THE AGE OF SNOWGLOBE
In the living room, Grandma is sunk in her chair in front of her favorite TV show, a heavy quilt draped over her lap. I look down at the weather ticker scrolling away along the bottom of the screen.
-50°F
That’s a three-degree drop from yesterday. A snow-cloud icon trails the temperature, suggesting flurries throughout the day, and Grandma pushes herself out of the chair, shuffling to the electric space heater with the kettle in hand. My brother, Ongi, appears in the living room, wearing his standard morning look: a toothbrush in his mouth and a scowl on his face.
“I wish I were still in school!” he whines, because schools close in temperatures below -50°F.
“Just brush your teeth, please,” I respond flatly, which comes out garbled as I’m still brushing mine, and turn back to the TV. As usual, Grandma has it on Channel 60, the station that airs Goh Around round the clock.
“No! Hear me out,” Ongi persists, stepping in front of me and ratcheting up the grievance in his voice. “I was sixteen ten months ago when I was in school. I’m still sixteen today, but just because I graduated, I’m now expected to endure this brutal temperature?”
His face is blocking my view of the TV. What does he want me to do about the weather? “Stop spraying toothpaste all over the floor, would you?” I snap, suddenly irritated.
Ongi is my twin brother born exactly ten minutes before me. He likes to pretend to be older and wiser, which is no end of laughable. He should know well by now that I only came second to make sure he got out safely—kind of like a captain being the last one off the ship. I’ve been taking care of him since we shared a womb.
Grandma, back in her sagging chair, swivels her head in our direction. “Ongi, my sweet,” she calls. “Don’t act like a baby in front of your girlfriend.”
Ongi’s eyes bug out, and he races to the kitchen sink, where he spits out the mouthful of foaming toothpaste with extra force.
“Grandma!” he cries. “Jeon Chobahm is not my girlfriend!”
Grandma has dementia, and she’s been confusing me with my brother’s nonexistent girlfriend for some time now.
I leave Ongi to stew and head back into the bathroom, where I turn on the wall-mounted faucet and fill the tin basin under it. When I scoop up the frigid water and rinse my mouth, the cold sends a shocking jolt through my teeth down to my jawbone, which immediately begins to ache. My hair is next. I’m staring into the basin, steeling myself against the brain-chilling assault to come, when Grandma appears at the door with the kettle in her hand, a plume of steam escaping its spout.
“Watch out, dear,” she says, and stoops to carefully tip the kettle over the basin. “I made this hot water for Ongi, but he wants you to have it instead.”
I watch as she sticks her hand in the basin and swishes the water around to even out the temperature. Over the rising steam, her face is aglow with pride and joy that her grandson grew up to be such a considerate young person—a true gentleman who knows how to care for his girlfriend. Meanwhile, said young man is washing his hair at the kitchen sink, howling as he dips his head under the frigid stream. I can’t help but laugh at his antics as Grandma shuffles back toward the door with the empty kettle.
“Thank you, Grandma,” I say.
She stops in her tracks. Turning around slowly, she searches my face for a long moment with her watery eyes.
“You sound just like my granddaughter,” she says in a voice full of longing. Then she turns back around and heads out the door for her worn chair.
—
In the mudroom, Ongi and I struggle to pull on our heavy snow boots. It’s made all the more difficult by the layers of insulated clothes—tops, pants, and tights—we have on under our thick snow bibs. Next come out parkas, expedition-weight mittens, and ski masks. Then, finally, the hoods go up, and we’re ready.
“We’re off, Granny! See you later!” Ongi calls toward the living room in his usual upbeat tone.
But as he turns the doorknob, Grandma’s urgent voice stops us short.
“Wait! My goodness, Ongi! Chobahm is on TV!” she cries.
Ongi and I exchange a look as she coos at the TV. “Aww…Chobahm! My sweet baby girl.”
I don’t have to look to know that it’s Goh Haeri on the screen. Ongi refuses to acknowledge it, but the beloved actress and I look very much alike. We even share the same birthday, and for what it’s worth, it so happens that we’re both lefties. But no one, except for Grandma, would ever mistake me for her, what with my rough cheeks perpetually inflamed from daily exposure to bone-dry, subzero air, and my coarse hair cropped short for quick washing in frigid water. In contrast, Haeri’s porcelain skin, rosy cheeks, and trademark long, shiny hair radiate her Snowglobe pedigree.
About Snowglobe. With the world now at an average annual temperature of -50°F, Snowglobe is the only place with a temperate climate—the only location with warmth and color—in the whole world. It’s a special settlement that was built atop a geothermal vent and is enclosed in a gigantic weatherproof glass dome. But not just anyone can live there. Its lucky residents are actors, whose unscripted lives are recorded in real time and edited into shows, which are then broadcast to the open world for entertainment. Goh Haeri isn’t just an actress, she’s a megastar, and she’s just been named the new weathercaster—one of the most coveted jobs in Snowglobe. She’ll set the record as the youngest weathercaster in the history of the settlement.
