Seven days until the Earth’s Teeth bite down.
The dim light from Sophie’s phone cut through the darkness. She turned over and squinted, eyes struggling to focus on the notification. Instead, the time caught her eye. 6:55AM. Twenty-five minutes later than she intended to wake up.
Sophie groaned, letting her head thump back onto the pillow. But she had a few more minutes, so she grabbed her phone, dismissed the notification about the Earth’s Teeth, and started scrolling.
Forty-five minutes later, Sophie was in her car, fighting through the morning traffic.
The ivory pillars of the Earth’s Teeth jutted out from the horizon. Sophie leaned to one side, keeping her head tilted so that one of the Earth’s Teeth blocked out the rising sun. After a few moments, her neck began to ache. She righted her head and instead held up a hand, a temporary sun visor until she could trade it for one of the other Teeth.
—
Sophie plopped down at her desk, steaming mug of coffee in hand, and watched the clock. 8:50AM. Ten minutes to sip her coffee and skim the news. Ten minutes to steel herself for the next eight hours. Sophie clicked the news icon bookmarked on her web browser. The front page of the Times was a picture of the Earth’s Teeth.
US NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED IN LAST-DITCH EFFORT TO REMOVE THE EARTH’S TEETH
LEGISLATORS DEADLOCKED ON AUTHORIZING ADDITIONAL AID TO COMBAT EARTH’S TEETH
EUROPEAN STOCKS SOAR AS INVESTORS PULL MONEY OUT OF US-BASED FUNDS; PENSIONS AND 401(K)S PLUMMET
At the third headline, Sophie frowned. She opened a new tab and tried to log into her investment account. A moment later, she dug around in her pocket for her phone and waited for the text with her two-factor authentication code. After all, it had been more than ninety days since she had signed in on this device.
Sophie waited a few more minutes, but her phone never lit up. Her log-in request timed-out, and Sophie closed the tab. She wasn’t really sure how much was in her 401(k); she just set a random percent to be taken out of her paycheck automatically.
Sophie wondered how much it really mattered, anyway.
She scrolled down the news homepage until she found an article about a new television series that had premiered last week. The author claimed that it was promising; Sophie made a mental note to watch the first episode later that week, perhaps with a glass of wine in hand.
At 9:00AM on the dot, Sophie grabbed her headset and logged into her first meeting of the day. Sophie was an IT analyst at an insurance company. Her job was fine. It paid fine. Hours were fine. All of it was fine.
“Sophie, the policy changes to the dental insurance plans were approved by the executive team. Are you able to make the changes to the data model today?”
Sophie nodded, realized she didn’t have her video camera on, then fumbled around to unmute herself. “Yes, I can!” Sophie said, just a moment too late; her boss had moved on.
Thirty minutes later, she disconnected the call. A notification pinged in; her boss had sent her the documentation for all of the policy changes. Sophie opened up the dense attachment and started to read. The last time the Earth’s Teeth had bitten down, the few survivors had grown two extra sets of teeth. Their main dental plan was adding a requirement stating that separate policies had to be taken out for each set of teeth the policy-holder had.
Sophie wasn’t sure how many policy-holders actually had multiple sets of teeth. But Sophie did her job, and added new fields to the data model that counted the number of teeth per person. This ended up being much trickier than anticipated; a majority of their back-end systems had relied upon the assumption that one policy-holder had one set of teeth.
Her head started to pound when she realized the requirements documentation didn’t actually include how the data would be collected. Was it a step on their enrollment form, asking new users how many sets of teeth they had? Or would they be required to add it to their policy after enrollment?
She typed up her concerns and emailed them to her boss, then googled how many people had two extra sets of teeth.
The Earth’s Teeth had last bitten down eight years ago and swallowed Australia and New Zealand clean off the map. A few thousand survivors had been plucked from the foaming ocean, gasping and sputtering, clutching their mouths.
Sophie remembered that day. She had been at a loose acquantaince’s house. Sophie was the age where, upon receiving an invitation for a “get-together”, she wasn’t sure if it was a charcuterie dinner or an alcohol-soaked party. Sophie had compromised by bringing a pack of fancy alcoholic seltzers; borderline acceptable to sip over dinner, easy to dispense at a party. It ended up being a dinner party, and Sophie was glad she chose to dress on the safer side.
Someone’s phone had lit up during dinner, its owner disregarding the cheerfully passive-aggressive “no phones at dinner please!” sign at the head of the table.
“Hey, guys? The Teeth bit down again. Australia and New Zealand, this time.”
