Waking Gods

by Sylvain Neuvel

  —I know. Come sit with me over here.

  —It seems I won’t get that meeting with your … friend after all.

  —Perhaps not. Is there anything you want to know that I might be able to answer?

  — …

  —Dr. Franklin?

  —What? There are … There are so many things I wanna know.

  —We may not have time for so many things. If you could only ask one question, what would it be?

  —That’s easy. Who are you? Who do you work for?

  —I said one question.

  —I—

  —It does not matter. The answer to both questions is really one and the same. I am … no one.

  I was a college professor. I taught American literature at Montgomery College. I was … I was a different person. I married really young. My wife wanted me to become a writer. I never … She died of cancer when our son was twelve years old.

  —I’m sorry.

  —That is kind of you. It was a difficult time. I was not the worst father that ever lived, but I certainly was not good enough to raise a young man on my own. Henry, my son, seemed to forgive my shortcomings easily. We had a good relationship for a while. Parents feel a great deal of responsibility for the way their children turn out, but there is very little a parent can do that will remotely rival the influence a friend or lover can have. My son met a girl when he was fifteen, the daughter of a US senator. Nice girl, a year older than him. I thought she would be a good influence on him. My son turned out to be a bad influence on her. He had tried drugs before, but he could not afford an addiction. I had chosen to keep the house after my wife died—I wanted some stability for my son—and there was little money left after the mortgage. But she had money—her parents did. Two rebellious teenagers in love, with what must have seemed like unlimited means. A few months later, they were but shadows of themselves. I thought cocaine would claim the life of my son, but it was alcohol that did it. They got into a head-on collision with a drunk driver on their way to the video store.

  The driver had two prior convictions for driving under the influence. He was charged with vehicular homicide but was found not guilty because of a tainted blood sample.

  —You must have been angry.

  —I was. I was left with nothing. My wife and I had lots of friends, but they were her friends and they forgot all about me soon after she died. I had stopped going to work. I lost the house. All I had to hold on to was the anger. I withdrew whatever money I had left from my bank account—a thousand dollars or so—and I asked a friend of Henry’s to buy as much cocaine as he could with it. Then I found out where the driver lived. I put on my best suit, told his landlord I worked for the government, and asked to be let into his apartment. I hid the drugs and left. Later, I made an anonymous call to the police.

  —Did it work?

  —Of course not. I had made my discontent very clear to the police on several occasions. It did not take long for them to figure out who that mysterious government employee really was. They arrested me four hours after I made the call. I knew I was caught. I did not wear gloves. They would soon find my fingerprints all over the bag of cocaine.

  —Then what happened?

  —I was let go. Two men, both wearing a better suit than mine, picked me up and drove me home. A week later I received an invitation to the home of the senator.

  —The father of the girl your son dated.

  —Exactly. I did not know it at the time, but he was also the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. You do not get to that position without knowing the right people. Just one more favor called in and I was a free man. We had a long conversation about parenthood and the world we live in, some very good whisky.

  —Did you talk about what happened?

  —Not a word. It took nearly a month before I heard from him again. We met in a fancy Italian restaurant in Washington. That time we talked. He said I had shown both courage and stupidity, but that to achieve what I had set out to do—

  —To get some justice.

  —No. What drove me was not a sense of injustice but pure, unadulterated rage. All I wanted was vengeance. The senator told me that to get it, my commitment would need to be much greater. I remember feeling ashamed when I told him I would not murder the man who took the life of our children. He then asked me what I would be willing to sacrifice. I felt such a relief. I had nothing left, not even the desire to live so I did not hesitate before giving him the answer he was looking for.

  After dinner, I was taken to a small apartment outside the city and a nurse came in to draw my blood. I do not know how much blood I gave, but I had to lie in bed for two days afterwards. I got up when a man dropped a large envelope at the door. It contained five hundred dollars, a bank card, and a copy of the newspaper from that morning. On page three, it read: “Man arrested in murder of college professor.” The driver of the car that killed my son had been found unconscious in his own bed, covered in blood—my blood—with a knife on the floor. My home had been ransacked, there were signs of struggle, a large pool of blood on the living-room carpet. Witnesses said they saw his vehicle stopped on the side of the road near the Potomac River …

  —Don’t stop!

  —Apologies. I was distracted by the gas approaching your shoe.

  —Oh my God!

  —Perhaps we could continue our conversation on this desk, once we liberate it from all its … Dr. Franklin, you are trembling like a leaf.

  —We’re gonna die, aren’t we?

  —We were always going to die, Dr. Franklin. Would it be terribly inappropriate if I placed my arm on your shoulder? There. Where was I?

  —You were dead.

  —Oh yes. My body was never found. I watched my own funeral from a distance. Having so few people attend made giving up my former life that much easier.

  —How did you end up working for … ? You never told me who you work for.

