Sleeping Giants

by Sylvain Neuvel

  FILE NO. 182

  PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY—DR. ROSE FRANKLIN, PH.D.

  Location: Underground Complex, Denver, CO

  “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

  Those are not my words. In fact, I had to look up the exact quote. Like everyone else, I only knew “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” We tend to romanticize good quotes, and I always imagined Oppenheimer uttering those words while staring at the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. In reality, he spoke those words during an interview for an NBC documentary in 1965. He had had twenty years to think about it.

  I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project these past few days. I haven’t been building a bomb, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore a very simple truth.

  I am building a weapon, and a formidable one at that. But that’s not the truth I’m hiding from. There’s no hiding from that. I spend most of my time understanding just how devastating it can be. I realize it may have been an instrument of peace, but not the kind of peace achieved through righteousness and understanding. This is meant to be a killing machine, one of such might and power that no one would stand against it.

  It works. I’m afraid of it. I’m reminded of it every night in my dreams. All of us are. I keep showing up earlier and earlier in the morning, either because I can’t sleep or because I don’t want to go back to whatever dream I was having. Inevitably, someone’s already there, or they show up a few minutes later. No one wants to talk about it, but we can all tell we’re going through the same thing.

  My dream is usually the same: she’s standing over me, then she bends on one knee and brings her face a few feet above my head. She’s staring at me with bright, blinding turquoise eyes; she looks like she’s about to speak. That’s when I wake up in a sweat.

  After yesterday, I know I won’t have the same dream ever again. We finally looked at the head.

  Everyone was dying to see it. It had just been sitting there wrapped in a black tarp. I’d catch Kara trying to take a peek about once a day. I could have just unwrapped it, but it was too much fun torturing her. She would pace around it for twenty minutes, hoping the tarp would magically fall off. And then she’d walk off angrily.

  Yesterday morning, I brought Vincent in his wheelchair and I told Kara it was time. We unstrapped the head and removed the cloth. She is stunning, but not at all what I expected.

  She has thin lips and a very small nose. All her features are small, delicate. She almost looks like a child, innocent but controlled. Chaste is the word that comes to mind.

  I can’t decide if it’s her hair or a very elaborate helmet, but her head is covered in wavy spines with intricate carvings. Turquoise light seeps between them. Some extend forward onto her cheeks and brow, others are sleeked backward toward her back armor. From her forehead, several spines join to form an axe-shaped appendage at the back of her head.

  When we unwrapped her, I was expecting to cross the same intense gaze I see in my dreams, quailing at the idea to be honest, but it wasn’t there. No blinding light, no gaze, no eyes.

  She doesn’t have eyes, only small recesses where they ought to be. It’s very unsettling. You can’t help but wonder just how aware of your presence she really is. I know she’s not aware of anything, because I’m the one who put her together. But there’s something about her…a presence. I think there’s more there than a glorified toaster. Besides, I can’t really be blamed for anthropomorphizing something that’s anthropomorphic. Anyway, I doubt she’ll leave me alone at night, but she’ll have to find another way to scare me.

  We had to use two cranes to raise the head. As soon as we attached it, the whole room started to shake. Her entire body stiffened for a second, then everything went back to normal. I asked Kara to grab a walkie-talkie, get up the elevator, and into the sphere.

  She went in and braced herself at her station. I asked her to raise her right arm slowly. It was fantastic to watch. She moves! After all this, we finally got her working. We made her move her arms, rotate her head. She even bent down to pick up a storage crate. She’s really gracious, delicate in her movements. I didn’t expect such fluency. Of course, she crushed the crate with her fingers, but we can work on that. Kara’s not that delicate herself.

  We found weapons today. I haven’t told our nameless friend yet. He’ll find out soon enough. I just don’t want to give him the pleasure of pretending he hasn’t been waiting for this all along. We came upon them by accident. I was expecting we’d find weaponry at some point, but not so soon, and I always thought it would be lasers, a death ray, something futuristic. Maybe I just watch too many movies. I was wrong, it turns out our girl is old school. She has a sword and a shield.

  Apparently, she was built for close combat. I don’t know what she was supposed to fight, but it must have been big. The sword is a focused-energy weapon. Like a lightsaber, only wider, double-edged, more like a medieval sword. Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings. It’s not turquoise like everything else. It’s a very, very bright white. It’s almost impossible to stare at.

  What’s really—I seem to use the word cool a lot these days—is that we can dial its length on the console. Vincent figured out that it works on a sixty-four-step scale—1 being the shortest, 64 the longest. At the lowest settings, it’s almost like a dagger. At its longest, it’s…We made a large hole on the floor when we tried it at 64. We stopped playing with it after that.

