—Who did? Serbs?
—It doesn’t matter. Bosniaks and Croats killed plenty of people too, but yes, they were VRS. Do you know how many men it takes to terrorize a town of ten thousand people?
—Fewer than one would think.
—You can probably do it with fifty men. There were a lot more that day. Two hundred VRS soldiers raided my town while I was away. We had all heard of the atrocities. People knew what the VRS did. The villagers weren’t defenseless. They had weapons, p … plenty of them. People could have fought back. Ten thousand against two hundred. They would have been overwhelmed in minutes. But they didn’t. The town leaders called for everyone to remain calm, stay in their home. Don’t p … provoke them! Don’t make things worse! They thought offering no resistance would make things easier.
—Did it?
—Maybe it did. They only killed twenty-seven people that day.
Two hundred men … Fffewer than that, because a dozen of them were taking turns raping my … raping my sister to death. They made my parents watch, then they killed my mother, let my father live … because he was a Serb. They raped and killed a whole lot of people that day. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred men left on the street, in the whole town. No one did anything. No one tried. Everyone just … hoped for the best. My father killed himself a week later.
That’s what happens if you don’t do what needs to be done. Vincent and Kara were in their midtwenties. That meant they could be eff … efficient for another t … twenty years at best. They could have died. They could have got … gotten sick. I thought there was a good chance their children could operate the robot, but it would take years to find out …
—You do realize there are … other ways for people to have children? Did you ever wonder why I would encourage two people in a military unit to pursue a relationship?
—I don’t think that’s why you did it. I think you liked them. Maybe you thought it would make them work better together.
—If I have, in any way, willingly or not, led you to believe I was remotely interested in your opinion of me, it was my mistake. It will not happen again.
—It doesn’t matter why you did it. I was also hoping their children, in the tr … traditional sense, could pilot the robot. It would be the best-case scenario. Make a dozen babies, each of them could operate either station. But their ch … children would only have half of each parent’s ge … genes, maybe not the good half. It might not work. I couldn’t wait and see. I had to try cloning them too. I had to see if I could splice animal genes into theirs so their legs could bend the right way.
—You are mad.
—Am I? What would you have done if they had children? Cut open one of their kids and remove all of his leg bones so his knees would bend backwards? Now that would be cruel. I don’t think they would have volunteered for that. You just didn’t think … think this through. At least my plan didn’t involve mmm … mutilating anyone.
—Were you successful?
—Of course not! You drove me out of my lab before I could even begin. The aliens came sooner than I had hoped, but surely you can see now that I was right?
—Three minutes ago, I told you that I would take great pleasure in seeing you tried for your crimes. To most, that would suggest that … No, I do not think that you were right.
—Imagine that the aliens had come a f … few years later, and that Kara had been injured. How many more people would have died in London? Would they have st … stopped after London? If I had offered you a new pilot to replace her, would you have said no?
—I can imagine a world in which you saved us all and became a hero. In that world, I would ask for your forgiveness and solemnly watch as the president pins a medal to your chest. Fortunately for me, I do not live in that world. Based on my experience, your sentence will probably also be based on facts and not on what could have been.
—I don’t think so.
—You do not think it will be based on facts?
—I don’t think there’ll be a trial.
—Surprising as it may seem, most governments will not summarily execute people if there is no reason to forgo a trial. They view such things as … unbecoming.
—I don’t think you’ll t … turn me over to the Americans, not before you get me a f … full pardon.
—Are we still in living in this make-believe world of yours?
—You don’t seem to like hypotheticals, so let’s see how far your con … conviction goes in real life. I didn’t have time to clone anyone at the lab. I barely had time to grab a few specimens before the Marines st … stormed in. I had a fake passport the Russians had given me, but you can’t … you can’t t … travel with biological samples without anyone’s asking questions. So I stopped by a fertility clinic before I left the island and arranged for them to use the … specimens I gave them. There were four eggs. Three didn’t take. One did.
—What are you saying?
—I’m saying there is a ten-year-old girl in Puerto Rico with b … beautiful green eyes who might just be able to pilot that gi … giant robot of yours. Of course, you’ll never find out if you don’t g … give me what I want.
—And what is that?
—A full pardon. And I want to be back on the research team.
—You are insane. Puerto Rico is about one hundred miles across. How long do you think it will take me to find a ten-year-old girl?
—I don’t know. P … probably a few weeks without records to help. She’ll be gone by the time you find her. I was on my way to retrieve her, bring her to Russia so they can s … start training her. They’ll know I didn’t make my flight. They’ll go after her.
—What makes you think I will not simply have you killed after you help us find her?
—Oh, I tr … trust you. You would find it … unbecoming.
FILE NO. 1534
RESEARCH LOG—VINCENT COUTURE, CONSULTANT, EARTH DEFENSE CORPS
Location: Unknown
This is Vincent Couture recording aboard Themis. I’m … I have no idea where I am. I can’t see outside. It’s pitch-black all around. I don’t think I’m in space. There aren’t any stars. I can shift the weight between Themis’s feet, so we’re definitely standing on solid ground. I can hear … something. It’s a … a very low hum. Like a lightsaber that’s not moving, if that means anything. My best guess at this point is that I’m in the ocean somewhere and that’s the sound of water moving against the hull.
