by David Wong
“I thought you’d tell me to stay home.”
“That’s actually the one thing I can’t ever tell a client. Personal security would be an easy job if we could just make the client stay indoors.”
Zoey pushed the drawer closed and something just happened to catch her eye, in the split second when the shadows fell over the contents inside: a tiny, blue pinprick of light, at the corner of the reading glasses.
Zoey opened the drawer again, studied the glasses, and then put them on.
She expected nothing—maybe an empty inbox floating over her field of vision, figuring the glasses were an unused gift from a younger friend or girlfriend that Arthur had tossed in a drawer and forgotten. Instead, a burst of code flew down the screen, appearing to her eyes to be scrolling down from the ceiling. Then the room disappeared, as Zoey’s vision went black. A line of white text appeared in front of her:
“Welcome, Zoey.”
TWENTY
Suddenly Zoey was looking down at the city from above, through a filthy window. The camera was recording from inside a helicopter, judging by the thwupping noise that drowned out all other sound. A timestamp at the bottom showed it had been recorded more than fourteen months ago, the night of October 4 of the previous year.
A hand came into view and glanced at a watch that seemed to have been crafted from about six pounds of gold. The view panned around from a side window to the windshield, where Livingston Tower was growing larger on the horizon. On this particular night the tower was a screaming shade of purple, rather than the dour flat black Zoey had seen in person. The color wasn’t a paint job—the screens that covered the tower’s surface blasted it in every direction, casting a royal shade across the neighboring buildings and the street below.
Zoey heard Armando say, “You all right? What’s happening—”
“Quiet. There’s video. In the glasses.”
She watched the helicopter shakily descend toward what from the air seemed like a miniscule landing pad atop the glowing purple tower, and Zoey decided then and there she did not want to be a helicopter pilot when she grew up. The aircraft finally jolted to a stop on the rooftop and the wearer of the camera hopped down from the passenger side, then turned and watched the helicopter abandon him there, softly thwupping away into the distance until the only sound was the soft rustle of wind. The view panned around again and found that not far from the helipad was a man sitting in a wheelchair. Crouching calmly next to him was a chimpanzee, wearing a pair of sunglasses. The wearer of the camera advanced on the pair.
The man in the wheelchair—an Indian man in his forties—said, “Glad you could make it, Mr. Livingston.” As Zoey had already guessed, she was seeing the world through the eyes of Arthur, as if she had gone back to inhabit his body, a living person possessing a ghost. “I am Rupert Singh. Please put on these goggles.”
The man held out a pair of black welding googles and Zoey noticed this was actually what she was seeing on the face of the bored-looking chimp sitting next to the wheelchair, rather than sunglasses. She was mildly disappointed. The chimp was picking its nose and looking around, as if trying to figure out why the night was so much darker than usual.
The camera panned around and found that, across from them on the roof stood three department store mannequins, wearing military uniforms for some reason, complete with heavy bulletproof vests. Zoey wondered if the guy in the wheelchair—Singh, he said his name was—had set those up, or if the chimp had done it. It couldn’t have been easy either way.
The camera looked back and forth from the mannequins to the chimp and Arthur Livingston’s voice said, “I’m not making it off this rooftop alive, am I?”
He wasn’t serious. The man in the wheelchair, Singh, laughed. “I am an engineer, Mr. Livingston, and one who is paralyzed from the waist down at that. Besides, murdering you would be somewhat detrimental to my goal of getting you to invest fifty million dollars in my project.”
“You have five minutes, Mr. Singh. I do not enjoy having my time wasted.”
“I watch the news, Mr. Livingston. You love having your time wasted. As long as it is wasted in a way that amuses you.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Put on the goggles, please. They are for your own protection.”
Arthur took the goggles and put them on, but they didn’t blot out the view from the Blink camera—Zoey deduced that this meant what she was watching had been recorded from a device other than the eyeglasses. One that was, presumably, more easily hidden—she got the sense no one else in the world knew this recording existed.
Singh muttered a command at the chimpanzee in a language Zoey didn’t understand, and the primate waddled about halfway up to where the three army mannequins were standing, the chimp stopping about twenty feet away from where Arthur and Singh were watching. Singh pulled out a little control pad about the size of a phone, and tapped the screen. The chimp extended his right arm—or rather, the arm was extended for him, as if Singh was controlling the limb remotely.
Singh tapped the screen again.
There was a flash so bright that it blinded the camera, and a clap of thunder.
The chimp hooted and screeched.
When the camera was able to focus again, it found that the mannequin on the far right was now a handful of smoking chunks of black melted plastic. The chimp looked mildly confused.
Singh said, “Impressed, Mr. Livingston?”
“I … think I need some context for what I just saw there.”
“That, Mr. Livingston, is your tax dollars at work. You’re looking at the result of over twenty billion dollars in research and development by your Department of Defense.”
“To make a weaponized monkey? Or just a lightning gun? Because I’m not seeing the practical applications of either, to be frank.”
