Hollow World Read online

Warren looked at him and shook his head as if he were nuts. “We have the tools to make paradise on earth. I just plan on using them.”

  Ellis stared at his friend while overhead a chevron of geese honked its way south. “What is paradise, Warren?”

  “What do you mean, what’s paradise?”

  Ellis had a sinking suspicion Warren’s idea of paradise was a world the way he wanted it to be. The idea that others might not agree—and not be wrong—never revealed itself as so much as a flicker in the dark quiet of a certain mind.

  “I always thought—well, at Thanksgiving everyone would always ask for the same things, right?” Ellis said. “Beauty queens always gave the same answer when asked what they wished for. World peace was always at the top of everyone’s list. After that, everybody added an end to world hunger, then the elimination of disease, discrimination, and the absence of want. Isn’t that supposed to be paradise? But that’s Hollow World, Warren. They’ve already done all that. Isn’t Hollow World already paradise? Maybe we’re just not seeing it because it’s so alien to us. It’s like—you know—really winning the lottery. Everybody dreams about it, but if it were to happen, we wouldn’t be happy because it wouldn’t really be exactly like we envisioned. It wouldn’t be the end of all problems. Nothing ever is. Maybe we can’t see that Hollow World is paradise, because it’s perfect but we’re not.”

  “Bullshit.” Warren waved a calloused hand at him.

  “How is that bullshit?”

  “Because it’s all wrong. Paradise isn’t a lack of want. That’s hell, brother.” Warren glanced back at the lab again, then, clapping Ellis on the back, encouraged him to take a few more steps away. “This is the mistake everyone makes. Life is all about conflict. The pursuit of happiness—that’s life, not the achievement. It’s all about the journey, my friend. Everyone always used to ask how God could let terrible things happen. They didn’t understand. I didn’t, either, until I was alone under a pile of snow in a shack I built with my own hands, surviving on worms. I was teetering on the brink, Ellis—I really was. Thought I was going to die, and I can honestly say, I’ve never lived so fully and deeply before. Every minute, every decision I made could decide if I would survive or die. When spring came and I felt the warmth of the sun and ate that wonderful bushy-tailed squirrel—man—I knew I was alive. I was part of nature like every other animal that made it through the long dark. I never felt like that before, but that’s how we’re supposed to be. Life is intended to be a battle, a struggle. God designed it that way. Think about it. Everything is always in constant conflict. Heat versus cold, light versus dark, gravity versus…whatever. Every living thing in existence has to fight and kill to survive. Even plants are in competition with each other for light and water. The whole ecosystem is based on conflict. Who do you think did that? It’s God, Ellis. God made the world like a cage match. You go in and you fight to win or die trying.”

  “Survival of the fittest,” Ellis said, putting that piece in place. In one season in a branch hut, Warren had managed to succeed where centuries of scholars had failed—reconciling science and religion.

  “Exactly.” Warren nodded. “You see, everyone thought Darwin was anti-religion, but they had it wrong. They just refused to see the real God.”

  “A sadist God?”

  Warren smirked. “You only say that because you think conflict is bad. It isn’t. It’s like competition in capitalism. It drives the system and makes it work. Just think for a second. How much fun would it be to play a game like Monopoly if you started out owning everything and having all the money? The fun of playing the game is trying to win. Once you’ve won, what’s the point of playing?”

  “So you think God made it so no one can win?”

  Warren clapped his hands together, then tapped his nose with his index finger. “Look at history. Every time we solved a problem, it caused two more. Solve world hunger and what happens—overpopulation, right? Discover penicillin and you get super bugs. The world is a problem-creator so we humans never run out of things to combat, because that’s what we love to do. But the baldies, they don’t understand this. They’re trying to wipe out problems, engineer away conflict, and it’s driving them insane. They spend their time painting pictures and singing songs. That’s not living. That’s what people do in prison.”

  “So how’s this going to work?” Ellis indicated the lab. “Repopulating the world? We don’t have the pattern to make males, right? So what? Are we going to screw our daughters or just have our sons sleep with their sisters?”

