Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

“Well?”

“Give me time,” I mutter.

“It’s too late,” Haswell shouts at us.

“To undo killing that many people? I sure as hell hope not!”

There’s a pause behind me. I glance back at Haswell, who looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Kill them? I’m not going to kill anyone. I’ve set the missiles to burst in the air.”

Our eyes lock.

I get it.

Reboot.

Decades ago, when scientists used to test nuclear bombs out in the open, they set one off high in the atmosphere over the Pacific. And electronics died all throughout Hawaii and up to the West Coast. That’s how we found out that some bombs set off an electromagnetic pulse. Not as big a deal in the 1950s.

But today?

The electromagnetic pulse will slag most consumer-grade electronics. No more iPhones. No more internet. No more fancy car with GPS and collision-avoidance. No more flatscreen TVs. No more cable.

“Those fucking anti-intellectuals, the ones who can’t live without all the things the nerds invented, how will they make it now?” Haswell asks. “They decry our checking into social media; they mock our favorite shows. But they all depend on us. And you know what, we carry them no more. People like you and me, we’re the natural leaders. We are the inventors, the tinkerers, the ones who should lead it all.”

“Can’t lead shit if all our toys are dead,” I say, stepping forward. I can’t recall the missiles, I can’t change where they are headed. I need more time to understand how to undo it all, and time is something we don’t have.

Toto pokes around at the laptops as I stare in horror at Haswell.

“There’s an exclusion zone programmed into the bursts,” Haswell explains. “A place that already has the facilities, the technologies, the right people to lead. We will be a beacon in the dark. Unlike the Neanderthals on the science oversight committees who are literally against the concept of science itself until it puts in their pacemakers, we will be scientists. In charge of it all. Understand? Come with me. Come to the valley. Come build the new, orderly world. There’s a place for you.”

“A place?”

“You tracked me down. Who else could have done that? But you drive a shitty econo-car. Look, document leaks show us what kind of society these old baby-boomer politicians are creating: a police state. Caged in ‘free speech zones’ and no-knock raids. The whole ‘if you’ve done nothing you’ve got nothing to fear’ bullshit. We’ve become a bad operating system with so many patches on some old command line interface that we can barely run. It’s time to reset. I’ve got a van with shielded electronics and enough gasoline to get us back there. I’ll bring you with me into the new age. I hate to see wasted talent.”

And as he says that, I hear the rumble of a rocket motor kicking on. The ground shakes as if a giant is tearing free from the rock underneath us all. I’m about to witness the first moments of something so vast and terrible that the work of H.P. Lovecraft is a cheerful kid’s book by comparison.

Toto shoots Haswell in the kneecap. The man drops to the dust, writhing and screaming. Danny looks ready to jump for his weapon, so Toto shoots him in the stomach and picks up the shotgun.

He opens the hood of the van Haswell told us was ready for the EMP blast and nods. “It’ll keep working. Come on.”

“But…”

“We don’t want to be waiting around. We need to take care of our own shit, now.”

All around us, on the edges of the night horizon, ICBMs glare as they begin to rise above their groundhog holes and lumber into the sky.

“Where do you want to go?” Toto asks at last. He’s driving. I have my face up against the window, looking out at the contrails heading higher and higher.

“I don’t know,” I say. “The countryside. Somewhere with clean water and deer to hunt. Guns will still work after the pulse.”

Toto grimaces. “Before my family moved out to the countryside, we lived near one of the coasts. Got hit by a hurricane. It wasn’t all Hollywood and shit. People don’t run around screaming; we’ve been making communities for hundreds of years. Mostly in disaster, we pitch in, clean up, figure out how to muddle through.”

“Like the blackout,” I say. When the power went out, and people came out to light things up with their phones or car headlights. Even in our shitty neighborhood.

“Those people masturbating about the end of all things? They think they’re not plugged into a larger network of people who produce the things they need. That’s trade. More powerful than one jackass with a piece. A hundred people who actually build the guns, they’re more powerful. Besides, you can’t fucking eat gold and ammo. Medics, farmers, they’re always going to be needed. What you do is find a good town, with good farms, clean water near a mountain. I know a few.”

“We could go to the valley,” I suggest.

“I don’t think they’ll do as well as Haswell thought,” Toto says grimly.

“What do you mean?”

“First, answer me this: Did you agree with him? I remember, when you used to talk to me in school. About how you were treated. Do you think he had the right idea?”

“What the fuck?” I stare at Toto. “I got kicked around a bit for having my nose in a book. But you know what, everyone’s an expert at something. I don’t know shit about making my car run, doesn’t mean I think my mechanic is less of a human being because I understand TCP/IP protocols and he doesn’t.”

“Good.” Toto nods. “You didn’t ask me what I was doing on those laptops. Probably neither you or Haswell figured someone like me would know enough to change the code. We couldn’t send them all into the sea, or stop them. But I could launch one more, to cover that exclusion zone. Didn’t want to be made a peasant of. Figure if the apocalypse is coming, should be equally distributed.”

I would laugh, if it wasn’t the actual end of the world.

Toto pulls to a stop after a few minutes. We’re far enough away not to worry about the feds. Hopefully Haswell is right that the truck is hardened against the pulse, which should be coming at any moment.

We get out and stand in front of the truck and look at the skies.

“I got this off the dead one,” Toto says, and hands me a phone. “If there was ever someone you wanted to call and get things right with, you’ve got a couple minutes, I figure, before the cell network goes down.”

I look down at the phone. “I’d be calling you. No one else out there gives a shit if I live or die, you know?”

I toss it back at him, and he tosses it into the bushes.

Toto looks at me. “Hey…”

“You’re getting all sentimental.”

“If it’s more than the EMP. I gotta say: you know I love you, right?”

It’s going to be okay, I think, as the artificial, nuclear sunrise suddenly lights up the air above the highest clouds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has written several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Halo: The Cole Protocol , the Xenowealth series, and Artic Rising . His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Analog, Clarkesworld , and Subterranean , and in anthologies such as Armored, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories , and Under the Moons of Mars . He currently lives in Ohio with a pair of dogs, a pair of cats, twin daughters, and his wife.