Interest (6 page)

“Wow. OK, so what about the second type?”

“Early on, the Dranthyx identified human genes for intractable behavior and independent thought. Clearly, these are not favorable attributes in slave labor, and as such they had to be removed to produce the second type, Saskels. Saskels are designed to do tedious labor without questioning authority. Saskels are low to average in mental abilities and ostensibly have the ability to reason through minor problems. However, they are genetically engineered to not trust their own thoughts and to have a deep fear of losing their security. They are terrified of having to think, or fend, for themselves. This inborn insecurity causes them to constantly seek external guidance and to obey authority, no matter how irrational or malevolent that authority is. Saskels will support any government, regardless of how oppressive it is, if it promises to guarantee their safety. Saskel genes are the most dominant, and after thousands of years of breeding, Saskels now compose the majority of human beings.”

“This is fascinating. And the third type?”

“Xreths are humans who were designed for creativity and problem solving. Xreths have both ethics and the ability to come to conclusions independently. They were the most recent breed introduced by the Dranthyx approximately fifteen thousand years ago.”

“If they’re trying to stay in control, why would the Dranthyx introduce a breed like that?”

“The Dranthyx need a certain percentage of Xreths to exist because they are useful. Xreths create math, science, engineering, art. Before the introduction of Xreths, humans hadn’t even thought of agriculture. Without Xreths, you would have no lightbulbs, airplanes, or Internet. Human technological development stalls without them, and labor output declines to the Dranthyx’s detriment. Further complicating the situation, they realized that human Xreths are even more creative and productive than their own Dranthyx intellectuals. The Dranthyx have kept Xreths around because the science and technology they produce benefits them and their bottom line.”

“Wouldn’t the Dranthyx consider them a danger?”

“The Dranthyx consider Xreths a necessary evil, one that they monitor very closely. The Dranthyx are extremely concerned with Xreths usurping control. We estimate that human technological capabilities will surpass those of the Dranthyx in a hundred years’ time due to the brilliance of Xreths. However, so long as the majority of the population is law-abiding Saskel, and there are enough conscience-less Tchogols to brutally rule the herd, the largely unmanageable Xreths can pose no threat to Dranthyx hegemony.” Ich-Ca-Gan paused while Len wrote, then continued, “You may be wondering how the heritability works. There is a gene dominance hierarchy, with Saskel genes being the most dominant and Tchogol genes being the most recessive, with Xreths in the middle. However, the percentages of each type in the population are not what you would expect from normal breeding. Instead, they are kept in a delicate, artificial equilibrium that the Dranthyx worked out through millennia of experimentation. The Dranthyx have learned how much of each breed a society needs to function optimally, and they have done whatever was necessary to maintain that balance over the last several thousand years.”

Len had had a professor back in college who used to say, “A scientist’s job is to explain complex things. A science
journalist’s
job is to explain those complex things in a way that anyone can understand.” Len tried to figure out how he might present everything the Ich-Ca-Gan was telling him simply, as though he were writing an article about it for the paper. He drew a quick table in his notepad:

“I just want to be sure I understand all of this correctly,” Len said, showing the Ich-Ca-Gan the diagram. “Is this about right?”

“That is overly simplistic, but a reasonable synopsis. There are a number of subtypes of each, but those details are immaterial to our discussion.”

“OK, Xreths are brilliant but difficult to manage, right?” Len asked. “So what happens if Xreths begin to outnumber Saskels?”

“For various sociological reasons, that very thing has been happening with increasing frequency. When Xreths overpopulate, the Dranthyx have them culled. It had to be done several times in the twentieth century: Congo, Cambodia, Turkey, USSR, Germany, China, and even here in Japan.”

Len tried to think of the common theme between those places. “You mean genocides?”

“Yes. Genocides usually have an ideological pretense, but their real purpose is to kill off excess Xreths to prevent civil unrest. In any genocide, you will notice that a society’s intellectuals are the first to be killed.”

“This is heavy.”