I don’t know exactly how I got here, but I have a pretty good idea. I was trying to figure out if Themis could … teleport herself when it happened. Rose and I had been talking about it since London. We thought it would make sense for her to move that way. Well, more sense than having little rockets under her feet, or wings that spring out her back. She weighs seventy-two hundred tons, after all.
It was all wishful thinking really, because we were hoping for something quite different from what we saw in London. It came from outer space, so no matter what it used to get here, it must have worked in a three-dimensional space. That would be almost impossible for us to use here on Earth. The planet’s surface is curved, there is terrain to consider. Traveling farther than what you can see would be really complicated. You could end up inside a mountain, miles deep into the Earth’s crust, or a few kilometers up in the air. What Rose and I wanted was … something user-friendly. Something Apple would make: a gizmo that lets you treat the planet as a flat surface and does all the work for you. Just push a button and end up where you want to go, with both feet on the ground, not inside or above it. Anyway, I went to the lab early to try a few things on the console before Kara got there—she gets angry when she can’t help. At some point, I hit a key. Everything went white, silent. Then I was here. So, the good news is: Themis can travel anywhere!
The bad news is I think I’m gonna die here before I can tell anyone.
By my watch,
I’ve been here a little more than two days. I don’t have any supplies. I only had a bottle of water with me, which is now empty, and I could really go for a cheeseburger right about now. Extra cheese, with bacon … A large poutine … At least, air’s not a problem, I think. The sphere is about fourteen thousand cubic feet, so I’ll die of thirst long before the CO2 kills me.
If I’m right and I’m in the ocean—I’d most likely be in the Atlantic—there’s just no way anyone will find me here. I can probably last a few more days, but I’m having a hard time concentrating already, so if I’m gonna try anything, I think today’s the day. I wish I could just walk in any direction, but I can’t keep the balance on a flat surface without Kara. Plus I can’t see anything, so I’ll just end up throwing Themis flat on her face if I try moving.
I listened to the log I made that morning and I took some notes. I’ll walk you through them in case this doesn’t work. There’s a button on the top right of the console, looks like an “M” with a bar across. That’s what I started with—we hadn’t found any use for it and it looked … move-y—and all the sequences I tried were a combination of that, some numbers and “go.”
Rose thought we might try something like longitude and latitude, but Themis wasn’t made here, and it’s hard to imagine a two-coordinate system that would work like that on different planets. Even if you assume all planets rotate on a relatively stable axis, that’ll only give you a natural starting point for one of the coordinates, either a pole or the equator, but there’s no natural starting point perpendicular to that. Longitude is based on a completely random spot on the east–west axis. I don’t think the aliens we’re dealing with ever heard of Greenwich Mean Time.
If they were to use a two-coordinate system, it would make much more sense to use Themis herself as a reference point. Coordinates zero, zero would be where she is, and you could go from there. The problem then, if you used something like longitude and latitude, is that the numbers would mean different things depending on what planet you’re on. Longitude and latitude measure an angle from the center of the planet, so the distance on the surface for, say, one degree would be greater on a larger planet, a lot smaller on a tiny one. The bigger the planet, the less precise the navigation system would be.
There are other ways to imagine this. What I was really hoping for was a much simpler system. Just point Themis in the direction you want to go, punch in a distance, and that’s it. One number, not two. Wouldn’t be superprecise over long distances. You couldn’t jump from New York to—I don’t know—Paris in one shot. You couldn’t get the direction precisely right at such a distance, but you could jump the Atlantic, then just … hop from place to place and adjust the direction along the way. It had very little chance of working, but I thought it was more fun to search for something I knew I could use.
I started small and tried to make Themis move by a distance of one. I didn’t know one what, exactly, but I figured I’d probably end up somewhere on the empty lot in front of the hangar. So … I tried what I thought was the MOVE button, then 1, then GO. Nothing happened, of course. I tried in reverse, nope. Hold the MOVE button, one, then release. There aren’t that many ways to do this, and I think I tried them all. It occurred to me that it might just not work because teleporting yourself one unit might be stupid, like taking one step. I went crazy and tried with two. No good. I gave up on the simple solution after that and decided to try with two numbers instead of one.
I tried the numbers separated by GO, by a pause. At some point, I tried this: hold the MOVE button, press two, pause, two again, release. Nothing great happened but the console made a sound, like it does when we do something right. I did it again a few times. All I got was the sound. Then I got frustrated and my log is more or less useless after that. I hear myself screaming “two” a few times, then I’m here. In short, I don’t know what I did, but it starts with that sequence. I know I punched in at least four numbers, so either we’re dealing with a two-coordinate system and I’m an idiot for inserting pauses, or this is a crazy four-dimensional thing and I’m gonna die inside a rock, in space, four thousand years ago.
Anyway, I’m about to try to replicate what I did. I managed to wiggle Themis around so I’m facing in the opposite direction. With any luck, I’ll get frustrated the same way and end up right where I started.