  Fortunately, the shield is somewhat safer to experiment with. It’s also based on controlled energy and we can adjust the size in the very same way. At the lowest setting, it barely covers her wrist. At the highest, it can cover her entire body. It’s also not nearly as bright as the sword. It’s almost transparent, in fact. You can tell something’s there because it distorts light a little bit, like the exhaust of a car on a really hot day.

  We discovered it can also be used as a weapon. It took another hole—in the wall, this time—to figure that one out, but the edge of the shield is very sharp…if you can say that about light.

  The light in both the sword and shield appears to be self-contained. There’s no sign of an electromagnetic field around either of them. Needless to say, I have no idea how they’re able to manipulate photons as if it were regular matter. Yet, they seem to do with light as they please, like a sculptor would mold clay.

  We haven’t found any long-range weapons so far, but I’m certain we will. She’s full of surprises. There needs to be a way for her to focus the energy release away from her. If she does, I’m sure that weapon will have a pretty long reach. She really needs to be able to control it or she’d be more of a danger to her own army than to the enemy’s. All one would need to do is throw enough power at her and she’d obliterate everyone around. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her when she gets into a fight.

  On the other hand, if she can focus all that energy in one direction, she’d be a nightmare to deal with. Everything one would hit her with, she would throw right back. The more powerful the enemy, the mightier she would be. That, I have told already. But I hope we don’t find out for a long, long time.

  It’s important for “the powers that be” to know that we have yet to uncover her more destructive powers. I fear they’ll take her away from us the minute they believe there’s no more weaponry to be found. We must use the time we have to discover as much as we can about how she works and what she can do besides leveling a city or vaporizing an army. I haven’t told Vincent anything, but I think he understands.

  All we need now is to make her walk.

  We’ll have to wait before we take her for a spin. Vincent’s not ready. He
can barely walk himself.

  I hate to say it. We’ve already lost several months because of his injury, and I know Kara’s more than eager to resume training, but it’s a miracle Vincent’s lasted this far. To push him any farther would jeopardize everything.

  I would never tell him, because it would only make things worse, but I can’t stomach what they’ve done to him. I understand the appeal, there’s even a reasonably sound logic behind it, but we must draw the line somewhere if we’re to remain human.

  He hasn’t tried reversing his knees yet. He wants to, but I don’t. If I understand correctly, it’s going to rip apart whatever muscle he has left on the back of his legs. They’re just too short. It’ll take months for him to build muscles that fit his new anatomy.

  I realize that won’t happen if he doesn’t try his knees, but he’s already in pain twenty-four hours a day. I’m not going to put him through even more. And it’s not in anyone’s interest to push Vincent to do something he’s not ready for. It’ll break him physically, and mentally. It will bring resentment, mistrust, and will put every member of my team at unnecessary risk.

  I know he’ll have to try them at some point. I don’t think it’ll be easier, or any less painful, if he does it a month from now. In fact, it’ll probably be more painful because he’ll have gained some muscle mass. But I’m hoping he’ll have gained some strength as well, physically and mentally.

  All that said, I can’t wait to see her walk.

  So, what’s that simple truth I’ve been hiding from? It’s not that I’m building a weapon. It’s not even that it’ll kill people. That’s just a matter of time. What I’ve been trying so hard to deny is that I’m loving every minute of it. As much as I’d like to be principled enough to walk away from this, I’m having the time of my life. I’m a scientist, and this is what I breathe for. If I can learn to live with that, I might be able to sleep again.

  I tried to find out what Oppenheimer’s thoughts were while it was all happening. He had this to say in 1945:

  “But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.”

  FILE NO. 188

  PRELIMINARY REPORT—DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT ICELANDAIR 670

  FAA Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention

  Flight Icelandair 670 (FI670), scheduled for a nonstop flight from Denver International Airport (DEN) to Keflavik, Reykjavik (KEF), disappeared from Air Traffic Control instruments at approximately 10:31 on the morning of August 10. The Boeing 757-200 called ready for taxi from Gate A-43 of Denver International Airport at 10:16. Following instructions from Denver Ground, the plane taxied to Runway 17L through taxiways M and ED, holding short of the runway before contacting the tower. Flight 670 was cleared for takeoff immediately after assuming position on the runway. The entire communication between the tower and FI670 is reproduced below. Prior communication with ATC shows nothing out of the ordinary.

  FI670: Tower, this is ICEAIR 670 holding on Echo Delta for Runway 17 Left.

  ATC: Good morning ICEAIR 670. She’s all yours, into position on Runway 17 Left.

  FI670: Roger that.

  In position, 670.

  ATC: ICEAIR 670, you are clear to takeoff, Runway 17 Left, contact departure 1-2-6-1 in the air.

  670, you’re clear to go…

  ICEAIR 670, I lost you on my screen. Can you read back?

  FI670: Where the hell is that light coming from?

  ATC: Can you repeat that 670?

  ICEAIR 670, this is the tower, please respond.

