Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Evan realized he’d been holding his breath.

He and Molleken sat facing each other, their knees almost touching, not more than a few feet between their faces. Molleken seemed unbothered by the lack of personal space. Those duplicate pupils gazed into Evan, and again Evan had the unsettling feeling that Molleken was seeing more of him than he wanted to reveal. He resisted the urge to adjust the chewing gum beneath his upper lip.

“No wonder the military wants in on this,” Evan said. “The applications are spectacular.”

“The military is small-minded,” Molleken said. “But they do spend an awful lot of money.”

“I’d like to make clear,” Soo-jin called out, “that this discussion is strictly off the record. Do you understand, Mr. Specter?”

“I understand.”

Evan kept his focus on Molleken as Molleken did on him when addressing Soo-jin. She was an external embodiment of her boss’s concerns more than an actual person in the room with them. She seemed like a figment of Molleken’s imagination. The fact that she was East Asian and submissive, lurking in the shadows, gave Evan the same discomfort he’d felt downstairs at the young women on passive display before the male partygoers.

“The potential is spectacular,” Evan said. “But the military applications present some moral challenges.”

“Of course they do.” Molleken’s gaze was steady, penetrating. “But you can’t stop progress.”

“That’s what Oppenheimer thought.”

“And he was right.”

“A swarm of your microdrones could overwhelm enemy air defenses.”

Molleken smiled. Up close his skin looked impossibly smooth, devoid of wrinkles. “They could do more than that. Sensor systems like AWACS, they’re oriented toward larger airborne assets. If they were sensitive enough to detect one of my microdrones, they’d also alert at every mosquito or dandelion puffball caught on a breeze. My dragonflies benefit from inherent cloaking by dint of their size. And they have a negligible heat signature, which renders thermal imaging useless. So they are essentially invisible. They are everywhere and nowhere. They are divisible and additive. They are collaborative and think for themselves.”

Molleken leaned forward, his nose no more than a few inches from Evan’s, seemingly unaware that he was crowding him. “Imagine waging war without home-team casualties,” Molleken said. “No more Americans coming back in caskets. And imagine outsourcing the negative emotion associated with killing so our soldiers don’t have to feel it.”

Evan recalled Rafael rubbing his shaved scalp with agitation. You make the choices, you hear me? We at least bear that. What happens when you don’t anymore? What happens then?

Evan leaned back, gathered his thoughts. “In the past decade or so, the number of skiers who wear helmets has tripled,” he said. “Do you know the effect that’s had on the number of head injuries?”

Molleken’s features broadened with pleasure, a smile without the smile, this style of banter seemingly to his liking. “I do not.”

“They’ve stayed exactly the same. Do you know why that is?”

“The added protection gives skiers incentive to take more risks.”

Again Evan pictured Rafael, trapped inside his own conscience and the four walls of his room. I’ll tell you something that’s not programmable. Jake Hargreave’s soul. You try rendering that outta ones and zeros.

“There’s a moral hazard to avoiding cost,” Evan said. “Making war less painful for one side makes it a lot easier to sell. Which means we’ll see more of it.”

“There’s no halting progress,” Molleken said. “There’s no halting this technology. It’s being developed around the world. The safest thing we can do is make sure everyone has it.”

“Mutually assured destruction.”

“How many thermonuclear bombs have been used in war?”

“None,” Evan said. “Yet.”

Soo-jin’s voice floated across to them. “Go to your party, Brendan. Circulate.”

“Fuck you, Soo-jin.” There it was, a peek at the child-tyrant behind the curtain. Molleken rose abruptly, staring down at Evan. “Enough talk. Want to go play?”

45The Waiting Darkness

Evan exited the study with Molleken. Soo-jin didn’t even look up from her magazine as they passed by. They moved through the bodyguards and headed up a private hall. The electronic dance music rumbled through the bones of the house, vibrating the royal-blue Anatolian silk runner beneath Evan’s feet. They reached the elevator and stepped inside. The house was only three stories, but Molleken thumbed a fourth button at the bottom.

The elevator car’s mirrored interior threw endless fun-house reflections of Molleken and Evan as they rode down, down, down. When the elevator peeled itself open, they were in an underground garage that smelled of gasoline and cleaning products. A dozen or so cars slumbered beneath covers, enough to require a staff for maintenance. But there was no one here now.

Molleken led the way to a thick steel door, where he placed his palm on a sensor that hummed, reading his vein patterns. The door clicked open.

Beyond was a passage bored through the earth like a subway tunnel. Evan barely had time to register his surprise before Molleken ushered him across the threshold. A single open-topped shuttle car rested on a monorail. The space was claustrophobic, tight enough that Evan had to stoop to get aboard after Molleken.

Molleken threw the lever, and they whipped off, shot up the horizontal shaft. A few lights flew by overhead at wide intervals, intensifying the coal-mine effect. Evan pressed a palm atop his Giants hat to avoid losing it. He had kept his bearings, noting their northwest heading, which was launching them into a commercial zone of Redwood City. Molleken looked over at Evan, hair riffling, and said, “I traded for one of Elon’s tunneling machines.”

“What did you give him?”

Molleken smiled and did not answer.

Almost as soon as the ride started, it began to slow, halting at an abbreviated platform facing a similar door. The jaunt had been maybe three-quarters of a mile.

Another palm-reading sensor, and then they entered a pitch-black space.

“Welcome to my battle lab,” Molleken said.

He stepped forward, and motion-activated lights clicked on, illuminating the cavernlike space in segments. The lights kept going, the lab stretching out and out as it unfolded into view, an awe-inspiring reveal.

There seemed to be no rear or side walls, just perimeters where the lights ceased illuminating.

Evan followed Molleken through various industrial workbenches, server racks, and enclosed spaces. The cold design and fascinating gear gave it a utilitarian cool-nerd aesthetic; Evan half expected to find a Tesla coil lurking behind a pony wall. The overheads began to shut off in their wake until they were entrapped in a solitary rectangle of light that moved with them, the rest of the battle lab hidden all around.

They moved past a variety of missile prototypes, and then a disassembled Predator drone came into sight. Evan felt a prickle at the back of his neck where the Hellfire missile had scorched his skin.

“Is that a Predator drone?” he asked. “Here in your private lab?”

“I’m engineering a superior carbon-and-quartz-fiber composite for the fuselage,” Molleken said. “To reduce vibration and further decrease the sound signature.”

“You must have crazy security clearances,” Evan ventured.

But Molleken just kept walking, the lights clicking off behind them, shrouding the Predator in darkness.

They arrived at a bowling-alley stretch of polished tile leading to a bizarrely staged tableau: a variety of mannequins posed among furniture as if at a cocktail party. A masculine one in the middle had a bright red target painted on its smooth plastic skull. Molleken halted at the far end of the gallery before a lab bench. Atop the immaculate surface rested a plastic torso and head wearing a skin-tight skullcap of sorts, the apparatus on display like a wig.