Ark of the Lost Angels

September 1st, 2001 _{(Credit: Reddit)}

9/11 is a pivotal event in recent American history and its story deserves to be told in as much detail as possible.

I think any American that lived through 9/11, no matter how old we were, recognize that it’s still a sore spot in our collective consciousness. This was the defining moment for a generation. It marked the end of the 90s optimism and was an undeniable tragedy which happened almost entirely on live television. Everyone remembers where they were when it happened, either watching the second plane hit WTC 2 or either of the towers falling. It was a moment in time which captured the whole country’s attention. It changed the way we think, and I’ll bet that there are scores of others around the world who were deeply affected by watching such a shocking event as well.

One of my favorite expressions to describe the period of time in which I grew up is as “the child of two shadows.” I used that as the subtitle for a series of articles I wrote last summer which gave a cursory overview of what happened in the world in the 90s and 2000s for which people of my generation witnessed or were affected by the aftermath but weren’t old enough to grasp the full implications. What I mean by it is that, poetically, I grew up in both the shadow of the grave of the Cold War, and the shadow of the smoke at Ground Zero.

The end of the Cold War, our arrogance and complacency in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, and the utter panic we subjected ourselves to in the wake of 9/11 were the defining cultural attitudes of my childhood. However, much of what I know about the attacks and the aftermath are second hand, seeing as I was only three years old when the towers fell. The memory of watching the events unfold on television at my grandparents’ house while my father was flying down to Atlanta for work will be forever seared into my mind. I understand that I am one of the curious minds that would wade into the morbidity to figure out what happened around this monumental event which was so-often evoked when I was coming up. I know not everyone in my generation has that luxury or inclination. Hell, we were barely talking when it happened, I don’t blame anyone my age for not seeing the relevance. That being said, I think the attacks have a massive reason for leading us to where we are as a country.

It has been almost twenty-five years since the attacks. A quarter of a century filled with divisive policy, costly wars, and enduring mystification as to how the hell it happened, why the hell we did what we did afterwards, and what the hell it all was for. In some ways it’s all too recent to discuss in many ways. Sometimes the wounds are still too raw, especially when taking into account the pointless deaths as results from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the other theaters of our sprawling and often aimless War on Terror.

At the same time, it has been almost twenty-five years. There are kids who have graduated from college that weren’t even born when the towers fell. They have no perspective, even less than I do, as to what happened that way or some of the ways it changed the country and the world. We are always told “Never Forget” but there are generations now who are entering the world who don’t understand what we aren’t forgetting. It isn’t their fault. 9/11 has been invoked by their elders for their whole life to justify everything under the sun including invading sovereign nations and infringing on the civil rights of all Americans. The phenomenal impact of the day cannot be appreciated by those who never lived through it and don’t have the emotional frame of reference.

With all that in mind, I think this is the perfect time to put together a limited series chronicling the events of that horrid day. I think people are scared of touching it, and that’s understandable. Profiting off of tragedy is morally reprehensible. 9/11 is a sacred day in America for the worst reasons, because of a shocking and tragic loss of life on a scale most Americans could not conceive of beforehand. Unfortunately, it’s become a political prop more than a cause for reflection and contemplation. It’s hard to make people who weren’t there understand why 9/11 was so horrific. 2,977 victims is a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around. That old saying, “one life is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic” rings true. It’s more difficult to understand why this day had such an effect when looking at it from a macro level. No number of detailed summaries or analyses can capture the emotions of the stories both seen on that day and which made their way around the country in the days, weeks, and months afterwards. Not even the ones I’ve written.

Therefore, I want to make the argument that now is the time to depict these events. We were all there, we all saw it, but there are plenty of people active in society today who didn’t. And as all of us have gotten older, so have the survivors and the heroes of that day. And because all of us are only getting older, and our memories begin to fade and become muddled, a series depicting the events of September 11th can only get less accurate as each day passes. While there is more video footage of that day than some other great historical tragedies, news footage which has been played a thousand times over for almost two and a half decades loses its impact.

With every day and every first responder who dies of illnesses they received working at Ground Zero, our collective recollections grow less and less accurate. They become colored more and more by our collective losses and the sadness which permeates from that day. Now is the best time to create a series, with the input of as many people who lived through the events being depicted as possible, under the direction of a creative team which will treat the attacks and the situations surrounding them with the appropriate reverence and significance.

Such a project shouldn’t be politicized, and I don’t think it has to be. The only statement that needs to be made is that every soul who walked into the gates of hell to save others are heroes. Those people deserve to be immortalized in a way that’s as faithful to what they really did that can give the appropriate gravitas to the paradigm shifting day it was. There are countless works on political analysis of the aftermath and the decisions America made in the wake of the attacks. I am not trying to say they don’t have value, or that there is no value in demonstrating how our decisions contributed to the attacks or our decisions afterwards hurt the world at large. This series, however, should remain focused on that day, and the way innocent people became heroes as so many other innocents became victims.

