887: Two Is One, One Is None!

If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

“From WB Easy Chicago, it's the American Life.”

I'm Laura Starcheski, sitting in for Ira Glass. I'd been waiting for months for a certain moment to arrive. Garrett had mentioned it, Chrissy had mentioned it, and here we all were. Sitting in their house in the suburbs of DC, we were in their living room. Their son was hopping around with an icy popsicle in his hand.

This was left in the freezer overnight, feel it. And Garrett's laptop was right there. It wasn't open yet, but I was on the edge of my seat.

And finally, she asked me.

Are you ready for those? I'm ready. Okay. Chrissy jumped in to hype it up. It's beautiful.

It's excellent. Yeah, it's a thing of beauty.

“And Garrett opened the laptop and pulled up a file on her computer called Valkyrie”

after the Norse women warriors. They were very into the Thor movies around this time. And suddenly, it appeared, a spreadsheet, hold for a pause.

I was looking at many tabs, many rows, many columns, thousands of data points.

This is where Garrett is mapping out their whole future. Again, we're getting deep into my dinner, working in my mind. Okay. You know, I'm a data person by training and by nature. And by nature, it's very much like part of my DNA.

It's also part of their DNA as a couple. Spread sheets are how they make all their decisions as a family. Like after Garrett finished a PhD in molecular biology. Should she go into academia, get a government job, spread sheet. She crunched the numbers, decided to rejoin the Navy as an active duty scientist.

She and Chrissy had a whole plan. She'd served for 20 years, retired, get a pension, health care, a stable life. Where to live, the kid's schools, each and every one, spread sheeted with Chrissy's help. Normally we're pretty good at doing really concrete game planning. I get on the mental carousel and predict the future and then she makes a spreadsheet to like wrangle it in.

So that's how things normally go. But about a year ago, this family found themselves facing a big, complicated, very uncertain new situation. Garrett's trans and a lieutenant commander in the Navy. In last winter, President Trump signed an executive order banning trans people from the military. The order claimed that trans people are dishonest, unfit and harm-troup readiness.

Garrett and other trans-service members immediately brought lawsuits against the band. So everyone was in limba. Are we all about to get kicked out?

“Are we going to be allowed to stay and keep serving?”

What's going to happen and when? There was just so little data. These hypothetical things that could happen, could not happen. All the stress of trying to play chess around them and plan and spreadsheet around all these hypotheticals. Yeah, I mean, you can't make decisions if you don't have information.

Yeah. No matter, they would make a new spreadsheet and more spreadsheets. They would be on alert. They would be light on their feet because something big was coming for them. They were going to plan and bring all their skill and diligence and available data

to be sure that they had control over how this was going to go down. Today's show, how is this going to go down? This family finds out and it's not at all how they were I expected it to go. And another story of two people determined to make the exact right plans for the moment when everything's going to change.

Stay with us. [Music] The Jeever Wonder would just like to live alone, hidden in the woods, not speaking to a single soul for 30 years. A wonder that desert uncovered a hidden well and died to the bottom of the deepest water hole

for 2,000 miles.

The Stap doesn't podcast takes you there with amazing stories told by the people who lived them.

Stap judgment. Listen to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It's this American life, act one, freaking the spreadsheets. So we're going to continue to hang out in Garrett and Chris he's living room with their kids running

The first time I was there was last March.

“It was less than two months after Trump had issued his executive order and the little family”

scene I saw with them stood out to me because one quirk let's call it a quirk that I've noticed as a trans person reading all the coverage of Trump's military ban this past year is that the service members often appear like these islands. No family around them, no relationships, no community, just a lone isolated person. I've talked to a bunch of trans service members over the past year and that is in any of them.

They all have their people, spouses, kids, families whose faiths are tied to theirs, depending on them. Like Garrett, she's the main breadwinner here. They've been a military family from the start. Garrett enlisted at 17 and became a Navy diver.

She and Chris he met a few years later. They're both from military families. They have two kids, a daughter 11 and a son nine. Right now their son has his face in a video game. Zombies, skeletons, lava.

Don't run into the lava. Life lessons. This is life, this is a big life stuff. Garrett and Chris he are good at keeping it moving. Chris he's intense, blunt, but kind of dreamy too.

She's an illustrator, loves to paint floaty, undersea creatures. A lot of invertebrates. Garrett is smiley and tall, notably tall, next to Chris he. She's got a bob haircut that she takes behind her ears with great effort.

Her hair is always falling in her face, she takes it back again.

Their house is full of nerdy hobby zones. In the kitchen, historical cooking, with a focus on accuracy rather than deliciousness, think cabbage stew every single week. If it was last year or so, I've done doing medieval year-up basically and worked my way up from the Viking age to tutor England.

The kids are in and out of the room as we're talking. I'm not going to name them here. We're just going to believe out their names.

“What do you both know about what's going on with your mama's job?”