To the hostess’s dismay, everyone had checked their phones, Sophie included. The first news outlet to report the event had come from the Philippines. All of the Australian and New Zealand news outlets had been swallowed.
“Oh my god, I spent my entire senior year studying in Sydney. I can’t believe this happened,” one of the attendees gasped.
“Wait, I did too. Which university were you at? We might have been there at the same time!” another chimed in. Within minutes, the conversation shifted to their shared experience, only an odd comment thrown in on how awful the situation was.
Sophie remembered feeling everything and nothing at once. Feeling like she should be scared, or sad, or something else entirely. Instead, she had been sitting safe and sound and happily eating camembert cheese.
—
Five days until the Earth’s Teeth bite down.
Sophie’s mouse hovered over the email, its subject line proclaiming the countdown, when another email arrived. She clicked on the new email instead. It was from her landlord. Her lease was up in three months, and the landlord was raising rent again.
Sophie craned her neck around the office, but the floor was empty. Most of her coworkers had stepped out for lunch.
She stayed at her desk to prepare for a big meeting she had on Monday: a presentation of the data changes implemented in the past three months, and the data changes they were planning to implement in the next three months. It was a quarterly meeting, but it would be Sophie’s first time facilitating.
Sophie had a few free minutes, though. She opened up a new tab in her browser and searched for apartments for rent. Maybe she would check out a new neighborhood. Sometimes Sophie opened up house listings in different cities and imagined a brand new life there. A new job. A new hairstyle, maybe. Different hobbies, definitely.
The apartments in the neighborhood Sophie was eyeing were more expensive than Sophie’s current place. Sophie sighed, then typed her budget into the search filter.
The search filter had a lot of options. Price. Number of bedrooms. Number of bathrooms. Distance to the nearest Earth’s Tooth.
Sophie had only a vague recollection of how the Earth’s Teeth came to be. The first set grew sometime in the 1700s. There wasn’t an established pattern to how often they bit down, but Sophie remembered a paper she wrote on the history of World War I. The same year the Allied forces won, the Earth’s Teeth bit down in Europe. It tripled the casualties.
Sophie didn’t know when the Teeth started growing in her country, but she had been young. It took at least a decade for the Teeth to fully mature. They started small, tiny ivory tips sprouting through the soil like trees.
Now, each Tooth had a diameter of up to five miles.
Sophie couldn’t remember if the recommendation was to be closer or farther away. She supposed it depended on what you wanted.
Pros to living close to the Earth’s teeth: Increased minerals in the area tap water, lower overall temperatures.
Cons to living close to the Earth’s teeth: Higher insurance rates.
Well, Sophie got a discount on insurance. She searched for apartments closest to the Earth’s Teeth and found a nice one-bedroom apartment with a waterfront view. A little more expensive than her current apartment, but Sophie bookmarked the listing for later.
—
Just like every other day that week, it took forever to get home. Sophie barely registered the reflection of the Earth’s Teeth in her rearview mirror as she picked her way through the stop-and-go traffic.
Right before she was about to turn off the highway, Sophie cursed. She definitely didn’t have any food in the fridge. Ten minutes later, she was at the grocery store. She studied the empty shelves and decided that she didn’t feel like cooking that evening. Sophie grabbed a bottle of white wine instead and drove home.
On her way through the cheap apartment lobby, Sophie passed by the neat row of metal mailboxes as usual. Except—hers was definitely overflowing, little shards of white paper poking out of the top. She sighed and fished out her mailbox key.
Sophie spent the elevator ride to the eighth floor sorting through her mail. Mostly junk and copies of bills she had already paid online. Sophie never felt like she actually needed to check her mail for this very reason. But the sight of an envelope, her name printed in familiar handwriting, caught her eye. There was no return address, only the name “Allison” written in the top left-hand corner.
Sophie’s heart started to ache. Allison was her ex-girlfriend. She tossed the junk mail in the recycling and poured herself a glass of wine before she tore open the envelope.
On nights when Sophie didn’t distract herself with television and the other mundanities of life, she missed Allison terribly. They’d had a whirlwind romance after meeting through a friend-of-a-friend-of-an-ex-girlfriend. Three months later, Allison was waiting on the street with a Uhaul full of furniture.
But after three years of bliss, the Earth’s Teeth bit down. Despite the fact that it was across the world, despite the fact that Allison didn’t even know anybody personally affected, she started to obsess. Allison had been convinced that the Earth’s Teeth would bite down in the States next, and that they needed to prepare.
Sophie wasn’t so sure. After all, she had a job, an apartment, a life—what could she do? She couldn’t leave it all behind. So their domestic life eventually fractured, and Allison ended up back on the street with her Uhaul, and Sophie was left with an empty apartment and an emptier existence.
