Sleeping Giants

by Sylvain Neuvel

  Years passed, centuries went by, but the war never came. After more than two thousand years, the machines were removed from the colony. One was left behind, a female-looking giant the people called dhehméys. She was dismantled, and her parts were scattered across the colony. It was hoped that when the people had reached a certain stage in their evolution, they would rediscover the machine and use it to defend themselves should the war ever come.

  —What of the soldiers that were sent with it?

  —Excellent question. I see you’re paying attention. They had a life expectancy about three times that of the colony’s inhabitants, but this was still a multigenerational mission. When the machines were called back, the direct descendants of the soldiers, those whose blood was pure, were sent home as well. But over the centuries, some of the male soldiers had chosen women from the colony as spouses and eventually began to have children.

  These “half-breeds,” as they called them, were anatomically similar to the indigenous population but had the superior intellectual and physical abilities of their alien parent. They were left behind when the soldiers left. They assimilated with the colony’s inhabitants. Because of their abilities and more advanced knowledge of science, many of them, and many of their descendants, rose to positions of power or fame.

  —There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

  —So you know this story already?

  —This is from the Bible. Genesis 6:4.

  —Like I said, it’s a good story. Many people have told it.

  —How much of it is true?

  —Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it is true. You have to decide for yourself. Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind. I think this one does a bit of everything.

  —You are one of them, are you not? You are one of their descendants.

  —I’m just an old man who likes to tell stories.

  —Can you help us? Can you help us control her?

  —I can do no such thing. Even if I knew what you were talking about.

  —Then why tell us? Why come to me?

  —How about another story? I’m afraid this one does not have such a happy ending.

  —By all means.

  —Here we go. There was a man who lived in a small cabin in the woods with his two teenage boys. It was the middle of winter and there was a humongous storm coming. Soon, all the roads would be closed and they would be completely cut off from civilization…

  —I am listening.

  —I’m sorry. This sounds a little macabre already, and I haven’t even mentioned the shotgun. Let’s lighten things up a bit, shall we? I know you liked the other story, so let’s make the man a king in this one as well. He was a powerful king in medieval times, a formidable warrior who inspired fear and respect. He was believed to have a magic sword that made him immortal and impossible to defeat. None of it was true, of course, he was just really good with a sword.

  The king had two children, both teenage boys. One day, the king was asked to settle a dispute in a faraway village. His sons wanted to go with him, but the king feared there might be battle along the way. When the sons argued that their enemies might see the king’s absence as an opportunity to attack, he devised a plan to ensure everyone’s safety. He would leave his sword with his children and spread the word across the realm. His enemies would think the sons as invincible as the father if they brandished the legendary blade.

  The king went on his business and, upon his return, found his entire castle in mourning. An argument had arisen between the two brothers about which of them was the better warrior, and more worthy of yielding their father’s sword. In their dispute, the oldest son struck his little brother with the blade. The cadet did not survive his injuries, but he did live long enough to see his father one last time. After holding his son through his last breaths, the king took the sword and threw it into the sea so that no one would ever have to suffer its curse.

  That’s it! That’s how it ends.

  —You will forgive me for asking what may seem obvious, but I prefer to deal in certainties. What was the moral of this story?

  —Oh, I don’t think there’s a moral, nothing that deep. If you left a weapon with someone so they could defend themselves, and you found out they were killing each other with it, you’d probably want to take it back or get rid of it. It’s just common sense, really. But then again, maybe I missed the point entirely. Maybe it’s about something else.

  Ahhh! Here’s our waitress! I’m starving.

  [Good evening gentlemen. Are you ready to order?]

  —Oh yes, we’re famished! I’ll let my friend here order first.

  —I will have the Kung Pao chicken.

  —You’re a wise man.

  FILE NO. 233

  INTERVIEW WITH INES TABIB, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

  Location: White House, Washington, DC

  —Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Tabib.

  —I’m the one who called, so thank you. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I hope you have no reservations about a woman’s taking over this job.

  —To which aspect of the situation are you referring? Do I have reservations about women working in general? About women holding positions of power? About women making decisions about sending men, or other women, to their deaths?

  —I…

  —My answer would be the same to all three questions: a resounding no. And if I had such reservations, I would probably be more focused on the fact that a woman is now the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces than on the gender of her advisors. Speaking of the president, how is she?

  —She’s good. Still settling in. She wanted to thank you in person, but it’ll have to wait a bit.

  —Thank me?

  —We had a good campaign, but it’s no secret that we have your project to thank for such a landslide. You changed the world, starting with the president.

  —I did nothing of the sort. The former president could have handled things differently. He made his own bed.

  —That sounds an awful lot like: “Good for him! He got what he deserved.” Would you have handled things differently?

  —I am not, was not, and will never be president of the United States. It does not really matter what I would have or would not have done in his place.