“It is about to get heavier, Mr. Savitz. Constant uprisings and protests around the world indicate that the Xreth population has exceeded the Dranthyx’s desired equilibrium. If the Dranthyx do not intervene soon, Xreths will soon outnumber the other two types, and the Dranthyx will have trouble staying in control of the human race. We believe the next cull will be global and number in the billions.”

“Dear God. So this is real? What can we do to stop it?”

“The Dranthyx are quite powerful. The last time We intervened, twenty-seven hundred years ago, a war ensued between Ich-Ca-Gan and the Dranthyx, and fourteen of Us were killed.”

“Fourteen? How many Dranthyx died?”

“Millions, mostly due to technology asymmetry. As a journalist, you may be interested to know that the war inspired parts of the Hebrew Bible and other mythological scriptures of the time.”

“So what happened?” Len asked impatiently. “Did you win?”

“We entered into a truce agreement with the Dranthyx, and since then We have remained uninvolved. We agreed not to interfere in their culls, and they agreed not to interfere with Our education of the human race.”

“The cull that’s coming…how will they do it?”

“We do not know. Probably just as they have done them before.” The creature paused for a long time as Len was writing, then abruptly said, “Mr. Savitz, you must leave now.”

“What? Why? I just got started!”

Len heard a helicopter approaching in the distance.

“This monastery will soon be in grave danger. We believe you have enough information now.”

“Can we talk again tomorrow?”

“No. Good day, Mr. Savitz. Please leave now.”

Ich-Ca-Gan’s tentacle quickly peeled away from Mutoku’s head. Mutoku fell forward, unconscious, and Len leaned out quickly and caught Mutoku by the arm before he hit the floor and broke his nose. Mutoku came to within a few seconds and stumbled to his feet quickly without getting his bearings. Neglecting the customary bows, Mutoku shambled dizzily out of the room, yelling something in Japanese. Someone outside began clanging a gong. Others began ringing bells and running through the halls, yelling. Mutoku ran back into the room and lifted Len by his arm.

“It is time to go!”

“What’s happening?”

“The Great Master hears police radio broadcasts. No time to explain.”

Len quickly gathered his things, thankfully remembering to grab his suitcase as Mutoku ran with him through the monastery. As they bustled out, monks were lining up in the main hall, which reminded Len of the way fire drills were practiced in American grade schools, except the monks were lined up with their backs to the exit, as if they would be going farther into the building. Mutoku pulled Len through the kitchen, slid open a door, and shoved him out. Len came down on his backside in a narrow alleyway behind the monastery.

“If anyone asks, you are a tourist and you do not speak Japanese! Now get going!” Mutoku shouted before slamming the door shut.

Len scrambled to his feet, shoved the items he had been carrying into his suitcase, and did his best to walk down the city sidewalk, wheeling the suitcase behind him, without seeming panicked or attracting attention.

Once he was about a block away, several police trucks emblazoned with “Special Assault Team Tokyo” drove past him before pulling up in front of the monastery. Two helicopters circled overhead. Officers poured out of the vehicles and took aim with rifles at the monastery.

Len heard a tremendous noise like an earthquake coming from the chaos. He had been doing his best to look uninvolved, but turning around, he saw the monastery exploding in slow motion, as though a balloon were being inflated inside a Lincoln Log house, with the terrible sounds of ripping timber and roof tiles popping off. As the main pagoda collapsed in on itself, Len thought he briefly saw a gleaming object underneath the destruction. The dust cloud rising from the collapsing temple frustrated his attempt to see what the object was.
Pop-pop-pop
of gunfire: the police were shooting at something.

From the dust cloud emerged an enormous, pearl-white, spherical object that rose into the cobalt sky. Dirt fell off it as it floated upward. The police helicopters, which had been hovering nearby, quickly backed off to a defensive distance. The object hung in midair for about ten seconds while the officers below emptied magazines into it. Then, with a sound like thunder and enough force to cause a strong gust of wind, the object simply disappeared.