Um, a lot. Their daughter, the older one, answers first. Okay, so the thing that I know, she files them all suit and then it went through one of the courts. And now she's at the computer all day, that's on.

All this staring at the computer, it's because Garrett's always

reading court filings about the ban and memos from the military and signal messages with this whole network of trans service members who are all trying to figure out what to do. Now they're sun times in and which is bad for me because never plays with me and mom plays strategy value a lot and he only thing I know about her job is that she might get fired soon. It's true. This was the situation and if Garrett did get pushed out,

their whole life could go over a cliff. Fast. They could be forced to sell their house because they wouldn't be able to make their mortgage payment. They would lose their health insurance, which they really need because their son has a medical condition that they estimate would cost more than $500,000 a year to treat without it. So it's hard to overstate the existential threat they were living under. But Garrett, like almost every service member in her position,

was still quietly continuing to do her job. She'd commute to a military research office nearby, spend the day making decisions about where the Navy should invest millions of dollars in research money. None of that work had stopped. So it was like life as you know it may be about to end, but also act like none of this is happening.

“It was dizzying, all this uncertainty. The only way to deal with all of it at once was to develop”

the most extreme thorough, multi-valent family planning process I have ever seen. Garrett and Chrissy decided that they would make every possible version of a good future for their family come alive. Exhibit A, a spreadsheet, of course. A sort of in case of emergency break glass spreadsheet, gaming out their options if everything went completely to hell. Say Garrett not only got kicked out of the Navy, but also the overall backlash against

new executive orders, targeting trans people. If all that happened and Garrett and Chrissy decided

“the whole family needed to leave the U.S. She's developed a very deep and complex spreadsheet”

of the best places to live based on her own rubric of quality of life that applies to only our family. What's in the rubric? Okay, God. They needed to find a place where they could make a living, be safe, and have access to specialized medical care for their son. It's a short list, but a hard needle to thread. And not only that. I'm very particular about data sources and

like where you get data from. Most of the stuff you're never clear like what the methodology was,

like how reliable it is. So frustrating, all the subpar data just floating around out there. So Garrett under sprawling files of original raw data from all kinds of studies, she ran her own analysis on it, checking quality of life and values, happiness scales, the rights of queer people, and women. Whether something else, the weather that we like, because we're not moving the multi. We're cold weather people. Yeah. Chrissy and the kids have Italian citizenship,

so Europe is on the table, but so we're approximately 5,000 other places and subplaces. I couldn't even focus my eyes looking at it, but Garrett filled me in. So far, the place that's

come out on top, Germany. So far, Garrett was always adding new data whenever she found some,

running the numbers again. When do you look at it? Whenever I get super stressed out and I just need to look at some masks to calm myself down. Yeah, it's my way of touching grass.

“It's worked in the past, but lately, that's so much. What does that look like?”

Well, lately, it's looked like a lot of crying and Chrissy doesn't like crying, but I'm emotionally bottled up, yeah. So she would find me in bathrooms at one o'clock in the morning, so I got up to pee and just decided to start crying. And secretly rolled my eyes, but also give her a hug. God, get it together. You know, we'll talk about things, or I'll talk at her about things until too early in the morning, and she either falls asleep or gets frustrated,

couldn't keep you going away. And so then I'll be like, okay, next time I'm just going to keep it myself. So just sad, and I want you to do that, but we also can't be up till two in the morning, like every night. Yeah, and I just want, you know, just want my partner to feel my feelings with me. I do feel your feelings with you. I'm actually really good at it. It's more really good at it. But you exhaust me.

Here's how fast things were coming at them. The Trump administration banned trans service members from the military. That was last January. They were out. The service members challenged it. They could stay in. Weeks later, a federal judge wrote that the band was most likely unconstitutional. Stay in. The same month, another federal judge. I agree. Stay in. Then the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, claiming it was an urgent matter of national security. All the

“trans people had to go. Can't we just do this band now while all these lawsuits happen?”

Will you allow it? A Supreme Court ruling on that question can come out at any time. Which for Garrett and Chrissy was like, whoa, we're about to get a real answer on this.

And that's when in their perpetual effort to never be caught off guard. Garrett and Chrissy decided,

Chrissy would travel to Germany. In May, she got on a plane. To see if she could actually picture their family living there. She'd been assessing out job possibilities, checking out neighborhoods and cities. Frankfort, Berlin. Tonight at the bar I went to, Cole, Mr. Susan, fabulous bar. Everybody should go. Great name. Yeah. Five Americans fell it up to this bar. Like I was the fifth. Now watch it. It's two, a couple on my right.

Work for the state department. One of them had just retired. The other one was close to retirement. And they were beside themselves with the stuff that was going on. Everybody's like, do it. Bring your kids here. Get it out of there. Which is heartening to here. Makes me feel like we're not doing like we're not being stupid. We're not

moving out of the United States right now? Absolutely. Absolutely. To ourselves, we've had to justify it.

