One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  There was not enough for everyone, Professor Collins had told him. His eyes burned, his lungs, his heart … burned. No mistakes in the strategies, no mistakes in the model itself, nothing that could have given him hope. Not enough for everyone. Earth was not big enough to offer everybody a future, a life worth living in dignity, safety and health. Not wealthy enough … the numbers proved it. The diagrams were clear. Sober, merciless calculations allowed for no uncertainty.

  Can it be that God wants it this way? Has he changed his mind since the prophecy? Has he decided to let man go extinct after all?

  McCaine unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, yanked his arms out of it and flung it away. He looked over at the nightstand by the bed. He went over to it and opened the drawer. There was a book inside, a Bible. Noah … what did Noah do? He thumbed through it but saw that it was only a Gideon bible — the New Testament — in three languages.

  He needed the Old Testament: And the Lord said: ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and fowl of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.’ It was a long time ago since he had learned that in school. He could vaguely remember.

  “Am I the second Noah?” he asked himself in the darkness. He listened to his own voice … and for some sign or signal, but none came. He sat on the bed, watching the water pouring down the window, and the streetlights further away, swaying in the wind, their shapes twisted by the rainwater on the windows.

  Noah had built an arc, a great and mighty ship into which he loaded a pair of each animal and specimen of each plant. A legend, naturally, but today it would be feasible. Build a bunker in some remote area, camouflage it and make it secure, and store all of humanity’s knowledge on CD-ROMs or whatever, and DNA samples of all known species. Expensive yes, but feasible. There was no doubt Fontanelli Enterprises could afford it.

  He felt the cold crawl into his body, but he just sat there, motionless, only breathing, while his heart turned to ice. Was this really the task appointed him? To assure the survival of mankind’s knowledge during the dark centuries? To allow a new beginning one day? Maybe. It seemed so pathetic, so cowardly to do no more than prepare for the end. The professor’s computers could warn him on time. He still had a few years, maybe even decades. He could decide who should be saved; make appropriate preparations for survival in the bunker. And then? What would those who survived return to? To a world contaminated and sucked dry? Or to radioactive deserts? To ruins?

  No, that was just pathetic, nothing to do with the grandeur he had always felt the prophecy intended for him and to be done through him. This could not be the answer.

  There isn’t enough for everyone. Those words went through his head again, like some gruesome mantra, like a verdict, a verdict on the entire world, dumped upon his shoulders.

  He stood up and opened his pants, swaying under the imaginary burden, and dropped them on the floor, pulled off his shoes and then the pants. At this moment something exploded in the back of his mind, a thought so big and mighty and terrible that he could not think about it all at once. It was an understanding so fundamental and reasonable that his heart might cease to beat on the spot if he confronted it head on. He stood still. The idea was growing within him, like an iceberg on collision course, like a comet crashing down, an idea that should have originated from Titans, but not from a mortal man.

  The collapse.

  One day it would happen, even if it was unthinkable today. But many things, many of them once considered unthinkable, still happened. So much had been predicted, then ridiculed and then it really came to pass. This was the same: civilization would come to an end, the end of the world as we know it.

  His underwear suddenly burned his skin. He pulled off his socks and all the rest too. He stood there naked in the darkness, waiting for the impact.

  The apocalypse.

  Maybe it would be a disease with no cure. A virus, as deadly as AIDS and as contagious as the common cold. Or a local catastrophe, maybe a nuclear power plant blowing up in Europe, causing masses of people to flee to other parts of the world, starting conflicts there, and then war. Domino effect … a collapse in food supplies or energy supplies …

  Then the first fragment of this crushing, devastating realization swamped him with radiant clarity, incomparable, glorious in its awfulness, in its crystalline, god-like inevitability. The longer the apocalypse was delayed, Malcolm McCaine realized in this terrible moment of divine consciousness, the worse it would be.

  He sank down on his knees and hid his head in his arms. He shuddered from the thought. The revelation had struck him like a bolt of lightning, like an all-consuming fire, and although it was dark and quiet again, the revelation had remained — nothing in the world could get rid of it again. The longer the apocalypse is delayed, the worse it would be. The greater the devastation would be. The more raw materials were taken, the more toxins and radioactive waste would be accumulated and released, the more arable land turned into desert … the worse it will be.

  The more dead bodies would have to be disposed of.

  He closed his eyes and did not want to think about it any more. Something had to come out of this … he suspected … he knew it … but he did not want to think about it yet, he wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

  Could it be …?

  No … just don’t think about it. Don’t go that way.

  Could it be that …?

  This had not even been demanded of Noah. Not even Pontius Pilate. McCaine sat up suddenly and glanced around. Was there no minibar in this room, no alcohol to numb his brain?

  Could it be that the task in truth was …?

  He gasped. His heart was racing. He was suddenly sure that thinking this through all the way to the logical conclusion would kill him; this thought that was intended only for Titans. It would drive his soul into oblivion. But yes, that too was salvation. Yes.

  Could it be that the task in truth was to bring on the apocalypse? And to see to it that not just anybody survived but the right ones — to assure that whatever remained of the world was salvageable?

