Godzilla vs. Kong

by Greg Keyes

  It was Madison’s school, with a recorded message that she was truant.

  “Dammit, Madison,” he muttered. He knew she had gotten there. Her driver had confirmed it.

  This, he really didn’t need right now. Not on top of everything else.

  Monarch Relief Camp, Pensacola

  Godzilla was not a precision weapon. His goal might have been the Apex facility, but he had trampled plenty of other buildings as well. Madison knew as well as anyone that when Godzilla was around, there was always collateral damage.

  She knew that Monarch would be on the scene, and they were, near the water, setting up relief tents, passing out rations, giving first aid. It was the kind of scene Madison had hoped to never see again. Godzilla had created peace. She’d thought it would last.

  But she hadn’t come here to gawk; her father was in charge of this region, and he would be at the center of all. All she had to do was head toward where the most yelling was.

  She found him without much trouble. But he looked decidedly unhappy to see her.

  “What are you doing here, Madison?” he demanded. “You’re supposed be in school!”

  “Dad, I’m trying to tell you that there’s something provoking him that we’re not seeing here. I mean, why else would he flash an intimidation display if there wasn’t another Titan around?”

  “That podcast is filling your head with garbage,” her father snapped. “You should be in school!”

  “I’m just trying to help!”

  “I don’t want you to help,” he said. “I want you to be a kid! I want you to stay safe.”

  There was that again. Her mother and father had been separated when the Titans rose. When her dad figured out what was going on, he had done everything he could to save her. And he was still doing that, determined to give her as “normal” a life as possible. Normal house, normal school, everything just right. Except it wasn’t, and it never had been. Not since Andrew died, and probably not before.

  They reached a mobile office tent, where Monarch employees scrambled around like ants whose nest had just been kicked.

  “We needed a plan to keep peace with these things,” her father went on, “and the best one we had just went down in flames. The whole world is screaming at me for answers, and I don’t have any.” He paused and took a breath. “The last thing I need to do is be worried about you.”

  “Godzilla saved us,” Madison said. “You were there … with Mom. You saw it. How could you doubt him? There has to be a pattern here—”

  “There doesn’t,” he said, in a low, flat tone.

  “A reason why he—”

  “There isn’t!”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “Because creatures, like people, can change! And right now Godzilla is out there, hurting people, and we don’t know why. So cut your pop some slack, would ya?”

  Madison had developed a pretty thick skin. She had been threatened by professional murderers. She had stolen the ORCA device from them and used it to disrupt Ghidorah’s control of the Titans. And she had been right to do it. Who knows, if it had not been for her, the world might be a smoking ruin right now.

  But her father didn’t seem to remember any of that. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say, and he didn’t trust her, because he wanted her to be some kind of normal kid.

  And that hurt, even through the thickest skin. What was the point? There wasn’t one.

  “See you at home, Dad,” she said.

  He softened a little. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got some other things to talk over. I’m just—this isn’t a good time.”

  EIGHT

  From the notes of Dr. Houston Brooks

  Two brothers, One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, are invited to Xibalba, the Underworld, by the Lords of Death, who send very strange owls to guide them there. Some living Mayan informants claim to know where the entrance to Xibalba is, although no one has definitively nailed this down.

  —H.B.

  One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu left immediately, the messengers guiding them as they descended down the path to Xibalba, the Underworld. They traversed a steep slope until they came out on the banks of the canyons called Trembling Canyon and Murmuring Canyon. They passed through turbulent rivers. They passed through Scorpion River, filled with uncountable numbers of scorpions, but they were not stung. They came to Blood River, and were able to pass because they did not drink of it. Next they arrived at the River of Pus, which they passed, undefeated. Finally they came to the Crossroads, and there they were defeated.

  From Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya,

  written down circa 1554–8

  Denham School of Theoretical Science, Philadelphia

  “The seemingly unprovoked Godzilla attack on Pensacola has left the world in a state of shock. Monarch officials are scrambling for a response but as of now there is no official directive. Civilians are advised to shelter in place.”