  —Fine. Don’t tell me. I can tell you what I would have done differently. I wouldn’t have hidden that…How do you call the alien device? Is it a “she” or an “it”?

  —To the people involved, it is “she.”

  —Well, I wouldn’t have hidden her. I would have parked her in front of the White House for everyone to see.

  —Your predecessor was concerned that other governments would react unfavorably to a show of strength.

  —I know. It never made sense to me. He would have had to take her out at some point, wouldn’t he? Anyway, she’s out now. I don’t think there’s a single person on the planet that hasn’t heard about it. It’s really a game changer, you know. The ramifications are just…endless.

  —I wish you were right. Unfortunately, I believe people will soon go back about their business as if nothing ever happened.

  —That’s a little cynical, don’t you think? Of course, people will more or less keep doing what they were doing. Aliens or not, they need to work, eat, sleep, send the children to school, take out the garbage. Most of their day’s never gonna change, no matter what. I suppose that’s why people are disenchanted with politics. They expect whoever they elect to change their lives. Anyway, that’s not what matters.

  Right now, all over the Earth, there are little children staring up at the stars, wondering if whoever built that robot is from there, or there, or there. They might grow up to be astronauts, engineers, anything that discovery inspires them to be. Twenty ye
ars from now, one of these kids might build a new kind of engine that allows us to travel outside our solar system, all because he saw that robot as a child.

  Every major religion has to adjust to this revelation. Whatever god you believe in can’t just be about humans anymore. He, or she, has to be a god for the whole universe. Heaven, Hell, Nirvana, whatever, all these things have to be rethought, reshaped. Fundamentalists are simply denying the whole thing ever happened, but for everyone else, the world is a different place than it was before that crater in Denver.

  Even the president has to tweak her speeches to acknowledge the fact that there are other sentient life-forms in the universe. You’d be surprised how hard it is to fit God and aliens in the same sentence without sounding corny.

  Most importantly, everyone, including world leaders, now knows there are beings out there capable of building formidable weapons so advanced that we probably would not stand a chance if they chose to attack us.

  —They would eradicate us. They could probably do it from a distance.

  —Exactly. It’s a reality check for everyone, and it makes all our territorial or trade disputes seem just a little pettier. It wasn’t a cataclysm, like an asteroid hitting the Earth or anything like that, but it was a traumatic moment, and traumatic moments have a way of bringing people together. I think this is changing the way we view ourselves. That change may be slow and imperceptible, but it’s happening, I guarantee it.

  —I sincerely hope you are correct. My deepest wish is for this discovery to redefine alterity for all of us.

  —Alterity?

  —The concept of “otherness.” What I am is very much a function of what I am not. If the “other” is the Muslim world, then I am the Judeo-Christian world. If the other is from thousands of light-years away, I am simply human. Redefine alterity and you can erase boundaries.

  —See, I knew you weren’t that cynical. While you’re here, the president wanted me to touch base with you, see what you thought a good timeline would be to get her back.

  —When I told your predecessor it was not a permanent solution, I did not mean we could get it back whenever we wanted. It has only been four months.

  —I know. I know. It’s just…There’s a lot happening right now. The president just wants to know what her options are.

  —I am aware of no significant technological development in the last three months, none that pertain to our deep-sea-retrieval capabilities anyway. You can tell the president her options are exactly what they were yesterday, or four months ago, or before we ever heard of that giant hand in South Dakota.

  —I told her you’d say that…Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?

  —Yes.

  —Yes?

  —Yes. I am sure there is nothing we can do.

  —How about this: Are you sure there’s nothing anyone else can do to get it back? Having lost the robot is one thing, but I’d hate to see her show up on television with a Chinese flag painted on her chest.

  —Like I said, I am unaware of any such scientific or technological development. I would be surprised if the Chinese, or anyone else, had made any significant progress in that area without anyone else knowing about it. That being said, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

  —How would you go about making sure someone else doesn’t get it out first?

  —You cannot stop anyone from grabbing it if you cannot reach that depth yourself. I would strongly suggest multiplying federal funding for research in deep-sea exploration by, shall we say, a thousandfold, if you have not already. I am absolutely certain other governments have done so before the first piece ever hit the bottom of the ocean.

  —You make it sound like this is a race.

  —I do. It is.

  —So, you’re saying this is the space race all over again. We’re racing with the Russians, and God knows who else, to the far depths of the Earth, and whoever gets there first wins it all. Is that the gist of it?

  —Unless you find a way to turn enemy into ally, that sums it up quite well.

  —Are you suggesting we work with Russia on this thing?

  —I cannot tell you if you should, only that you could. Most people forgot, but in 1963 Kennedy did offer to cooperate with Moscow to reach the moon. Had he not met with such an untimely death, the first lunar landing might have been a joint venture between the United States and the USSR.