  He lay back down on his side and closed his eyes.

  Time marched on.

  He did not know how long he lay there without moving, but the storm was over when he rolled over and realized he was still alive. He felt cold, through and through. His heart was beating fast, his blood seemed to be a thick, syrupy substance, his nose was stuffy.

  Now he had it all ahead of him. He forced himself to get up, he felt shaky and fragile. But his vision was clear. He saw the path that he must take, saw the path he had taken thus far, and now understood why things had happened the way they did.

  Of course, he could not have seen this inter-relationship earlier. He had been too idealistic in his younger years to be able to take on this responsibility. To have seen the truth would have been a crushing burden, instead of an inspiration. Merciful providence had him wallow in the illusion that he would be the one to open up the closed door of the future for everyone. He had always wondered how this could be done, but he had confidence he would find a way; that had always given him strength.

  This detailed and unprecedented computer-based projection had been necessary to open his eyes to the true dimensions of the crisis. It had been necessary to throw him into the darkest hole of despair to give him the insight to the necessary steps that had to be taken. He shuddered at the majestic gruesomeness of nature. It not only brought life into being but also death. Both were one. One was not possible without the other. Life was trial and error, abundance, and the destruction of the unworthy.

  He had closed his eyes to this dimension of the divine plan, totally focused on the kind of thinking that was the norm at this moment in history. But where there is life there must be death. There was no future without this balance, no continuity possible. He had always searched for balance in his plans, his calculations, but he had not been able to find them because
he was never willing to pay the price that this balance would demand.

  He could not stand, so he crawled across the gray carpet to the bed, pushed the travel bag and coat out of the way, and got under the covers. How long had he lain there naked in the cold? He turned his head with effort. The numbers on the digital clock blinked; there must have been a power outage. He rubbed his arms and shoulders, but that wasn’t enough to warm him up. He needed a hot shower, regardless how late it was.

  As he stood beneath the shower of hot water, stinging and pricking at his skin like needles, thinking involuntarily of that blond half-ape in the other car, the guy who had laughed at pushing in in front of him. This broad-shouldered homo-erectus, who presumably had only fucking and driving on his primitive, dimwitted mind. One question free of prejudice should be allowed here; what right did primitive life forms like that have to exist? People — oh what the hell … creatures … such as those two in the car that only lived off the work done by others, the more productive members of society; people such as himself and those who worked for him. Valuable, useful people, people with brains and taste. People who made something useful out of their lives that pursued goals in life, who tried to be useful to the world around them. But alongside such useful members of society were also parasites — and plenty of them. It would be totally unnecessary to keep such half-humans alive when resources were getting scarce.

  If there would not be enough for all, he had to assume there would be enough for the deserving.

  Malcolm McCaine let the hot water spray on his face and thought fleetingly that it would be difficult to convince John Fontanelli of this insight.

  It took John a moment to remember where he was when he woke up. The sun’s mild rays shone through the roof window. The light had tickled his nose and awakened him.

  Ursula’s apartment was small. It consisted of a couple of rooms and a bathroom, ingeniously built into the attic to create a complicated jumble of rooms and niches. It was interesting and although it was obvious that most of the furniture had not cost much, it created a sort of magical ambiance that made him feel good.

  Ursula lay beside him half covered. As if she felt him being awake, she blinked at him a few times sleepily and smiled. “Looks like you like me,” she mumbled indistinctly.

  “Looks like it,” he responded with a grin.

  She turned around, which was also an attractive view, and reached for the clock. “Oh, today is Saturday, right?”

  “Sure, unless the calendar’s been changed.”

  “Don’t joke around — our nice romance could end abruptly today.”

  “Let me guess; you want to introduce me to your husband and he’s a boxer.”

  “Much worse. I want to introduce you to my grandfather and he’s an old Nazi.”

  John thought Ursula’s nervousness was odd. After all, he didn’t want to marry her grandfather, did he? But she only reacted with a, ‘wait and see,’ to that. She seemed genuinely worried he might just run off without a word. Her grandfather had to be some monster. John’s curiosity was piqued.

  Ursula worried for the entire drive to the nursing home. She even talked a lot with the bodyguards and wanted to know how they could guard a house all night and seem so fresh and chipper the next morning. Marco explained their modus operandi; who got to stay in the nearby hotel room to rest and shower for how long, how they organized the car duty, and how to have breakfast in a car without turning it into a pigsty.

  “There is a glimmer of hope,” Ursula said as they stepped through the door of the home. “I just remembered grandfather doesn’t speak a word of English.”

  John had to grin. “Then that’ll be quite boring when he tells us his war stories.”

  Two bodyguards followed them. Ursula was right; for the first time in days they were being properly guarded again.

  “He does not tell war stories,” Ursula said grimly. “He was an instructor in the Totenkopf SS, the Death’s-Head SS. He is a true to the blood Nazi and even knows Hitler’s Mein Kampf by heart.”

  John squeezed her hand to reassure her. “He speaks no English and I don’t speak German. I guess I will have to believe everything you tell me.”

