Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear
Page 6
There was nothing funny about 400 million deaths, but there was definitely something amusing about twenty Masters of the Universe sitting at a table and grumbling because they were going to have to think in front of their peers. It was like teaching school all over again.
***
The brainstorming session resulted in a list on the room’s huge whiteboard. No ideas were rejected out of hand, although scoffing noises could be heard from the Vice President following any suggestion that did not include the words “terrorist attack”:
Cthulhu
Solar activity
Mini black hole
Radioactive meteor
Terrorist attack
Muslim terrorist attack
Russian terrorist attack
Chinese terrorist attack
Possibly Chechen terrorist attack
Accidental nuclear weapon explosion
Intentional nuclear weapon explosion
Ozone depletion
Alien attack (non-Cthulhu)
Spontaneous radiation discharge
Mad scientist
Superbloop
Magic
After a bit of back and forth between several impromptu factions over how “magic” would be defined, the list was whittled down in Phase II of the exercise to just four options, plus two that President Hampton told everyone not to consider, since they were added during a break by Vice President Steele:
Intentional or accidental nuclear explosion
Terrorist attack
Superbloop
Cthulhu
Russia or China (crossed out by Steele)
Russia AND China (emphasis Steele’s)
Since Navy Secretary Admiral Benjamin Harper had dichotomized the “nuclear explosion” concept to the deliberate explosion of a nuclear warhead (which could have been a test which no one had been told about) or the accidental explosion of an unidentified nuke-powered ship or submarine, the President asked the Admiral, “Could a nuclear explosion cause this number of casualties? And these types of casualties? Your frank assessment, please, Ben.”
The Navy secretary answered truthfully and immediately. “No, Madam President. The Tsar Bomba, a weapon tested only once by the Soviets in 1961, produced the biggest explosion in history. It was a bit more than 50 megatons. It ripped stone roofs off houses in villages 100 miles away and disrupted radio broadcasts all over the world for almost an hour.”
The President and most of the military chiefs and advisors in the room nodded soberly at this information, some of them already knowing the details of the famous test and some, like the President, only learning them now. Hampton broke the silence: “Roofs off of houses in the Russian steppes. Static on radios. Lots of heat and destruction over what, a hundred-mile radius?”
The Admiral said, “Give or take a few.”
She nodded again. “What about beyond that? Anybody get, I don’t know, nosebleeds five thousand miles away? Any mass deaths from aneurysms?”
“No,” he said. “I was merely putting it forth in the spirit of our brainstorming session.”
“Very good—exactly what we need to make brainstorming a success, actually. Some of these ideas will peter out when we try to expand on them. Some will appear stronger the more we discuss them,” the President said, obviously using language she had used in her (some grumbled to themselves) hippie-dippie Montessori teaching days. “So every idea is a good one, Mister Secretary. Thank you for the contribution.”
Since the Secretary of Homeland Security had—second only to the Vice President—most strongly supported the “terrorist” angle, the President asked her, “Teresa, what could possibly be the point of this kind of attack by terrorist groups?”
Secretary Farr was ready for the question, but perhaps not as sure-footed in her answer as the Admiral had been. “The point of terror attacks may not be to kill the most people,” she said, knowing that this was a fact of which everyone in the room was familiar, but she had to add the corollary: “As their name implies, their actions are made to induce terror among whomever they are targeting. Make them paranoid and willing to give away their own freedoms in exchange for security. I know it may seem a bit ironic—”
“‘Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither,’” interjected the chair of the House Armed Services Committee. “Abraham Lincoln said that.”
The President said, “Actually, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’”
The congressman wanted to say, Actually, you can go fuck yourself.
Secretary Farr ignored the evil eye that the congressman was trying to sear the President with and continued, “I know it may seem a bit ironic that the head of the Department of Homeland Security is talking about terrorists causing a public overreaction and freedoms being curtailed in the name of security, but an event of this magnitude calls for clear-eyed analysis.”
“Agreed,” the President said. “So why would terrorists do this? Causing panic and loss of freedoms was the aim of 9/11, of the 7/7 London underground attack. Of car bombs that kill a hundred people at most. What’s the point of killing 400 million people, for God’s sake?”
“It would be to achieve the same ends, but on a much bigger scale, of course. I mean, I could see the Palestinians doing this to force the Israelis into giving back the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, maybe the Chechens, something global like that.”
“Then why wouldn’t they try to strike their enemies directly? Because their weapon was too powerful?”
“That’s a possibility,” Farr said, but didn’t sound convinced herself. “However, Madam President, Admiral, General … no terrorist could even in theory possess this powerful of a weapon. Heck, no nation has this kind of weapon. We certainly don’t. I can’t see twenty allegedly oppressed ethnic minority group members having the resources to even take down another skyscraper anywhere in the world, let alone to somehow create an explosion millions of times stronger than the biggest bomb ever exploded. Also, nuclear radiation doesn’t instantly wrap around the surface of the world like this. It’s not any kind of bomb I’ve ever heard of.”