The chimpanzee had now sat down, and was looking at its right hand curiously, as if impressed by his own talents. Zoey wondered just how heavily the animal had been sedated. Singh tapped his control pad again and began his presentation.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Livingston—what separates a man from a god? What stops you or I from smashing a boulder with our fists, or turning a building to cinders with our eyes?”
Arthur clearly thought this was a rhetorical question, but Singh waited for an answer.
“Um, we’re not powerful enough? I guess?”
“Power is an abstract concept. A politician has power. The word you are looking for is ‘energy.’ If you can store and release enough energy, all is possible. Limitations in energy storage is the only reason, for instance, that you cannot fly without a bulky aircraft around you, or that we cannot build a ship that can traverse the galaxy. Even if we can build an engine small enough for the task, the fuel—that is, the stored energy—adds too much weight, and bulk. Do you follow me so far, Mr. Livingston?”
Arthur, in a tone that made it clear he was ready for the man in the wheelchair to get to the point, said, “So this is about … batteries or something?”
Singh forced a smile, impatient with the rich douche who wasn’t appreciating the marvel that lay before him.
“This is about the next step in human evolution, Mr. Livingston. You see, several years ago, something radical fell into the lap of your government. An eccentric Russian defector named Resnov appeared one day with a prototype device he called an exoquantum hypercapacitor, which you may recognize as a name that is made up of two nonsense words. He claimed the energy density of the device approached infinity. You may recognize infinity as a thing that cannot actually be ‘approached.’ He promised it could turn a man into a god. You may recognize that as a claim made almost exclusively by charlatans and the insane. Yet, despite all of this, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency devoted billions in black project money to develop the technology for military applications. I was one of the researchers brought in for what Resnov insisted we call Project Raiden.”
Livingston said, “After the Shinto god of Thunder.”
“After some character in an old video game—note that Resnov was fifteen years old, and mildly autistic. DARPA’s directive was to develop the power source and create new weapons systems around it. But Resnov had higher ambitions. He had no interest in building new weapons. He wanted to build new men. He steered his designs toward devices that could be grafted onto bone, woven through muscle. Devices that could power a man to do, well, anything. All hidden from his superiors at DARPA, of course.”
“Why hide it? Sounds like that’s the kind of thing they’d love. Soldiers who can fly and punch tanks in half? That’s what we’re talking about, right?”
“You have not thought it through, Mr. Livingston. A boy grows up, he enlists in the army, they hand him a gun. He fights the war, or doesn’t, and then he gives back the gun and comes home to become a mechanic, or farmer, or criminal. A soldier, in other words, is just a man, doing a job. With Raiden, there is no putting down the gun—the man becomes the gun. Think about the relationship between the man—or men—who possess these powers, and those who do not, knowing what they are now capable of. At that point you are no longer talking about a new weapon. You are talking about a new species. A dominant one.”
“But either way, you had this stuff working, right? So why are you talking to me, and why doesn’t the army have death rays that can do to the Chinese what you just did to that mannequin there?”
“I shall allow Cornelius up there to explain.”
Zoey actually tensed up in anticipation of the chimp turning around and talking to the camera, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Singh tapped on his control pad again and told Arthur to put on his goggles.
The chimp raised his right hand once more, the lightning flew from his palm, and once more a mannequin was obliterated—this time it was vaporized, not even chunks remaining in the aftermath. As if he had turned up the power.
Singh tapped his controls again.
The chimp raised his arm a third time—
There was a blast that sent Arthur and his camera reeling. The view whipped around the rooftop, and when it focused again the last mannequin stood unharmed—but Cornelius the chimpanzee was nothing but a smoldering stain on the rooftop.
Zoey heard Arthur say, “Christ.”
Singh stuffed his control pad into a shirt pocket and said, “Resnov’s design was highly unstable. We spent seven years trying to stabilize it until, finally, there was an incident in which one of the devices exploded, killing eleven people, including Resnov. Much of the research he left behind was utterly incomprehensible. Soon, the Department of Defense got wind of his more … unconventional prototypes and quickly pulled funding.”
“And you decided to sneak some designs out the door to see what the highest bidder would pay for god powers.”
Singh shifted in his chair, not liking the way his whole enterprise had been boiled down to such crude terms.
“Mr. Livingston, as a man of science, I am not willing to give up on what I consider to be, not just the most important invention of all time, but the single greatest leap in human evolution since the species gained the capacity for conscious thought. I got out with six hundred gigabytes of schematics and hardware drivers. We could plug them into a nano-capable fabricator and, in minutes, start building working prototypes.”
“That turn the user into a splatter of pulled pork when they fail.”
“I can fix Raiden. I know I can. The flaw is in the software that stabilizes the capacitor, I was working on a fix when the project was shut down. I was close, Mr. Livingston. I believe if I still had access to the right facilities I would have done it by now. But I lack the facilities, because I lack the funds. So I am seeking out a partner with, let us say, an excess of funds.”
“And if the government finds out you’re doing this…”
“They will kill me, and everyone I showed Raiden to.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I assure you, I have many bidders waiting, Mr. Livingston.”
“You have many bidders who have fifty million dollars on hand to throw at an illegal weapon project that may not even work?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re talking about underground arms dealers, right? Guys who want to buy this up and sell it to third-world dictators and terrorists?”