  670, please respond…

  Investigators were on-site around 12:15 P.M. and FAA personnel were denied access to the site. However, the abundant news footage of the incident showed that only the southernmost section (estimate: two hundred feet) of Runway 17L/35R remained intact. A large crater, approximately fifteen hundred feet across, three hundred feet deep, covered the remaining part of the runway and the surrounding taxiways. The examined footage shows no sign of wreckage, no debris of any kind.

  The complete absence of evidence, coupled with the extraordinary nature of the circumstances, strongly suggests that neither mechanical failure nor pilot error are responsible for the disappearance of flight 670 and that the aircraft could not be responsible for the destruction of Runway 17L/35R. The circumstances of the incident, while currently unexplained, clearly fall beyond the expertise of the FAA and no further investigation is warranted at this point.

  FILE NO. 189

  INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT COUTURE, SENIOR INTELLIGENCE ADVISOR (DCIPS)

  Location: Fort Carson Army Base, near Colorado Springs, CO

  —I don’t wanna start at the beginning. Can we just stop? I…I don’t wanna talk…I just need a few minutes to think. Where’s Rose? I didn’t see her. Where’s Kara? I wanna see Kara.

  —Take a deep breath. You need to relax. I only want to help you remember.

  —Remember what? Where’s…

  —No. Do not try to get up.

  —Where are my boots?

  —Let us start with something simple. Tell me the first thing you did this morning.

  —Someone took my boots. What’s this? Is it a hospital gown? I can’t find any of my clothes.

  —Please, get back into bed. At least sit down on the bed.

  —My clothes…

  —I will help you find your clothes. Now, sit down and look at me. I want you to focus on me. What is the first thing you did when you woke up this morning?

  —This morning…I…I did…I took a shower, and I went to the lab. I got to the lab early.

  —Very good. What did you do once you got there?

  —When I got where?

  —To the lab. You got up early, and you went to the lab.

  —Yes.

  —What did you do at the lab?

  —I practiced walking…I walked a few times around the lab, then I…I tried it with my knees reversed.

  —Good. I did not know that you had tried them yet.

  —A few times.

  —How does it feel?

  —How does what feel? I…

  —Your knees. How does it feel when you reverse them?

  —It hurts like you wouldn’t believe. I tried them last week for the first time. Rose kept telling me to wait, not to rush things. I assumed you had talked to her…I’m not sure if you know how they work, but you have to stick your finger under the kneecap and push real hard. That hurts, just by itself, but the knees are spring-loaded, and they just yank your legs backward real hard. It’s overwhelming. I fell face-first, the first few times. It just…It hurts like hell. It’s like having a truck run over your legs.

  —Go on.

  —I…

  —This morning, you went to the lab early.

  —Yes, I did. I got there before anyone else.

  —And you tried your knees…

  —I wanted to see if I could go around the room. I made it about two-thirds of the way, then I fell down and I couldn’t get up. It’s really hard to get up with the legs in reverse.

  —What did you do then?

  —After I fell? Nothing, I just lay on my back and waited for someone to come. Rose came in about a half hour later. She brought my wheelchair over and helped me up. She had cinnamon buns. Coffee and cinnamon buns. There’s this little tiny shop about two kilometers from the airport. They make the best pastries.

  —What happened after Dr. Franklin helped you get up?

  —We sat down and talked politics while waiting for Kara. She showed up around nine. She whined for a good fifteen minutes because we ate all the buns. Rose promised to go get some more, and we made our way up into the sphere.
<
br />   We tried the shield again, then the sword. I asked Kara if she was up for a quick walk around the room. We radioed Rose. She didn’t think it was a good idea. She told us to practice handling the shield at different sizes. We did for a while, but I could tell Kara also had that walk in the back of her head. I flipped my knees again. I took a minute to get through the sting, then I braced myself in the controls. “Are you sure you’re up for it?” she said. Since I didn’t answer, she got out of her station and helped me get into mine.

  It’s cold in here. Where are we? Is this a military base?

  —It does not matter right now. Just keep going.

  —I wanna see Kara. She was with me. Is she here?

  —I will answer all your questions in a minute. I just want you to tell me what happened next. You braced yourself in. You were about to try walking for the first time.

  —We did. I had taken off my headset, but I could hear Rose getting worried: “What’s going on up there? What are you guys doing? Talk to me!”

  I lifted my left leg. It took us aback for a second. The whole room began to tilt slightly when the sphere adjusted to the movement. I moved my right leg, then the left again. Rose was trying to stay calm: “OK, you did it, now stop and get out of there.” I told Kara we’d go to the end of the room and back. I could feel my legs going numb, but I was too excited to stop. I took a few more steps, then my knees started to give. I’d never had to support more than my own weight with my knees backward, and I had to swing my hips upward and back at every step to keep the balance…