The most excellent Damon Lindelof has kindly offered to share a serialized story with NextDraft readers to help us, and him, through the quarantine. Past chapters here. To be continued, daily…

Chapter 5: Spring Breakers Will Kill Us All And No I Don’t Mean The James Franco Movie But It’s Not Doing Us Any Favors Either

Verbatim text thread between Dr. Elizabeth Bohrs-Rosenberg (“ME”) and Albert Bohrs (“DAD”) // Twenty Days AH&W, Iteration One
ME: Hey, dad. How are you?

DAD: b

ME: ?????

DAD: ok thx

ME: Did you read the article…?

DAD: yes

ME: And….?

DAD: intresting

ME: Please don’t be dismissive.

DAD: (emoji of taco)

ME: ??????

DAD: oops didnt mean to do taco.

ME: You have a college education. I wish you would capitalize. And punctuate. And spell “interesting” correctly.

DAD: and i wish you single spaced after periods oh well

ME: The double space is perfectly acceptable… and if ever there was a time for more spacing, it’s now.

ME: That’s a social distance joke.

ME: …Hello?

DAD: ys funny

ME: If you read the article then tell me where the party was.

DAD: conneticut.

ME: Connecticut. Capitalized. Missing “c.”

DAD: one c too many if you ask me

ME: Dad… can I ask you an ethical question?

ME: … Hello?

DAD: shoot

ME: Let’s say I had a way to go back to that party… where they all got infected. And let’s say the only way to prevent them from getting infected involved killing one of them. That means ten less super-spreaders, which would have bought us almost two extra weeks before the tipping point.

ME: … JESUS DAD… HELLO?!?!?!?

DAD: sorry watching wheel rerun not the same without your mom vanna seems less shiny somehow

ME: So… Is it ethical? If I could… is it okay? Take one life to slow exponential growth? Save hundreds of thousands… maybe more?

DAD: not ethical, no.

ME: Yeah. I figured.

DAD: but if your going to hell…

ME: YOU’RE. JESUS DAD!

DAD: might as well make it count

ME: ?????

DAD: fuck conneticut problem is with the orangutang in the white house you want to change things change that

DAD: … Elizabeth?

ME: You capitalized my name.

ME: (crying emoji)

To be continued…