All at once, he realized he had seen this machine before. It was in a science magazine that had been floating around their house for years.
But no. It was preposterous. He could not believe it. This was from a science fiction movie. It couldn’t be real.
Fig. 3.7. Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Oscillating Cathode Electromagnetic Pulse Generator
From Radasky, W. (2005), “Non-Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Generators,” Journal of Electrical Engineering 27: 24–31
And yet all the proof was here: the exploded flux compression generator that would precipitate the massive blast of electrons, the barrel-like vircator to shape this blast into a brief, powerful pulse of microwave energy, and the conical antenna to diffuse and direct the pulse. He would never have thought it was possible to build a machine like this without massive governmental support, yet here it was. Not only had his father built it (Where had he gotten the parts?), but it had actually worked. The pulse must have been magnified by the giant 119-foot antenna above the shack and been broadcast across a huge area.
Holy, holy crap.
His father, Kermin Radmanovic, had caused the blackout.
5
And yet his father was nowhere to be found.
“Tata?” he called again.
Nothing.
What the hell had his father been doing? Why had he built this thing? The whole idea of an explosively pumped flux compression generator was that it would explode. Didn’t he realize this? Didn’t he realize the potential devastation? Did he want to cause such devastation?
“Tata!” he coughed.
Maybe his father had been blown into a corner and was now knocked unconscious — or worse. He ventured deeper into the room but saw no evidence of Kermin, only more piles and piles of electrical junk. There was an overturned barrel full of various antennae that looked like an arsenal of medieval sabers; a collapsed rack of plush leather earphones; boxes of shattered vacuum tubes; rolls and rolls of wires of all different gauges; a collection of old World War II cryptography machines; and, across one low shelf, a solemn procession of microphones from every era since the dawn of broadcasting, now covered in shrapnel from the blast.
It was then that he looked up. He made a little gasp and tripped, falling backwards against the wall. Bats. The ceiling was filled with bats. There were hundreds of them. The bats were getting ready to sweep down and attack him. He instinctively covered his face.
But there was no attack. In fact, they did not move at all, so, after catching his breath again, Radar stood up and took a closer look. They weren’t bats at all — they were birds. Hundreds of tiny birds. Thousands of tiny birds. All dead. Hanging upside down from strings attached to their feet. He now saw that a number of the birds had been blown around the room during the explosion — he could see them on the floor, littered across the shelves.
Yet there was something wrong with the birds. Not just in their deadness — their bodies were not right. Then Radar realized what it was: the birds had no heads. Every single one of them was headless. This couldn’t have been caused by the explosion alone. He picked up one of the creatures and touched its feathered wing. The joints were soft and supple; the wing bent perfectly against his hands, swinging up and down as if under the influence of an invisible breeze. He had always figured taxidermied birds would be stiff and immovable, but this one was like a little bird robot. He looked into its neck and saw the glint of metal and wire.
What had been going on in here? Electromagnetic pulse generators and flocks of headless robot birds?
“Tata!” he called. “Kermin!”
He shivered. Despite the heat, he suddenly felt chilled and overtaken by the distinct sensation that he was performing some kind of trespass. He dropped the bird and slowly backed out of the shack, slamming the door behind him. In the yard, he stood, breathing, trying to reconcile what was in there with what was out here.
Mr. Neimann had mentioned that he heard a loud bang right before the lights went out. He had also said they had found the source of the blackout. What if the authorities were already on their way? Their entire block would instantly be swarming with FBI agents, CIA, military—everyone. His father would be labeled a whack-job terrorist. He could already see the New York Post headline:
BIRD-CRAZY BALKAN MAN DETONATES E-BOMB, CRIPPLES NEW JERSEY
And where was Kermin? Had he panicked when the explosion went off? Maybe he was hiding somewhere. Yes. Of course.
Radar ran into the house, shouting his father’s name.
“It’s okay, Tata. I saw the machine. I know what happened,” he said. “It’s okay — you can come out now.”
He checked every room in the house. He checked the basement. He looked under the couches, in the attic crawl space, behind the shower curtain. His father was nowhere to be seen. He must’ve fled. Or maybe he was injured and had gone to the hospital?
He heard a car door slam out front. The police! The police had found them already.
Suddenly he was the one looking for a hiding place. The basement! Behind those boxes of his childhood Erector Set! Quick!
There was no time to lose, and yet curiosity drove him into the front parlor, where he hunched on Kermin’s favorite beige couch and parted the linen curtains. He just wanted to see the scrum of SWAT trucks, to see how many guns they had trained on the house. He wanted to see the police tape cordoning off the crowd of anxious, disbelieving neighbors. He wanted to see polite Mr. Neimann’s expression when he heard the news that Kermin, kind old Kermin, was a wanted terrorist.
But there were no guns. No SWAT trucks. There was only the Oldsmobile.
It was Charlene. She was speaking with Mr. Neimann on the sidewalk, gesturing at the car. Mr. Neimann, still holding the spatula, was nodding like a good neighbor.
Radar collapsed back into the couch. Suddenly the question now became: What should he tell her? The truth? That her husband had blown up New Jersey, kept a shackful of headless birds, and was now on the run from the authorities? What would this do to her?
As much as she might argue otherwise, his mother was a fragile woman. Radar had the feeling that she had spent much of her life running from a part of herself, a dark part that had never seen the light of day. While he was away at college, she had battled through multiple bouts of depression, and there were a couple of times when things had gotten really bad, when she had slipped all the way to the edge, when he was terrified that he would wake up to a call in the middle of the night and she would be gone. That call had never come, but the edge was still there. The edge was always there. The threat of her relapsing had created a strong gravitational field around their little family and was part of the reason he had never left home.
He went to the kitchen and sat down at the table. The twin radios, now silent, still flanked the pig centerpiece. His father’s plate and its lunula of forgotten toast. Nearby, the humping-bunny mug, which housed the cold dregs of his mother’s chinchilla concoction. The props of a marriage at equilibrium.
This house. How funny, this house. How funny this house was just another house, and yet it contained all of this.