Mattias Berg - The Carrier

We followed Ingrid into her room, which she said had the best view. She pulled open the curtains and removed one of the boards from the window.

Then we just stood there in silence, observing the remarkable organism of the mine. It seemed to be breathing, hissing and belching smoke, coloring the snow at the top a threatening iron-ore black. From there on down to the very bottom, the rock sides had been layered like farming terraces. At ground level, the mine then continued on down in a confusion of railway tracks, overhead wires, lamps, winches, relays.

After a certain time—maybe five minutes? ten?—Ingrid replaced the board with care, closed the window and pulled the curtains shut again.

“Not that it’s necessary. But belt and suspenders, as they say.”

On our way from the station, Ingrid had insisted that we would be safest here, nearest to the mine. Locally, the area was only ever known as the “Valley of Death”. The hotel and surrounding buildings would be the first to be dragged down into the depths: so they had been declared uninhabitable some years ago, sealed up, and had become an excellent haunt for people who, for different reasons, wanted to go underground. Here, nobody would ask—and absolutely no-one would answer.

“Dearest Jesús María, would you mind leaving us alone for a little while? Perhaps make yourself at home in your room, change for dinner?”

“Sure, I can do that. I’ll pull out my fucking quinceañera dress.”

As soon as Jesús María had left the room, Ingrid took out her portable command terminal, left the set of keys in the lock, barricaded the door with a chair pushed under the handle. Sat down on the squeaky four-poster bed and gestured for me to install myself next to her. There was a faint smell of skin and soap about her.

Soon the map of the world could be seen on the screen, the correspondences . I let my eyes run from east to west, between our nuclear weapons bases on home soil. Followed the solid red lines between yellow triangles, then switched my look to the corresponding installations on the European continent.

“In case you’re wondering what we’re doing up here, my treasure.”

She zoomed in on northern Europe, over Sweden, toward the little cross on the map. It could not be too many miles away. Step by step she clicked her way in on Kiruna, the old city center, and put a marker on Hotell Snöflinga. The distance from here to the destination was given on the screen as twenty-six miles. Estimated time to get there on foot: 8 hours, 32 minutes.

“You know about Esrange Space Center, the rocket range—but hardly its full extent. Not many do. Or are aware that Sweden has actually got something of universally strategic value. At least as important as the iron ore in Narvik during the war, or the heavy water in Rjukan. A good enough reason in itself to occupy this whole country.”

On the screen, the security gates looked as neutral as at any space center or nuclear weapons facility. The basic rule was, the more valuable, the more low-key. When Ingrid tried to zoom in further, everything became pixelated: the global digital security setting for top secret installations.

“This, Erasmus, is the world’s leading connections center for the enormous mass of information streaming down from all satellites at any moment. The hub itself, the main exchange. To begin with, the rocket center was mostly focused on weather forecasts and other innocuous things. Then they started getting orders for navigational data, concrete geopolitical mapping, more and more specific with each year. Nowadays our drones could not get too far without Esrange.”

She zoomed out again. Moved along the dotted blue lines leading from the cross here in the northernmost part of Europe, back and forth over the map of the world.

“And I think this might interest you, my treasure.”

The screen image now traveled over the Atlantic and on toward the missile base at Minot in North Dakota. I had recognized it without having to check on the map. Could distinguish this particular anonymity from all the other anonymities since decades back.

When we had zoomed in sufficiently, the display split as usual into smaller split-screen images. One showed the missile itself: its grayish matte surface, like a mighty underground whale. Two others depicted the above-ground exterior. Forested terrain, mountain scenery in the background, a light haze. The largest image was in the middle of the screen and showed the command center itself. The control console, the panels, the forced stillness.

Routinely I checked the co-ordinates at the foot of the screen. Time, temperature, other weather conditions, the pressure inside the missile. All the metrics which the command center needed, including the alert level. And only then did I notice that the launch counter was rapidly spinning down.

The green numbers first turned yellow and then red, before starting to flash frenetically. The command center sent out calls, fully in accordance with regulations—but still nothing stopped. The launch phase too seemed to go according to plan. The smoke and heat development were immense: even the most distant trees on the exterior images had started to burn. I stared at the counter furthest down to the right, what was called the “Body Count”. Was rooted to the spot. Could do nothing at all about it, stop the process, overpower Ingrid.

And it was, of course, already too late. Once everything has gone this far, the security system is designed to ensure that the process is not interrupted, stopping the missile from falling on populated areas in friendly territory instead.

“More or less like that,” Ingrid said.

With a click on the control console she got the entire operation to stop—before it was rapidly rewound. The counter spun back to the beginning with equal speed, the alert level returned to yellow then green. In the end she clicked away the images from the base, as well as the world map, and closed the lid of the command terminal.

An ice-cold drop of sweat ran down my forehead.

“Isn’t it amazing? Most of the conceivable scenarios are already on my computer, from our intensive training exercises around the world. And after our unofficial field trip out there to Esrange, the Magic Mirror will be complete: then I will be able to use this little gizmo to connect to the image streams from each one of the satellites and after that tinker with them to my heart’s desire. From that point on I can simulate any course of events I want, wherever I want. Our pursuers will no longer have the slightest idea what is happening. Or whether they can even believe their own eyes.”

When the drop of sweat ran down the ridge of my nose, I finally flicked it away. Tried to get up from the sunken four-poster bed, which was squealing and creaking, like a drowning cat. Ingrid waited until it was quiet again in the room.

“And above all, my treasure, after that you and I can burn out our entire global nuclear weapons system, from the inside—without anything untoward appearing on the monitors. Guaranteed not one trace. However hard you look.”

That night I dreamed, not for the first time, that I was the little Japanese girl at an international conference for survivors.

Bashfully I told them how I had been in a tram and saw something like a flash of silver and threw myself onto the ground. Everything became black as ink, so dark that people were running into each other everywhere, like the blind rats which I had seen in the cage at the home of my friend.

When it grew fractionally lighter, I began to walk through the town, by now strange to me. I met a woman with bleeding eyes and a girl who must have been about the same age as me and who was shouting out the same thing all the time: “Help me, help!” Her back was burned to shreds, just ashes and soot, was still glowing like dying embers, the skin hanging down on her hips in strips. Crowds of people were making their way along the river bank. Jumped in and were immediately scalded to death by the boiling hot water.