CZM Book Club: The Comet, by W.E.B. Du Bois

Summary

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It Could Happen Here – CZM Book Club: The Comet, by W.E.B. Du Bois (March 1, 2026)

Episode Overview

This episode of the Cool Zone Media Book Club, hosted by Margaret Killjoy, features a dramatic reading and analysis of “The Comet” (1920) by W.E.B. Du Bois. The show explores the novella’s groundbreaking approach to race, apocalypse, and the possibility of rebirth beyond social collapse, reflecting on Du Bois’ influential role as a historian, sociologist, and early Afrofuturist. The episode invites listeners into the world of Du Bois’ fiction and reflects on its ongoing relevance and power.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

Introduction to W.E.B. Du Bois & Context of "The Comet"

[02:07]

• Margaret shares background:
  • Du Bois was a civil rights leader, Harvard-trained sociologist, co-founder of the NAACP, and a major influence on historical understandings of reconstruction and Black agency.
  • Best known for nonfiction works like The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America, Du Bois also wrote fiction to explore ideas unaddressable in essays.
  • “The Comet” is recognized as a foundational piece of Black science fiction and early Afrofuturism.
  • Du Bois’s interest in religious metaphor, apocalyptic language, and societal structures is a major influence on the story’s style and substance.

Summary and Dramatic Reading of “The Comet”

[03:03] onwards

• Margaret narrates the story, focusing on Jim, a Black bank messenger in New York, who survives a global catastrophe triggered by a comet passing Earth.
• As Jim emerges from the bank vault, he finds the city silent and filled with the dead, a haunting vision of instant social collapse and mass death.
• Moving through New York, Jim encounters Julia, a wealthy white woman; together, they believe they may be the last people alive.
• Their search for other survivors takes them through Harlem and Manhattan, structuring an exploration of class and racial difference in the face of apocalypse.
• The narrative develops mythic and Biblical overtones: Jim and Julia become a new Adam and Eve, united in shared vulnerability but haunted by society’s old divisions.

Racial & Social Dynamics:

• The racial and class barriers between Jim and Julia blur in extreme circumstances, but never wholly disappear.
• Notable scene: When Julia’s father and fiancé return—having survived outside New York—the restoration of ordinary social order immediately reinstates racial hierarchy, as Jim is both thanked and othered.
• “He has dared all to rescue me...but she did not look at him again.” (Margaret, quoting Du Bois, [46:44])

Biblical & Apocalyptic Imagery:

• Frequent reference to themes of rebirth, redemption, and the leveling nature of mass death.
• “The rich and the poor are met together…the Lord is maker of them all.” (Du Bois, read by Margaret, [36:28])
• Characters gesture towards a moment of human equality before being swept back into old roles.

Literary Analysis & Reflections

[47:47]

• Margaret and Hazel (the show’s story selection assistant) offer post-story reflection:
  • Du Bois uses conventional tropes—“apocalypse and rebirth,” “archetypes from the Garden of Eden”—to imagine the destruction of racism and birth of new humanity.
  • The story’s return to brutal social order after the crisis is “profoundly degrading and dehumanizing,” illustrating how deeply such roles persist.
  • Yet the ending allows a moment of Black joy and survival—a reminder of “resistance and interdependence, a promise that the fight for liberation continues.”
• Hazel notes: “I enjoy...how when the cars honk and the fireworks crack, the noise they make is put into quotation marks as if they're characters who are also speaking. I find this stylistically quite charming.” ([47:47])
• Margaret on Du Bois’ style: “He loves alliteration...I really appreciate that he actually cares about the craft of writing.” ([49:00])
• Discussion of how apocalyptic fiction has shifted from horror to a genre of its own, and reflection on the leveling effect of death in history.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Social Hierarchy and Human Distinction

“The rich and the poor are met together...the Lord is maker of them all.”
— Margaret quoting Du Bois ([36:28])

“Yes, I was not human yesterday...And your people were not my people, she said. But today...”
— Margaret, reading ([36:51])

On the Meaning of Apocalypse

“Death. The Leveler, he muttered. And the Revealer, she whispered gently, rising to her feet.”
— Margaret ([36:58])