Before I inadvertently blow myself up, I have a message for my wife … Kara, I love you. I’ve had two days to just sit and think about how crazy my life has been since they asked me to sign an NDA and go look at some panels in Chicago. I found myself feeling … grateful. Grateful Rose trusted me. Grateful we found this big-ass alien thing. But the thing I’m most thankful for is meeting this crazy, stubborn pilot with a chip on her shoulder. Kara, none of this would have been as much fun without you taking jabs at me every step of the way. I got to have my legs crushed, got turned into a T-800 … We blew up an airport! I wish we hadn’t killed Rose, but it turned out OK, sorta. Hell, we got to wrestle with aliens! Who gets to do that? Anyway, if I don’t make it, please don’t feel like I was robbed of anything. I lived plenty. I had a blast.
I never got to tell you how sorry I was. I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to be something you weren’t. I’m sorry I made you … dim your light, when all I ever wanted was for it to burn brighter. That sounded good.
I want you to be happy. Find someone. You have my blessing if he’s not a dick … and not too good-looking. Don’t be too happy with him though, but … you know … be happy. Of course, if you can be happy without the guy. Just … I don’t know what I’m saying … I … I don’t want you to be miserable because of me. If I’m dead, I’m dead. You can’t hurt me. Do what you need to do. I won’t be looking down on you from the heavens. I doubt they take pretentious assholes with an accent, and you know how much I’m afraid of heights.
I guess that’s it. Oh! Almost forgot! If you find Themis and I’m dead, you might want to clean the floor right behind your station. Seriously, give it a good scrub.
OK. Here we go! Hold. Two. Two. Release. I love that sound. Two. Go. Nope.
Hold. Two. Two. Release. Two. Two. Go … Nope.
Release. Two … I just did that. Let’s do this again. Ho—
…
Ah ben calver! It worked! I moved again! It’s still dark, so I must not be too far from where I was. I have no idea what direction I’m moving in, but I’m moving! I can do this!
Kara, forget everything I said about meeting someone. Screw him. I’m gonna make it.
Hold. Two. Two. Release …
FILE NO. 1539
INTERVIEW WITH RYAN MITCHELL, SECURITY GUARD
Location: Michigan Science Center, Detroit, MI
—How long have you worked here, Mr. Mitchell?
—About a year, sir. Why?
—Do you enjoy your work?
—I … What do you want?
—I sense anger in your tone. Are there unresolved issues we need to discuss?
—Ha! You’re kidding, right?
—Do you believe I am being facetious or was that a rhetorical question?
—I spent four years in jail after I rescued Kara and Vincent!
—Why would you expect otherwise? There were four years left on your sentence for crushing Mr. Couture into a wall with your vehicle. You had to serve the entirety of your sentence after violating the terms of your parole by leaving the state to join Alyssa in Puerto Rico.
—You could have gotten me out, sir.
—The US Government wanted to charge you with treason. You could be meeting your lawyer to appeal your death sentence. Instead, you are scolding children for running inside a museum. I fail to see what you have to complain about.
—You could have gotten me out!
—Let us not waste time pondering what each of us could have done differently, shall we? You and I both know this conversation will not end with any gre
at moral victory on your part.
—Do you know what I talked about at Fort Carson, before I went to Puerto Rico?
—I have a feeling I am about to find out.
—Nothing. I talked about nothing. Rose visited me a few times, but she’s about the only one I talked to. I stayed in my cell as much as I could. They took me to the yard, twice a day, but I mostly kept to myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done to Vincent. I—
—Is that really what you thought about?
— … You’re right. I kept thinking about what I had lost, about Kara. I couldn’t … I imagined the way she must have felt about me and I couldn’t stand it. I hated myself. I hated myself for a long, long time. I … I wanted her to like me again. I kept thinking of the ways I could make it up to her, what I could do to make her see me as a human being again, not as a monster. I’d come up with completely insane scenarios in my head. You know, she gets captured by terrorists and I save the day, that sort of thing. Took about a year for me to stop torturing myself and actually face what I did. I still hated myself, but at least I wasn’t living in a fantasy world. It wasn’t about Kara anymore.
—Is there a point to this story?
—Yes sir, there is. One day, out of nowhere, I get called in and they tell me I got an early release. Just like that. You can go. I didn’t know what was happening, they almost had to drag me out. A day later, I get a call to go to Puerto Rico. Kara’s there. Vincent’s there. Then things get really messed up and, by the time I realize how far out of her mind Alyssa’s gone, I’ve hurt both of them … again. I … It was hell. I couldn’t believe what was happening, but I pulled together and I did it. I saved them. You know, for real. I wasn’t daydreaming. I saved them! I wasn’t expecting everything to be perfect after that, but I thought … Then you threw me back in jail. Four years. No one came, not even Rose.
—I do not know where to begin. You attempted to kill Mr. Couture. Given the chance to gain their trust again, you chose to help Alyssa keep them captive and perform medical procedures on Ms. Resnik against her will. Finally, faced with something even you could not stomach, you chose to act like a decent human being, once, for about ten minutes. I am truly sorry if you were expecting a medal. As for Dr. Franklin, she was dead, which, if you ask me, is a reasonably good excuse not to visit.