Mitchell looked like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar. The difference was he knew there could be deadly consequences for his duplicity. Cooper trained his pistol on him, remembering the flash bang grenade from the factory, “Keep your hands up!”
Dranko was swiftly at his side, “Keep your eye on him, brother. You got winged in the right arm. This bastard had a guard hidden. I spotted him right before he fired.” Already, Dranko was digging in his backpack and wrapping a pressure bandage on Cooper’s arm.
Cooper felt sick to his stomach, but he knew this was not solely from his wound. Mitchell’s words had turned his world upside down and his head and stomach were swirling.
“Get me on my feet,” he hissed at Dranko. Dranko looked at him in surprise, but lifted him onto his unsteady feet. He continued bandaging his arm.
Cooper stumbled across the few feet that separated him from Mitchell, “I hope you realize that little stunt of yours frees me from my word not to hurt you.” He jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into Mitchell’s temple. Mitchell tried unsuccessfully to cover a gulping sound with a cough.
“If you want to have any chance of saving your skin, you’ll keep talking. Just what the hell did you mean when you said you started it all here?”
The fear left Mitchell’s eyes and the fire returned. Only the cold steel of Cooper’s pistol restrained him from parading about the room as he talked, “Just what I said. I started this illness.”
Dranko looked up from dressing Cooper’s wounds, “Why the hell would you do that?”
Mitchell’s voice was so calm it sent chills down both men’s spines, “Because we had to.”
Cooper pressed the pistol further into Mitchell’s head causing him to grimace in pain. Cooper’s words spat out from between grinding teeth, “Stop speaking in riddles. Tell it plainly.”
“Can you remove the pistol from digging into my head? I can think more clearly that way. There’s so much to explain.”
Dranko had finished bandaging the wound and Cooper directed him to bar the door so they could avoid any more surprises. Cooper relaxed the grip slightly. A sliver of light shone between his pistol and Mitchell’s head.
“Thank you,” Mitchell said. “You want to know what we did? I’ll tell you. We released this virus—codenamed Reset—about two weeks ago. It was designed to spread rapidly across the world, kill quickly with as much mercy as possible, and then mutate out of its lethality.”
Both Cooper and Dranko looked at him in shock for several seconds. “What?” was all that Cooper could finally manage.
Mitchell looked like a schoolteacher teaching the slow class, “You wanted to know what we did here. So, I’ve told you. I’ll tell you the why and then maybe you’ll understand. We had to do this. Mankind was killing this planet with his extreme wastefulness and lack of care. You’ve heard of global warming, haven’t you?”
Cooper responded first, “Of course.” But, Dranko was quick to follow, “Yes, I’ve heard of it. The threat has been a little exaggerated hasn’t it?”
Mitchell’s long arm reached out, pointing a slender finger aimed right at Dranko, “You see! This is exactly why we needed to act. The threat has, if anything, been under-exaggerated. The scientists, using skepticism and caution as their religion, only released the most conservative estimates, the most proven, of the coming damage.”
Dranko fought on, “But there were a bunch of scientists who disagreed and said there was nothing we could do about it.”
Mitchell shook his head back and forth and looked truly morose, “You see? No, there were a handful of scientists who disagreed with the scientific consensus. But, of course you heard from them quite a bit, seeing as they were funded quite well by the likes of ExxonMobil. There are a handful of scientists who deny the existence of nearly every scientific theory. It doesn’t mean those theories aren’t accurate.”
Cooper had grown impatient, “Yes, I get it. It’s a threat. I knew some said it could have catastrophic consequences. But, do you mean to tell us that you started this plague to stop it?”
“That is exactly what we did. The world needed a Reset. A breather from the bustling economic activity that was belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at rates that would lead to runaway global warming, and a catastrophe for civilization as we know it. So, we designed this plague to do just that.”
Cooper exploded, “What are you mad! You killed millions of people…including my wife!”
Mitchell replied coldly, “Actually, we expect the plague and the short-term civil disorder that will follow to kill between 500 and 750 million people. Gross Domestic Product will decline 20-30% for the next two to five years and it will take a decade or more for it to reach current levels. This respite will slow rising carbon dioxide levels dramatically, as well as give the world more time to see the effects of global warming and—finally—adopt the medium and long-term measures we need to avert worldwide catastrophe. Do you see now why we had to do this? I am sorry for your wife’s death. But, her death will give your son a future he can actually survive in. Name one mother who wouldn’t make that trade?”
Cooper looked on in exasperation at him, “Have you no faith in democracy? Yes, progress was slow, but we would have figured it out and done the right thing.”
Mitchell scoffed and his words dripped with scorn, “Progress was slow? Progress was non-existent. Figure it out? Not in time. The democratic peoples of the world traded calamitous scientific warnings for SUVs and tons of plastic crap made in China. Worse yet, they did it without even thinking for two seconds about the choice.” As he continued, his voice rose toward crescendo, “Think about it! Ninety-nine percent of the world’s best scientists told us that if we did not lower our greenhouse gas emissions we would leave our children, and certainly our grandchildren, a planet with vastly diminished ability to support civilization. What was the answer of the most educated and free population the world has ever known? In short they said, ‘Good luck with that, I’m going shopping.’ That was what your precious democracy gave us.”
Cooper gathered himself, “Yes, democracy is slow. But, it works. You took the easy way, the shortcut, and you took the lives of hundreds of millions of people to satisfy your cynical view of the world. The democracies—while slow—took on the great challenge of fascism and defeated it. We solved the crisis of the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain through democratic action. What right do you have to do what you did?”
Mitchell’s eyes were like steel, “When you see a fire, you act. You put it out. You don’t wait for a committee to decide what to do. That is what I did. You should be thanking me.”
Something clicked in Cooper’s mind, “Then show me. Prove to me why this would work and why it was the only way.”
Mitchell’s eyes brightened with optimism again. He took the next ten minutes showing Cooper graphs, charts, memos, and numbers all showing just what he had told Cooper. Midway through, Cooper stopped him.
“Hold on, pull that memo up again. Who was that one to?”
Mitchell didn’t hesitate, “A Mr. Thomas Wilkins.”
“Who is that?”
“He is a strategic advisor to the President.”
Cooper scratched his chin, “I thought I recognized his name. He was a big fundraiser during the campaign, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Yes, he was.”
“So, the President knew about this?” Cooper could not contain his shock.
“Well, there is plausible deniability and all that rubbish,” he said waving his hand dismissively. “But, yes he knew. As did the major leaders in Congress and strategically placed corporate leaders. I assure you, the right people knew.” Mitchell’s pomposity irked Cooper.