Desh stared into Kira’s eyes and saw nothing but sincerity. And her assertions were almost too outrageous to be anything but true.
“You weren’t the only one I was deceiving, David. I was deceiving myself just as much. The fewer people who knew, the less chance something would go wrong. If you don’t know something, you can’t spill it during an interrogation. Disclosure was on a need to know basis only. If it had been up to me, I would have told you everything from the beginning.” She rolled her eyes. “Then again, I would have told myself everything also.”
Desh nodded. Knowing that he hadn’t been the only who wasn’t trusted with this plan made him feel better about the situation, even though he knew it shouldn’t.
“Basically, transcendent Kira realized the only way to stave off disaster was to present an external threat. A threat to the entire planet. One that would scare the world straight. Freak out people and governments enough that they would have to learn to work as a single species. They would still have their own languages and cultures, but everyone would be striving toward a common goal, focused on a common enemy, rather than trying to tear out each other’s jugulars.”
Desh’s eyes narrowed. Was she implying what he thought she was? He couldn’t see any other alternative. “So what are you saying?” he asked, his tone incredulous. “You can’t mean that . . .” He paused and waved his hands, somehow unable to finish a thought that seemed so utterly preposterous. “So what are you saying?” he repeated.
“What I’m saying,” responded Kira with a grin, amused by his struggles, “is that there is no alien species. I’m saying that transcendent Kira found a way to fabricate one from whole cloth.” She paused and raised her eyebrows impishly. “What I’m saying, David, is that the entire alien visitation is a sham.”
63
Desh sat in stunned silence for almost thirty seconds. Had Kira Miller really engineered the greatest hoax in human history? A hoax swallowed whole by eight billion people? It was remarkable. Stunning. Impossible.
“Just a teeny bit ambitious,” said Kira with a smile, “wouldn’t you say? Even for someone with godlike intellect.”
“How?” said Desh simply.
“Second level Kira came up with the entire plan, of course, and imbedded key parts of it in the neuronal structure of both normal me and enhanced me. Like programming a computer.”
“It can’t be done,” objected Desh. “Implanting the epiphanies we have while enhanced in our minds for playback when we return to normal is impossible.”
“Impossible at the first level of enhancement, yes,” conceded Kira. “But as you know, the second level is as far above the first as the first is above normal.”
Desh smiled sheepishly. He did know that. He was being stupid. They weren’t using the word transcendent for nothing. “Go on,” he said.
“We always thought Ross took enhancement better than any of us, without negative personality changes. Transcendent Kira was certain he was someone who could be absolutely trusted, even while enhanced. And also that if he studied enough physics, he could pull off a few miracles—with her help. So I gave him a lifetime supply of gellcaps, which sped up his advances dramatically, since he wasn’t a danger to society and didn’t need any babysitters.”
Desh nodded. “So once you recovered from your five minutes at this second level, you had Ross bone up on physics. But not to tackle cold fusion.”
“Right. Ross knew the real score from the beginning, even if I didn’t. The hidden half of my personality told him everything. He was responsible for implementing three breakthroughs that transcendent Kira scorched into my mind. Zero point energy was one of them, of course. Ross needed to pretend to be making progress with cold fusion to justify his physics work. And the last thing we could do was risk letting you or Jim—or me, for that matter—know he was working to implement the principles of ZPE my much smarter self had laid out, or we might have connected the dots when the alien ship was discovered. During this time, Ross was also making great progress building his own group to move the plan forward. Doling out gellcaps from the supply I had given him.”
“Can I assume he was also responsible for developing the nanites?”
“Yes. Although I helped some with the biological portion, and others he recruited helped as well.” She paused. “Actually, the nanites are far simpler than you would ever guess. A concerted effort would have allowed us to create them even at the first level of enhancement, without the help of transcendent Kira.”
“But then Frey discovered Ross and attacked,” said Desh.
Kira nodded.
Desh raised his eyebrows as something else occurred to him. “Frey discovered Ross because of advanced science he found on his computer. Frey told me it was so advanced, it meant nothing to him, even when he was enhanced. And Frey was a Ph.D. scientist.”
“It was the principles of ZPE that transcendent Kira had laid down. Believe me, none of us could understand them either, even while enhanced. But Ross and his group kept at it and at least came to understand these principles enough to use them to produce a working drive.”
“So when Frey attacked, Ross decided to be opportunistic and use this as a way to fall off the Icarus radar screen.”
“Exactly. He really was shot. He needed to take a gellcap to help him heal—he was lucky the shot didn’t kill him. But once enhanced he realized it was a golden opportunity. If he cut his ties to Icarus, he could act totally independently, without having to pretend to be working on something else. The great majority of time I was just as clueless about any of this as you, including that night. When his pulse stopped, I thought he was just as dead as you did.”
Desh remembered her reaction to Metzger’s supposed death, and knew she was telling the truth. She had been devastated.
“So then he continued building his organization,” said Desh. “Keeping in contact with you periodically.”
“Exactly. He perfected the nanites shortly after this time.”
Desh rubbed his chin in thought. “You needed the nanites to cement the threat posed by the fictitious aliens,” he said. “To create the illusion that an armada was on the way, and establish a specific deadline. To get our species working together.”
“Right. If the threat was too far removed, it wouldn’t have the same impact, the same urgency. But too soon wasn’t good either. Transcendent Kira decided on thirty-four years.” She paused. “But the nanites played another role as well.”
“Well, obviously they were also intended to pretend to blow every nuke on the planet. To freak us out even more. And to get the nations of the world to take their nukes off-line.”
“No. We still can’t count on the nations of the world disarming. Even now.” She grinned broadly. “The other purpose of the nanites was to take the nukes off line for them.”
“What?”
“We created the nanites to preferentially migrate to uranium and plutonium. To lend further credibility to the hoax, yes. But their real purpose wasn’t to infiltrate nukes to detonate them. It was to disable them.”
Desh’s eyes widened.
“Designing nanites to detonate nukes, to make a collection of uranium go critical, is a tougher challenge than you might imagine,” continued Kira. “I learned a lot about nuclear weapons while I was helping Ross develop the nanites.”