Patrick Lee: Ghost Country

Garner was still thinking it all through. Making the connections Travis had made earlier in the suite. But not all of them. He shook his head. Looked at Travis and waited for him to go on.

"You said that the initial uses of ELF in the fifties, just by accident, triggered suicides, and also bouts of euphoria."

Garner nodded.

"And in the years after that, when governments tried to weaponize the technology, they dialed in on exactly how to create certain responses, and how to vary the intensity."

"Yes."

"So a global network of satellites with that capability could paint the whole world in zones ranging from suicidal to dancing in the streets. Anything the controllers wanted."

"I suppose."

"All right. Then it works. You could use the technology to herd people. Like livestock. Entire populations, all at the same time."

Garner's eyebrows knitted together, like he agreed with the point but didn't see its significance.

"Imagine it from any random person's view," Travis said. "What would it be like on the receiving end of this technology? One day everything's fine. The next day, you wake up and you don't even want to move. You're miserable lying there, but the thought of getting up makes you miserable too. You don't even know why, but there it is. Every part of it overwhelms you, and you realize there's nothing on your horizon that makes you happy. Nothing pulling you forward. It's not like any sadness you've ever felt before. It has no cause. It's just there. But knowing that doesn't make it go away. You lie there thinking about that, and you start to get scared. You realize you're having a serious problem, and you think maybe you better go talk to someone about it. Maybe pretty soon, too, because you don't know what you'll do to yourself if this keeps up for any length of time. Now imagine you find out, over the coming hours, that it's not just you. That it's happening everywhere, to everyone, all at once. Picture it. Make it as real as you can. Think of the public reaction. People would know something was going on, but they would have no idea what. It'd be the strangest damn thing anyone ever saw. It would make the news, obviously, but how would it be covered? What would they say? What the hell would anyone say, except to wonder what was happening to them, and how anyone was going to fix it?"

Garner looked chilled at the idea. His eyes were far away now, seeing his own version of a day like that, the effect bringing cities to a dead stop.

"Imagine it gets worse the next day," Travis said. "And the day after that. Until you're ready to just end it. You no longer even care what's causing it. No one cares. All that matters is how bad it feels. The papers are calling it Bleak December. That's all they've got. A name. Still no real information. Another day, and it's worse yet, and right then, when you're thinking in specific detail of how you're going to end your life, a friend calls and asks if you're watching the news. You turn it on, and there it is. The one place where this effect simply isn't happening. Yuma, Arizona. No one knows why, of course. And no one cares, either. What matters is that it's true. You can see it even in the background of the coverage. You can see people already arriving there from other places, and it's obvious from their body language that they're not sad anymore. They're better than not sad. They're euphoric."

In the dim interior of the car, it was impossible to discern Garner's skin tone, but Travis imagined it'd gone pale.

"Think of Finn's original plan for conflict zones," Travis said. "Profile everyone. Weed out the bad. Keep the good. People with just the right attributes for a peaceful society. I think even when he'd decided the whole world was the problem, he still thought that idea was the solution. Just on a bigger scale. A global scale."

Garner looked at his phone again, the map of northern Chile still on the screen. He backed it out and dragged it until both Chile and the United States were visible in the frame. He drew imaginary lines with his fingertip, tracing routes from all over America toward Yuma. And then a single line: Yuma to Arica.

"You're saying he wants to kill the world except for a few tens of thousands of people," Garner said, "and then use them as some kind of seed population to start over, in Arica?"

Travis nodded. "We can stay away from what we'd have to guess about; what we already know is enough. We know ELF can be used to move people around en masse. Push and pull them at will. You could empty a city like Arica of its original residents. Draw them off to their own version of Yuma, up or down the coast. You could kill them once they were there. Turn up the signal until the depression is unbearable. Kill the rest of the world too, outside the United States. And within the U.S., we've seen for ourselves what happens. Everyone comes to Yuma, with their cars packed full of whatever they think they might need. They've already heard something about flights going out of there, and they'd be happy enough to catch one of them, but what they want more than anything is just to reach Yuma itself. Because then the pain will go away."

Silence came to the car. They were passing through the suburb now, the two-lane bisecting separate reaches of it. Travis saw an overpass far ahead, where 495 crossed the road.

"And how would Finn select the ones he wanted to keep alive?" Garner said. "Would he do that right on-site in Yuma, as people begin to show up?"

Travis shook his head. "He could've done that part years in advance. He'd probably have to. He'd need at least some people with critical knowledge. Scientists, tradespeople, doctors. The rest could come from the profiling, which could be conducted over a span of years on people who probably aren't even aware of it. Finn's best attempt at choosing good neighbors. That process is probably already finished."

Garner was still thinking it all through. Travis could see that he understood it. It was acceptance he was struggling with.

"Once these people are actually down there," Garner said. "Once they're in Arica, however many there are, ten thousand, fifty thousand… to be self-sustaining, they'd need so many things. I'm sure the city's existing water supply could be kept running, however it already works. Same for irrigated farming. But what about power? What about manufactured things we take for granted? Everyday items that wear out over time. Even clothing."

"You could use solar power," Travis said. "Arica has to be about the best place on Earth for it. And all the panels in the world would be left for the taking. Everything in the world would be left for the taking, at least until things started to decay. But in places like Vegas and Los Angeles, useful objects and materials would last a long time. You could send salvage flights up there for decades, if you had to. But I don't think you would have to."

"Why not?"

"Because that's what the gathering site at Yuma is for. Think about it. All those cars, packed with the basic necessities people would naturally bring along. Clothing, dishware, in some cases computers or other electronics. All of it neatly stored in a place where it'll last forever. For years after the settlement of Arica, flights could come up to Yuma and methodically gather that stuff. Take it back down there and store it in the Atacama. For a small enough population, it'd be a thousand years' worth of everything they'd ever need."

Travis watched Garner process it. Watched him try to, anyway. The man closed his eyes and rubbed them. Exhaled heavily.

"What else explains Yuma?" Travis said. "What else explains any of this stuff?"

Garner opened his eyes again. Stared at the cross streets going by, each lined with dozens of homes.

"How could anyone actually do it?" Garner said. "All those lives. How could someone sign up for a thing like that?"