part 12

Good morning. Where do you . . ?

No, this is fine. Eli, nice to see you. When we’re done here I’ll take you over to the com, as they call it, and we can look at the new projects.

Not yet but we hit ten figures. You need to step it up, I expect you to spend it as fast as I can make it.

Yeah, I know. It’s chaos out there, but I’ve got some ideas and more staff for you.

I know, but I need to finish here first, ok? It’ll only take a few minutes.

Anyway . .

No, I’m fine.

Jeez, you guys and your donuts. If I ate like that I’d weigh nine hundred pounds.

Now, I didn’t say that . .

Well look at Chas . .

I don’t know. Where do you put it Charles?

Yeah, but what do your lipids look like?

Really? How about your blood pressure?’

Well, shit.

Your gonna live forever then.

Ninety one? Holy shit. Well, I’m not surprised.

Hell no, he was fifty-four.

Heart attack.

He was actually on the can when it happened.

No, the EMT said it happens all the time, people just don’t talk about it.

I dunno. He’d have preferred to die in combat, but I like to think he was on a mission of some kind.

Yeah, yeah, definitely killed in action.

No, thank God, I got my mother’s cardiac genes.

Well, he was asking for it. He had really high blood pressure and never did anything about it.

Yeah, they’d give him drugs, but he never took ‘em.

And he never met a donut he didn’t like.

Well, Charlie doesn’t but I’ll bet you do.

I’m just sayin’.

I know, I know.

Anyway . .

Yeah, I think it should work.

Pretty much. There’s some things to fine tune. Mark has a list.

Well, it’s pretty nice, but it still feels like living in an office building.

No, no, it’s fine. Beats the hell out of the president’s plan.

Or a prison.

Well, we can spin it however we want, but it doesn’t change anything. I’ve been institutionalized.

Kind of late in the game for me to start complaining, I signed off on everything.

No, it’s the best play for the hand we’ve been dealt. You guys did a great job.

Everything. Lots of space, lots of light, privacy when I need it, secure, continuous, independent media connections . .

Kinda fortress-like in that regard, but . .

I sure as hell hope we never have to hold out that long.

God, that’s a lot of beans.

Yeah, but the important question is, are there any donuts?

That should be enough to make, like, ten million of ‘em.

Well, I’ll tell you, if it comes to that, I’ll eat ‘em with you.

Are you insane? I love donuts.

No I didn’t, I just can’t get away with it. Really, if I have one of those glazed ones, I’m fucked, I’ll eat every freakin’ donut in the place.

No, it drives me crazy.

No, no . .

Well, I appreciate that, but . .

Look, I’m enough of a prima donna already, I’m not going to start pulling that kind of crap.

No, really, forget it. We need to move on anyway. Eli, you look like you have a question.

Not really. Nothing formal anyway. Just wondering what’s going to happen and hoping none of this is necessary.

How much do you know?

No, I just assumed.

Well, that’s basically it. When it became clear how much people had come to depend on my reports, the president wanted me in a fucking bunker under a mountain, but there’s no way in hell. But it seemed like a good idea under the circumstances for me to take up residence some place that was relatively safe and where I’d have immediate access to a media upload. I can also monitor project implementation.

That same independence we talked about. I don’t want to be at the mercy of any agency or utility.

You’ll get details on what we have going for you in a few minutes.

Right, so we’ve just been wondering how bad it’s going to get.

I know, me too.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly, everywhere.

Instead, they’re just heading for the hills.

That’s the mentality. Cover your own ass.

Of course he’ll be in one of those fucking bunkers.

Well, I see the reasoning . .

Right. Like a dispersion effect. He attacks population centers, therefore we need to spread out all over the planet. Instead of changing our behavior, we’ll just run like hell and hope he won’t notice us.

So they get stuck holding the bag. Nobody knows that better than Eli.

Well, maybe some of them do, but they’ve made a conscious decision to bail anyway.

I think so. He’s created two categories, and we’re in a panic to classify ourselves.

Yeah, for the first time I’ve got a sense I know what’s going to happen next.

Right, right, he’s probably working on that right now.

Me either. He’s the shit.

I’d be surprised if he needed to.

All he needs to do is increase the range.

I don’t think so. In fact, I’m guessing it may already be there.

Think about it. The pulse doesn’t seem to vary in intensity. You’d think the strength would be inversely proportional to the distance, but I don’t think it is, at least not to the degree we can detect. People’s heads don’t seem to get any hotter when they’re closer to him and at the limits of the burst the effect just suddenly disappears, it’s not like the next mile people only get headaches. This is scary, the total energy in the wave actually gets exponentially greater as it spreads out.

I have no idea. No physics I know works like that.

Exactly. Which implies . .

Right. If he’s arbitrarily limiting the range, then maybe there’s lots more where that came from.
I’m not saying I know, maybe it does exhaust itself. Maybe the way it increases its energy is to somehow steal it from the potential wave beyond the the limit point.

But if it doesn’t and Dawn is right . .

In which case all he needs to work on is how to discriminate.

I’ll bet you’re right. He knows how, he just has to calibrate for the next criterion.

Yeah, you can make the case. But we’re not trying to escape from him, we’re protecting ourselves

from them.

We’ll know soon enough.

It’s been three weeks. People have made their course corrections. He’s flushed out the runners. I don’t think we have long to wait.