Summary
"Fall" opens with Amie returning for the new school year and noticing significant changes at her school. Many students have left, for reasons such as one parent being a short-stringer and not being able to justify the expense with the knowledge that the family will soon be a single-parent household, and other families searching for a higher quality of life outside of New York. Further, the administration and the PTA are stifling teachers by barring them from bringing up anything related to the strings to students. A teacher at Connelly Academy is fired for overstepping this rule when she shows her senior class a presentation telling them not to be afraid of short-stringers and not to be afraid of receiving a short string themselves. We see the unfolding of greater disdain towards short-stringers: law enforcement arrests a man for selling short strings for cruel pranks, a gun law limiting short-stringers' access to guns is the first gun regulation law to make it through Congress in a very long time, and a custody battle is underway where a mother cites her ex-husband's short string as a rationale for her receiving custody.
Maura feels stuck due to all the bad press and news around short-stringers and the arduous journey she's on to come to terms with her string. She confides in Nina, telling her how she's feeling and not knowing how to move forward. In response, Nina surprises her and offers a trip wherever she wants. Because Maura took Italian for a year in college and she identifies with the enduring spirit of Venice, they go to Venice. Bucket list trip travelers crowd airports and landmarks. Nina and Maura visit Verona and see the Juliet statue and the site where the newlyweds jumped off the bridge together and the short-stringer woman died. The current of this realization while being in Italy with Maura prompts Nina to propose. Maura says yes.
Back in America, Senator Wes Johnson officially announces he is a short-stringer. While he receives applause, Anthony Rollins's pledge to short stringers overshadows Johnson's speech. Rollins cites Jack's 'short-string', and Javier is furious. Javi can't believe his short string could be what launches Rollins further into public favor. He is confused that Jack hasn't brought it up, so he brings it up when they're at a boxing ring together. Jack says that his uncle's actions are messed up but plays it off, and Javier is angry that Jack isn't willing to stand up to his family in any way and is brushing aside this issue even though it will affect many people. He feels that Jack is too self-centered and unable to see the gravity of things beyond his family. This is their first big fight in four years of friendship, and Javier goes to pray for the first time since the arrival of the strings at a local church on his run because he's so mad about the whole situation. Javier moves out one week early, deciding to be with his family instead of Jack. Jack tries to give Javier the aged Jewish prayer card his grandpa Cal gave him, but Javier rejects it. Jack realizes he's done wrong by Javier, and promises to make him proud.
Anthony Rollins's campaign team finds more information on the girl who attempted to shoot him at his rally. The girl is motivated by her brother's death caused by verbal and physical abuse at a fake-pledge fraternity hazing at Anthony's fraternity. The boy was among several scholarship kids and first-generation students the fraternity regularly invites—guys they have no intention of letting into the fraternity—to abuse them for their amusement. The parents of the frat brothers spent three hours crafting a statement with the college president before calling the authorities to notify them of the death, and they lied that it was due to alcohol poisoning. In light of all the strings, Anthony reasons that it isn't his fault, because the boy had a short string. If it weren't for Anthony and his frat brother's actions, surely something else would've happened to end his life. He believes God couldn't have known that he would've pushed the boy to the point of death. This thought strikes a chord with Anthony, so he begins drinking to forget the situation.
Ben goes to Maura's apartment as she has commissioned him to create art based on three significant locations in her relationship with Nina. As he enters their apartment, he meets Amie, who Nina has asked to stop by to water their plants. They meet, but neither knows the other is who they've been exchanging letters with. After helping the elderly neighbor with a leak in his apartment, the two go on a date to a trattoria to pretend they're also in Italy. So begins several dates, and Ben avoids taking Amie back to his apartment until he can tell her about his string. After Amie brings up Gertrude, Ben is stunned, and eventually he pieces together that Amie is "-A." He isn't sure if he could or should tell her, because he's already divulged so much in the letters. After a chance encounter in the park, Ben tells Amie the truth through a letter in which he addresses her directly and signs his name -Ben. Amie freaks out. Even though she likes him and feels a familiarity with him she hasn't felt before, she can't get the time he has left, 14 years, out of her head. She asks Nina over and tells her about everything, and that she can't continue with Ben because of his short string. Nina tells Amie she's proposed to Maura, a decision Amie questions and criticizes. They get into a heated argument, ending with Nina saying that if she doesn't support the marriage, she shouldn't attend the wedding.