The most interesting thing about 9/11 is the variety of stories which came out of that day. On the one side, there is the national security side of things: the intelligence failures leading to the war, the efforts of the military and the President’s Staff to assess and respond to the attacks themselves, the changes brought on by the aftermath. On the other hand, 9/11 also represents the average, everyday person’s response: shock and horror when finding out wherever you are at your daily life, the firefighters trying to rebuild when so many of them were lost when the towers go down, the paranoia that settled over everyone. The New Yorkers who had their lives upended by the attacks had nothing to do with the intelligence failures or the foreign policy which contributed to the resentment which sparked the attacks, yet their lives were affected just the same.

With all of the documentaries which have been produced, and the films exploring the aftermath of the attacks, this would be a way to put all of the famous stories we’ve been hearing for twenty-four years side by side with each other in a way that contextualizes everything. The intention is not to manufacture drama but provide a more immersive fashion for audiences to understand all of the pieces which were moving on one of the darkest days in American history. With so many eyewitness accounts of the events, finding the common ground to tell the story should allow us to construct a version of the events that are as true to life as possible. With so many stories from the days, even small moments can offer humanizing anecdotes and instances of showing the light found on such a dark day.

Paul Greengrass’ 2006 film, United 93, is a key inspiration for this series. The film chronicles the events of United Flight 93 which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back against the hijackers along with the air traffic controllers across the region. A meticulous focus on truth and facts is the most important part of this hypothetical series, and what I believe will make it work. It is important to recognize that this series may not be 100% accurate but striving to be as close to reality as possible is still the end goal.

Below, I have constructed a rudimentary outline as to what this could look like, breaking down episodes by the events depicted in each of them. This is just a rudimentary outline and could obviously be adjusted and expanded should this hypothetical series ever get made.

• Episode 1: Clear in a Million (Prelude)
  • President wakes up in Florida
  • Airplanes are boarded
  • President arrives in Florida
  • US Military Exercises
  • Newsrooms on the air
• Episode 2: Impact, Pt. I
  • People arriving at the Trade Center for work
  • ATC losing flights
  • Firefighters checking the gas leak
  • Impact of the first plane
  • Disaster response
  • News coverage begins
• Episode 3: Impact, Pt. II
  • South Tower gets hit
  • Responders arrive
  • Other places react
  • Trying to figure out in the newsrooms what is going on
• Episode 4: World Trade Center (Towers)
  • Disaster response begins
  • President leaves Florida
  • People move uptown
  • Responders head downtown
  • Vice President moved to the bunker
• Episode 5: Arlington
  • Pentagon gets hit
  • Evacuation of the Pentagon
  • Capital
• Episode 6: Emergency
  • The miscommunications on the news (fire at the White House, car bomb at the State Department, etc.)
  • FAA operations
  • Landing planes all around the country
  • Disaster coordination in New York City
  • Flight 93
• Episode 7: Collapse, Pt. I
  • WTC 2 Collapse
  • Uncertainty of stability of the North Tower
• Episode 8: Collapse, Pt. II
  • WTC 1 Collapse
  • New Yorkers attempting to get home
  • Families being notified
• Episode 9: The Only Plane In The Sky (Angel)
  • The President’s movements throughout the day
  • The Vice President’s activities at the White House
• Episode 10: War
  • The Collapse of World Trade Center 7
  • The discussions inside the White House
  • The newscasters wrapping up their days

Alternatively, episodes grouped by time and following the events of the day in a completely linear fashion with a lot of jumping around is a possibility but may be more difficult for audiences to follow.

I understand this may be a controversial viewpoint. That it’s too soon to mine this for entertainment. That is disrespects the victims and their families. Obviously, such a series would be undertaken with the full cooperation of the September 11^th Museum and Memorial, and the families affected. My desire is to confront America with what happened in a way that’s different than a documentary. Being visceral is the key here. Documentaries, articles, and books have a level of disconnection from today’s society focused on entertainment. Perhaps seeing things in such a way deliberately designed to invoke the emotions will trigger people to consider both why 9/11 is such a big deal to the people who lived through it and to understand why the nation reacted the way it did in its aftermath. Footage of buildings falling down from archived news coverage are enough to show what happened in an academic sense. However, to make younger audiences understand the emotional impact of this day, showing what happened in a much more intimate setting might spark the understanding and the reflection on 9/11 so desperately needed to understand how to navigate the way forward as a nation.