  —I was not entirely sure myself, but it soon became clear I worked for the senator. He had his own private agenda and I was to help him advance it in any way that I could. My bank card gave me access to a CIA slush fund the senator had tapped into. He told me to find a quiet place to stay. I chose the small town in Northern Virginia where my wife was born. It took almost a year before I heard from him again. Several of the rebuilding contracts he had helped secure after the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War were getting some unwanted attention from the Defense Contract Audit Agency. He wanted me to “convince” the DCAA to look the other way. I refused, of course, but it was made abundantly clear to me that I did not have a say in the matter.

  —What did you do?

  —I bought a better suit. Then I met with the director of the DCAA.

  —You just sat down with him.

  —I thought I could persuade him.

  —And?

  —My powers of persuasion were not all that I thought them to be. He had me arrested, by the FBI this time.

  —Was the senator able to get you out again?

  —Indeed, he was. The director of the FBI came to see me personally. He took me out for a walk and asked if he could be of assistance. I told him I could use his help with the DCAA. The next day, the DCAA director was caught in some prostitution scandal and had to resign. After that, people in law enforcement and the intelligence community seemed to know who I was. I tried to find out what had happened at the FBI several times, to no avail. Years later, I was told that the director of the FBI received a call from the Oval Office saying that I worked for “an organization that has the best interests of the United States at heart.” I have heard it worded in various ways, but that is the one I like the most.

  —I assume you don’t work for that senator anymore.

  —Oh no. He died not long after that. Bone cancer.

  —So who do you work for now if it’
s not him?

  —Well, he was the only person who really knew anything about me. I had no name, a growing reputation in the intelligence community. I had a bank card. I traveled for a few months, then it occurred to me that, perhaps, I was in a unique position to effect some positive change in the world.

  —It can’t be just you. Are you telling me there’s no secret worldwide organization pulling strings all over the world?

  —I can tell you that if such an organization does exist, I have never heard of it. I certainly never worked for one. Over the years, I have made numerous connections all over the world, and the means at my disposal are considerably greater now than they once were, but I do not work for anyone, if that is what you are asking. I am what you would call … self-employed.

  —I’m … That’s insane! And it works? People believe you?

  —Why would they not? I have what they want most.

  —What’s that?

  —I offer tranquility of the mind. People choose to believe I am part of a greater entity because it lets everyone sleep better at night. The world we live in is terrifying. There is war, global warming, disease, poverty, terrorism. People are scared. Everyone is. That is especially true of powerful people. They are scared of the world and the part they play in it. They are petrified, paralyzed by responsibility, unable to choose for fear of making the wrong choice. I offer exoneration, peace of mind. I peddle God in the form of an all-knowing, all-powerful global institution that will right every wrong and keep the world safe.

  —Why this project?

  —Ah! In 1999, an incident on an archeological site in Turkey was brought to my attention. Evidence found onsite, though inconclusive, led me to believe that technologically advanced beings might have been present in the area several millennia ago.

  —You knew? Who else was aware of this?

  —I knew nothing. I suspected. When the NSA granted funding to your research project in Chicago, I became aware of your childhood discovery and I immediately took an interest.

  More than anything, I saw this project as a potential legacy. What I do, it is … It takes a particular mindset. It is not unlike law enforcement in that regard. I started out thinking I could remove the bad from the world one piece at a time until there was none left. The world, unfortunately, does not work that way. Perhaps it needs a certain equilibrium to function properly. Whatever the reason, it soon became obvious that what I had set out to do was very much like digging a hole in the mud. Remove a bad man from power, and a year later the person you put in his place is just as corrupt. If a policeman stops a drunken man from beating on his wife, what are the odds he will never have to go back? Can he really prevent anything, or is he just delaying the inevitable? I came to realize that good and evil were out of my reach, that time was the only thing I had any control over. I could buy time, create intervals. I could not truly make the world a better place, but I could make part of it a better place for a short while. I came to peace with that. Some cannot. As I said, it takes a particular mindset.

  But as you grow older, you realize there will come a time you cannot keep digging, and the idea that your hole in the mud will fill itself completely, as if you never existed, becomes harder to bear. Permanence is the Holy Grail in my line of work. I saw this as an opportunity to leave a mark.

  —If you could go back in time—

  —Perhaps I could.

  —That’s true. Do you wish things had been different?

  —Besides the world coming to an end?

  —That’s not what I meant. Would you rather have lived a … normal life?

  —I wish my son had never died. I wish my wife were still here. If I could not change that, I would probably choose the same path. It has not always been easy, but overall, I believe I have done more good than harm.

  —I guess that’s all any of us can ask for.

  —I do have one regret.

  —What’s that?

  —I wanted someone to continue what I started. I did not know that I would run out of time. I had hoped to find a successor, to take someone … under my wing. I was looking for—

  —A son.

  — … Perhaps. I wanted to leave some form of legacy. For a while, I thought Mr. Couture was a good candidate—

  —He could still do it.

  —He has a family now, a child. He has too much to lose. I was saying I thought Mr. Couture was a good candidate until I realized you were the ideal one.

  —Me?

  —It had to be you. You are intelligent, dedicated. You do not have a family and you have expressed no desire for one. When I first met you, you were too naïve, too … fragile, but since your reappearance, you have become more resilient, less—

  —I tried to kill myself.