I turn a flat gaze to the TV screen. Dressed in a stylish suit, Haeri looks like she was born to fill the position.
“Hi, it’s Goh Haeri,” she greets the viewers in a buoyant tone. “I’m so excited and honored to be serving our community as the new weathercaster. Make sure to tune in to News at Nine on New Year’s Day!”
She treats us to her perfect smile, and then the camera cuts away.
I wonder, not for the first time, if I’ll ever be able to meet her in real life. If my hair grew in proportion to my desire for a life in Snowglobe, I could shave my head bare every night and I’d wake up the next day with it sweeping the floor. Sometimes I wonder if my intense longing for the place might be responsible for Grandma confusing me with Haeri—as though she can see my soul yearning to flee this godforsaken icebox in favor of Haeri’s life in Snowglobe.
Ongi turns back to the door, clucking his tongue in distaste.
“What?” I hiss, glowering back at him.
“If only you hadn’t talked so much nonsense about how you might be Goh Haeri’s lost twin and—”
“Stop.” I cut him off with a cuff to the ribs. I can feel the color rising to my face at the memory. “Unless you want to dig your way out of a snowbank!”
But he’s wearing too many layers to be warned off, and he boldly resumes running his mouth. I shove him and he shoves me back, and then we’re snatching at each other and ducking and banging into walls—until we finally end up laughing too hard to keep fighting and we pull ourselves together, then open the door and step outside.
Fifty degrees below zero. The frozen world welcomes us by snatching the breath from our lungs. My nose instantly freezes and stings, and within a few blinks, ice crystals form on my eyelashes and cloud my view.
“It’s so damn cold,” Ongi says with a full-body shudder.
From age six, my twin brother and I accompanied each other to school every day for ten years. Since graduation in February, though, our daily commute has been to the power plant.
I look up at the marbled sky, its gunmetal gray promising a second squall in three days. In the bleak world below, squat log cabins dot the white expanses between tall pines, their branches heavy with snow.
Ongi and I start for the bus stop. Our commute to the power plant could be made on foot, but with a brooding sky like this, the bus is safer. We trudge through the knee-deep snow, and before long, my breath turns my ski mask into an icy mess over my mouth and nose—though better the mask than my face. A few feet ahead, Ongi pauses under a tree and waits for me to catch up. He can be so sweet, I think. But no sooner do I arrive than he jumps up to a branch to send an avalanche of snow down on my head and shoulders, laughing hysterically.
Seething, I scoop up a handful of snow and pack it into a tight ball. He bolts, shouting, “Race you to the bus stop!”
“Wait!” I shout, already on the move. “Jeon Ongi, you cheater!”
Snow grabs at our boots with each sinking step, rendering our best effort at a dash into more of a lurching shuffle.
“Loser does laundry for a month!” Ongi yells.
“Oh…You’re so done, Jeon Ongi!”
I struggle through the clinging trap of snow with everything I have. And when we dive for the bus stop, it’s my hand that touches its bent pole first.
“Ha! Who’s laughing now—” I say victoriously, gasping for breath. Sure, I won by a hair, but a win is a win. I’m bent over with my hands on my knees, catching my breath, when Ongi snatches my arm and jerks me behind him.
Annoyed, I straighten to see him narrowing a hard gaze at a figure ahead. Just another commuter waiting for the bus, so what about it? is my first thought, but then the person turns in our direction, and when she acknowledges us with an awkward dip of her head, neither Ongi nor I return it.
The woman is Jo Miryu, a former Snowglobe star. Discovered at nineteen, she lived in the settlement for seven years, starring in a hit noir series. She returned home a few years ago when the network abruptly canceled the series, and yet, at twenty-nine years old, she still has the face of a wood sprite and a frame that is five foot seven inches of pure grace. Her youthful innocence makes it all the more difficult to believe that the success of her series was due to the multiple homicides she committed throughout its run. By the time it was canceled, she had brutally murdered nine men, and her director had snatched the National Medal of Arts for outstanding directorial achievement. Like millions of her fans, I can recite a long list of other trivia about the starlet. I even know her blood type, which is A.
When Miryu returned home, however, she was shunned for the brutality she had dealt in Snowglobe. Even her own family fled to another town upon news of her homecoming, unable to swallow the idea of welcoming a killer into their midst. Ongi and I were thirteen back then. I remember the whole town twitching with hysteria. Kids were being warned against her—we weren’t to speak to, or even make eye contact with, the woman if we happened upon her on the street.