  “Like I said, it was good enough for Adam and Eve, but we don’t have to do that. Your sons will marry my daughters and vice versa. It’s all very simple, really. I don’t know why you’re kicking up such a stink.”

  Ellis sighed. “I don’t like this idea of a pecking order. It’s—it’s just bullying for the sake of bullying. These people were designed to resist violence—which is a good thing—and here you are training them to fight.”

  “They need to be toughened up. They need to know how to fight.”

  “Why? Who is there to fight? Did that squirrel you ate put up that much of a battle?”

  Warren took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. “Do you think the moles underground are gonna be fine if we build a prosperous society here on the surface? What did I just tell you about conflict?”

  “You’re expecting to fight Hollow World?”

  “Of course.” Warren raised his arms, then slapped his thighs.

  “They’re nonviolent. They don’t even have a police force, much less an army. They don’t understand weapons. There’s no way they’ll attack us.”

  “You’ve heard of this Hive Mind thing they’re working on, right? How long before they insist we get chips planted in our brains so they can control us?”

  “The Hive Mind has nothing to do with control—”

  “Of course it does. That’s all anything is ever about. Once they implement it, they’ll be unstoppable, like a colony of single-minded ants. They’ll be the Borg, rushing from their holes to wipe us out if we refuse to be assimilated. Well, I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “Warren, the Hive Project doesn’t even work. They can’t do it. You’re scared of nothing.”

  Warren glanced back at the lab again. How many times was that?

  “What’s going on in the lab?”

  “Huh?”

  Ellis pointed. “Is Dex starting the female Chia Pet farm in Edison’s lab?” Ellis had to admit that was surprisingly apropos. Thomas would have been pleased.

  “Oh—uh—yeah. Dex is working on all kinds of things. They’ve already got the first batch of eggs growing in some sort of incubator that he and Pol brought back.”

  “All kinds? Other than making baby girls, what’s Dex up to?”

  “Probably best if you don’t know,” Warren said so thoughtfully, so seriously, that Ellis focused on the lab. He tried to see through the windows, but they were covered.

  “Why is that?”

  “You know I love you like a brother, Ellis, but you’ve always lacked the conviction of your beliefs.”

  Ellis shifted his attention off the lab and back squarely on Warren. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Warren had his straight-shooter face on. The tough-love train was heading Ellis’s way and looking to pick up a passenger. “If you really wanted to be an astronaut, you could have, but you settled for a mid-level white-bread job. And when Peggy got pregnant, you should have told her Hasta la vista, bitch. But you’ve always been weak. Let’s face it, Ellis, if you were a lifeboat captain with too many passengers, they’d all die because you couldn’t make the tough decisions. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just the way you are. A lot of people are that way.”

  Ellis felt like Warren was telling him he shouldn’t be ashamed to come out of the closet. Not that there’s anything wrong with being compassionate.

  “What’s going on in the lab, Warren?”

  �
��The future.”

  “Haven’t we both had more than our fair share off that plate?”

  “You can’t understand—not yet. But you would if you had spent that winter with me. You see, when I crawled out, I knew I had been spared for a reason. Course, I didn’t know what that was at the time, but Moses didn’t know why he survived being exiled to the desert either. God had a purpose for me.”

  “What’s in the lab, Warren?”

  “It wasn’t until I met Pol, Dex, and Hig that I began to understand I had been saved from cancer and a killing winter for a reason. So I could fix the world—so I could be the new Savior—kind of a second coming of Warren Eckard. We really are like Jesus and John the Baptist. I’m doing the heavy lifting at first to pave the way—to prepare the people—for you to use that brain of yours and guide them. I can’t do that as well as you. You got all the education. My gut tells me what’s right, but I can’t explain the hows and whys like you can.”

  “How are you preparing the people?” Ellis began walking back toward the lab.

  “It took a year, Ellis, and the hard work of everyone here, mostly Pol and Dex, but especially Hal.”

  “I never met Hal. Who’s that?”

  “Oh, you met him,” Warren told Ellis as he stepped on the porch. “You killed him.”