She took a fortifying sip of wine before she started reading. Five minutes later, Sophie finished reading, tossed the letter to the side, and downed the entire glass.
Allison was in Antarctica. Her letter claimed that she, along with a small handful of other people, had created a commune of sorts where the Earth’s Teeth could never affect them; supposedly, they wouldn’t be able to break through the ice. Allison wanted Sophie to come.
For a second, Sophie tried to imagine it. Quitting her job. Leaving her very normal life, and moving to a place where she couldn’t go outside for ten months of the year. Dealing with the actual struggles of survival, instead of just cleaning her apartment and paying her bills.
She’d have Allison again. And maybe she’d see some penguins.
Sophie shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. Instead, she settled into her couch with a new glass of wine and queued up the new television show she’d read about earlier. When the opening ads started playing, Sophie took out her phone and started looking up takeout options for dinner.
Chinese sounded good, so Sophie added the orange chicken and crab rangoon to her cart. She almost pressed checkout, then squinted at the abnormally high delivery price. Surge rates. Sophie sighed and threw her phone to the side. She’d scrounge up something for dinner instead.
The letter from Allison stared at her from the other end of the couch.
—
Three days until the Earth’s Teeth bite down.
This time, the notification popped up during a conversation Sophie was having with her mother. Sophie swiped it away in a huff and returned to the call.
“No, mom, it’s going to be fine. Every year they say the Earth’s Teeth will bite here, and every single time they’re wrong. I can’t drop everything at work every time they think it’s going to happen.”
Sophie listened to her mother’s protests, the repeated insistence that her childhood bedroom was properly outfitted for an extended stay.
“Mom, I’ve gotta go, I have a meeting soon,” Sophie lied. “I love you, okay? Talk to you soon.”
Sophie hung up and returned to her lunch. It was a balmy day, so she, like dozens of others, had fled outside for the lunch hour. She sat alone on a bench and stabbed pieces of quasi-wilted lettuce with her reusable fork.
She somewhat regretted her decision to eat outside, given the smell in the air. From the bench, she could see three of the Earth’s Teeth. Massive, taller than any of the skyscrapers that littered the city’s skyline, shining in full force in the midday sun.
The Teeth were miles away from Sophie; the nearest one was in the neighboring state. The Teeth spread up and down the entire coastline.
She kept chewing on her salad and studied the Teeth. One of the Teeth, the farthest away from Sophie, seemed pointier than the other two. Another Tooth was chipped. Even from this distance, Sophie could see the crater; a darker yellow gash cut halfway up the Tooth.
The last Tooth was surrounded by gnats. At least, the military planes looked like gnats at this distance. Sophie watched the small explosions that burst against the Tooth with mild interest.
Every time the wind picked up, it carried the stench of sulfur and gunpowder. The Tooth remained unmoving.
Sophie scrunched her nose, the scent clashing with the salad dressing, and emptied her lunch container into the trash.
—
No new notifications
Three days later, Sophie woke up a little early. She rolled over and checked her phone. Her email inbox was full of the usual; fifteen percent off at The Gap, someone had ‘liked’ one of her posts.
She scrolled down and almost missed the email from her company, sent Sunday evening to all employees.
SUBJECT: All Offices Open as Usual
Sophie tapped on the email and skimmed it, then rolled her eyes. Four paragraphs to state the obvious; Monday would operate just like any other day. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of why her bosses felt the need to send out that email.
Sophie got out of bed. She took a little extra care when getting ready. She had a presentation that afternoon, after all. A crisp blazer transformed her standard uniform of dark jeans and a plain blouse to smart business casual. Before heading out the door, Sophie double-checked that she had her laptop, presentation materials, and badge. They were almost always in her work bag, but she wanted to make sure.
It was an important day. Sophie had prepared all week.
Traffic was light that morning. The usually cramped highway was sparse, and it perked up Sophie’s mood. Sophie didn’t notice the morning sun in her eyes that day, because the Teeth had grown tall. Sophie didn’t notice that the car radio didn’t work, because she connected her phone’s music to the speakers.
Sophie breezed into the office with a smile.
“Morning!” Sophie said, cheery, to her desk neighbor. The woman looked back at Sophie. Her eyes were bloodshot.
“Morning,” the woman replied in a monotone voice. Sophie didn’t respond. Instead, she grabbed her coffee mug and headed into the kitchen. A small group of her coworkers were huddled together, talking in lowered voices. They didn’t acknowledge Sophie when she walked in, so Sophie didn’t say anything. She placed her mug under the machine, pressed the buttons on the touchscreen display, and waited for her coffee to brew. From her location, she could only make out a few lines from their quiet conversation.