  —A momentary lapse in judgment. I meant to say you have become less … vulnerable to what the world has to throw at you. I can tell you that your former self would not have remained as collected as you were these past few days.

  —I don’t give a shit anymore, is that what you’re trying to say?

  —I said that you could replace me. That was never meant as a compliment.

  —I couldn’t do what you do. I’m not … James Bond!

  —I was not looking for someone to blackmail world leaders. I wanted my replacement to safeguard the Themis Files, preserve a record of these world-changing events. That said, I have accumulated a tremendous amount of sensitive information. If you knew what I knew, you could get what you want from just about anyone.

  —Thank you, for thinking of me. I—

  —I am sorry to interrupt, but it appears we have run out of things to climb on. Shall we stand?

  —It’s all over my feet. Do you feel anything?

  —Not at the moment.

  —What will happen to them? Your files?

  —I do not know. Everything I collected in my—I hesitate to call it a career—is on a hard drive in a safe-deposit box. The key and access card are in my jacket pocket. I can only hope that whoever recovers our bodies has a curious mind and an adventurous spirit. The most recent files are on a thumb drive, also in my jacket. Figuring out the password should be easy with this recording.

  —What is it?

  —The name of my son.

  —Tell me something more about you.

  —What do you want to know?

  —I don’t know. Anything. Tell me how you met Eugene. You two seem to be close.

  —That is a very interesting story but also a very long one. It was an honor knowing you, Dr. Franklin … —cough

  —Sir?

  Sir?—cough

  …

  …

  FILE NO. 1588

  MISSION LOG—VINCENT COUTURE, CONSULTANT, EARTH DEFENSE CORPS

  Location: EDC Headquarters, New York, NY

  —This is Vincent Couture. I’m in the control room next to hangar one. Everyone’s gone. I sent them to UN headquarters. They’ll be safe on the top floors if they get there in time. I hope Rose makes it. She was in the lab when the robot appeared. That’s a lot farther from the main building.

  I’m taking the backup drives from the safe. Some comm gear. I’m not sure what else I can grab before I head out. Hopefully, the building won’t be destroyed and it doesn’t matter.

  I wish I could fight that thing. A whole lot of people have died already but it’s different when it’s home. Our neighbors, the dry-cleaning guy across the street, I wonder if any of them will survive. Probably not. I feel bad that I have a way out and they don’t. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I even feel sorry for the asshole at the coffee shop who keeps hitting on Kara. I’m heading to hangar one now. I’ll take Themis up north in case that robot decides to rip her apart.

  Crap! Almost forgot. Gotta make a quick stop by our lockers. Kara left some personal stuff in hers: an old pict
ure of her mom, some trinkets I gave her. I have a signed picture of David Prowse in mine. Oh, and my wedding ring’s in there. That’s why I’m going. If I die out here, tell my wife I went back for my wedding ring. She’ll be impressed.

  —She’ll think you’re a complete idiot.

  —Kara? Is that you? Oh my God! Come here, you’re crazy!

  —OK, stop! You’re choking me.

  —Sorry.

  —Vincent, meet Eva. Eva, this is Vincent.

  — …

  —Vincent? You OK?

  —Yeah …

  —Then say something, either of you.

  —It’s nice to meet you, Eva. Would you like to see Themis?

  [She’s here?]

  I’ll take that as a yes—

  —Vincent, there’s a lot I need to tell you.

  —I know. Our “friend” filled me in.

  —That asshole, I’ll—

  —Later. We really need to go. There’s a big robot shooting poisonous gas about a mile away from here. Eva, it’s that way.

  —How long do we have?

  —I don’t know. It travels fast. Three minutes maybe? Is she … ?

  —I can’t say for sure. She kinda looks like me, don’t you think?

  —Not kinda. It’s a bit eerie.

  —Shhh. She’s right behind us!

  —Does she know?

  —No. I haven’t told her. She’s been through enough already. She’s … she’s a bit dark.

  —How dark? “Dark” like her favorite band is The Cure? Or I’m-an-abomination-I-should-be-burned-alive-Rose-dark?

  —She’s … She’s not what you’d expect. One minute she’s a normal ten-year-old, the next it’s like—

  —Like what?

  —She talks about people dying, how they felt. She’s … dark. She saw her parents die.

  —Poor kid.

  —Yeah. The Russians got there before me. Three men broke in in the middle of the night. They killed her parents right in front of her.

  —Where did you find her?

  —In Haiti.

  —Haiti? How the hell did you end up there?

  —I knew they couldn’t take her back on a commercial flight and there were no private planes there with Russian tags. I figured they’d hop islands and fly out of Cuba. My plan was to go from port to port, hoping someone would remember three big men with a weird accent. I got lucky on the first try, right there in San Juan. They had chartered a boat to the Dominican Republic. I ran into the captain’s wife on the docks. I caught up to them at Punta Cana and followed them across the island all the way to Port-au-Prince.