  Nathan Lind shook his head as he listened to the report on the radio. Shelter in place? What did that even mean when it came to the Titans? Hiding in an inner hallway or doing the old duck and cover was not going to offer much protection if Godzilla stepped on your house, even if your house was built to withstand a hurricane, which many in Pensacola were.

  But then what did he know? Just enough to get his brother and two other pilots killed and himself thoroughly discredited. If he didn’t have tenure, he would have been out on his ass; instead the Denham School of Theoretical Science was content to let him rot away in this dark office, with a minimal workload of intro courses where they figured he couldn’t do any harm. He glanced around the cluttered, unkempt office at his diagrams of the Hollow Earth. The picture of his brother, as he had last seen him, in Monarch flight gear, his helmet with “Unto the Breach” written on it. The piles of manuscripts and books he hadn’t looked at in months.

  He had dreams, almost every night. Everything happened as it had: their last drink together, the press briefing on the carrier, the planes entering the tunnel. And at every point in the dream he tried to stop it, make something else happen, say the right thing. But it always ended in that last moment, hearing Dave’s last words.

  Everything had imploded after that. Monarch, already tender over how they were perceived by the public, left him to hang. No one blamed him by name. But there was a lot of talk of how the calculations had been wrong, that the Hollow Earth theory had not passed the verification test. Other academics reacted with predictable Schadenfreude, blasting him as a fringe theorist and holding him up as an example of a pseudoscientist whose nonsense had gotten people killed. There were still people at Monarch who knew better, but they weren’t talking. Houston Brooks had retired, and as far as Monarch was concerned, two major debacles on the Hollow Earth front were enough. Pure research for the sake of research was out, replaced by what they considered to be more “practical” projects. At that time the Titans were sleeping; why risk waking more of them up, as they had Camazotz? What if there were a thousand Titans below their feet, just waiting to be riled up like a nest of skyscraper-sized hornets?

  He tried to fight it at first, to salvage what he could of his reputation. The fight hadn’t lasted long; he didn’t have the will or the stamina for it.

  He heard a faint sound and turned. He was shocked to see a man standing in his office, a man in a very expensive-looking black suit. His dark hair was styled so it almost covered one eye, and he sported a thin mustache. He wasn’t looking at Nathan but was casually surveying the contents of the office. Like he belonged there and was taking inventory.

  “Uh, can I help you?” Nathan asked.

  The man didn’t answer but continued his review of the various news clippings, diagrams and photographs in the room.

  “Look, if you need an appointment, my office hours are nine to five—”

  “Oh, please, Dr. Lind,” another voice said. “Guys like us don’t do normal hours, do we?”

  Nathan wondered if
his jaw had literally dropped, or if it just felt that way. There was another guy sitting across the office—his office. From him. How had he come in within him noticing? Had he been that preoccupied?

  And this guy wasn’t just anyone. He still didn’t know who the first man was, but the man who had just called him Dr. Lind was one of the most famous people in the world. There was no mistaking the widow’s peak, the salt-and-pepper beard, the slightly crooked smile. Inventor, entrepreneur, a man who thought so far out of the box that boxes were now all but obsolete: Walter Simmons, founder and CEO of Apex Industries. Nathan watched, struggling to understand what was going on, as Simmons approached his book, the one with the ungainly title Hollow Earth Gravity Paradox and Our New Frontier.

  “I’ve been fixated on Hollow Earth as long as you have,” Simmons said. “Your theory that it’s the birthplace of all Titans is fascinating.”

  “Your book was very impressive,” the other guy said, finally proving he could speak. “Brilliant ideas.”

  “I’ve got about thirty unsold boxes in my apartment if you want some,” Nathan replied.

  “Walt Simmons,” Simmons said. “Apex Industries.”

  “Y-yeah, yes, sir,” Nathan stammered. “I know who you are. It’s an honor.”