It kind of feels drastic. But at the same time, I don't want to be complacent. I don't want to pretend like nothing's happening. Yeah. Okay. Where are you? I'm walking to get the kids. I only have a couple minutes. Oh my god. I just saw what happened. Yeah. I called Garrett, because while Chrissy was in Germany, the Supreme Court ruling came out. It was bad news. The court had sided with the Trump administration. The military could go forward and kick

everybody out. So for Garrett and everybody else, this ban that had been looming in a theoretical

realm for months was all of a sudden real and imminent. Are you kind of in shock or

what's your mental state? I can't tell. I know you also have to be a parent in like three minutes,

“probably. Yeah. I mean, it's a little shocking. Yeah, I think as it's setting in, I guess as”

we're talking, it's a little surprising that they didn't carve out room for the plaintiffs. Because that means that now we're going to be processed out of the military. It's like everyone else before the case even gets back to the Supreme Court to be rolled on its merits. Will you say anything to your kids or are you trying to spare them from the like blow by blow stuff? I don't know. I think I might talk to them in the next day or so.

Pretty good triggered by all this big time. So I don't want to figure them out about that kind of stuff. So I don't have to. I didn't read the opinion, but I talked to Garrett about it at length. I reached Chrissy the next day in her hotel room in Germany. It was late at night, almost midnight her time.

“I think he feels a lot of guilt. What does she feel guilty for?”

I think that what she's feeling guilty about is feeling like her transition is creating these problems for us. So I just tried to talk her down a little and I don't want to catastrophize. I'm trying to look forward instead of getting hung up on what about should bully fucking Prince think about us because I don't care what they think. You know, I'm here in Germany with the intention of marching forward. Speaking of marching forward, now that the ban was real,

here was the military's new policy. Trans-service members had less than a month to make a choice. Leave voluntarily or wait for someone to find you and make you leave.

Basically, the Department of Defense was saying we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

You choose. Coming up, Garrett and Chrissy try to find another way. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's this American life. I'm Laura Starcheski sitting in for Ira Glass. This is the story of Garrett Morgan and her wife Chrissy. Trying to navigate the

military's ban on trans people and keep some control over what's going to happen to their family. So one thing I asked Garrett, have you ever had any issues with your commanders, your colleagues,

“since you came out as trans? Any problems with anybody serving in the Navy with you?”

No, she told me. Not once. Which is wild? I asked a bunch of other service members from different branches of the military, different ranks. What was their experience? And overwhelmingly, people said it was good. I actually got a lot of support. I got a round of applause when I came out to my unit. One army captain told me. This surprised me because I was at least expecting more of a mixed bag. I read a few horror stories. Those were documented in the court cases,

but so many people had been serving through multiple administrations without issues. There's about a decade of experience to draw on, look at, study, on how it's affected the military,

I mean, there's been no catastrophic failure of unit cohesion, no indication that trans service members somehow harm troop readiness as the Trump administration has argued without evidence. That's been true for years. Which is why it was particularly hard to believe that what the Trump administration was claiming about trans people, that was going to carry the day and not the reality everybody was living in. But now the ban was here. And trans service members had less than

30 days to decide what they go voluntarily or involuntarily, the easy way or the hard way. Presenting just these two unfavorable options is really just such a maniacally effective way to get people to do something they really do not want to do. This is evil genius stuff, mob boss stuff. So I just want to spend a minute on this choice, voluntary versus involuntary

separation. Voluntary separation, the first option, would mean you'd raise your hand,

self-identify, and your branch would start the process of discharging you. You'd be eligible for an honorable discharge, and you'd get separation pay. In voluntary separation, there was way less information about what that would look like. How exactly would the military

“find everybody, and identify them? Was there any real way to challenge it if they did find you?”

And if you were pushed out involuntarily and got discharged, would you get an honorable discharge? Or something else? Even a dishonorable discharge? Was that possible? Because that follows you out into the civilian world forever. It shows up on background checks.

You can never get any VA benefits. It's a big deal. But those details weren't part of the

policy memo, and nobody seemed to know. And there was one more penalty to choosing that path. You'd get just half the separation pay that you would have gotten if you'd gone voluntarily. People had different ways of thinking about this non-choice when I asked about it. One thing that came up was the weirdness of volunteering to not do something, to quit. It went against all their training. Hank Young is a staff sergeant in the Army at Fort Drum

in Far Upstate, New York. He operates artillery pieces. He served for nine years, done a deployment to Afghanistan. And Hank told me that of the two options, voluntary,

“felt like the only way to have any control over this process. So we put in his paperwork.”