  Indeed, Josef Valen did not speak a word of English. But he did speak Italian, better than John! “I was stationed in Italy for three years by order of Reichsführer SS Himmler personally,” he explained with military preciseness. “I was a liaison officer to our Italian comrades. It was obligatory to take language lessons. I was to participate in undercover operations. That changed later, but the language skills remained.”

  Ursula had to sit there thunderstruck. John was

  flabbergasted. Ursula’s grandfather was as old as the hills and wheelchair bound, but John seldom saw someone so aware and snappy as Josef Valen. And he understood why Ursula was so anxious; there seemed something evil lurking within the old man, an aura of mercilessness and toughness that made John’s hair stand on end. The little hair her grandfather had was kept short and was combed to the side. He peered at John like a wolf at its prey. It was easy to imagine this man once having shot women and children, and you were afraid to ask, because you did not want to know the answer.

  “So you are the famous John Fontanelli,” Josef Valen said. He pointed at one of the chairs standing by a wall. “Have a seat. My son told me you were coming; it is an honor.”

  “Grazie,” John mumbled and sat down. Ursula had a hand over her mouth and a look of panic in her eyes.

  Valen adjusted his wheelchair. “I have read a lot about you, Signor Fontanelli. Of course, I never guessed I would ever meet you one day. The prophecy fascinated me.”

  “Yes,” John said, nodding with growing discomfort. “Me too.”

  “To give back mankind’s lost future …” The old man kept his cold, gray eyes fixed on John. “I had always wondered if you knew just when humanity lost its future?”

  John leaned back until he felt the wall hard against his back. Was it colder in the room or was it his imagination? “To be honest,” he responded hesitantly, “no.”

  “In 1945,” Valen said, “as the Jewish world conspiracy forced our fatherland to its knees … as it became obvious that Jewish capitalism had America firmly in its grip.”

  Somehow, John thought, he should have known that he would hear something like that. “Ah, yes,” he nodded. This would be over soon. “I understand.”

  “Do not tell me you understand!” the old man barked. “You understand nothing! I can see that in your eyes! Adolf Hitler was destined by providence to recognize this conspiracy, to free himself from the delusion of a false doctrine that had been poisoning mankind for centuries and to take action to remedy this discrepancy. And he took action.” Valen leaned forward and pointed a bony finger at John. “Do you realize that Hitler wanted to the same thing as you?”

  John gasped. “What do you mean?”

  “To safeguard humanity’s future, of course! That is the goal he was working for. He knew the world was limited in size that it could not be enough for all and that there must be a fight for space and natural resources. And he had understood that this struggle was natural, that the races had to prove themselves and that it was only this struggle that kept them strong.”

  “Initiating a general contraceptive measure would have been a more original idea to solve the problem, don’t you think?” John asked sharply.

  “You do not understand, Signor Fontanelli. Nature throws living beings into this world and they must survive. The weak will perish and the strong will thrive. That is the law of nature, the aristocratic principle of life itself. Nature knows no contraception it knows only overabundance and the destruction of that which is not capable of survival. Only those worthy of surviving, survive. That’s the way nature wants it. And today? Just have a look around: people reproduce without a sense of race, everyone with hereditary diseases or weaknesses are kept alive at vast expense and are allowed to reproduce, and what is the result? The genetic make-up gets watered do
wn and spoiled. The white races, which are the true upholders of human culture, are all sick to the bone. Degeneration, do you understand? The world in which we live is a world of the degenerate and those unfit for life, and that is why it is doomed.”

  John wanted to say something, wanted to stop the flow of merciless words, but he did not know how.

  “Humanity must submit to nature’s wisdom again or it will succumb. That is the only way, Signor Fontanelli,” Josef Valen went on explaining. “But nature’s wisdom is a gruesome one. It has no provisions for pacifism and religions of compassion, it knows only the law of the strong. The strong will overthrow the weak and through victory prove worthiness. The Third Reich was not about conquering other countries; it was about improving mankind itself, assuring the continuity of our kind. Do you understand? To assure the continuity of our kind that was the goal. The same goal you are pursuing…”

  “One question, Signor Valen,” John interrupted, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “You don’t look like the epitome of health and fitness, but you are allowed to live here and are being cared for. You don’t mind that, do you?”

  Josef Valen rolled closer, so close he almost felt sickened by the bad breath. He hissed, “I mock all of them, and these cowards take it! I spit on their despicable compassion, but they accept it! They deserve no more! Slaves, all of them!”

  “That’s good to know. I can’t stand this any more.” John stood up and recoiled away from the old man. “It was not a pleasure to get to know you, Signor Valen, and I hope there will not be another meeting between us. Die well.” He left the room. Only afterwards did he admit to himself that at that moment he didn’t care whether Ursula came with him or not.

  But she followed him. He put his arm around her and felt her shudder. He heard the old man laughing, and heard him calling after him: “I like you, Fontanelli! Just wait. One day you will do the right thing!”

  Then they went around a corner and the squeaking wheelchair drowned out the rest.