“...NASA is marking a 70% likelihood based on seismic activity,” someone said.
“Well, last year they said it would be a 75% chance. The National Weather Service only marks a 50% chance,” someone replied.
“I heard it’s just a PR campaign to get people to move out of their houses, and the investment banks can snap them up for cheaper,” someone else said.
At that, Sophie chuckled under her breath. It would be great if housing prices went down. Maybe this would be the year she’d finally buy instead of rent.
The coffee machine sputtered as it finished spitting out her coffee. Sophie added two sugars and had to side-step the little group to fish the milk out of the communal fridge. The fridge door bumped someone when it swung open, but Sophie didn’t apologize. The kitchen wasn’t meant for gatherings like this.
Sophie returned to her desk and began reviewing her slides one final time while sipping on her mediocre coffee. The presentation was scheduled for 1:00 PM.
She took a moment to double-check her calendar, and her eyes widened when she saw that her usual 10 AM meeting had changed. The meeting was just a status update, and normally consisted of a video call Sophie joined from her desk.
But today, her boss had requested they all meet in person. Sophie grabbed her coffee and laptop and scurried off to the elevators.
When Sophie walked into the conference room at 9:59AM, it was standing room only. It had been a long time since she had seen all of her coworkers face to face, despite working in the same building.
“Is there any reason why we’re all meeting up here today? Don’t get me wrong, it’s great seeing everyone in person, I’m just curious to know the impetus,” a man asked from the front of the room. Suck up.
“Word from upstairs. They wanted all upper and middle management to take attendance today,” her boss replied. Everyone shifted uneasily in their chairs.
“Where are the execs then?” someone called out from the back of the room. A few others murmured their agreement.
This time, her boss shifted in his seat before he responded. “I believe they’re at an overseas offsite.”
More murmurs. Sophie’s boss shook his head and stood up, then called the meeting to order.
Sophie didn’t pay close attention. The Chief Technology Officer was supposed to attend her presentation later. She had worn a blazer. She had rehearsed. She wondered if he would dial in from overseas.
After fifteen minutes, the meeting was dismissed, and her coworkers spilled out of the room. More than one person held their bags in hand and waited for the elevator to go down.
Sophie took the stairs back up and pretended she wasn’t out of breath by the time she returned to her desk.
Sophie’s desk faced away from the window. Most mornings, there was a terrible glare on her monitor from the rising sun. But over time, Sophie’s eyes had adjusted.
That morning, there was no glare on Sophie’s monitor. There was no sun shining at all, because the Teeth were blocking out the sun.
At 12:45PM, Sophie stepped into the bathroom to freshen up her makeup. She wasn’t entirely sure why it made her feel more prepared, but it did. Every noise echoed in the almost-empty bathroom. The splash of the woman vomiting in one of the stalls echoed. The snap of Sophie’s compact echoed.
Sophie returned to her desk. At 12:57PM, she grabbed her headset and clicked on the button to start the meeting. The little pop-up opened and started loading. Then, her screen went black.
Her stomach dropped.
“No, no, no,” Sophie whispered to herself. Frantic, she ducked under her desk to see if something was wrong.
No wires were out of place. Sophie popped back up and desperately held down the power button. Even after ten seconds, it didn’t stir. Sophie’s hands shook. Her stomach churned. She was supposed to start the meeting. At least fifty people were planning to attend. In a few minutes, that would mean fifty people would stare at a blank screen, waiting for Sophie. Getting annoyed at Sophie.
She fished her phone out of her pocket. Maybe she could start the meeting from her phone – maybe her laptop would start working again in a few minutes. She could make a joke about how they worked in IT but technology didn’t like her. Maybe people would laugh.
But Sophie’s phone wouldn’t connect to the internet. Sophie’s phone, in fact, didn’t have service. She raised her phone high, palms sweaty, trying to get a signal.
Something was trembling. Was she shaking from nerves? That had to be it. Her eyes were fixed downwards, mind full of the implications from missing the meeting, so Sophie didn’t see what was happening outside the window.
The ground rippled and trembled and erupted.
Sophie was still staring at her phone when the Earth’s Teeth bit down.
Rachel Kitch is a speculative fiction novelist in Washington, DC. She often writes on themes such as grief, mental health, and cognitive dissonance. Her essays, short fiction, and poetry have been published in several online publications. She holds a Masters from the University of Pennsylvania and by day, works as a humanity-centered visual designer. Find her on twitter @rachelkitch.