The Twins

As for the World Trade Center itself, these were symbols of America. They stood proudly in the New York City skyline for 28 years. In 2029, it’ll have been as long without them than they existed. In addition to being a colossal office complex, the World Trade Center also had a restaurant called Windows on the World in the North Tower, an observation deck called Top of the World on the South Tower, and an underground shopping mall which provided passageway for people evacuating the towers and for first responders to assist in saving civilians. There is even a small passageway that survived 9/11 to still be used today, with its original appearance intact. This was a place that was not only an icon of the city and representative of the nation as a whole, but also an everyday sight for thousands of workers and commuters who passed through the PATH station on site. It played hosts to tourists who stood in awe of its grandeur, and workers who were there every day.

Past generations had the ability to visit the World Trade Center. Many describe their childhood vacations complete with visits to the Top of the World, looking out over New York City. Many such stories about visits which took place in the weeks or days before 9/11 have a particularly haunting resonance. These were icons in movies and television shows, seen in countless photographs of New York City looming in the distance. They were landmarks for everyday New Yorkers for decades.

There is a game currently in development called Titanic: Honor and Glory. It’s a digital recreation of the famous RMS Titanic, being researched in the most meticulous detail I have ever personally heard of, to recreate the famous ocean liner for people to walk through. To understand a magnificent ship brought to a premature bitter and tragic end.

I am proposing a similar project for the World Trade Center. A way to walk through a place that is impossible to experience any more. As detailed of a recreation as possible for people to understand the scale and size of something so massive brought down by a tragic terrorist attack. A digital monument to a truly iconic location that many of us were robbed of the opportunity to visit would be a fitting tribute.

Especially if coupled with virtual reality, a digital reconstruction of the World Trade Center would put things into perspective. Give people the chance to look up at the two 110 story buildings in awe the way so many people could in reality for almost thirty years and to understand the scale of what was lost. Allowing people to look down from the floors where those trapped by the fire chose to jump. By bringing the past to life again like stepping through Windows on the World or doing some window shopping in the mall, I believe it’ll make it easier to feel why their loss was so significant.  

This is not meant to be a game. This will not depict the attacks in any way whatsoever. There is no objective to escape the attacks or anything of the sort. This “game” is meant to provide a space for people to walk around this iconic set of buildings to better understand them and feel why their sudden and violent disappearance was so significant for both New Yorkers and the world at large.

Why

There is a prevailing attitude amongst younger generations that 9/11 is held up as being too important by those who lived through it. There is a generational disconnect because there is little point of comparison available for life before and afterwards. People respond best when they have emotional investment. Reading a list of the names of the victims and watching fixed angles of the tower collapse from uptown can only do so much. Human society is currently focused on visual mediums.

The point of these ideas is to immortalize the heroism of those who walked into the gates of hell and came out, as well as pay tribute to what was lost. Without putting the events of 9/11 into perspective for people who never experienced them, their effect on society may not be entirely understood. For many of us who always lived in a post-9/11 world, being able to understand the emotion of the day would help explain the illogical or shortsighted actions and attitudes seen in its aftermath.

The World Trade Center, to me, represents the ideal of old New York. In addition to symbolizing the world before foreign terrorism came to American shores, it represents the world of my youth which I have so often talked about. Boxy cars and CRT screens, gold-hued sodium vapor lamps, and the lack of ubiquity of the internet were all characteristics of a past age to me. I feel that the Twin Towers represent the mundanity of this world as well as the more abstract idea of a society before America felt fear. To walk around in them in a digital way has the historical significance, of course, but would also sate a personal curiosity of mine about a world which overlapped with my life but not for a significant time.

More to it, depicting their final hours and the stories of the brave people who were there is a debt I feel we owe to the survivors.  I am among the last of the generations who could hear the stories of World War II veterans firsthand, and I understand that it will be my generation’s responsibility to tell their stories as accurately as possible when all of them are gone. In the same way, I will be among the last who witnessed 9/11 firsthand. Despite how young I was, the fact that I was here for the stories of 9/11 means that I will be one of the last who can tell these stories. History not heeded is history ignored, which means lessons that remain unlearned. Without telling these stories, immortalizing these moments, and impressing the emotional weight of these events upon those who came after, we cannot hope to remember the lessons we learned in their wake.

9/11 was a defining moment in American history. The impact of that day deserves to be explored through its stories so that future generations continue to understand its importance. The bravery of those who sacrificed their lives at Ground Zero should serve as an inspiration to all. In the tragedy of one of America’s darkest days came some of its finest hours. Those actions deserve to be immortalized in a way that elicits the emotions which will inspire reflection, contemplation, and the desire to continue acting in that vein and honoring those sacrifices.