He couldn’t be happier.
The two police officers slide out of the cruiser, dazed but with guns drawn. One shouts at him: ‘Get your hands where I can see them! Now!’
Alvy is more than happy to comply, though the act of raising his hands makes him extremely lightheaded. One of the cops opens his door, drags him from the vehicle and pushes him to the bitumen.
‘Jesus!’ The cop sees the blood, calls to his partner: ‘We need an ambulance, now!’
‘On it.’ The partner calls it in as Alvy looks back and tries to locate Kilroy’s Prius. He can’t see it, but then he can’t see anything because the world goes dark.
Kilroy watches the arrest unfold as he drives past. In spite of everything, he can’t help but be impressed by Alvy’s resourcefulness. Drive into a cop car and they’ll have no choice but to call an ambulance when they see your injuries. Clever boy.
Kilroy pulls over and studies the scene in his side-view mirror. It’s clear Alvy is unconscious; he won’t be telling anyone anything in the short term, but how long will that last?
Kilroy’s first thought is to walk over there and start shooting, take out Alvy, the cops and anyone with the bad luck to be rubbernecking. Then a second police cruiser and an ambulance pull up beside the crash site. There goes that idea. With four cops in attendance he is outgunned. He glances at his watch. Phase Two will begin in a matter of minutes. He needs to take care of this pronto.
12
The Tyrannosaur slices through the beige smog cloud that hangs above Los Angeles.
In the chopper’s cockpit Bunsen listens to those screaming plants on his headset as he glances at the Air-Crane’s altimeter. They’re at three thousand feet. He unplugs the headset from his iPhone, plugs into the aircraft’s console then turns to Enrico beside him. ‘How long until we’re in position?’
‘Two minutes.’
Two minutes until the world has the motivation it needs.
It’s incomprehensible to Bunsen that of the almost seven billion people on the face of the earth, not one has yet created an efficient mechanism to harness the sun’s power and unshackle the globe from its unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels. There is, he feels, an overwhelming lack of motivation for mankind to make the necessary change to clean energy.
Well, today Bunsen will create that motivation — and it will not be gentle. He knows a carrot won’t work. He needs a stick — a big stick — and with the Swarm he wields the biggest stick since the dawn of the atomic age. Like the first nuclear weapons created during the Manhattan Project, the Swarm’s power will profoundly alter the way people think about the world.
Enrico turns to him. ‘We’re in position.’
‘You know the route?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Then let’s do it.’ Bunsen reaches for the small, red switch attached to the side of the chopper’s control panel, touches it, can feel his heartbeat through the tip of his finger. He takes a breath, tries to settle the butterflies that swirl in his chest, doesn’t succeed. Three years of his life and the better part of twenty million dollars have led him to this moment. He can’t quite believe it all begins now.
He flicks the switch.
Directly behind him he hears a faint whir as a spigot opens and a fine mist of the Swarm is released from a two-metre-long crop-dusting spray rail fastened to the bottom of the water tank. Bunsen looks back and watches the vapour fill the sky, then fall towards the Santa Monica Freeway, the ugly ribbon of cement and bitumen gridlocked with traffic below.
13
Ding.
The elevator door opens onto the top floor of the CNN building. Corey steps out, Spike beside him, Bowen directly behind and Judd bringing up the rear. They enter a wide foyer, empty except for a pair of sleek, black leather sofas.
Bowen speaks into his iPhone: ‘Yes, it was very funny. Really. I drank milk while I was reading it so I could have it run out of my nose every time I laughed — hold on a sec.’ He turns to Judd and Corey and points down the hallway to the distant reception area. ‘Hang here. I’ll find out when you’re on.’ He moves off, resumes his conversation: ‘Really? He’s doing the next draft? The autocorrect on my iPhone writes better dialogue than him.’
Judd and Corey turn to the large window that offers a panoramic view of Los Angeles. Judd takes it in. He lived here, briefly, as a boy. His father was in the army and the family moved all around the country. Judd doesn’t remember much about their stay in LA, it was only for eight months or so, but he does remember one thing: this city is the reason he became an astronaut.
Most people think astronauts choose their career for the rush of being strapped to a vehicle travelling faster than a bullet. Not Judd. He became an astronaut because, as a thirteen-year-old, he had an epiphany. It happened on one of the rare Saturdays his father wasn’t working and they could spend the day together. It was a strange day, a day of two halves. In the morning they visited Disneyland for the first time, a pristine, magical place, the ‘happiest place on Earth’ as the motto trumpeted. Judd was the perfect age, not too old to be jaded, but big enough to go on all the rides, Space Mountain being his favourite.
Near the end of their stay an older man in his sixties stepped off the Big Thunder Mountain roller-coaster and fell over, dizzy after the ride. A swarm of people ran to his aid, including Judd’s father. Medical attention was quickly forthcoming and the man was stretchered away, Judd’s father staying with him until he was loaded into the ambulance. The old guy was fine at the end and the episode just added another element of excitement to an already exhilarating day.
That afternoon Judd accompanied his father to visit an old army buddy of his on San Pedro Street, in Central City East, a place, Judd realised years later, also known as Skid Row, the most economically depressed area of the city at the time. Simply, it was the polar opposite of Disneyland. If it had a motto, ‘the unhappiest place on Earth’ would have been spot on.
As Judd and his father walked along the desolate street, searching for his father’s friend’s apartment, a man who had ‘fallen on hard times’, they approached a young guy lying unconscious on the footpath. Judd remembers two things. The first was that, unlike Disneyland, no one stopped to help, including his father. Instead they stepped over the young guy and walked on. The second thing Judd remembers is how tightly his father gripped his hand as they did it.
As they walked away his father turned to him and said: ‘One day you’ll understand.’
Even at thirteen Judd knew he didn’t want to. Why didn’t anyone, including his father, a good man, a good soldier, not stop to help the young guy? Years later, Judd realised the young guy was probably drunk or on drugs, but still, how did the world get to the place where it was okay to ignore it? Or accept it? Why was the world like that? Why didn’t it work the way it should?
Judd was a clever boy and once he was aware of this schism he saw examples everywhere. Inequality between the haves and have-nots, between the sexes, between the races. He saw how the environment was being destroyed through stupidity and greed and how religious superstition created division and ran roughshod over scientific fact.
So how did a young boy fix this world, make it work the way it should? He quickly realised he couldn’t, but as a man he could find another world, a red planet where the human race could start over with a new set of rules, where the environment was respected, where religion was a personal choice with no role in government or science, where equality and fairness, no matter who you were, was guaranteed because everyone would be Martian. It would be a place where no one would ever step over you.