Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

“So how’s this going to work?” Ellis indicated the lab. “Repopulating the world? We don’t have the pattern to make males, right? So what? Are we going to screw our daughters or just have our sons sleep with their sisters?”

“Like I said, it was good enough for Adam and Eve, but we don’t have to do that. Your sons will marry my daughters and vice versa. It’s all very simple, really. I don’t know why you’re kicking up such a stink.”

Ellis sighed. “I don’t like this idea of a pecking order. It’s—it’s just bullying for the sake of bullying. These people were designed to resist violence—which is a good thing—and here you are training them to fight.”

“They need to be toughened up. They need to know how to fight.”

“Why? Who is there to fight? Did that squirrel you ate put up that much of a battle?”

Warren took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. “Do you think the moles underground are gonna be fine if we build a prosperous society here on the surface? What did I just tell you about conflict?”

“You’re expecting to fight Hollow World?”

“Of course.” Warren raised his arms, then slapped his thighs.

“They’re nonviolent. They don’t even have a police force, much less an army. They don’t understand weapons. There’s no way they’ll attack us.”

“You’ve heard of this Hive Mind thing they’re working on, right? How long before they insist we get chips planted in our brains so they can control us?”

“The Hive Mind has nothing to do with control—”

“Of course it does. That’s all anything is ever about. Once they implement it, they’ll be unstoppable, like a colony of single-minded ants. They’ll be the Borg, rushing from their holes to wipe us out if we refuse to be assimilated. Well, I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Warren, the Hive Project doesn’t even work. They can’t do it. You’re scared of nothing.”

Warren glanced back at the lab again. How many times was that?

“What’s going on in the lab?”

“Huh?”

Ellis pointed. “Is Dex starting the female Chia Pet farm in Edison’s lab?” Ellis had to admit that was surprisingly apropos. Thomas would have been pleased.

“Oh—uh—yeah. Dex is working on all kinds of things. They’ve already got the first batch of eggs growing in some sort of incubator that he and Pol brought back.”

“All kinds? Other than making baby girls, what’s Dex up to?”

“Probably best if you don’t know,” Warren said so thoughtfully, so seriously, that Ellis focused on the lab. He tried to see through the windows, but they were covered.

“Why is that?”

“You know I love you like a brother, Ellis, but you’ve always lacked the conviction of your beliefs.”

Ellis shifted his attention off the lab and back squarely on Warren. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Warren had his straight-shooter face on. The tough-love train was heading Ellis’s way and looking to pick up a passenger. “If you really wanted to be an astronaut, you could have, but you settled for a mid-level white-bread job. And when Peggy got pregnant, you should have told her Hasta la vista, bitch. But you’ve always been weak. Let’s face it, Ellis, if you were a lifeboat captain with too many passengers, they’d all die because you couldn’t make the tough decisions. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just the way you are. A lot of people are that way.”

Ellis felt like Warren was telling him he shouldn’t be ashamed to come out of the closet. Not that there’s anything wrong with being compassionate.

“What’s going on in the lab, Warren?”

“The future.”

“Haven’t we both had more than our fair share off that plate?”

“You can’t understand—not yet. But you would if you had spent that winter with me. You see, when I crawled out, I knew I had been spared for a reason. Course, I didn’t know what that was at the time, but Moses didn’t know why he survived being exiled to the desert either. God had a purpose for me.”

“What’s in the lab, Warren?”

“It wasn’t until I met Pol, Dex, and Hig that I began to understand I had been saved from cancer and a killing winter for a reason. So I could fix the world—so I could be the new Savior—kind of a second coming of Warren Eckard. We really are like Jesus and John the Baptist. I’m doing the heavy lifting at first to pave the way—to prepare the people—for you to use that brain of yours and guide them. I can’t do that as well as you. You got all the education. My gut tells me what’s right, but I can’t explain the hows and whys like you can.”

“How are you preparing the people?” Ellis began walking back toward the lab.

“It took a year, Ellis, and the hard work of everyone here, mostly Pol and Dex, but especially Hal.”

“I never met Hal. Who’s that?”

“Oh, you met him,” Warren told Ellis as he stepped on the porch. “You killed him.”

Inside, the white walls were lined with black shelves filled with bottles of various sizes and colors—wooden floor, wooden tables, wooden chairs, everything battered and beaten, but sturdy as a carpenter’s shop. Big windows would have let plenty of light in if not for the heavy curtains. As it was, oil lamps illuminated the long tables that were crowded with contraptions of brass, glass, and wire. At the far end stood a church-style organ with a sailfish fin of pipes and ivory keys. In front of it, three people were gathered, working on the contents of a large white-plastic crate that rode on its own set of wheels. Ellis had no idea who they were, not just because they had their backs to him, but because they were dressed up like astronauts—no, not astronauts. They weren’t wearing helmets—more like hoods.

“I wouldn’t go any closer,” Warren warned. “Already too close, I would imagine. Dex says the radiation level could be toxic. The baldies are more resistant than we are.”

“Radiation?” Trying to solve the puzzle, Ellis turned his head back and forth between Warren and the crate.

“You have no idea how hard it was to find enriched plutonium in this day and age,” Warren lamented with the same tone he used to complain about the traffic on the Southfield Freeway. “They don’t have a pattern for that, you know.”

When Ellis’s sight finally settled on the white-polymer crate with its convenience wheels and old-fashioned, black-and-yellow radiation symbol, a single thought repeated in his head: That can’t be what I think it is . Ellis had little trouble comprehending interdimensional portals that let people step from one planet to another, Makers that created cups of coffee from gravel, and imitation sunlight miles underground, but his mind refused to accept what he knew was right in front of him.

“What’s going on, Warren?” Ellis asked, his voice pleading for his friend to explain it all away. Hoping he would say, It’s just a joke, buddy—a gag. You should see the look on your face. That big plastic case over there with the reinforced clamps and the US military stamp—that’s just a giant espresso maker. We’re all gonna have lattes!

“I don’t plan to make the same mistake President Truman did,” Warren said. “You know, Patton told everyone we should have rolled our tanks right on into Russia at the end of World War II. He was right. Same with China. Instead, we waited—and what happened? The Ruskies got the bomb, and China ended up buying our asses.”

“What’s in the goddamn box, Warren?”

“It’s a present—a little housewarming gift for Hollow World.” Warren laughed. “Literally. Shame Hal won’t see the bang. Hal was the physicist—or whatever they call it now. Hal’s plan, really. The trick was to place the bombs in the right places.”