  Inside, the white walls were lined with black shelves filled with bottles of various sizes and colors—wooden floor, wooden tables, wooden chairs, everything battered and beaten, but sturdy as a carpenter’s shop. Big windows would have let plenty of light in if not for the heavy curtains. As it was, oil lamps illuminated the long tables that were crowded with contraptions of brass, glass, and wire. At the far end stood a church-style organ with a sailfish fin of pipes and ivory keys. In front of it, three people were gathered, working on the contents of a large white-plastic crate that rode on its own set of wheels. Ellis had no idea who they were, not just because they had their backs to him, but because they were dressed up like astronauts—no, not astronauts. They weren’t wearing helmets—more like hoods.

  “I wouldn’t go any closer,” Warren warned. “Already too close, I would imagine. Dex says the radiation level could be toxic. The baldies are more resistant than we are.”

  “Radiation?” Trying to solve the puzzle, Ellis turned his head back and forth between Warren and the crate.

  “You have no idea how hard it was to find enriched plutonium in this day and age,” Warren lamented with the same tone he used to complain about the traffic on the Southfield Freeway. “They don’t have a pattern for that, you know.”

  When Ellis’s sight finally settled on the white-polymer crate with its convenience wheels and old-fashioned, black-and-yellow radiation symbol, a single thought repeated in his head: That can’t be what I think it is. Ellis had little trouble comprehending interdimensional portals that let people step from one planet to another, Makers that created cups of coffee from gravel, and imitation sunlight miles underground, but his mind refused to accept what he knew was right in front of him.

  “What’s going on, Warren?” Ellis asked, his voice pleading for his friend to explain it all away. Hoping he would say, It’s just a joke, buddy—a gag. You should see the look on your face. That big plastic case over there with the reinforced clamps and the US military stamp—that’s just a giant espresso maker. We’re all gonna have lattes!

  “I don’t plan to make the same mistake President Truman did,” Warren said. “You know, Patton told everyone we should have rolled our tanks right on into Russia at the end of World War II. He was right. Same with China. Instead, we waited—and what happened? The Ruskies got the bomb, and China ended up buying our asses.”

  “What’s in the goddamn box, Warren?”

  “It’s a present—a little housewarming gift for Hollow World.” Warren laughed. “Literally. Shame Hal won’t see the bang. Hal was the physicist—or whatever they call it now. Hal’s plan, really. The trick was to place the bombs in the right places.”

  Ellis noticed the lids for two other plastic crates on the floor under the table. Both had the same bumblebee-colored warnings, but their associated crates were missing.

  “Three H-bombs aren’t going to erase that honeycomb they got down there, but if put in the right spots…”

  “Subduction Zone 540,” Ellis said to himself. Words were spilling out on their own accord as his brain locked up, freezing like a deer in headlights.

  That can’t be what I think it is.

  “Exactly. Subduction Zone 540. Then the whole place will collapse like an old lady stripped of her walker.”

  “You used me?” Ellis glared at him. “This whole publicity tour to gain sympathy was just a way of—” Ellis looked back at the plastic crate. “Did you take that from the museum in Jerusalem?”

  “The war museum—yeah. Pol said your name would open all the doors, and it did. Everyone was falling over themselves to give you anything, even a backstage tour of the weapons of mass destruction. We thought news traveled fast in our day. A week of promotion and you’re the David Cassidy of the forty-third century. All Pol needed was the coords, and all he needed to get those was to be there.”

  “Then, what? You just went back and ported them out? Ported them here?”

  “Yep. Slick, huh?” Warren chuckled. “No security at all. The place is a joke. Considered taking a tank, but the thing wouldn’t start, and the portals are too small.”

  “I opened the door for you.” Ellis found even his new lungs didn’t work so well when he was drowning in stupidity and humiliation.