Checking the box that said, "I'm here. I'm trans." And you can kick me out now. How did that feel to be communicating that? It was scary. I was actually more concerned in my head. I was a little bit more concerned but I was going to get judged for electing to get out than I was, for being trans. I really cannot emphasize how strongly the Army frowns upon anybody trying to get out of anything

ever for any reason. That was actually probably the part that made me the best nervous. I heard this concern a lot that leaving voluntarily would mean letting other people down. Everyone felt responsible for the people in their units, the people they supervised,

even their commanders. Breanna is a sergeant first class, Army aviation. She's done everything

from helicopter mechanic to drill sergeant to deployments to Afghanistan. She's only out as trans to her family and one close friend and her immediate commanders and was still showing up to work as a male officer. So to protect her, I'm only going to use her first name. Breanna was hoping to take the involuntary separation. She didn't want to capitulate but her main worries seemed to be that her commanders could be blamed or punished for not turning her in.

“She didn't know what to expect. I have no idea, like I'm honestly prepared for a witch hunt.”

So to speak, and that's really the last thing that I want to experience myself and I don't want like my commander, an excellent commander, my first sergeant, an excellent first sergeant, or any of my peers, I don't want to put them in this position of loyalty to the service or loyalty to a human being. So to me, that would be a very compromise and difficult decision to make. And I don't want to do that, too. In the end, Breanna decided to take the voluntary to

voluntary separation. She didn't submit any paperwork at all. She decided to dare the military

“to come and find her, betting that she could find a way through before they could kick her out.”

Which brings us tack, too. Act two, when the bureaucratic shark bites. One quick thing I need to say before we keep going. Garrett and all the service people I talked to did not speak to me in any official department of defense capacity. They shared their own thoughts and feelings, their personal views, and the department of defense wouldn't answer any of my questions about the military ban. They said they don't comment on ongoing litigation. Okay. So the clock had

started. There was less than a month left. Volunteer or we will find you. Garrett entered this new intense phase with the same focus she'd brought before. She would master every element of this bureaucracy, watching out for traps, gathering data, staying two steps ahead of she could.

“One small example. Once the countdown started, Garrett learned that the military was on the”

verge of adding a new question to this mandatory health assessment that every service member has to fill out online once a year. The new question would ask if you'd ever experienced gender dysphoria,

basically, are you trans? If you clicked yes, a notification would appear, saying you'd been rendered

non-deployable, not fit to serve, and telling you to await next steps. So Garrett jumped online before they could change the form, and quickly filled out the old version before the new question was added. She figured correctly that would buy her time. This was the kind of careful maneuver she was executing on four different fronts simultaneously, keeping all the possible realities alive. Scenario 1. A court victory. She and the other plaintiffs win the court case. Could be years away,

“and sure, maybe they'd all have gotten kicked out by them, but it was still possible.”

Scenario 2. Medical retirement. A while back, Garrett saw a doctor about an old injury that was

giving her trouble, and he referred her to be assessed by what's called a medical evaluation board.

If the military deemed her too disabled to serve, she could be medically retired. And now, that seemed like it could actually be a good option since the threat of getting pushed out was looming. So Garrett threw herself into this notoriously arduous and unpredictable process, going to doctor's appointments, getting assessed, putting an amount of paperwork, to document every injury from her service, and then she waited. Scenario 3.

Someone could turn Garrett in, and she'd be forced into the involuntary separation process. Normally there are options to appeal and make your case if the military is trying to kick you out. Garrett could request to go before a panel of officers called a separation board, but it was unclear if that process would actually help her or just be humiliating. And then after all that, she could just get separated anyway. Scenario 4. Germany. If necessary.

She and Chrissy kept up with the house repairs in case they had to sell, had the kids start learning German. I could not imagine an all-my-trying, any base that was not covered here, any possible path out of this maze that was unexplored, any blank on any form that was left unfilled out. But the stakes of involuntary separation seemed to keep getting higher. The more time passed, the more Garrett learned.

A few weeks from the deadline, Garrett found out about an alarming detail buried in a memo from the Department of Defense. It said that if officers, Garrett is an officer, as Lieutenant Commander, if officers did not self-identify. When they were eventually discharged, they'd get a special code assigned to them. It would go in their DD-214. That's a piece of paper that summarizes your military service. It's an official document,

Garrett likened it to a birth certificate. You show it for jobs, or to prove you've served. A JKQ code means serious misconduct. B.D.U. means alcohol abuse. The code for trans officers who failed to come forward, J.D.K. And so J.D.K. is going to designate essentially designate us as national security rest. What? Yeah. And so it was sort of buried in there and we didn't really know what to make of it. And the lawyers got into it. It was like, oh, this isn't good.

Then it was like, oh, shit. This is like actually really mad. And I just just feel so unnecessary.

if you drag us out and make us come and find you, we're going to make it as painful as possible for you.

“And as risky as possible for you. I think that that's the message I think.”

