I have to begin this story where I can. It isn’t the beginning of the story; it’s the first day of my life that I really “remember‗ in the common sense of the term. It’s the day I left the home. It was also the day the Phenomenon occurred, as well as being the day that any number of people that I knew (presumably along with some people I did not know) were removed.
That’s an unfortunate word, but it’s the best one I’ve ever been able to come up with to describe what happened. They were removed. Other terms used by those of us who discuss this subject (a small group) include undone, unmade, uncreated, destroyed, eliminated, and erased. Erased is probably the most popular. I don’t deny that it’s a good fit, but I prefer removed.
Todd says that removed is a euphemism. He suggests that there is something Orwellian in my selection of the term, that I’m trying to hide the awful reality of what occurred behind a word that obscures tragedy with its vagueness, like when an airline makes reference in its annual report to a mysterious mid-air explosion killing all 257 people on board one of its planes as a “conversion†or “replacement†of its aircraft. I believe Todd is mistaken on this point. The word removed is not vague, nor does it shy away from reality. If there was an explosion, I would say explosion. If we knew people were killed, I would say they were killed.
But we don’t know any of that. We don’t know that anyone has been erased, or eliminated or destroyed. There is this nagging sense, this appalling and overwhelming fear, that they might have been. But we don’t know that for sure. Far from obscuring the horrible reality, I think the word drives the horror home. They were here, they’re gone, and we have no idea what happened to them.
