By Matt Spaulding
Abbot thinks he is picking up just another ride-share customer when he pulls into a quick-stop parking lot. Instead, he meets Ether, a mysterious woman who has a large, sealed black box she has been hired to transport clear across the country to Washington D.C. in just a few days in time for the Fourth of July. Soon, the two become the subject of multiple conspiracy theories and a cross-country chase.
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is the first definitive novel about the modern internet age. Pargin has crafted a narrative about all the issues facing our country today: isolation, mental health, radicalization and the rapid spread of misinformation. He perfectly captures the way that a small misunderstanding and a lack of information can balloon into insane conspiracy when fed through the internet hive mind.
One of the intriguing things in this novel is how the character we start the book with, Abbott, changes throughout. When we meet him, he’s riddled with anxiety and has lots of social issues and problems with his dad. We think he’s a lovable loser. But, the more we get to know him, the more we learn that might not be the case.
Conversely, when we meet Ether, we begin to think that she’s perhaps part of something shady. We aren’t sure at all what she’s about. But, ultimately, she ended up being the best character in the book, in my opinion. Through Ether, Pargin said a lot of things that I’ve known for a long time that I think too many people don’t know but need to hear. Despite a note from Pargin at the end of the novel about how everything in the book is fictional and tries to distance himself personally from the characters, Ether feels most like the character who is expressing his views. I have no way of knowing this, of course, but she’s so authentic it’s the feeling I walked away with.
Another major player is retired FBI agent Key, who can’t leave her job behind. She specialized in online radicalization and tracking terror threats, and the story of Ether and Abbot convinces her there is a major threat to national security. She’s pretty ridiculous, just as unable to accept actual evidence (or lack thereof) as anyone she’s studied on a message board. She’s an example of how even the best of folks can get roped into things under the right circumstances.
The story being told is gripping, mysterious, and hard to put down. And, though Pargin would deny it, it’s an important story, too. Some folks may argue that fiction can’t be important, but I disagree. The power of stories is strong. Fiction allows us to explore other points of view and ideas we may not have considered before. Because of that, I consider I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom to be one of the most important pieces of fiction of our time. Because, even though I can’t give it away, what’s inside the Black Box of Doom isn’t what anyone thinks it is. But what is in the box still has the power to wreck the world, and we all need to figure out how to stop it.