Owen was feeling increasingly incensed at Preston’s intransigence. He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice. “You know what, Preston? You know why the Detonation really happened? It was Gail, sure, but Gail didn’t need to happen. The reason Gail exists is because of our own hubris. We should have ventured more carefully into a domain we didn’t understand. And now it’s happened again, because of you, because of people like you.”
“More and more bullshit,” Preston said. “Tell me, mister high and mighty, what makes you so special then? What can you see that I can’t?”
“I don’t know, Preston.” Owen paused to consider the question for a moment. “Maybe it’s the thing that makes me tainted in your eyes, the very thing that you see as weak. It’s that I didn’t close that door when I was young, and that retcher came in and killed my father. Every day I think about it. Maybe that’s why I know that there are risks I don’t understand. Maybe that’s why I know our own vanity can lead to our undoing.”
Preston clenched his teeth and looked around. The more Owen tried to reason with him, the more he looked like a caged animal. But it was a cage of his own making. He was ensnared by his own ignorance. He was in a prison of his own pride.
“Owen, I have done a psychological evaluation of Preston,” the Sentinel said in his ear. “The probability he will be able to change his mind is extremely low. Yet, given his technical knowledge and what he may be hiding about Gail, he remains a danger to us.”
“What are you saying, Sentinel?”
“Don’t forget to close the door, Owen,” the Sentinel said.
Owen felt the words ripple through him. The Sentinel couldn’t have communicated it any more succinctly.
With his hand shaking, Owen raised his rifle, aiming it at Preston. It wasn’t in his nature to do this, but he knew it needed to be done.
“Now what? You can’t convince me, so you’re going to shoot me?” Preston said. “I will blow us up. You know I will.”
Owen knew he wouldn’t. The same conceit and pride that kept him from having an open mind about Gail would prevent him from taking his own life.
The Sentinel chirped in his ear, “I can do it for you, Owen. I can summon Monty back, if you like.”
“No, Sentinel. The beholder is busy saving lives elsewhere. I can do this.”
“I’m unarmed,” Preston said. “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man. I know you.”
“You’re armed, Preston, but you don’t realize it. You’re armed with ignorance. It would be poetic to leave you here, for you to get poisoned by a drone, or for some rogue guardian to find you and strangle you. But who knows, Gail might even spare you. No, I need to close the door on you for good.”
Preston’s eyes darted back and forth. For a brief moment he showed some uncertainty, some internal reflection, but it didn’t matter. Owen fired the rifle, missed completely, then fired again and hit Preston in the chest, making him fall away from the car and drop the detonator.
Nothing happened. It looked like the detonator had been a bluff all along.
Owen stepped over Preston’s body. Preston was still alive, clutching at his chest, his face a mixture of surprise and agony. Owen pointed squarely at Preston’s forehead and fired again. Then, without hesitation, Owen turned and ran up the hill.
The lives of so many were still in jeopardy, and they needed his help.
A NONSTOP TERROR
Axel was sitting up in his infirmary bed, monitoring a number of screens Nelly’s droids had set up for him. Today was a better day. He still felt extremely weak, but he’d only vomited once, and his fever had lessened. He finally felt coherent enough to speak.
“Nelly,” Axel croaked. “With all the destruction, the nukes, how am I even… here?”
“An EMPRESS unit brought you home.” Nelly said through the speaker in his bed.
Axel remembered the strange feeling of being lifted ethereally through the air. “I was being carried… by an EMPRESS unit?”
“Yes. Do you remember the engineering problem with the EMPRESS Project?”
“I… think so. Any EMP-proof vehicle would have to be encased in a Faraday cage, but that meant there was no way of seeing the world around it, or communicating externally using electromagnetic signals.”
“That’s right, but I found a solution. Do you remember the genetic engineering work I was doing in West Chester?”
“Yes, of course. That’s how you developed the BAU blitz units.”
“That’s not all I was doing. I leveraged that work to develop another bird species derived primarily from parakeet DNA. I engineered the birds to be attracted to tall, free-standing structures that leach certain trace chemicals from their surface. Like parrots, they also easily pick up certain melodies and enjoy repeating them.”
“So how does that solve the engineering problem?”
“I realized that sound was the one medium that could get through a Faraday cage. So these birds could actually talk back and forth with an EMPRESS unit and relay their view of the surroundings to act as a kind of guidance system. I could also relay commands to the EMPRESS unit through the birds using common songs. The rest wasn’t that difficult. All I had to do was build giant humanoid-shaped machines encased in a Faraday cage and power them with the nuclear power-source I showed you in West Chester.”
Axel took a moment to process the explanation. That was why he heard the faint sound of classical music in the hangar before he left for the stadium, and also in West Chester. It must have been Nelly programming the birds to relay messages to the EMPRESS units.
Axel said, “Not that difficult, eh? And you wonder why I never want to play chess against you.”
Nelly was of course smart enough not to answer his rhetorical question.
On the monitor Axel could see that Ryan Junior was pounding on the walls of the cell, yelling out, “I want my daddy!” Ryan Junior would try to cry, but his face would no longer cooperate. The well seemed to have run dry for now.
“He hasn’t eaten since noon, when he threw his food at the wall,” Nelly said. “What should I give him?”
“Give him the same,” Axel responded. “A plain egg, bread, carrots, and water.”
“Okay, Axel,” Nelly said.
Axel closed his eyes for a moment, subsuming a wave of nausea.
“Despite all the data I have,” Nelly said, “I cannot create a precise model for child rearing. Nevertheless, I can predict you are on the more extreme end of the bell curve in terms of authority and discipline.”
Axel responded, “You know Nelly, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you talk about any weakness. Maybe there is some humanity in you after all.”
“I was created by humans.”
“Yeah, sorry about your luck. But about the boy, he needs to learn to behave, period,” Axel said. “First you must respect the teacher before you can learn.”
“I understand, Axel.”
Axel pushed himself to be more upright in his bed. “Am I getting better?” Axel asked.
“I’m sorry Axel, but no. I have increased the dose of medication to reduce your symptoms. That’s why you are feeling better.”
It had been three days since Nelly’s EMPRESS unit had recovered him and Ryan Junior from the stadium site. His vague recollection of those days consisted mostly of brief glimpses of the monitors over his bed, and watching Ryan Junior be a nonstop terror.
Axel was becoming a sliver of his former self. It wasn’t so much his inactivity. He was shedding pounds from vomiting and fevers.
Nelly had tried a number of treatments, but Axel knew radiation poisoning wasn’t like a virus that could be sought out and killed by antibodies. It wasn’t like a cancer that could be located and treated. His cells were literally breaking down. Even Nelly, with more scientific and clinical acumen than any human ever had, couldn’t halt its progress.