes place in the near future.
There’s one moment that has stayed with me, even when I forget most of the story. The primary antagonist is a guy named Michael Drucker (played by Tony Goldwyn). He’s the ruthless CEO of a cloning corporation called Replacement Technologies with all kinds of unethical and evil plans.
Near the end of the film, Drucker is mortally wounded, so he has his right-hand man “warm up a blank”—which means a clone of Drucker himself will be prepped so he can transfer his mind, consciousness, and memories when its ready. This way he can live on, defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger, and continue his evil work despite his current body’s imminent demise.
But the cloning machinery is damaged by Schwarzenegger and Drucker’s clone wakes up a few minutes too soon—naked, gooey, and physically incomplete. Clone Drucker sees dying Drucker, understands the situation, and casually begins stripping dying Drucker of his clothing since he’s the new Drucker and needs something to wear to get back to business.
“Aren’t you even going to wait . . . until I die?” dying Drucker ask Clone Drucker. He’s genuinely horrified at the cold disregard his clone has for him. They’re the same guy, right?
“Would you?” the clone asks, as if it had been an absurd question.
Dying Drucker is stunned, mentally grappling with the sudden reversal, with being treated so callously by his other self. Now he’s just in the way, like all the people he’s stepped on or had killed. He should just die already.
Drucker’s clone goes on to tell Schwarzenegger in the final showdown, “You have absolutely no reason to kill me; I didn’t do anything to you. It was all him.” He points to the still-dying Drucker whose bleeding out on the floor. There won’t be any transfer of the mind, obviously. The clone’s already got what he needs, and he’s got the same evil mind.
Forget how the film ends (but check it out, maybe?). I barely remember it. But this particular moment is what I recall, where the bad guy experiences what it’s like to be treated the way he’s treated other people. It’s the most realistic part of the film. It never occurred to the wealthy CEO mastermind that he could be on the receiving end of the very evil he injected into the world.
The parallels of this to the real world are obvious to me. This is why I love speculative fiction. It’s never mere entertainment. Not when it’s done right.
Every day, more and more people realize the hard way that their dearest leader has no use for them. But hey, before you starve or die off, cast a vote for him and his puppets, okay? Then die already, you’re in the way.
Is there room for hope? I think there’s some. Years back, when we worked on the Foreshadows cyberpunk anthology, we got artist Talon Dunning to make black and white illustrations for every story in the book. Taken as a whole, the stories depicted a dark near-future version of Earth where life is dystopian but the human characters are still trying to be human and someone, or something, is still pulling for us all.
For one of the short stories, “Geist Threnodic,” I wanted the illustration to depict a Manhattan of the future. But even though this was a dystopian society with rampant, often sinister technology where multinational corporations were running the show, we wanted to find some way to represent the World Trade Center in the New York skyline. I don’t remember the details of the brainstorm anymore, but Talon agreed it was still an important element to observe, “the one constant in an otherwise transient world.”
The result is the header image above. (Thanks for that, Talon.)
To end this long very long post on a melancholic but wistful musical note, I would encourage anyone who hasn’t heard U2’s “The Hands That Built America” to have a listen, and in particular the final stanza.
It’s early fall
There’s a cloud on the New York skyline
Innocence dragged across a yellow line
These are the hands that built America
Foreshadowed and Foresung 