  “Might have been able to get in there without you, just would have taken longer. The Geomancy Institute was the ball-buster. Those bastards take their work seriously. And they’re smart too. We tried getting inside by talking to one, but that geomancer noticed something—got all antsy. Luckily the poor slob just blurted out his suspicions. Hal was the one who knew the most about geology and stuff. The only one who could hope to pass for a real geomancer, and I had conditioned Hal, like I did the rest of them—like I have Rob reeducating Yal. I call it desensitivity training. They’re never gonna be real men. Don’t have the killing mentality—the advantage of the Y chromosome, as Dex puts it. Hal took care of Geo-24, but by the sound of things, our bald Einstein did a pretty piss-poor job of killing you and Pax—not that I wanted him to.” Warren held up a hand, warding off a rebuttal. “Hal was acting on his own with that.”

  Ellis was fitting the puzzle pieces in place, and a picture was finally taking shape. Warren in a bar beating up strangers; Warren’s wife being so clumsy she fell down flights of stairs; Warren’s desire to play quarterback—to be in charge—when his real talent was as a fullback.

  The trio in hazard suits at the far side of the room had ignored them, but then one turned. It could have been anyone’s eyes peering out of that shielded hood, even Pax.

  “Two are already set—just got this last one. Having trouble with the timer or something, I guess. Not really needed, but I like to be thorough. Operation New Dawn is about to commence.” Warren looked at the clock on the wall. “About three hours, I figure—Dex has the bombs set to blow precisely at 14:54 Hollow World core time, which translates to sunset here. So in the morning, this village will be all that’s left of humanity. Just think of that, Ellis, the whole world cleaned, reset, and ready to sprout anew from our two seeds. And after I dropped out of high school, my mother never thought I’d amount to anything.”

  “This is insane!” Ellis’s voice rose in volume and pitch more than he expected. He sounded a little hysterical, a man on the brink, but maybe that’s what Warren needed to hear. Ellis had to convince his friend just how bad an idea this was, and calm conversation just wasn’t going to cut it. “You know that, right, Warren? I’m talking totally off-the-fucking-hook nuts!”

  Warren shook his head with that same condescending you-just-don’t-understand smile. “Ellis, why do you think you and I are the only two people to travel through time? If we could do it, do
n’t you think everyone else could have too?”

  “No—not really. Hoffmann’s equations were wrong. His idea wouldn’t have worked at all if I hadn’t figured out the mistake, and I didn’t tell anyone. You were only able to do it because you had my notes.”

  “Oh, so you’re the only one in two thousand years who could have figured out that error? We’re the only ones here. You don’t find that a bit strange?”

  “Perhaps, but…well, maybe there’s a minimum jump threshold, and that’s why we traveled two thousand years instead of two hundred. More people might have tried but haven’t showed up yet. Not to mention it’s not the kind of thing you try without a really good reason. The high probability of death is a pretty big deterrent. Heck, even the most devout people who are convinced they’ll wind up in heaven aren’t taking the leap of faith to the afterlife. Even after Jesus came back and said the water’s fine, people are still terrified, and in the case of time travel, no one can go back to assuage their fears. It’s no coincidence that both of us had terminal illnesses. Neither of us would have tried otherwise.”

  Warren smirked. “You know what I think? I think no one else has done it because it isn’t possible.”

  “Huh?”

  “C’mon, Ellis, milk crates and batteries? Seriously? Do you think that would actually work?”

  “But it did.”

  Warren shook his head. “Divine intervention, buddy. The Almighty picked us both up and chucked us into the future to be a pair of Noahs. And when the sun sets, we will be.” He looked out the window again and chuckled. “It’s Friday—did you know that? Gives a whole new meaning to TGIF, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t let you do this. If this isn’t some joke—if you’re serious”—Ellis looked at the crate and the three people in hazard suits working over the table—“and it looks like you are…Shit, Warren, there’s no way I’m gonna let you kill millions of people.”

  “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it, buddy? They aren’t really people, now, are they? I’m doing this for us, and the world. You can’t tell me you like the idea of humanity living like Ken doll moles. Mankind got off course, slipped the rails, and skidded right over a cliff. We have the chance, right now, to put the old Lionel back on the metal. We can fix everything, and maybe this time God will approve and usher in the end of days.”