As the words I’ve ever heard of sank in to the men and women around the table, all eyes turned to Marine Corps Major General Jack Patterson, head of the NSA. The man in charge of The Shadow Factory itself.
The President said gently but with authority, “Jack? Anything you care to share with us? I believe everyone here is cleared above top secret.”
Patterson motioned to indicate Sergeant Berry and also the new A/V technician. “Not everyone,” he said.
Adamson asked the tech and Sergeant Berry to please step out for a moment, along with the staff members who lined the walls in anticipation of their bosses’ needs. They all moved toward the door, but the President held up a hand to Berry before he could get up from his seat and said, “Sergeant, if you would stay, please.”
“I-I’m not cleared for—”
“He’s correct, Madam President,” Adamson said. “Enlisted personnel are not cleared for top secret or above.”
“I see. General Adamson, General Patterson, what is the beginning rank for officers in the Marine Corps?”
“Second Lieutenant,” they said almost in unison.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Sergeant Berry, I am giving you a field commission. You are now Second Lieutenant Berry. I’ll take care of the paperwork later, but can we get him his new uniforms and such?” She waited for a nod from the head of the Marines, then turned to Berry again and said, “Have a seat, Lieutenant.”
When the staff members and enlisted men and women had all filed out, Hampton turned again to the NSA chief. “Well, Jack? Is there anything like this bomb in our arsenal? Or anyone else’s arsenal?”
With something of a dramatic pause—the NSA was used to collecting information, not disseminating it—General Patterson shook his head and said, “No, Madam President, t
here is not, neither in ours nor in anyone else’s. But there’s a good reason for that.”
That perked up everyone’s ears. After a few seconds, the President said, “And that reason is … ?”
“It’s impossible. Radiation travels in a straight line—in other words, it radiates,” he said, meeting the eyes of the President and her military chiefs. “I suppose sufficiently strong radiation from some kind of superbomb—something much stronger than anything ever even conceived of—could go through the Earth, but it couldn’t wrap around the planet like an armada of ships traveling the oceans.”
The President, used to being in control of conversations since her teaching days, could not help herself from saying, “So, it’s impossible. Meaning those millions of people are no longer dead.”
“I said such a bomb was impossible, Madam President. Obviously it happened, so it’s not only possible—it’s actual.” Patterson looked again at the Joint Chiefs and their leader. “To repeat my answer to the President’s question, gentlemen: Whatever this Event was, it was not crafted or executed by human hands. It was no bomb and no nuclear accident. It is something entirely new to our experience, almost an extinction event, but one about which the National Security Agency has never thought to run simulations or worked out a contingency plan as we have with killer meteors, nuclear war, runaway pandemics. The singularity of this Event makes a zombie apocalypse look like a stone-cold–sober eschatological possibility.”
The room fell silent once again. Everyone knew that the two most familiar—the two most plausible—the two most actionable, we-can-do-something-about-this—theories had been thoroughly shot down. It was not a bomb, and it was not a nuclear explosion of any kind. The President removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I suggest a short recess, people. My brain is about to boggle right out of my skull.”
***
Fifteen minutes passed, during which almost no words were spoken; then it was back to business. “Doctor Tyson,” the President said, “you suggested during our brainstorming session that this could be some kind of ‘Superbloop.’”
Tyson nodded, looking to all the room that he wished to hell he hadn’t.
“What would cause such a thing? Extra-strong glacial movement? Could that cause such a weird radiation output? I mean, if it’s even radiation at all?”
“To be completely honest, I don’t know. Bob and I put out some feelers during the break to various scientific entities entrusted with studying the weirdest possible situations. These are scientists, mind you, Madam President, men and women who are as meticulous in their research methods as anyone in the world.”
“I don’t know if I like this preamble.” There were a few laughs in the room, including from Tyson and Nye.
“I don’t blame you,” Tyson said. “These are people who have brought their extensive knowledge and scientific skills to work for the United States’ ultimate security. They study and develop protocols for things like an alien invasion, like a ‘zombie epidemic’—which would in reality be something along the lines of the flu virus and rabies virus merging to produce a kind of hyper-aggressive, highly contagious state, all too plausible—or a psychic attack.”
“Psychic attack? What in the hell is this?” General Adamson blurted, then reddened and said, “My apologies, Doctor Tyson. Madam President.”
Tyson gave a very slight chuckle and said, “No, they are charged with developing the craziest of crazy contingency plans, I admit, but it’s vital work in situations exactly like the one the world just experienced—where an extreme ‘black swan event’ paralyzes action and nearly prevents any thought, since it’s so utterly unprecedented.”
“Like a Superbloop?” Hampton asked.
“Madam President, I’m sorry I even said that. There is no such thing as a ‘Superbloop.’ The Bloop in 1997 was strong and loud but did no damage to anything or anyone. I threw ‘Superbloop’ out there basically as an ‘X’ quantity, a variable to hold the place of something with the power and—if caused by a living thing or group of things—the will to bring about such an Event.”