“Du Bois’ protagonist could only imagine the destruction of racism through the destruction of his entire society...”
— Hazel ([47:21])

On Literary Style

“I also really appreciate that he's managed to write a nuclear apocalypse story before the invention of the nuclear bomb, and it's interesting because it was probably presented as horror, but it doesn’t read as horror to me now.”
— Margaret ([49:21])

“I enjoy...how when the cars honk and the fireworks crack, the noise they make is put into quotation marks as if they're characters who are also speaking.”
— Hazel, as quoted by Margaret ([47:47])

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Important Timestamps & Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:07 | Background on Du Bois and his place in Black history, science fiction, and political thought | | 03:03 | Start of dramatic reading of “The Comet” | | 19:28 | Introduction of Julia, and the intersection of race and gender as apocalypse unravels social boundaries | | 34:44 | Move toward mutual understanding and kinship between Jim and Julia | | 46:44 | Restoration of social order and racial hierarchy when Julia’s family and world return | | 47:47 | Post-story analysis with Hazel; discussion of themes, style, and story's ongoing relevance | | 49:00 | Margaret’s personal reflections on style and the historical nature of apocalypse fiction |

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Episode Takeaways

• “The Comet” by W.E.B. Du Bois is more than early science fiction—it’s a profound meditation on race, apocalypse, and rebirth.
• The episode highlights the story’s prophetic vision of how social roles endure and are challenged during catastrophe.
• Listeners are left with a sense of hope in resistance and the enduring struggle for liberation, even within cycles of collapse and restoration.

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Final Thoughts

Margaret closes with a call to mutual care and struggle:

“Take care of each other. Love each other. It is our duty to fight for freedom and it is our duty to win.” ([50:40])

—

This summary captures the heart of the episode, making it accessible for listeners and non-listeners alike, with clear sections, direct quotes, and thoughtful breakdowns of both story and analysis.

Transcript

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Cool Zone Media. Book Club Book Club Book Club Book Club Book Club hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm your host Margaret Killjoy and every week I bring you usually stories and this week I'm bringing you a story by someone that I didn't even realize wrote fiction, but someone that I've referenced a lot in my Historian research, Historical research. I'm not really a historian, but in the history podcast that I run, because I'm going back to a story from 1920 written by the civil rights leader, Harvard trained sociologist and prolific author W.E.B. du Bois. Basically, if you've heard me reference on cool people who did cool stuff, the idea that the Civil War was won by the general strike of enslaved people in the US south and how that crippled the Confederate economy. I'm referencing W.E.B. du Bois, and he's written a lot, but that's the most influential on my understanding of history. W.E.B. du Bois was born in 1868, and he is primarily known as a nonfiction writer, most notably the Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America. But he also left us some fiction that explored ideas he couldn't articulate with his nonfiction work. And it's actually good fiction. Just to be clear, sometimes when nonfiction writers are like, I'm going to write a story, they're not nailing it. But yeah, no, the story is very good. Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP and was a longtime editor of its newspaper, which is called the Crisis, which is a fantastic name for a paper. Politically, he was a Pan Africanist and sympathetic to socialism and found capitalism to be the root cause of fascism, though pragmatism and personal conflicts with socialist organizers often led him back to electoral politics. This story, the Comet, is a pillar of early 20th century Black science fiction, and a lot of critics look back on it as an early example of Afrofuturism. Du Bois was a lifelong atheist, but was deeply interested in religious metaphor, apocalyptic language, and the way that systems bigger than us filter down into everyday lives. And you'll see that on full display in this story. And just as a note, this was written by a Black author in 1920, talking about people at the time. And some people are going to use the N word to describe a character in the story. I am not going to read the N word, but instead I'm going to introduce a bleep. Okay, without further ado, because that's the ado. The ado is done. Without any more of that adieu. Here is the Comet by W.E.B. du Bois. He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him, save in a way that stung. He was outside the world. Nothing. As he said bitterly, bits of the words of the Walkers came to him. The comet. Oh, the comet. Everyone was talking of it. Even the President, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him and asked. Well, Jim, are you scared? No, said the messenger shortly. I thought we'd journey through the comet's tale once, broke in the junior clerk affably. Oh, that was Halley's, said the president. This is a new comet. Quite a stranger, they say. Wonderful, wonderful. I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim, turning around again to the messenger, I want you to go down into the lower vaults today. The messenger followed the president silently. Of course they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened. Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in, said the president. But we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there. It isn't very pleasant. I suppose not very, said the messenger as he walked out. Well, Jim, the tale of the new comet hits us at noon this time, said the vault clerk as he passed over the keys. But the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went, beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men, down to the dark basement beneath. Down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here, with his dark lantern, he groped in the bowels of the earth under the world. He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last, was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf on the muddied floor and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in. It was evidently a secret vault, some hiding place of the old bank vault, unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong and rusty. He looked at the vast and old fashioned lock and flashed its light on the hinges. They were deeply encrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last low groan lay bare its treasure. And he saw the dull sheen of gold