The J.D.K. code would make it hard or impossible to get any kind of job where you'd need a national security clearance, which is the kind of job a lot of people hoped to get after they were kicked out. As it was all kind of sinking in, it really was really hurtful and called very scary, but honestly, like, the next, like a day or two later, I just started feeling really indignant. It was like, you know what? Like, that sounds like a cool near tattoo. J.D.K.

Did that make you want to do anything differently, knowing about this code? You know, I guess it just sort of steeled my resolve to not self-identify and I'm going to

“try to make my exit from the military as much on my terms as possible.”

I'd never heard Garrett sound like this, just openly defiant, but I was worried this was all going

to end in the worst case scenario for her. She'd get singled out, punished for not self-identifying and walk away with nothing. It was getting hard to see it going some other way. The deadline came and went. Garrett was still going to work, waiting. But nothing happened. One by one, almost all the trans-service members she knew were put on leave, pending separation. One guy Garrett knew, who had also chosen involuntary, got a notice after the

deadline passed. He's an instructor at West Point, was up for a promotion, but his name got flagged

“and he was put on leave. I couldn't understand why Garrett's name hadn't been flagged, too,”

but it hadn't. She'd drive to work, check in, sit at her desk, look around. I'm really starting to feel like kind of like out on this island while everybody else was like back on the mainland, and I'm like am I the only one out here? Garrett worried that somebody at her duty station would report her for continuing to show up. At work, she started avoiding the bathroom and the locker rooms, changing in her office or in a closed bathroom stall. She didn't

want to raise any alarms. A few weeks later, Garrett got an order to start working from home. It was like one more door closing. Still have a job, can't show up at work, but she just worked from home as long as she could. And then, in the beginning of August, Garrett texted me. She had some news. She said I should call her. It was gigantic news. It turned out. And it was a good thing. Her medical retirement had come through. When I called, it sounded like she was afraid to get to

excited, or she jinx it. It's slowly been thinking, and I've been like, I've been getting like more positive fields about it every day. Is it sort of like thinking of like the reality of what this

means? Here's what it means. Garrett would get a pension for the rest of her life, health insurance

for life, for her and Chrissy, and for both kids, until they were adults. She'd be a regular, retired veteran, no special JDK code branding her. She'd get an honorable discharge. And so I've got somewhere between say like 50 days to 90 days to where I'll be a civilian. Oh my gosh! Yeah, holy shit. Like, that's really soon. Turns out somehow the best case scenario in all this. Was that Garrett had been deemed permanently and fully disabled veteran? Chrissy just Chrissy said

it next to me now. She said that she's worried I'm gonna use that to get out of doing dishes. Which I am now. Chrissy, what do you feel about all this? I feel really lucky to be honest with you. It's a minute. It's pretty to sink in with me. It usually does. I noticed that that day. I felt happy. There's like a moment in the movie bad guys where the wolf shakes his tail because he did

So how do you square this kind of process of persecution for who you are leading to this outcome?

I was thinking about a way to answer a question like that while Chrissy was talking and I don't

“have a good answer. It's just like, I mean I think this is all really raw right now. So the”

most clear way to look out and I think of this moment. Garrett started talking about this outcome in a really passive way. As if she and Chrissy hadn't been meticulously planning and mapping out all the different options. As if she hadn't pushed to submit all the paperwork for the medical retirement and stayed on top of every detail. It was for to at us that the medical review for process got started before all of the policies started rolling out after the executive order.

And that was your strategy. Yeah, I mean that was a that was a hope to try to get like

“that option on the table. Hi, I think that Garrett's trying to sound very circumspect and not”

like we made this happen 100,000 percent and everybody just stayed still with that. But we have been

gaming this. What? Like not gaming but we built a future. We knew the shit would happen and we worked to build a future based on we worked to make lemonade at least fucking lemons. And then you get to have a pension and be rewarded for the sacrifice you made to join the military to take care of us. I mean, it's not like the gaming that sounds like that's not sneaky that's not bad news bears. You made a plan and our plan worked. That's okay.

What? Give yourself some credit. What are you feeling, Garrett? I'm feeling like I'm still drawing military paychecks. So I cannot agree or just agree with anything my life just said on my guard. We are just protecting our family. Yeah, strategically and methodically marching through the halls of a very complex bureaucratic system until we found the right door to open and now we're going to walk through it. The happy solution that Garrett and Chrissy found. It was pretty rare.

Most of the people I talked to got discharged over the winter. Even the ones who pivoted really fast started school or found a new job. They told me they were struggling and disoriented. Rex mental health wise. Garrett and Chrissy's safe landing was like one bright spot. Born out of skill and a smile from some God of fortune that most people weren't going to get. There are so many efforts right now by our federal government to pry entire groups of people away

from their jobs, their communities, their lives as they've been living them. This particular effort to purge trans people from the military stands out to me. Not only because all of them are serving their country, making sacrifices so many people have no interest in making. But also,

“because who is allowed in the military tends to be a kind of signal for the rest of America?”