Jack goes to New York to escape his sad apartment after Javier leaves. He spends two days there, and while in New York, he sees two teenage guys in aggressive stances approaching a Wes Johnson canvasser. He watches nearby, and when things escalate he nods to the pregnant woman across the street who is poised to call 911. The boys are heckling the canvasser, throwing his clipboard, and trying to get him to retrieve it so they can steal all the donations. They're mocking him, telling him he must be a short-stringer, which they say as if it's a curse word. Jack intervenes and tells them to leave him alone, and they begin punching at him, which he dodges swiftly and effortlessly. He punches them both in the stomach, without using full force, and hands them off to the police. Jack then meets Lea, the pregnant woman from across the street. He notices her pin of two different string lengths twirled around each other, signifying inter-string-length love. Jack realizes how capable he is, and how much the time spent sparring with Javier has helped him. Now he knows that when something matters, he can summon the strength to fight for it. At this moment, he realizes Javier is right about the danger his uncle poses. He decides that the next time his aunt and uncle invite him to a rally, he's going to go and make good on his promise to Javier.
While in a storage unit with his parents clearing out most of what they've kept, Ben finds a card his parents wrote to him when he was younger. It says, "Don't be scared! We're always watching out for you." It makes him realize how his parents have always made him feel safe and protected, and now he needs their comfort more than ever. He tells his parents he has a short string with 14 years left of his life. In response, his mother hugs him fiercely, and his father places his hand on his shoulder. Ben realizes that Claire never touched him when she told him the truth, she only held herself. But now, his parents disregard themselves and turn their care toward their son. After having realized that Amie is the person he's been writing letters back and forth with, he has felt unsure of what to do and has considered abandoning the letters. He feels his dreams of wanting a family and children may be illogical because of his string. Among these feelings, he realizes today is the two-month anniversary of Hank's death, so he makes his way to where it all happened. He sees a bunch of people crowded around something, and at first, he thinks they could all be there for Hank. He realizes they're standing around the artwork of someone opening Pandora's box and releasing evil into the world. He can't look at it, so he makes his way toward the spot and sees a girl standing there with peach-colored flowers. Upon speaking with her, he learns that Hank gave her his lungs, and the readers know that this is the girl with the pink tips whose mother looked at her string. She inspires him to measure his life by the breadth of life experience, which fuels his honest letter to Amie. Upon leaving the park, he looks back at the artwork of Pandora's box and realizes someone has written "Hope" at the bottom of the box.
Analysis
Predestination is a prevalent theme in "Fall." Javier says that for many people, the strings are proof of either predestination or the inequities of luck. This also brings up the theme of fortune, because some long-stringers see their fate as proof that God is on their side, while others are confused about what they did to warrant such bad luck. This raises the question of what effect not having something to work towards (in this case, the prize of a long life) has on people. But from Javier's point of view, we learn how religious service attendance has greatly increased since the arrival of the strings, and how he understands this as supporting the belief that the world feels less chaotic when we see things as part of God's plan. Javier uses the metaphor that he wants to believe we have more agency over our lives than cars on a track assembled by God (p. 201), which contrasts with the motif of trains that appears throughout Ben's point of view. This contrast highlights the idea that we don't know how much fate guides our actions—whether it matters what we do in our lives or if the endpoint is determined the minute we get on the train/begin our lives.