[Angela Yee (Way Up With Angela Yee)]

boom.

[Margaret Killjoy]

A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew the great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then, with a sigh, he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead, but he searched, pounded, pushed and worked until after what seemed endless hours, his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges. And then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corps. He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him, the messenger hurried up to the sub vault. In vain, he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re echoed weirdly up into the great basement. He rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face. Cold and a fear arose in the messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere, bowed, bent and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved, but the sight was appalling. Robbery and murder, he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him. If they found him here, alone with all this money and all these dead men, what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street. How silent the street was. Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high noon. Wall Street. Broadway. He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright, he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building and stared helplessly at the sight. In the great stone doorway, a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great gaping doorway like refuse in a can. As if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a businessman, silk hatted and frock coated, who had crept too along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the sign post, her head bowed, motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a streetcar, silent and within. But the messenger butt glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the last edition in his uplifted hand. Danger screamed its black headlines. Warnings wired around the world. The comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar, the messenger read, and staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little sweet faced girl, looking upward toward the skies. And in the carriage by her lay. But the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way, the terror burst in his veins, and with one great gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran, ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one, one last wail of pain, he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still. When he rose, he gave no glance at all to the still and silent forms on the benches. But going to a fountain bathed his face. Then, hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through the comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see. He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous ghost haunted halls. He beat back the nausea and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the streets and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights. Yesterday they would not have served me, he whispered as he forced the food down. Then he started up the street, looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms, silent, silent. All was nobody, nobody. He dared not think the thought and hurried on. Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God, how could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway. Then he almost laughed. No, a car. If he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere, stood, leaned, lounged and lay the dead in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile wrecked and overturned, past another filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death struck lips on, past crowds and groups of cars pausing by dead policemen at 42nd street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd street, he heard a sharp cry and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God. And do you know what else is in your ear right now? Like the voice of God. It sure as fuck isn't sports gambling, but it might be the rest of these goods and services.