  “The honor is mine,” Simmons said. “As is the urgency. Godzilla has never attacked us unprovoked before. These are dangerous times, Dr. Lind. Allow me to introduce Apex’s Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Ren Serizawa. He has an … interesting thing to show you.”

  Nathan watched as Serizawa pulled something up on a pad and then placed it on the table. A holographic globe appeared above the pad—the Earth but depicted in MRI imaging. As Nathan studied the digital globe, he began to pick out density representations, lines of magnetic force—and something else. An energy signature that was substantially different than anything else he had ever seen—but which was also oddly familiar. He had seen similar data before, but it hadn’t gone nearly as deep into the planet.

  Oh, Lind thought.

  “Magnetic imaging from one of our new satellites penetrated the Earth’s mantle,” Simmons said. “You know what this is.”

  “Hollow Earth,” Nathan breathed, his gaze still picking over it, now identifying hollow spaces, some very large, others smaller but nevertheless distinct.

  Simmons nodded. “An ecosystem as vast as any desert or ocean, beneath our very feet.”

  Nathan continued tracing the contours of it, hardly believing what he was seeing. His theory predicted this, all of this, right down to the global electrostatic barrier, the boundary that certainly marked the gravitational reversal, the Swiss cheese nature of the interior of the world. Although that one central pocket was a little larger than he had imagined.

  And that unknown energy represented … he couldn’t be sure what it was exactly, but the sheer power it signified agreed with his prediction that there must be some vital force to sustain life in lieu of sunlight and chemical outflow.

  “This energy signal,” he said. “It’s enormous.”

  “And almost identical to readings from Gojira,” Serizawa said.

  “As our sun fuels the planet’s surface, this energy sustains the Hollow Earth,” Simmons said, “enabling life as powerful as our aggressive Titan friend. If we can harness this … life force … we’ll have a weapon that can defeat Godzilla.”

  That was it. That made it all snap into place. Monarch scientists had been debating the nature of Godzilla’s metabolism since he had first reappeared in 2014. It was clearly linked to radiation—after all, Ishiro Serizawa had used a thermonuclear bomb to jump-start the Titan—but many speculated that Godzilla converted conventionally understood radiation into some other form of energy, which manifested into the beam of unknown energy he discharged from his mouth. Which did not closely resemble the nuclear particles and waves discharged by a fission or fusion reaction.

  Here was the proof, another sort of energy, perhaps not nuclear in origin, but tied more closely to quantum states…

  He noticed Serizawa and Simmons exchange a quick glance. Then, as if they had reached some tacit agreement, Simmons met Nathan’s gaze.

  “I need your help to find it,” Simmons said.

  Nathan’s first reaction was stunned disbelief, followed quickly by suspicion that they were mocking him. But that seemed like a weird thing for a billionaire tech giant to do, slum down to a basement office just to make fun of a has-been geologist. That left him with the possibility that they were—as impossible as it seemed—serious.

  Hell, yes, Nathan wanted to say. What came out instead was a bitter laugh.

  “I don’t know if I’m the right guy for the job,” he said. “Did you read the reviews?” He picked up one of his books. “‘A sci-fi quack trading in fringe physics,’” he quoted. Then he nodded at their surroundings. “Look where they put my office—I’m in the basement right across from the flute class. Besides, I’m not with Monarch anymore. And Hollow Earth entry is impossible. We tried.”

  His throat caught on those last words. Simmons softened immediately and glanced at the news clipping about Dave.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” Simmons said. “He was a true pioneer.”

  “Thank you,” Nathan said, trying to put on a polite smile, but it was, in fact, all he could do not to break down. He took a steadying breath. Simmons gave him a moment, then motioned toward the holographic globe.

  “All forward scans suggested a habitable environment down there. So … what really went wrong? Your brother’s mission.”

  Nathan took a moment to try to distance himself from the subject. To try to explain it dispassionately.

