Reif Larsen - I Am Radar

“It wasn’t entirely your fault.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Lars. I don’t need your bullshit right now.”

“We had to get Otik”—Lars corrected himself—“ Miroslav out of there. He was in poor health.”

“The black boxes, they were killing me, slowly,” said Otik. “Every time I make one, I must leave part of me inside box. And so my body goes like this . I used to be very thin, if you believe.”

“He had also been found out by certain security forces,” said Lars. “It wasn’t safe for him anymore. So we brought him back to a new life with a new name.”

“You brought him here ? To New Jersey?” said Radar.

“You could do worse.”

The music on the radio had shifted into a march. The rattle of a snare as an oboe urged them onward.

“I had no idea,” said Radar. “I can’t believe he kept all of this from us.”

“He was a private man. He kept things from everyone.”

Radar thought about this for a moment.

“Do you realize he caused the blackout?” he said.

Lars and Otik looked at each other.

“We had a hunch,” said Lars. “We couldn’t be sure, but when I heard there’d been an accident, I figured as much.”

“I just don’t understand why he would build something like that without thinking about what could happen? I mean, he must’ve known he would fry the whole electrical grid. What was he trying to do?”

“He didn’t build the vircator to fry the grid,” said Lars.

“What was he doing then?”

“He built it for you.”

“For me ?”

Lars sighed.

“What do you mean, for me ?” said Radar.

“We’ve been experimenting with vircators for some time now.” Lars pointed at the machine next to Otik. “And the more we researched this, the more Kermin became convinced that a high-energy pulse was the secret to reversing the effects of your procedure.”

“My procedure?”

“Your electro-enveloping. Kermin thought that if he just found the right energy and focus, then he could cure you—”

“ Cure me?”

“Or at least cure your epilepsy,” said Lars. “Okay, it’s crazy, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. There’s evidence that epilepsy is a quantum phenomenon. But we told him it was a bad idea, particularly because there was no way to know—”

“I tell him so many times this is bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,” said Otik, looking up from his work. “Like total bullshit. Even if we identify the coherence, seizure is huge reaction. Not some small event. But Kermin, he’s so. . I don’t even know this word.”

“He’s stubborn,” said Lars.

“Yes, stubborn, but more sneaky than this. In Serbian it is called zadrt . Like he is hypnotize.”

“He was building his own vircator,” said Lars. “He didn’t tell us as much, but we had our suspicions. Particularly when he stopped letting Otik come over. He was assembling the birds, he was showing us his work, but on the side he was building his own private EMP generator. We were on the outside, just like you. And we certainly didn’t know how far he’d gotten or how powerful it was.”

“Jesus,” said Radar.

The vircator had been for him . To cure him.

“Obviously, he overestimated the strength of the pulse,” said Lars.

“But how do you build something like that and not know it’s going to screw everything up? He must’ve caused like billions of dollars in damage today. He probably killed people.”

“Yes,” said Lars. “It’s most regrettable. He’s disrupted our work as well. Ten years of planning have all gone out the window.”

“What planning?” said Radar.

“Nothing is out the window,” Otik said from his bench. “We still go.”

“We’re not going, Otik,” said Lars. “We need Kermin.”

“No. He blows it. We get birds and we go. Alone.”

“We can’t go. Not before we find Kermin and make sure he’s okay. We owe this much to him.”

“You were one who said this boat sails only tomorrow,” Otik said to Lars.

“Yes, but we can’t just go without him. We can’t do it alone.”

But Otik had turned back to his computer and was no longer listening. He was typing intently, whispering something inaudible to himself.

Lars smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “As you can see, you’ve caught us at a tricky time. Clearly Otik and I need to discuss a few things here. We were supposed to catch a ship bound for Africa tomorrow morning, but your father’s. . untimely disappearance, shall we say, has complicated matters considerably.”

Radar felt a quiver of guilt. “I should go. I should go look for him,” he said.

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” said Lars.

“I have to,” said Radar, suddenly feeling antsy. “I thought he might be here, but I’ve got to find him. My mom’s waiting alone at home right now. I just worry he got into some trouble.”

“As you wish,” said Lars, bowing his head.

Radar got up to leave. “Thanks,” he said. “Good luck with your—”

“I am telling you! Genius! ” Otik yelled.

He punched a button and jumped to his feet with surprising dexterity for someone of his girth.

The light flickered above them, and the march on the radio slowed. Radar felt a hum across his skin, and it was then that the two birds on the table quivered and came to life. They leaped up into the air, spinning around each other, up and up until they crashed against the ceiling, plummeted, rebounded, and smacked against the wall, toppling over a jar of screws, a folder exploding into a cloud of papers. The birds rounded each other, eyes unblinking. They careened into the ceiling again and tumbled down, but just before they hit the ground, they swooped up again. And now an understanding emerged between the two and they began to circle the room in tandem, the oboe on the radio offering a cushion to the sound of their wings against the air, the bare lightbulb gently rocking back and forth in time to the birds’ revolutions. The three of them stood below, watching the pair act and react, react and act, until Otik yelled something in his language that Radar could not quite understand. Otik twisted and leaped like an animal in pain, and then he was at the door to the house, flinging it open with great drama. One of the birds sensed this expansion of space and immediately whipped out through the open door, leaving the other to circle the room alone. The difference between one bird and two was immense. After several more revolutions, the lone bird stopped in midair, hanging there motionless, as if it had forgotten what to do next. There was an impossible pause, a flagrant denial of gravity’s embrace, and just as the bird began to plunge back to earth, it regained itself, remembering, and now it was turning and swooping out through the open doorway. They were both gone just as quickly as they had come to life, and before Radar could ask if what he had just seen was real, Otik was already running out after them, whooping, the sound of his voice echoing against the walls of the garage until this, too, faded away into just the soft question mark of the oboe playing its final notes on the radio.

March 2, 1953

Tien was squatting on his haunches in the shade of a banana tree, smoking the last of his three cigarettes, trying to ignore the heat that was beating down on him in waves. He had been up since before dawn, when the mists still hung heavy, tapping 445 rubber trees by the light of a kerosene headlamp that burned hot against the skin of his forehead. The trees could only be cut in the cool dawn air, when they would bleed enough to fill the collecting cups before their spiral incisions dried up in the tropical sun. Tien had half an hour remaining before he had to brave the midday heat and begin the collection, retracing his route from that morning. He could no longer separate this cycle from the pulse of life itself: Cut, drain, retrieve. Repeat. It was as natural as breathing.