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There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps 25, rarely beautiful, and richly gowned, with darkly golden hair and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to a rescue, she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from her, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously, he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better classes, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity, and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow, and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires Long banked but not out. So a moment each paused and gauged the other. Then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other. What has happened? She cried. Tell me. Nothing stirs. All is silence. I see the dead strown before my window as winnowed by the breath of God. And see. She dragged him through the great silken hangings to where beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery. The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body. I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night. When I came out I saw the dead. What has happened? She cried. Again, he answered slowly, something comet or devil swept across the earth this morning, and many are dead. Many, very many. I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you. She gasped, and they stared at each other. My father, she whispered. Where is he? He started for the office. Where is it? In the Metropolitan Tower. Leave a note for him here and come. Then he stopped. No, he said firmly. First we must go to Harlem. Harlem. She cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps. There's a swifter car in the garage in the court, she said. I don't know how to drive it, he said. I do, she answered. In 10 minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutts rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th street on 2 wheels and slipped with a shriek into 1 35th. He was gone but a moment. Then he returned and his face was gray. She did not look but said, you have lost somebody. I have lost everybody, he said simply. Unless he ran back and was gone several minutes. Hours they seemed to her. Everybody, he said, and he walked slowly back with something film like in his hand, which he stuffed into his pocket. I'm afraid I was selfish, he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lying dead of Harlem, the brown still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence, the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park and down Fifth Avenue they whirled in and out. Among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great square metropolitan tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy Aside, the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and staring at her sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed, but unsent. Dear daughter, I've gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me. Jbh Come. She cried nervously. We must search the city. Up and down, over and across, back again. On went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death, death and silence. They hunted from Madison Square to Spoot and Duval. They rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge. They swept over Brooklyn from the Battery and Morningside Heights. They scanned the river. Silence. Silence everywhere. And no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled, they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor, a smell. And with a shadow shifting breeze. A sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled back helplessly in her seat. What can we do? She cried. It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly. The long distance telephone, the telegraph and the cable. Night rockets and then flight. She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men as she had always pictured men, but he acted like one, and she was content. In 15 minutes they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door, he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro and knew his burdens, the poor little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage, inert, dead, almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked. She beat back the thought. But it looked. It persisted in looking like. She turned her head and found herself alone. One moment she was terrified. Then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely with a quick intaking of breath. Hello. She cried in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world must answer. Would the world answer? Was the world silence? She had spoken too low. Hello. She cried, full voiced. She listened. Silence. Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones. Hello? Hello? Hello. What was that whirring? Surely no. Was it the click of a receiver? She Bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes and called and called until her voice rose almost to a shriek and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly, staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained, but the world. She could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty, too terrible. She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world, with a stranger, with something more than a stranger, with a man, alien in blood and culture unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was awful. She must escape. She must fly. He must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughts. She gathered her silk and skirts deftly about her young smooth limbs, listened, and glided into a side hall. A moment she shrank back. The hall lay filled with dead women. Then she leaped to the door and tore at it with bleeding fingers until it swung wide. She looked out. He was standing at the top of the alley, silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know. She did not care. She simply leaped and ran, ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings. She stopped. She was alone, alone. Alone on the streets, alone in the city, perhaps alone in the world. There crept in upon her the sense of deception, of creeping hands behind her back, of silent, moving things she could not see, of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested. Then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly. But he said nothing as he handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered, not that. And he answered slowly, no, not that. And you, dear listener, are also never alone in this great and terrible world, for you will always have the accompaniment of these sweet, sweet deals on products and services waiting for you. Gently. Here's ads,