  —Somehow, I don’t see that happening.

  —I suppose that is what you meant by “slow and imperceptible change.” Is there anything else I can help you with? I am on a fairly tight schedule.

  —No. I guess not. Not unless you can get North Korea to shut down their nuclear program.

  —What have they done this time?

  —Third underground test this year. Only, this one looks like the real thing. In the past, they would just blow up a whole lot of explosives underground to make us think they had nukes. This time’s different. Japan has detected radiation at the site.

  With anyone else, we’d play the strength card and threaten to level the entire country…but they don’t really seem to care. I’m not sure where that leaves us.

  —A preemptive strike?

  —As far as the president is concerned, that’s what you call an “act of war” if you’re the one making it.

  —Then I am afraid I have nothing to offer. It pains me to say it, but I have always been thoroughly bewildered by North Korea. They cannot be threatened, as they feel themselves superior to the one making the threat. They cannot be reasoned with, and most importantly, they are 100 percent convinced of their righteousness, so they cannot be bought. Megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur are notoriously difficult to handle, but how generations of them can follow one another is beyond me.

  —…I’m sorry, my mind was drifting. I was thinking about racing the Russians to the trench. It’s gonna be hard to make a good speech out of that. We choose to go to the…ocean. We choose to go to the bottom of the ocean in this decade and do the other things…

  —Maybe you should leave the speechwriting to others.

  FILE NO. 237

  INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT COUTURE, UNEMPLOYED

  Location: La Fontaine Park, Montreal, Canada

  —Please sit down, Mr. Couture.

  —We could have gone to my place. It’s cold for a picnic.

  —I have tried my best to hide the identity of everyone involved in our project, but after the incident I prefer to discuss this in a public location.

  —You’re worried someone bugged my apartment?

  —I cannot discard the possibility. Besides, this park is lovely in the fall. Did you receive my message?

  —I’m not sure I’d call that a message, but yeah, I received the two words you sent me. It’s pretty cool.

  —Define cool.

  —Cool is that at some point there might have been more of these giant robots on Earth, eleven more to be precise.

  —How…

  —How would I know? Well, the first word you sent, tittah, means “big” in Hattic. Hattic was spoken about five thousand years ago in Anatolia, that’s more or less Turkey today. That word was borrowed by the folks living west of there, and in Greek you end up with the word Titan.

  In Greek mythology, the Titans are children of Gaia and Uranus. That’s also cool. Do you get it? They’re children of the Earth and the Sky. They must have known where they came from, somehow.

  There are twelve of them, six males and six females. I don’t know all their names by heart, but I know which one we found. The other word you sent, dhehméys, looks a whole lot like what we call Proto-Indo-European, which we believe was spoken right around there at the time. If it is PIE, then that “d” will eventually turn into a “t,” and by the time you get to Ancient Greek, you end up with Themis, one of the Titans.

  —I am not familiar with the name.

  —You’ve seen her a thousand times. She’s blindfolded holding a scale in one hand and a sword in the other.<
br />
  —Is that who we call Lady Justice?

  —More or less. The statues in front of courthouses are fairly modern. They’re usually a mixture of Themis and Iustitia, the Roman equivalent. What’s the saying? Justice is blind. Well, now we know why; she doesn’t have eyes.

  I don’t think justice is the right word, though. She represents something bigger, something like divine law. That’s probably what dhehméys meant five thousand years ago already. I’m pretty sure that dharma in Sanskrit is from the same word, and it means cosmic order, what keeps the universe together. Her daughter, Dikē, is the Greek goddess of Justice.

  —She had a daughter?

  —Well, obviously, she doesn’t have a “real” daughter. I don’t think there’s a minirobot buried somewhere either. Some mythology has got to be just that, mythology.

  Can you imagine though? A dozen of these things walking around, all lit up in turquoise. Then again, maybe they glow in different colors. They didn’t even have iron tools back then, let alone electricity. I wish I could go back in time just to see that for myself. One of these things is jaw-dropping today. Twelve of them, at a time when technology was more or less nonexistent? That would have been like coming face-to-face with gods.

  I’d like to know why this one was left on Earth while all the other ones went back to wherever they came from.

  —What makes you think they went anywhere?

  —We pretty much searched the entire planet and we only found parts of this one. If there were eleven more spread around, surely we’d have a couple spare parts, extra hands, another foot, lying in a warehouse somewhere.

  Are you gonna tell me what you know or do I have to guess everything?

  —I may not know anything.

  —Of course not. You just stumbled upon the words tittah and dhehméys while doing crosswords, and you called me for clues so you could finish the grid. What’s a seven-letter word for “full of it”?

  —Caution.

  —At some point, you’re gonna have to trust someone. If anything, you could get hit by a milk truck tomorrow and there’d be no one left who knows any of whatever it is you keep to yourself.