Similarly, we see this idea of predestination and free will in Anthony's point of view. Anthony's team finds a link between him and the female shooter at his NYC rally. The link is her brother, who was hazed to death by Anthony's fraternity. When Anthony learns his connection to her, he reminds himself that the boy could have left at any time during the abuse; the door was never locked. In hindsight, he sees that the boy would now be considered a short-stringer, so if the alcohol hadn't killed him, then something else would have. But then we see that Anthony is struggling with the possibility that there was a reason that the boy's string was short. The possibility that God had been able to see the future and that Anthony and his frat brothers would cause the boy's death, causing his short string. So in Anthony's inner dialogue, we see how the idea of predestination also brings up the question of free will. The possibility that our actions are known and predestine us (ex: someone's string is short and the way they die is the way they were always going to die, or someone's string is long because they're fated to meet a specific doctor who will save them) before we act.
We see the theme of control in the conversation between Maura and Ben. Maura asks Ben if he's seen the new mind-uploading companies striving to discover how to perpetually preserve the human brain by scanning it onto a computer. We saw this theme touched on in the approach to decoding the strings and how the strings have affected individual countries within The Measure thus far. Mind-uploading companies are in demand because people are looking for a way to bypass their strings and "escape" a timeline "dictated" by their physical body/string (p. 207). This word choice illustrates this as the most glaring attempt at control thus far, as this is an attempt to control and rewrite destiny. Ben doesn't believe this approach is for him. However, when he meets the girl to whom Hank donated his lungs, he sees another way for us to live on beyond death (p.256). This realization further addresses the theme of perspective, as we've seen alternative ways to live after death through Ben's point of view: through creation, such as the creation of buildings, through organ donation, and the effect we have on the lives of others.
Upon Nina's offer to go on a trip to escape the feeling of stuckness Maura is experiencing in New York, Maura immediately knows where she wants to go: Venice. And in her descriptions of Venice, we see both the anthropomorphism of Venice and Venice as a metaphor for short-stringers. When deciding on Venice, Maura cites the warnings that Venice receives each year that the city is sinking, and the water continues to rise. The odds are against it, but it still stands, and she proceeds to anthropomorphize, and likely identify, with Venice, calling it a fighter (p. 197). We can hypothesize this identifying with Venice and using it as a metaphor for her predicament resulting from Maura feeling pressure with the public scrutiny of short-stringers and characterizing them as dangerous. Further, when Maura is in Venice with Nina, she notes that almost everywhere they go clanging sounds and the sound of jackhammers constantly remind everyone of the city's fragility and inevitable demise. She then says Venice is in perpetual repair, hoping to ward off its fate (p. 226). Similarly, the strings' arrival reminds us of our fragility as people, and the efforts to ward off death through mind-uploading (i.e. "perpetual preservation") parallel Venice's hope to ward off its fate (p. 207).
While in Venice, Nina proposes to Maura. When Nina plans to tell Amie about this engagement, Amie is having a crisis after learning that Ben, a man she's falling in love with, is the short-stringer she's been exchanging letters with. Firstly, in this storyline, we have situational irony. Thus far, we know Amie as a fanciful romantic who's slightly less grounded than Nina and uses fiction and even the current state of the world to fuel her need for a storylike adventure to help her forget her unhappiness with life. Contrastingly, Nina is a practical, cautious person whose logic outweighs her curiosity and her feelings. However, in this situation, Nina intends to marry a short-stringer while Amie is forcefully advising against it, telling her sister she hasn't thought this all through. As the reader, we'd expect the opposite situation, but instead, Nina is shocked at Amie's decision to no longer write to Ben and calls her a coward for deciding against pursuing the short-stringer that she's enamored with.
Up to this point, we've mostly seen Erlick use everyday situations to highlight the difference in the new world order. However, during Nina's fight with Amie, she further highlights the paradox brought up by the strings. When Amie argues that Nina can change her mind—that she will end up alone and widowed at forty if she marries Maura,—Nina argues that that's life and has always been the case. She highlights that marriage vows have always been the same—you vow yourself in sickness and in health until death do you part with another person, not knowing what fate will have in store. So before the strings, every couple accepted those terms, but now, with the appearance of the strings, such a promise seems unimaginable (p. 265). The strings have only changed the ability to know when parting will happen, but now people are allowing the strings to dictate whether people should stay together, or marry someone who'll die before them, even though that possibility has always been integral to marriage vows.