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[Angela Yee (Way Up With Angela Yee)]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're back. They climbed into the car. She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed with great, dry, quivering sobs as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. In the world. Behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent. Here it was hideous. It clothed in itself, in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and awful silence was it like death everywhere. Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all enveloping death deserted them. They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep, not dead. They moved in quiet reverence lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had at last found peace. They moved in some solemn, worldwide Friedhof, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept until. Until. And quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other's eyes, he ashen and she crimson with unspoken thought. To both the vision of a mighty beauty, of vast unspoken things, swelled in their souls. But they put it away. Great dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low layer of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth. The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold. Do you know the code? She asked. I know the call for help. We used it formerly at the bank. She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of the waters far below, the dark and restless waters, the cold and luring waters, as they called. He stepped within. Slowly she walked to the wall where the water called below and stood and waited. Long she waited and he did not come. Then, with a start she saw him too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters and said quietly, the world lies beneath the waters. Now may I go? She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her Heart, she answered in a voice clear and calm. No. Upward. They turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The world was darkening to twilight and a great gray pall was falling mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay silently back as the motor whizzed along and looked half consciously for the Elf Queen to wave life into this dead world again. She forgot to wonder at the quickness with which she had learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And then, as they whirled and swung into Madison Square and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower, she gave a low cry and her eyes were great. Perhaps she had seen the Elf Queen. The man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk. Then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city, and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently yet tenderly. She looked up at him with thankfulness in her eyes and eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him. He seemed very human. Very near now. Have you had to work hard? She asked softly. Always, he said. I have always been idle, she said. I was rich, I was poor, he almost echoed. The rich and the poor are met together, she began, and he finished, the Lord is maker of them all. Yes, she said slowly. And how foolish our human distinctions seem now, looking down to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows. Yes, I was not human yesterday, he said. She looked at him. And your people were not my people, she said. But today. She paused. He was a man no more, but he was in some larger sense a gentleman, sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his hands and his face. Yet yesterday, death. The Leveler, he muttered. And the Revealer, she whispered gently, rising to her feet. With great eyes he turned away and after fumbling a moment, sent a rocket into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up a slim path of light and scattered its stars abroad, dropping on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. Above the dead past hovered the angel of Annunciation. She was no Mere woman. She was neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. She was primal woman, mighty mother of all men to come, and bride of life. She looked upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong, vigorous manhood, his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. She was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of another clime and blood. But her brother, humanity incarnate, son of God and great all, father of the race to be. He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering darkness. Dark purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind them and all around the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. Suddenly, as though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud curtain fell away. Low on the horizon lay a long white star, mystic, wonderful, and from it fled upward to the pole like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars. In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his cast leaped the lone magic majesty of kings. Long dead, he arose within the shadows, tall, straight and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters hovering to his grasp. It was as though some mighty pharaoh lived again or curled a Syrian lord. He turned and looked upon the lady and found her gazing straight at him. Silently, immovably, they saw each other. Face to face, eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust. It was not love. It was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid. Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other. The heavens above, the seas around the city grim and dead below. He loomed out from the velvet shadows. Vast and dark, pearl white and slender. She shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms and they cried to each other almost with one voice. The world is dead. Long live the honk, honk. Hoarse and sharp, the cry of a motor drifted up clearly from the silence below. They started backward with a cry and gazed upon each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled. Honk, honk, honk, honk. Came the mad cry. Again, and almost from their feet a rocket blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. She covered her eyes with her hands and her shoulders heaved. He dropped and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. A blue flame sputtered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering rocket as it flew. Then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth. Clang, crash, clang. The roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the great tower tremble. A murmur and babble of voices swept in upon the night. All over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered and flamed, and then, with a sudden clanging of doors, the entrance to the platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed to the girl and lifted her to his breast. My daughter. He sobbed. Behind him hurried a younger comelier man, carefully clad in motor costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face flushed deeper and deeper crimson. Julia, he whispered. My darling, I thought you were gone forever. She looked up at him with strange, searching eyes. Fred, she murmured, almost vaguely, is the world gone? Only New York, he answered. It is terrible, awful, you know. But you. How did you escape? How have you endured this horror? Are you well? Unharmed. Unharmed, she said. And this man here? He asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm and turning toward the negro. Suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to his hip. Why? He snarled. It's a Julia. Has he. Has he dared? She lifted her head and looked at her late companion curiously, and then dropped her eyes with a sigh. He has dared all to rescue me, she said quietly, and I thank him much. But she did not look at him again. As the couple turned away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets. Here, my good fellow, he said, thrusting the money into the man's hands. Take that. What's your name? Jim Davis, came the answer, hollow voiced. Well, Jim, I thank you. I've always liked your people. If you ever want a job, call on me. And they were gone. The crowd poured up and out the elevators, talking and whispering. Who was it? Are they alive? How many?

[Angela Yee (Way Up With Angela Yee)]

