Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

The child was a wonder. She was easily the most successful test subject at the Facility, and she delighted in using her powers. She was capable of things that seemed, to the casual observer, like predicting the future. What it actually was, was probability. Given enough information, Olivia could parse the likely outcomes of any situation. She was most precise when the information was purely mathematical – even this young, the girl had a grasp of numbers that was just unbelievable. But she could look at any real-world situation, and make a very educated guess at the outcome.

She could, for instance, be told what occurred at the Vance Campground a few days before. She could be given access to maps. Photos of the surrounding forest. Details on the terrain, the vegetation and animal life, the weather. Then she’d look up, blinking behind her thick glasses, and calmly pronounce that the boy who could cause earthquakes was still alive.

Even then, it was something of a gamble. The girl would only give a general area where the boy would be. It was small, but it would still take days to search.

Unless, of course, the searcher had the genetic ability to see things in the infrared spectrum, with far more precision and at a much greater distance than even the most advanced military technology.

Unless she could pick out warm bodies in the undergrowth from miles away, as easily as someone spotting a friend across a crowded room.

Olivia had helped in other ways, too. The US Army had declared the Olympic National Park off-limits while they conducted their search – nobody in, or out. But the park was almost one and a half thousand square miles in size, and not even the Army could watch every access point. Olivia had worked out that this particular trailhead – the one the Director has just taken – would have the best chance of being unguarded on this particular day. The Army searchers would have moved on, heading deeper into the park.

It was a risk, of course. A big one. Then again, the Director is carrying no weapons. She’s just a hiker, out for a stroll. And of course, she can see them coming long before they can see her.

A few hours later, the Director stops at the top of a small rise, checking a map on her phone. Looks around her. When she was a child, she couldn’t see that far – fifty yards, maybe, no more. But she’s gotten a lot stronger since then. She slowly turns, noting the glowing red form of a bear, snuffling in the undergrowth half a mile away. The squirrels scrabbling across the tree trunks. The deer, drinking from a stream – a very faint glow in her vision, nearly a mile hence. She’s especially alert for large human shapes in the distance – the special forces tracker teams, still hunting. But it’s a huge area for them to cover, and she can’t see anybody.

At her two o’clock, there’s a tiny blob of heat energy. One that might be a raccoon, or a small coyote, or something else altogether.

She takes a drink of water from her pack, then sets off again, moving off the path and into the dense forest, keeping a lazy eye on the bear shape so she can give it a wide berth.

She’s always loved walking. Ever since she was a kid, when she and her brother and sister had a thousand acres of unspoiled Wyoming wilderness to play in. She’d often ditch them and go for rambles – that’s what she thought of them as, rambles, a word her dad had once used which had never left her. She wishes her dad was here now. He’d appreciate what she was trying to do.

And what are you trying to do?

Even now, she has her doubts. It has taken so much faith for her to proceed this far – not just in Olivia, or Ajay, or the other doctors. It’s taken faith in herself. In her mission.

The Facility had been the easy part. Once she had the funds in place, and the right people, it all came together. There were challenges of course – the boy, for a start. His desire to hurt those around him, to see what it would feel like, took some serious thinking to overcome.

But the challenges had been overcome. And the Director had started to think a little bigger. She’d begun to imagine what would happen if people like her and the children and her brother could walk freely, not hiding their abilities, safe in the knowledge that no one could hurt them.

Of course, for that, she needed money. Plenty of it was available – Olivia proved as deft at predicting the stock market as she did at predicting where a baseball would end up after it was hit. But it was far too slow. It would take years to raise the kind of funds needed without attracting attention – years of careful planning, shell companies, an intricate network of investments. Years of trying to outsmart the federal government, not making too much too quickly, staying under the radar.

And then, one day, she’d had a revelation – one so startling she’d sat bolt upright in bed, causing Ajay to spill his morning coffee next to her.

She’d started feeding Olivia more data. Much more. Asking what would happen to the economy and the market under certain scenarios. How the financial world would react following war. Disease. Terrorist attack.

Or if a massive earthquake were to strike somewhere in the United States.

Olivia, ever eager to please, had sucked it all up like a sponge. With her help, they’d modelled a scenario, down to the last variable. They’d worked out where to place their funds, investing in places no one would think to put their money. Setting up a massive, interconnected web of holdings that would sit, dormant, until a specific event thought to be entirely out of human control set them in motion. Then they would grow, and grow, and grow some more.

Causing the specific event – the earthquake – was where the Director had taken a huge leap of faith. No one knew what would happen if the boy were to come across a fault line. He might not sense it at all, or sense it but be unable to do anything about it.

The Director had spent long nights in conversation with Ajay. She’d consulted Olivia repeatedly (without telling her the full picture – she was only five, after all). She’d watched the boy from her office window. Wondering how someone so young could be so cruel.

She had a strong sense that he couldn’t be forced to do it. If they dragged him to a fault line, he might just refuse to help, or lie to them. He would have to find his own way, believe it was his idea…

She could guarantee that he’d cross the San Andreas fault – that part was easy. It was practically impossible to enter Los Angeles without doing so. But the rest of the plan was less certain. It required Ajay convincing the mother and her son to run. It required the Director to trust her instincts as much as she trusted Olivia’s mind.

She knew there was a chance that the boy would disappoint them, and she planned accordingly. She was already in the process of moving the Facility, changing their identities – if the boy was caught, she didn’t want it coming back on her. She’s become used to this kind of subterfuge, the subtle ways to stay out of the government’s eye. She’s been doing it for a very long time.

All the same, she had a good feeling about the plan. When you wanted to create a new world, you had to believe in your ideas.

The Director had wondered why the loss of life in the earthquakes didn’t bother her. She supposed it was because most of the people in the affected area would despise her, and Olivia, and anyone else with abilities.

She didn’t especially wish them dead. They simply didn’t matter to her. If there’d been an easier way to achieve her goals, one without loss of life, she’d probably have taken it. But there wasn’t, so she didn’t.

Of course, things hadn’t gone completely to plan. They’d factored in the Director’s sister, and her little government-owned crew, but not even Olivia could account for everything. Humans weren’t always predictable. Cascadia had not gone off, which meant that their stock market gains hadn’t been as huge as she’d hoped.