I don’t know what it says about me, but I’ve always been more intrigued by her than terrified. There’s so much I’d like to ask her about Snowglobe. Ongi, who knows me like no other, digs his heels into the snow and shoots me a warning glance: Don’t even think about it.
Suddenly, the roar of gears rips through the air, and the dark green, rusted-out double-decker pulls to a stop. Buses—being the only means of transportation in our town—regularly pack in about a hundred commuters during rush hour. The door hisses open and the line begins to move, only to stop.
“Get off my bus!” Mr. Jaeri, the bus driver, erupts in an angry shout, and I look up to see that a few feet ahead, Miryu has just mounted the steps.
“Please…I just need to go to the post office,” she pleads in a small voice, but Mr. Jaeri throws out his arm and blocks her.
“I said, Get. Off. Now,” he rumbles.
All essential businesses and services—the post office, grocery stores, laundromats, clinics, and so on—are located inside the power plant. It’s convenient for most of us who already work at the plant, but not for an outcast like Miryu. They are left to sustain themselves with whatever game they can snare or fish they can catch in the wild and only go to the plant when they have no other choice.
“Please.” Miryu tries again. “My ankle’s hurt, I can barely walk. Can I please get a ride, just this once?”
Mr. Jaeri barks out a laugh.
“Oh, poor little cupcake,” he says in a mocking tone, then in a booming voice yells out, “No!”
“Why do you even engage with her?” someone shouts from inside the bus. “Let the others in, and let’s go already!”
A handful of children join in, “Yes, Mr. Jaeri, let’s go! Or we’re all going to be late for school!”
Miryu drops her gaze and, without another word, turns around and steps off the bus. People shuffle forward and we move ahead. I’m about to climb aboard behind Ongi when I hear a small “Excuse me.”
I turn to see Miryu staring at me pleadingly.
“Yes?” I manage to get out.
“Can you please stop by the post office and see if there’s any mail for me?” she asks, then adds apologetically, “The name is Jo Miryu.”
It takes me a moment, but I find myself nodding in agreement, too stunned to speak.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she says, her features softening with relief. “Can I meet you back here at the end of your day, then?”
I murmur a yes just as the line surges forward and pushes me up into the bus. Then the door is hissing shut, and Ongi shouts through the closing gap, “Don’t you wait for her!” He turns to me and in an angry whisper says, “Are you nuts? Don’t you know what she could do to you? Don’t you know what she’s capable of?”
I shrug, avoiding his gaze. He’s still furious when I murmur to no one in particular, “Sure, she killed nine men. But I’m not a man.”
“What?” Ongi breathes, staring at me with exasperation.
Meanwhile, Mr. Jaeri shifts into gear and pulls away, chewing tensely on his bottom lip. He’s likely cursing his luck this morning. How could he not be worried about upsetting Miryu?
THE GREAT UNWASHED
“Hi, sweeties!” Mom calls, waving at us from a corner of the power plant’s central hall, where she’s chatting with some friends.
The sight of her makes me feel lighter. We don’t get to see a lot of each other—there are a total of four shifts at the plant, assigned by lottery, and as a first-shift worker, she’s here from six a.m. to four p.m. every day.
I wave back and make a beeline for the stack of free TV Guides on the nearby newsstand. TV Guide is a weekly magazine that provides the upcoming program schedules for the hundreds of Snowglobe channels available for viewing every day, and thus is essential for daily life. Honestly, depending on the week, the slim volume can be even more entertaining than the shows themselves. Reading about which new programs are about to premiere and which series are ending is always captivating, regardless of whether or not I tune in to them.
“Yes!” I exclaim under my breath as my eyes alight upon this week’s special feature—an interview with Cha Seol, director of Goh Around, also known as the person I admire the most in the entire universe. I thumb the corner of the magazine, weighing my options. It’s tempting to just devour the whole article right now, but another part of me wants to wait and savor the pages in the comfort of my room at the end of a hard day’s work. I tuck the magazine away in my parka’s internal chest pocket, choosing the latter. A few moments later, though, I find myself reaching for it again.
“I’ll just check out the Tips,” I say to myself, taking out the guide. The Tips section, with its weekly career advice for aspiring actors and directors, is my favorite section of the magazine.
“Hey, Jeon Chobahm, are you even listening to me?” Ongi’s voice interrupts my focus, instantly annoying me. I lift my eyes to his scowling face. “I said, don’t you ever speak to that woman again, do you understand?” he says, reaching toward the stack of TV Guides for his own copy. As much as I want to throw a retort back at him, it isn’t worth it to make a bigger deal of the incident, so I just brush him off.
“God, you need to relax, Jeon Ongi,” I say, looking back to the Tips.