Who is allowed to wear our uniform? Who belongs here? Who are we as a country? And for the last year, the government has been putting on a pretty flashy show of forcing out this one group of people only because of who they are. There have of course been decades of case law making that extremely hard to do because it's discriminatory and unconstitutional. But here we are.

Gerard finally retired a few weeks ago. She and Chrissy thought about having her ceremony at a

gay bar, but decided just to do something small with family. They're planning a trip to Germany later this summer for them and the kids. You know, keeping their options open. That story was produced by Miki Miki and edited by Nancy Updike and Hanajafi Wall.

facing a huge disruption to life as they know it. But instead of making a million different plans,

“they have just one single very consequential choice to make. It's from a new book of short story,”

by Rachel Kong. In this one, God has given up on humans. It starts like this. And on the two billionth, 556 millionth, 750,000th day, God reconsidered what he had made and decided that the world would be much better off if humans were other animals entirely. If there were no such thing as human beings at all. And then God gives every single person one choice. Here's the story. Jade was at her best friend Ruby's house when both of their phones

pinged with the news, like it was an amber alert or hurricane warning. At the end of the month,

God declared, "All people would be transformed." Ruby, Jade and the rest of humanity

would have 30 days to select what they wanted to spend the rest of their lives as. They had the entire animal kingdom to choose from. After the deadline, humans would not exist. Jade was straining pasta over Ruby's sink. The hot steam rose into her face. A carbohydrate facial. Ruby stirred the pot of sauce over the stove. What animals have friends? Jade asked Ruby. Ruby typed the question into her phone. Citations are capable of true friendship, Ruby read. Higher primates, elephants,

“camelids, certain members of the horse family. Camelids or camels? Jade asked?”

Anlamas and alpacas. They sat down to eat their dinner. Ruby poured their wine into her favorite little museum store glasses, which were shaped like egg cups. What animals get drunk, Ruby asked? That one, I know, Jade laughed. Elephants and parrots. Deer, moose, bats. So elephants have friends and get drunk, Ruby used. Jade told spaghetti around her fork and conveyed it to her mouth. "Where do you put in this? It's so good. Fish sauce, do you like it?"

"I'm gonna miss your cooking." "You won't throw Ruby said laughing sadly." I mean that's the kind

of beautiful thing. For the first two weeks after the announcement, political bickering paused.

Instead, zoologists were in high demand, appearing on television shows, looking a bit confused by their newfound fame. Nature programs saw a surge in viewership in revenue. "What's your choice?" people asked one another. Everyone everywhere was trying to make sense of things. They read out the superior choice. Ruby thought it was ludicrous. The point was to be free to trivial human concerns, and yet humans were already trying to extrapolate based on human social

conventions, like romance and marriage. Penguins were well-publicized as animals that made it for life.

“Many, many people wanted to be penguins, but were we going to have a world full of penguins?”

When it was getting so warm? 28 days before the deadline, Jade and Ruby met at their favorite old movie theater. At the concession stand, Jade ordered a large popcorn from an acne-rittle teen named Halvor. "What's your choice?" Jade asked Halvor. It was small talk now. Electric eel Halvor said. Very cool Jade replied. In the dark in theater, Ruby produced the friends preferred condiments from a purse. For a kake, sea salt, a double baged baby food jar of melted

real butter. They had been friends since they were six years old. That was 30 years of being friends. At six they made perfume together by steeping rose petals in water. At 12 they practiced freak dancing. At 18 Ruby held Jade's hair back as she puked from too many jealous shots. They knew which movie the other wanted to see without asking. The friends emerged from the dark in theater. Their eyes squinting to adjust to the light.

Ruby loved the movie. Pushi could tell from the neutral expression on Jade's face that Jade hadn't liked the film, so she tempered her enthusiasm. It happened more frequently than you would think. That someone you loved loved different things than you. At their favorite fall restaurant, Jade ordered for the both of them. Animals that get the most sleep, Ruby said. Our slots, koalas, bats, armadillos, cats. You know bats sleep a lot and get drunk, so those are

pluses said Jade. But they grossed me out. You're only finding them gross because of your humaneness. You wouldn't find yourself gross as a bat. You wouldn't like consider yourself in any reflective surfaces. They're fall-arived. Pink lily pads of rare meat, thin rings of white onion.

of the two. It was what it was. Ruby disliked her own practicality. While everyone was busy being

upset that they would be transformed into non-homosepians, Ruby had come up with a spreadsheet of animals. listing the pros and cons of each. Don't make fun of me, Jade admitted. But I'm thinking of seeing an astrologer. Jade, Ruby sat shocked. I knew I shouldn't mention it. No, I'm sorry, of course you should. I'll be curious to hear what they think. Even though there was less than a month left of capitalism itself, businesses were still springing up. Consultants who claimed to be able to

look into your soul via your eyes and tell you exactly what animal you were meant to be.