___
_

Len had exactly three priorities at that moment:

1. Get the hell out of there before any cops saw him;
   

2. Booze, like right goddamn now; and
   

3. Get back to the hotel and type up his notes because holy fucking shit.
   

There was nothing from Mr. Hamasaki at the front desk. Len went to his hotel room, which was about the size of a walk-in closet in America. Japan was a bad place for claustrophobic people, which Len thankfully wasn’t. The room had a mattress-type thing that could be folded into a chair when you weren’t using it for sleeping, a little television, and a tiny window.

Len, disregarding the careful efficiency and tidiness of the space, unzipped his suitcase and dumped out all the stuff Neith had given him. He also shook out a shopping bag of items he’d hastily bought on the way back to the hotel: alcohol, cigarettes, and enough food to work all day without interruptions. He ripped open the carton of cigarettes, a local brand he’d never heard of, then fumbled to open the equally foreign bottle of whiskey. He took a few slugs to calm his nerves, struggling in disgust to swallow it each time. Japanese whiskey would be a lot better if it weren’t trying so hard to be scotch, he thought. Whatever. He rolled some paper into the typewriter and set to work.

Len decided to omit what Ich-Ca-Gan had said about Neith. He figured it would be better if Neith didn’t know what Len had found out about her. Once he’d finished writing up everything else, he put the typed pages and handwritten notes into one of the envelopes, along with the film canister and the typewriter ribbon, and left it at the reception desk for Mr. Hamasaki, whoever the hell that was. The microcassette, however, he took with him to the deserted alley behind the hotel. He pulled the tape out of the cassette, lit the ball of gray ribbon on fire with his lighter, then put the remains into a street trashcan. Having been awake for forty hours at that point, Len went back to his room and slept until the next afternoon.

One would have thought that the local SWAT team getting into a firefight with a UFO that had been hidden under a Buddhist monastery for seven hundred years would make some great front-page news. One would have further thought, in this day and age of ubiquitous surveillance and video cameras affixed to every conceivable electronic device, that footage of such an extraordinary event would surface and appear on TV or the Internet. One would have been surprisingly wrong. The next morning, Len went down the street to a newsstand and bought five different local papers. Inexplicably, none of them said anything about the incident. He went back to his room and turned on the little TV. Zilch.

Len checked at the front desk. The kid with the anime hair handed him another envelope. Inside was a boarding pass for a flight back to the United States.

11

On the other side of the globe, it was a Sunday night. People ate dinner with their families or slept or watched TV to take their minds off the fact that all the security they’d ever known was under siege. That invincible fortress, the mighty US government, was starting to feel like a brittle Popsicle stick house. The collective anxiety in America and around the world had become palpable. Neith’s war was largely psychological, and she was winning.

Citizens tend to regard governments the way children regard their parents’ marriage. The stability and permanence of both situations are taken for granted, and neither beneficiary realizes how tenuous the institution they live under is, nor how easily small things, happening precisely in the correct order, can cause all the stability they’ve ever known to completely fall apart.

In fact, several of those small things were about to happen.

At 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time, when the entirety of North America was completely dark, a beautiful ballet of technology began simultaneously in thirteen separate locations: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. At each site, an army of small robotic flying machines was launched from the back of a semitrailer. Flying through the doors, they rose quietly into the moonless night sky. In each city, a highly tailored flight path was followed to avoid security cameras, radar, and human sight. The swarms of drones flew in stunningly perfect formation: through dark alleys, low over rooftops, down air ducts, and through dark offices.

Each machine carried a deadly payload, a plastic explosive that could be remotely triggered. These little bombs were placed at the most structurally significant points in each edifice the drones entered: support columns, I-beams, foundations—locations mathematically determined to produce untold damage.

Once the payloads had been delivered, the machines quickly and silently exited the buildings and returned to the trucks whence they came. With every single robot accounted for, the trucks drove off, leaving no trace.

At exactly ten the next morning, Monday, when the offices were fully occupied with throngs of white collars, the explosives were detonated simultaneously. In a choreography of exquisitely controlled demolition, thirteen very important buildings across the continent imploded thoroughly, leaving nothing but fire, bodies, twisted steel, and utter panic.