A minute later, I’m pulled away again by the plant supervisor’s shout. “Hey, Jeon Ongi, you lazy lump!”
The man is standing by the loading dock across the hall, looking constipated, as usual. “What are you doing?” he yells more loudly. “Get over here and start unloading!”
Ongi takes off like a rocket. “On my way, sir!” he shouts in reply.
The two of them go through this routine daily. I’m snickering when someone slaps me on the back, chirping, “Jeon Cho!”
I turn to see my friend Jaeyun flashing her toothy smile at me.
“Jaeyun! You’re back!” I cry, delighted. “How was your tour?”
“Good! I made it back in one piece,” she says, then continues wearily, “The storm raged for three days straight.”
Jaeyun is a train engineer on the Ja-line, one of the fourteen railways that comprise the freight network that extends, like arteries from a heart, from Snowglobe to the outer settlements. It’s via the railway that food and other essential supplies are distributed throughout the open world, as well as occasional nonessential items mail-ordered by those able to pay a stiff premium. Deliveries are dropped off at the power plant of each settlement along the routes. From the Gah-line to the Ha-line, train engineers are selected from towns situated at the line’s terminus—settlements on the fringes of civilization, like my hometown settlement. Jaeyun, who is only a few years older than me, has held the position for six years now.
“Did you know that the TV in the engineer’s cab turns off in bad weather?” she says, rolling her eyes. “So here I am, staring at nothing but the infinite tracks ahead, all alone in my cab without anything to distract myself with. The wind is screaming. Snow’s blowing everywhere. And as if that’s not enough, thunder is sounding right above my head. The next thing I know, I’m on my knees, praying for the first time in my life.”
She pauses to shudder for emphasis, but I know her dramatics are mostly for my entertainment. In truth, she’s one of the bravest people I know. She wouldn’t be doing what she does, otherwise. But I play along.
“Oh, man. You have to tell Ongi about it when you see him,” I say. “The wimp thinks he wants to be a train engineer.”
In fact, the only reason Ongi is volunteering as a warehouse hand is to keep a close eye on all things rail-related. With Jo Woong, the other engineer of the Ja-line, nearing retirement, the supervisor is said to be scouting about for his replacement.
“Ongi?” Jaeyun says, surprised. “I thought he wanted to stay close to home.”
I give her a blank look. If he does, it’s news to me. When I’m silent, she continues, “Considering your grandmother’s health? Who’d take care of her when you go off to film school, if Ongi has to spend half a year away from home on a train? He should stick around, for her sake.”
Oh, film school…I shrink into myself, the stock line in the stock rejection letter I received a week ago all too fresh: While your skill set and potential are impressive, we regret to inform you that we are not offering you admission…
Snowglobe’s Film Academy is the most prestigious educational institution in the world, producing top-ranking directors year after year. The rejection letter is the second of its kind I’ve received, the same as the one I got last year.
I squirm on my feet as Jaeyun, clueless, flips through TV Guide and finds this week’s special feature. The boxed copy containing Director Cha’s quick bio, which I already know by heart, jumps out at me. She was one of those brilliant people who was accepted into the academy on her first try, and graduated with the highest distinction to boot.
“You’re not going to treat me like a stranger when you become this famous, are you?” Jaeyun teases, jabbing me lightly with her elbow.
Fighting back the shame rising up inside me, I deadpan, “Of course I am. What do you think?” and the two of us burst into laughter.
I try to enjoy the moment, pushing the rejection letter from my mind. After all, what matters is that I will create the most amazing show of all time, the kind no director has ever produced before. As long as I know that, I can’t beat myself up over the when of it. What’s a few years’ delay in the great scheme of things? Nothing. At least, that’s what I have to tell myself. Because if I stop believing in my future, I’m afraid I won’t be able to endure the punishing monotony and hopelessness of my so-called life. Not for another minute.
—
“Second shift! Get moving!” the supervisor shouts, and the two hundred or so workers scattered around the hall begin shuffling toward the gigantic motor in the center.
“Come on!” he urges. “Hustle!” He starts his obnoxious marching clap, the rhythm of which we follow to position ourselves at the workstations: human-sized hamster wheels connected to the central motor. Those of us with odd ID numbers begin the shift by walking inside the wheels, while those with even ID numbers begin the shift sitting just outside the wheels, working the hand cranks attached to the wheels’ stub axles. As the wheels turn, their kinetic energy is harnessed through a mechanical amplifier coupled to an electromagnetic energy harvester, whose output subsequently turns the central motor to generate electricity. Simply put, power production depends entirely on human physical labor, without which our world would screech to a halt. There wouldn’t be freight trains or commuter buses, not to mention electric kettles that can heat up ice-cold water in minutes for a hot cup of cocoa. ...
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