“What animal's experience sexual pleasure Jade asked Ruby? Dolphins maybe?”

Don't Dolphins seem so, I don't know, basic. The golden retrievers of citations. Definitely. Jade dipped a raw bean sprout in saracha. We should be together, though, human me. Don't you think? Not as penguins, Ruby said. I refuse to be a penguin. We won't be penguins. I wonder if God would let us be rocks, Ruby joked. Jade and Ruby stay who we are forever. One week remained. Ruby wanted to bask in the most human things.

What were they? To her they were domestic tasks that most others found unspectacular. Cooking noodles, solving crossword puzzles, promising her rough feet, responding to emails with

sorry for my delaying getting back to you. She even savored for the first time sitting in traffic

“on her way to Jade's apartment. What's the most human thing we could do right now Jade asked?”

Escape in a scape room? Bacon multi-layered gank? Jade nodded? Let's bake a cake and do an escape room. They were frosting the cake when Jade using the offset spatula to smooth the frosting around the cake sides. Spoke up. I think I want to be a whale, Jade said. She seemed nervous to be saying miss out loud and Ruby turned surprised to her friend. It was the first time either of them had expressed a real desire. Until that moment, they had only brought up possibilities in a joking way.

Oh wow, Ruby said. She tried not to seem too surprised or at all alarmed. What kind? Bowhead whales lived to 200? I don't know if I want to live that long, Ruby sensed slowly. Really? Jade asked. Don't we think it would be fun being a same pod for 200 years?

“I would love to be in your pod. Ruby assured. What if we chose a shorter lived whale?”

Blue whales only lived to 80 or 90? Jade's voice had a tinge of desperation in it or blue go whales. They lived to 50. Plus they're cute. We won't know that we're cute. Don't be like that, Ruby. Jade said. Tears were gathering in her eyes. Be honest with me. Could you be a whale? I don't know, Jade. Ruby said. I have to think about it. I'm sorry. They sliced and ate the cake in silence. When it came time for their escape room appointment,

Jade told Ruby she wasn't in the mood. Actually, I think I'd rather be alone right now. Jade said. Okay, Ruby said. Of course, no problem. She took her car keys from Jade's kitchen counter. Then she hugged her friend, who returned for embrace, stiffly. All her life Ruby had felt like a weirdo. What other people had, groups of friends, romantic partners, weddings where they were treated like celebrities, spacious houses, adorable and well-behaved

children, Ruby had never wanted. She wasn't shirking these things as a point of identity,

but simply because she had always viewed them as extraneous, empty. Only two things made her feel like she wasn't completely inhuman. One was working, immersing herself in her writing. The other was being around Jade. Only Jade had witnessed Ruby in every iteration of her life and not fled. Why couldn't Ruby agree to be a whale? It could be so simple. 32 hours remained. Jade and Ruby cardboard to their friend Cassandra's house. In their larger

friend circle, everyone had been throwing extravagant parties. Trying to spend all the money they could before money no longer mattered. Last week, they attended a party where it's a duck and sat on an enormous doily. The host sliced neatly into it with an electric carving knife, exposing the wonders within, a breathtaking meat geod. Cassandra welcomed them. She wore a silk dress that draped beautifully across her round, uniquely human breasts. Server circulated with the

champagne flutes and crystal dishes of the finest bluga caviar. Jade and Ruby were pleased to see

Ruby's parents plan to be turtle doves and her younger brother would be a partridge. If they were irritated with her for not wanting to be a bird along with them, Ruby's mother was so bereft that she wouldn't speak to her.

What are you thinking, Jade asked finally? The friends had been avoiding the

“question all night wanting to enjoy the party. I think Ruby said slowly watching her friend's face.”

I think I want to be a turtle. Ruby had abandoned her spreadsheet. She couldn't explain it, but Ruby felt deep in her bones that she wanted to be a turtle. Jade loaded a potato chip with caviar, placed the entirety of it on her tongue and chewed for a long moment. But turtles live even longer than whales, Jade said as neutrally as she could manage. I guess it wasn't about the lifespan at all, Ruby admitted. I don't know if I can explain it. A fresh water turtle?

I don't think I want to be a sea turtle, unfortunately. So we won't even be in the same body of water. I know, Jade, I'm sorry. You can't let me hold you back from being a whale. Jade said nothing. Please, please don't be mad at me, Ruby said. I couldn't stand it if you're mad at me and are last. She looks at her watch. 29 hours. Jade said nothing still.