Two.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Who was saved. A white girl in a There she goes. Where is he? Let's lynch the damned. Shut up. He's alright. He saved her. Saved? Hell, he has no business here. He comes. Into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly with the eyes of those that walk and sleep. What do you think of that? Cried a bystander of all New York, just a white girl and a the colored man heard nothing. He stood silently beneath the glare of the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed. Slowly he put his other hand into his pocket and brought out a baby's filmy cap and gazed again. A woman mounted to the platform and looked about, shading her eyes. She was brown, small, and toil worn, and in one arm lay the corpse of a dark the crowd parted and her eyes fell on the colored man. With a cry she tottered towards him. Jim. He whirled and with a sob of joy caught her in his arms. The end and yeah, we're back. Thanks for listening to that story with me. Hazel, who helps me pick the stories, has this to say about it. Du Bois is using common literary tropes of the day to craft a powerful tale of apocalypse and rebirth for black folks. He plays with archetypes from the Garden of Eden to cast our protagonists as a new Adam and Eve and a grand metaphor for the destruction of racism and the birth of a new humanity. Du Bois protagonist could only imagine the destruction of racism through the destruction of his entire society and the restoration of societal order coming with some pretty profound degradation and dehumanization. Even as the scale of the story returns back to the interpersonal and out of the mythical, we still see how the characters continue to be caught up in roles and narratives and violence that is greater than they are. And even amidst that, we still end on a moment of black joy, a reminder of resistance and interdependence, a promise that the fight for liberation continues. Also, that Hazel specifically enjoys, quote how when the cars honk and the fireworks crack, the noise they make is put into quotation marks as if they're characters who are also speaking. I find this stylistically quite charming. As for what I have to say about it, I tend to agree with Hazel about stories. It's why we work together on this. But specifically, he loves alliteration and it makes it really funny to read. I had to do a lot of retakes of various parts, but I really appreciate that he actually cares about the craft of writing. There's a lot of stuff that isn't the modern style, right? Like ending sentences with exclamation marks is like seeing as cheesy from the pulp era of fiction this was written then. I also really appreciate that he's managed to write a nuclear apocalypse story before the invention of the nuclear bomb, and it's interesting because it was probably presented as horror, but it doesn't read as horror to me now because the idea of literally everyone dying is like apocalypse is a different genre than horror now, even though most of the story is just describing dead bodies. And I also really like the sort of subtle and unsubtle play of as they're developing these sexual thoughts towards each other. It's mostly her deciding that she has sexual thoughts towards him. I didn't catch it until my second read that she's holding the telephone in this black telephone. She's like, it almost looks like a. No, I can't think that. I don't know. But the characters, they're still doing this mythical level thing, but they feel very real. Yeah, I don't know. I understand why people have to imagine the destruction of all of the existent. And also I just really appreciate stuff that talks about death as the great leveler. I really appreciate when I'm reading history and you're like, oh, these revolutionaries, they died or whatever. And you're like, yeah. And so did everyone who sat it out. Right? So did everyone who just like stayed home, twiddled their thumbs. You're talking about the 19th century. Everyone's dead. No one from the 19th century is alive. So what do you want? Yeah, anyway, this has been the Comet by W.E.B. du Bois, published in 1920 in a collection called Dark Water. I'm Margaret Killjoy. You can find me on the Internet at Margaret on Bluesky and Margaret Killjoy on Instagram. And next Sunday I will be back with more short fiction. The Cool Zone Media Book Club. Take care of each other. Love each other. It is our duty to fight for freedom and it is our duty to win. Alright, bye everyone. It Could Happen Here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast podcast from Cool Zone Media Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts

[Angela Yee (Way Up With Angela Yee)]

you can find sources for it could

[Angela Yee]

happen here updated [e-mail] sources thanks for listening.

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[Angela Yee]

spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas, endless sunshine and the cool Bahamian breeze. Baha Mar, located in Nassau, Bahamas, offers your choice of three luxury hotels, the richly refined Rosewood, the playfully hip SLS and the stylishly modern Grand Hyatt. With over 45 restaurants, bars and lounges, Baja Mar serves up delicious dining from world renowned chefs like Daniel Boulud and Marcus Samuelsson, nightlife venues like the new Jean Baptiste Jazz Club and the Caribbean's most luxurious luxurious casino. At Baja Mar, you'll find every pleasure under the sun and one of a kind experiences for the entire family like Baja Bay, our 15 acre lush tropical water park, interactive wildlife experiences including our daily Flamingo parade, world class golf, tennis spa and so much more. Visit bajamar.com today and discover a vacation destination where memories are made for a lifetime. Baha Martin Life Spectacular this is Angela

[Angela Yee (Way Up With Angela Yee)]

Yee from Way Up With Angela Yee, y'. All Black Girl Vitamins is completely changing the wellness game for us. You know our bodies don't move the same as we get older and health becomes even more important. BGV Black Girl Vitamins is giving us all the supplements we need to stay healthy. I've seen hundreds of ladies online raving about their tasteless collagen powder that made their joint pain practically disappear. I had to try it myself and y', all, it is the truth. If your body needs help bouncing back, go ahead and check their products out on BlackGirlVitamins Co and get 20% off using code Angela Yee this is an iHeart podcast.

[Angela Yee]

Guaranteed human.