Station Eleven

At that time, Miranda is working as an administrative assistant at Neptune Logistics, a shipping company. During her frequent downtime at work, she works on a series of graphic novels titled Dr. Eleven. The series is set 1,000 years in the future: After Earth is captured by an alien civilization, physicist Dr. Eleven and a few hundred others manage to escape on a damaged space station, Station Eleven. Fifteen years after their escape, a segment of the station’s population, who have banded together in a region known as the Undersea, want to return to Earth; Dr. Eleven opposes them.

Miranda secretly enjoys work more than being home with Pablo, her boyfriend of eight years. After falling out with Pablo, who does not understand her passion for Dr. Eleven, Miranda receives Arthur’s call; the two go out to dinner. Miranda spends the next few nights with Arthur at his hotel. The morning after their first night together, she looks in the mirror and thinks, “I repent nothing” (89). She later wonders whether it was “dishonorable” to walk out on Pablo. Arthur counters, “Can you call the pursuit of happiness dishonorable?” (90).

On the third anniversary of Arthur and Miranda’s wedding, they host a party at their home in Los Angeles. Guests include Arthur’s best friend, Clark Thompson, an English management consultant whom Arthur first met in an acting class in Toronto, Elizabeth Colton, who costars in Arthur’s latest movie, and various others who work in the film industry. As the guests talk, Miranda notices that Arthur will not make eye contact with her. Conversation turns to her work on Dr. Eleven; Miranda explains that the project is for her own satisfaction, not necessarily for publication.

At the guests’ insistence, Arthur begins to tell how he and Miranda met; Miranda leaves, using their dog, Luli, as an excuse to step outside. Listening to Arthur tell the story, she recalls parts he leaves out, including a visit to Pablo that left her with a bruised face. Watching through the window, Miranda realizes that Arthur and Elizabeth are having an affair. Clark joins Miranda outside and discreetly offers his sympathies.

That night, Miranda draws a Pomeranian just like Luli for Dr. Eleven. Afterwards, she finds Elizabeth sleeping on the sofa. Stepping outside, she asks Jeevan, one of the paparazzi in front of the house, for a cigarette and asks him why he does the work that he does. “Work is combat,” he explains (103). As Miranda returns to the house, he takes pictures of her, to her displeasure. Miranda takes a paperweight that Clark brought as a present from Arthur’s study before returning to work on Dr. Eleven. Elizabeth appears and repeatedly apologizes to Miranda (107).

Within a few months, Arthur and Miranda get a divorce, Elizabeth moves in with Arthur, and Miranda returns to work at Neptune Logistics, where she advances up the corporate ladder.

This chapter is an excerpt from an interview between François Diallo, a librarian and publisher in a town called New Petoskey, and Kirsten, 15 years after the Georgia Flu. Diallo, who is interviewing Symphony members in turn, explains his work as an archivist, and Kirsten asks whether he has seen Dr. Eleven comics before; he has not.

A year before the collapse, Clark and Arthur meet for lunch in London. Arthur, who is undergoing a third divorce, is on his way to visit his second wife, Elizabeth, and his son, Tyler, who live in Jerusalem. Clark grows “sick with disgust” to realize that Arthur is putting on a performance for the other guests in the restaurant (112).

Diallo continues to interview Kirsten. Kirsten discusses her life as a child actor before the pandemic and how she joined the Symphony. She compares the civilized, stable towns they visit with the dangerous, unstable ones they avoid.