I'm just sad. Jade said finally. I'll miss you. You won't actually stop it, Ruby. Jade said

angrily. Don't tell me I won't be able to miss. Tears fell down her cheeks and pronounced dramatic riffs. I will miss you. And I'll miss you, Jade, Ruby said. She told herself she wouldn't, but she started crying too. Jade slipped over at Ruby's. In the morning they indulged in a hungover feast of pain killers and waffles and bacon, which Ruby made extra crispy the way Jade liked. Afterwards, they climbed under Ruby's roof and threw dirty dishes off the side of it,

because they didn't need to wash them anymore. The dishes shattered satisfyingly on the asphalt. That evening Ruby and Jade visited their families. At the front door, Ruby hugged her father and brother. Her mother was still too upset to speak with her, so Ruby left a handwritten note that she hopes sufficiently expressed how much she loved her. Back at Ruby's house, they popped popcorn and watched chunking express. Over the years, they'd found the film charming and then annoying and

now charming again. They brushed and flossed their teeth, not because they had to, but because sleeping with clean teeth felt nice. Lights out, lying side by side, they began to talk the way they had when they were girls having sleepovers. Earlier that day, they had texted their final decisions to God, whale for Jade and turtle for Ruby, and received brown thumbs up emojis. At four in the morning, their time, all of humanity would evaporate. Each person would be transformed

“and placed in a suitable habitat. Remember that time we raised snails, Jade asked,”

Ruby could hear her smiling in the dark. And my mom got so mad because it was dinner time and this snails were too slow. I remember, said Ruby, and we brought them inside and our pockets to race in the bathtub, Delilah and Joseph. I can't believe you remember that. They lay in the silence for a long moment. Do you want to be conscious when this happens? Ruby asked, "Is she trying to get some sleep?" I don't know. What about you? I don't know either. There was another long silence.

Jade, I'm sorry that Ruby paused. There were so many things she needed to apologize for that she didn't even know where to begin. The time she neglected her friend because she believed her work was paramount. The time she knew Jade was going through difficulties but hadn't known what to say. During those periods, she cooked bulk meals for Jade and mop Jade's floor. She knew Jade would have

liked verbal reassurance too, but Ruby didn't know how to offer it. She never would know.

It's okay, Ruby. Jade's voice was clear and steady. I know. I know you.

“I don't think I can sleep, Jade said. Me neither. Should we do something else?”

Ruby stood up and turned the lights on. She peaked out the window and saw that other lights were on too. What about Ruby thought? What about YouTube karaoke? I have a good one. Hang on. Ruby angled her laptop away from Jade so that the song selection would be a surprise. The familiar notes of Pacabelle's canon and D came on. Jade broke into laughter, delighted. They didn't need the lyrics.

Ruby and Jade sang together at the top of their lungs. They put their phones down and with their

a hundredth of a second, Ruby and Jade vaporize with the rest of humanity.

“Adam scattering, traveling, reassembling, Jade in the Pacific Ocean and Ruby in an Australian pond.”

But as to be expected with such an enormous undertaking, there was a glitch. For a fraction of a second, Jade and the body of a blue whale and Ruby and the body of a freshwater turtle sustained human thoughts. Jade thought, Ruby, and Ruby thought, Jade.

Then God put his divine palm to his divine face and corrected the error.

From then on, Jade swam and Ruby baths in the sun's warm rays. And God looked upon everything that he had made and behold. It was very good.

“The story was read for us by actor Melissa Tang and produced by Diane Wu.”

You can read the full version of this story, D-Day, in Rachel Kong's new book of short stories. My dear you. All the color he's got. Traces made to you dust. They washed it and everyone's nothing. Love it. But there's only one in only.

Who could go, me, me, me, me, me, me. Our program was produced today by Nicky Meek and edited by Hannah Juffy Walt, editorial help from Soner Kurt. The people who put together today's show include Fia Benin, Zoe Chase, Adrian Lily, Stone Nelson, Molly Marcello, Katherine Reimondo, Ruthie Petito, Nadia Raymond, Marisa Robertson, Texter, Ryan Rumory, Lily Sullivan,

Francis Swanson, Christopher Svetala, and Julie Whittaker. Our managing editor is Sara Abduramann, our senior editor, David Kestendown, our executive editor is Emmanuel Barry. Special thanks to Lieutenant Nicholas Talbot, Commander Emily Shilling, Major Erica Vandal, Major Julie Klavier, Captain Gordon Herrero, Senior Master Sergeant Jamie Hash, Specialist Wendellin O, Priya Rashid, Emily Starbucks,

Gerson, Shannon Minter, Jennifer Levi, Amanda Johnston, Malkia Hutchinson, Lauren Gray, Sabrina Hyman, K Petrin, Yowe Shah, Kyle Poli, Lindsay Church, and Minority Veterans of America,

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Thanks as always to my boss Ira Glass, movie night with him is always the same thing.

I brainstorm a ton of ideas, but he only wants to watch his favorite movie for the thousand time. Any movie I suggest is met with the same response. That's not bad news bears. I'm Laura Starcheski, we'll be back next week with more stories of this American Life.