“And what did your scientists tell you?”
“They are, as I am, cleared in cases of national emergency to share highly classified information with relevant members of your Cabinet. So, Jack, this is no breach of security, all right?”
Patterson nodded impatiently, not thrilled by the attention thrown on him again.
“My god,” the President said, “what could they possibly have said?”
“They said—and I apologize for the language, Madam President—‘We have no fucking idea.’”
The President smiled ironically at that, but the amused expression soon faded: coming from the greatest minds in the world dedicated to the most outrageous, most infinitesimally possible disasters in the universe, We have no fucking idea was chilling indeed. “Did they … well, did they have anything else to say? Something that might be helpful to us in this room as we try to make sense of the greatest tragedy in human history?”
“They did,” Tyson said, looking a little sick. “They said the Event was impossible.”
“Another ‘impossible,’” the President muttered in a defeated sigh. “Jesus Christ.”
“Maybe that’s what it is!” the House Armed Services Committee Chair exclaimed, almost jumping out of his seat. “Maybe God caused this! He alone can do the impossible!”
“I thought we had ruled out magic,” Nye whispered wryly to Tyson, who only barely kept a smile from forming on his face.
The President put her hand over her eyes and said, “Congressman, if God just killed half a billion human beings, I doubt there’s anything we can do to stop Him from doing it again or worse. In other words, if this is Jesus cracking His holy knuckles for the Apocalypse, we might as well adjourn this meeting and go pray for a swift and merciful end.”
The flabbergasted congressman’s mouth moved, but even with his inability to form actual words, everybody knew that the Gentleman From Texas thought that this was indeed the best course of action anyone could possibly take.
Moving on but reaching the limit of her patience, the President said to the room at large but to Tyson and Nye in particular, “The greatest scientists researching the weirdest contingencies conceivable say it’s impossible. My own top science advisors say it’s impossible. My top spy chief says it’s impossible. But this happened, people. It’s not a bomb, it’s not a Superbloop … essentially we’re saying that Lieutenant Berry is right: It’s Cthulhu. It’s a mythical creature living under the sea in a pulp science fiction story. It’s … Cthulhu.”
Berry moved to make a slight amendment to her statement, but then realized it was about the worst thing he could do for his future career.
Tyson stepped in to save him. “No, ma’am, we can’t say it’s Cthulhu—or any other specific cause—as yet,” the scientist said soberly. “I mean no disrespect to you when I say this, Congressman—but we must avoid the logical fallacy of the ‘God of the Gaps.’ That’s a situation in which none of the knowledge we have can explain some physical mystery, thus some kind of supernatural entity must be the missing explanation. Throughout history, whenever any material conundrum has not been explained by the science of the day, theological sorts have always insisted that ‘it must be God who did it.’ The creation of the universe, the sky being blue, even things like humans’ capacity to read. All were originally credited to the God of the Gaps.”
“That’s what’s so great about this on-the-surface silly Cthulhu idea,” Undersecretary Nye said with his usual warmth so that neither his boss nor any “theological sorts” in the room could take offense, “this—which for lack of a better term I will call the ‘Cthulhu theory’—actually is testable with more information. It’s not a ‘God of the Gaps’ cop-out—it’s something we can look at and accept or reject based on data. It’s falsifiable.”
Tyson said, “And there’s another way that this doesn’t resemble a mystery force from the ocean depths, something
that can be explained away as caused by a God of the Gaps.”
Nye raised his eyebrows.
“We know a lot more about what H.P. Lovecraft was talking about with Cthulhu than about any other possibility on the table. Or, I should say, any other impossibility. Lovecraft, even by coincidence, has given us a starting point to conceptualize our predicament. That’s much more than any other bullet-point explanation.”
“Thank you, Norm and Bob. Now, Lieutenant Berry,” the President said, making the Marine sit up straighter than his already uncomfortable ramrod position next to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “the floor is yours. Please brief us on what we should know about … and I can’t believe I’m saying this … about Cthulhu.”
Facepalms spread around the table.
Berry had to fight the urge to freeze under the spotlight attention of the President, standing rigidly and marching stiffly to the dais. He took Nye’s spot and cleared his throat. Then cleared it again.
“Shit or get off the pot, son,” Chairman Adamson barked.
“R-Right. I mean, yes, sir.” He cleared his throat again and almost flinched at the look Adamson shot him. “Okay. I’m not saying the cause of the Event is actually Cthulhu, who is a fictional creature, of course. But there are some striking, um, similarities between the story by Lovecraft and what happened yesterday near Point Nemo. And the Bloop. That is—”
“How do you know all this, anyway, Lieutenant?” the President asked.
“Ma’am! I was always a big reader.” He didn’t do it consciously, but everyone else in the room thought he had just played the “teacher’s pet” card quite brilliantly. “I always loved horror and science fiction, Stephen King and Poe and, y’know, Lovecraft, ma’am. A lot of the guys on the base—and the women, too, of course, ma’am—grew up on these stories and love them just as much today.”