The Age Of Miracles

Two days pass after the announcement of “the slowing,” and it is still unclear what is going on. Days have stretched from 24 hours long to 25 hours and 37 minutes. School continues uninterrupted, and citizens are encouraged by the American government to carry on as usual. Julia misses Hanna “like a phantom limb” (35). On their way to school, Julia and her classmates gather around the bus stop at the start of their day. One kid, Trevor, claims that it is “the end of the world,” and a few of the other kids agree (36). Julia does not participate in the conversation and feels “awkward standing alone on that curb” without Hanna. She misses her friend.

Still waiting for the bus, one of the kids, Daryl, tries to snap the bra of Michaela, one of Julia’s classmates who is maturing at a rapid clip. “The bra isn't supporting much. Michaela was as flat as I was. But she wore it anyway, a racy symbol of things to come” (38). Daryl then tries to snap Julia’s bra, except he soon discovers that she isn’t wearing one. He deems this “gross” (39) and starts shouting it to the entire bus stop, as Julia’s embarrassment mounts. Without Hanna by her side, Julia is even more ill-equipped to receive this teasing. Julia defends herself by lying and tells Daryl that he is mistaken, that she is in fact wearing a bra. Daryl calls her bluff and says that if she’s wearing a bra, then she should prove it. Every kid is watching the showdown between Julia and Daryl. Just as the bus arrives, Daryl swoops in and grabs the edge of Julia’s T-shirt, pulling it over hear head and exposing her breastbone and bare ribs. Daryl is vindicated knowing that she isn’t wearing a bra.

When Julia arrives at school, she learns that the students are now being instructed to ignore the bells, all of which are off time because of “the slowing.” Classrooms are half empty because parents are pulling their students from school. What’s more, the first episodes of mysterious gravity sickness are beginning to affect people around the globe, including some kids at the school: “Hundreds of people were experiencing symptoms of dizziness, faintness, and fatigue” (47). Teachers adjust their lessons and try to proceed as if everything is normal.

Julia has a crush on “tall and quiet” (35) Seth Moreno, but he is oblivious to her feelings for him. In the middle of the school day, the sky goes entirely black and there is a “sudden […] high speed” (51) sunset sometime in the afternoon. Kids began screaming and panicking, and Julia and Seth flee together outside in the grass. Soon, Mr. Jensen, the science teacher, explains that it is a solar eclipse. Because of “the slowing,” the eclipse, which was only supposed to be visible from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, has shifted coordinates. When the four-minute long eclipse ends, Julia and Seth are relieved. In a quiet moment between them outside, Julia apologizes to Seth about what’s happening with his mom, who is sick with cancer. Seth sits up and says to Julia, “What the hell do you know about it?” (54). Seth walks away in anger, leaving Julia alone on the hill, despite her attempts to apologize for breaching the sensitive issue.

More people flee the suburbs, and Julia and her mother decide to take a trip to visit Gene, Julia’s grandfather, who lives alone. Gene owns the only dilapidated house in a large modern housing development toward the edge of town. When developers came in, Gene refused to renovate his ancient house. His home is chock-full of bric-a-brac, as he keeps many antique trinkets and treasures. Chip, a somewhat goth teenaged neighbor, is one of Gene’s only companions, mainly because they both share a hatred of the modern housing complex.

When Julia and her mother arrive, they discuss “the slowing.” Gene thinks it’s a conspiracy, claiming that “they’re messing with the clocks or some damn thing” (61). He offers Julia any of the trinkets in his house. Her grandfather then shows her that one of the cabinets in his kitchen has a false back with a Folgers coffee can just behind it. In the can, there is a silver box with a gold pocket watch. The watch belonged to Gene’s father, and Julia accepts it, even though she feels a little bad taking something so precious.

Julia and her mother take the scenic route home from her grandfather’s house. On the car radio, they hear early reports that people in South America are getting something called “gravity sickness” and the Center for Disease Control is investigating.

Julia listens to the news updates and recalls, “I felt a wave of loneliness. It occurred to me for perhaps the first time, as the car lurched forward, that if anything were to happen to my family, I’d be all alone in the world” (67). 

“[T]he days still felt like days,” but “[w]ith each new morning, [they] fell further out of step with the clocks. [...] Within a week, midnight no longer necessarily struck at some dark hour of the night” (68). Julia as well as the rest of mankind need to adapt to the increasing environmental changes that were once subtle and are now becoming less gradual.

More children stop attending school. Julia’s mother begins slowly packing their cupboards full of emergency supplies, like canned food, dried fruit, and condensed milk. Julia’s soccer team, for the most part, continues to practice because, as Julia says, “Shows had to go on. We clung to anything previously scheduled. To cancel seemed immoral, or it might mean we’d given up or lost hope” (69). Although these changes are occurring, Julia experiences a cognitive dissonance with her new reality. Mankind is slowing, yet she feels as though “the grass grew as it always had” (69).

As Julia tries to reconcile with this new reality, she remarks, “How quaint the old twenty-four-hour clock began to look to our eyes, how impossibly clean-cut, with its twin sets of twelve, as neat as walnut shells. How had we believed, we wondered, in such simplistic things?” (70).

The effects of “the slowing” manifest more clearly after the first couple weeks, and Julia notices how “something began to happen to the birds,” (71) who were literally falling from the sky, either dead or dying. She recounts the peculiar scene: “Birds were found dead on our streets and our rooftops, on our tennis courts and our soccer fields. The fowl of the air were falling to the earth. It was happening all over the world. No one knew why” (71).

Julia’s piano teacher, Sylvia, keeps pet finches, which live in a bell-shaped metal cage in the corner of her living room. At Julia’s next piano lesson, Sylvia is unable to focus on the notes because she is too concerned about the finches’ wellbeing: “They seemed quieter than usual, and they looked a little less fat” (73). Sylvia gives Julia her opinion on why she believes “the slowing” is happening: “I think the slowing of the earth is just the last straw for the birds. We’ve been poisoning the planet and its creatures for years. And now we’re finally paying for it” (75). Sylvia is not alone in this belief, as others share the sentiment that manmade poisons—“pesticides and pollution, climate change and acid rain, the radiation emanating from cell phone towers” (75)—are responsible for “the slowing.”

Seth’s piano lesson follows Julia’s, and he arrives a bit early for his session, catching Julia amid her playing. Seth waits patiently in Sylvia’s living room for his turn. When Sylvia stops Julia’s lesson to take a phone call in the other room, Julia and Seth inspect the finches more closely and discover that one, sitting on the bottom of the cage, is dead. Julia packs her things to leave Sylvia’s and wonders how Hanna is doing in Utah right then. Julia describes the day as “one of the last real afternoons” (80). 

Fourteen days after the beginning of “the slowing,” the President of the United States makes an announcement via the emergency broadcast service declaring: “[W]e, the American people, would be asked to carry on exactly as we had.” This message indicates that everyone is to remain on the 24-hour clock time. As Californians, Julia and her family are unaccustomed to this new way of life: “Those of us living in the lower latitudes were about to experience a lifestyle strange to us but long familiar in the land of the midnight sun” (81).