  “When they tried to enter,” he finally said, “they hit a gravitational inversion. A whole planet’s worth of gravity reversed in a split second. Like flying a Volkswagen into a black hole, so … they were crushed in an instant.”

  Simmons nodded, as if he’d just heard something he already knew. “What if I told you that we at Apex have developed a phenomenal craft that could sustain such an inversion?” He nodded at Serizawa. The technology officer pulled up something on the tablet that turned out to be specs for some sort of machine.

  “The Hollow Earth anti-gravity vehicle,” Simmons said. “HEAV.”

  “The right tool for the job,” Serizawa added.

  Nathan stared at the specs, instantly overwhelmed by the design. This was his dream vehicle, the one he’d seen the possibility of but could never harness the technology to build.

  And Simmons had built it.

  “We can make the Hollow Earth entry possible,” Simmons said. “We just need you to lead the mission.” Simmons sat down next to him. “Help me,” he pressed. “Help everyone. Finding this needle in a haystack is our best shot against Godzilla.”

  Nathan’s mind had already shifted into overdrive, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. He had theorized on an energy source in Hollow Earth, but it had not been the point of the expedition Dave had spearheaded. That had been pure science, a voyage of discovery.

  But he could work with this. If Simmons’s objective was to find the energy source, that was okay. It was still a path that led to Hollow Earth, to everything he and Dave had been trying to accomplish. But it did present a bit of a problem—they would have to find it. And it wasn’t likely to be obvious to human senses or to the machines that they had created to enhance those senses.

  A green plant, an anole lizard—most life on Earth had evolved to perceive the presence of the sun, to react to it. A plant bent toward the light, trying to maximize the energy it could draw from it. An anole warmed its blood in the sun, moved to shade when it was too hot, buried itself and hibernated when the luminary’s warmth was no longer enough to power it. Nocturnal animals reacted negatively to the sun, staying hidden when it was out, emerging when darkness came. But, as the surface world’s chief source of power, the sun was salient, and living things recognized that.

  Even if you could not perceive
the sun, you could use a sunflower to find where it was; the sunflower would turn toward it.

  By that logic, what would turn toward the power source of Hollow Earth?

  Nathan stood, walked over to a pile of papers and magazines, and dug out his copy of A Scientific Future magazine and the cover article “Kong: Genetic Memory and Species Origins” by Dr. Ilene Andrews.

  “I have an idea,” he told Simmons. “But it’s crazy.”

  “Love it!” Simmons said. “Crazy ideas made me rich.”

  Nathan waved the magazine. “Are you guys familiar with the concept of genetic memory? It’s the theory that all Titans share an impulse to return to their evolutionary source.”

  “Like spawning salmon,” Serizawa said.

  “Exactly,” Nathan said. “Or a homing pigeon.” He pointed at the holographic globe. “So if this is the Titans’ home, and this … life force sustains them—”

  “A Titan could show you the way to the energy source,” Serizawa said.

  “Yes,” Nathan agreed. “With a little help from an old colleague.”

  Skull Island

  Ilene hadn’t seen Nathan Lind in almost a year. Back then, he had been sincere, energetic, charming in a clueless sort of way. He had come to Skull Island pursuing the same leprechaun that Houston Brooks and a half-dozen other scientists had come for in the last fifty years—a path from Skull Island to Hollow Earth. She had been caught up in it herself at the time; Iwi mythology suggested that much of the life of the island—including most of the people themselves—had come up from some ancient, mythic underworld. The biological reality of the island seemed to confirm the mythology. If you looked at a continent like Australia, which broke off from Pangaea before the dinosaurs became extinct, you could see that tens of millions of years of isolation had encouraged life to diverge quite radically from the rest of the world; marsupials dominated the megafauna instead of the placental mammals that ruled the other continents, for instance. Monotremes, egg-laying mammals once found everywhere, had survived and continued to evolve in Australia and New Guinea, but nowhere else, exemplified by that weirdest of creatures, the duck-billed platypus.