“I also have Russian mobsters, cartel bosses, Cambodian insurgents, and Sub-Saharan African warlords. And one real estate tycoon who is most well known for showing up pantsless to the groundbreaking ceremony for his own casino. So you must understand, Mr. Livingston, that at this point I am as curious as you. I know what those other men want to use Raiden for. The fact that I don’t know what you want it for actually makes me more nervous.”
“Who’s to say I don’t just want to keep it out of the hands of those other men? Maybe I don’t want a world full of flying superterrorists who can rip airliners to pieces with their bare hands.”
“That is a lot to pay for a clean conscience.”
“A clean conscience is expensive, it’s the reason most men have to live paycheck to paycheck.”
“So you are saying you’re offering to pay me the money to not finish my research? Your goal is to bury it?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ll get you your facility. I’ll get you the nano-whatever fabricators. Whatever you need.”
“And when I get it all working, what happens then?”
“That’s my business. Who knows, maybe I want to implant all this stuff, put on a cape, and go fight crime.”
TWENTY-ONE
The feed went to black and Zoey started to take off the glasses. Armando asked her what the hell was going on, but another video started and she shushed him once more.
The date on this recording was about two months ago. The feed picked up inside a moving car, rolling through downtown Tabula Ra$a. Will Blackwater was behind the wheel, and the camera had started recording him in mid-sentence.
“… I guess a lot of them got moldy in storage, they’re all canvas you know, and the Tenth Street warehouse flooded last spring. They’re fine, they just smell bad. They’ll air out by Halloween.”
Arthur, who once again was unseen behind the camera, said, “And the snow, you get that all lined out?”
“Had to reserve five more machines from a resort in Park City for some obscene amount of money, but yes it’s all a go. Echo has the running itemization if you want to check out what this is costing you.”
“Why would I ever want to do that?”
And then, Will did something Zoey had never seen him do in the couple of days she had known him: he smiled. Will cranked the wheel and shifted into park, driving the car the old-fashioned way. They had arrived, but the camera’s viewing angle didn’t make it clear where they were.
Arthur said, “You do a good job, Will. All of you do. I don’t say it enough.”
“Yes, when it comes to party planning, you probably won’t find three, four billion people in the world better at it than me.”
“You know what I mean, smart-ass. I appreciate what you guys do, just, day to day.”
There was a silence that Will seemed uncomfortable with. Finally he said, “That’s Singh’s car, right? Are we waiting for somebody else?”
“Just goin’ over the game plan in my head. I need to relax, I didn’t do my yoga this morning.”
Will laughed. Some kind of private joke between them.
“Here,” said Arthur, “do the thing with the coin.”
Arthur’s hand came into frame, palming the one-sided “lucky” coin Arthur had made a point of leaving to Zoey. Will took it and showed it to the camera, holding it between finger and thumb. He passed his other hand in front of it, and it was gone. He held up both hands like a magician, showing they were empty, the coin nowhere to be found.
“Amazing. Even knowing how you do it, I can’t see you do it.”
Will, without cracking a smile, reached down the front of his pants and produced the coin.
Arthur laughed and
said, “Jesus, I don’t want it back now. That was never part of the trick before, letting it touch your balls. If I’d known that, I’d just given you a regular quarter.” Will kept offering it back and Arthur said, “No, no! It’s all yours now.”
“It didn’t touch my balls, Art, it was hidden in my hand. That’s the trick.”
“Still … I want you to keep it. Seriously.”
Will’s face froze. He wasn’t touched by this gesture, or amused, or grateful. His eyes were watching Arthur carefully, unblinking. Trying to read the man.
“Art … what’s going on?”
“Don’t make a big deal of it. The whole lucky coin bit, it was always a silly affectation. I’m not even superstitious, you know that. It was just a conversation starter. I can’t even do tricks with it, not like you. You keep it: make up an interesting backstory. Tell girls in bars that you got it off a soldier in Korea or something. Then do that magic trick and you’ll hear panties dropping from across the room.”
Another pause. Those blue eyes watching: the brain behind them running through scenarios.
Finally, Will said, “Why don’t I come with you?”
“We’re not having that conversation again. Singh demanded confidentiality on this thing and I don’t want to spook him. As soon as we have a working device we can take to market, trust me, you’ll be the first to see a demonstration. As for this, it’s probably nothing. He called in a bit of a panic, but Singh panics over everything. He’s always paranoid the government is gonna finally come after him.”
“Are they?”
“I’ll see you back at the house. And stop worrying. Life’s too short.”
The camera tracked with Arthur as he stood up and closed the door of the car—Zoey saw it was Will’s Astin Martin—and a warehouse came into view as Arthur turned to face it. Presumably this was the building as it had existed before the mysterious event that turned it into a charred crater. He took several steps toward a back door and dug into his front pocket for a set of keys, but when his hand emerged, it was holding his lucky coin—Will having slipped it back to him at some point, using some bit of sleight of hand. Arthur barked out a laugh. He turned to see the Astin Martin’s taillights vanishing around a corner.