“Meaning the cylinder,” Garner said.
“That was what I thought. But I was wrong. I should have known by the way he said it. It wasn’t just surprise in his voice. It was more like reverence. Pride, even. It was the sort of tone you’d hear from Orville Wright if you took him out to LaGuardia on a busy afternoon.”
Travis broke his stare with Garner and looked at the soft lights of the suburb coming up.
“The collapse of the world isn’t a failure of Finn’s plan,” Travis said. “It is his plan. He means for it to happen.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Garner said nothing for the next several seconds.
“I won’t pretend I understand his motivation,” Travis said. “Or the motivation of anyone who goes into a conflict zone and tries to make things better for people. Someone like me doesn’t have the first clue, and never will. But I have to think there’s a burn-out rate like no other. I have to think that for everyone in that line of work, there’s a moment that comes sooner or later when you really understand the size of the problem, and the limits of your own capacity to do anything about it. I’m guessing, but I bet it feels more like a cement truck than a last straw. In Finn’s case, if I’m right about the rest of this, then it was even bigger for him. I think he lost hope in a lot more than just Rwanda. I think he was looking at the whole human picture by the time he walked away from that place. Like he wished he could just end the world and start over. And maybe he’s not the only person who’s ever felt that way, at a low moment, but in Finn’s case there was something that set him apart: he was a pillow away from the one person on Earth who could actually make that happen.”
Something changed in Garner’s expression. Travis saw him working it out.
“Oh, Christ . . .” Garner said.
“Finn isn’t stupid,” Travis said. “Neither is Audra. They must have known, even before they submitted that paper to the Independent, that using ELF satellites to sedate conflict zones would be politically toxic. But I doubt that was ever their goal, in the first place. I think the paper was only meant to put the subject out there, get people talking about it, especially the kind of power players who’d be interested in the implied technology. The point was just to get the ball rolling so that someone would actually build ELF satellites, because that was the critical piece of the real plan. So when the paper got rejected, and Audra’s father stepped on it, they must’ve decided to get the ball rolling themselves. There would’ve been lots of reasons for Audra to leave Harvard and take the job with Longbow Aerospace. Re-immerse herself in the design field, make industry contacts to go along with Finn’s political ones, that kind of thing. And at some point she got them to agree to build the satellites she wanted, disguised as comm satellites that didn’t work worth a damn. I guess she faked her death so her role in the project would never come under scrutiny. There’d be a lot she’d have to do over the years, and she wouldn’t want to answer questions about any of it.”
Garner was still thinking it all through. Making the connections Travis had made earlier in the suite. But not all of them. He shook his head. Looked at Travis and waited for him to go on.
“You said that the initial uses of ELF in the fifties, just by accident, triggered suicides, and also bouts of euphoria.”
Garner nodded.
“And in the years after that, when governments tried to weaponize the technology, they dialed in on exactly how to create certain responses, and how to vary the intensity.”
“Yes.”
“So a global network of satellites with that capability could paint the whole world in zones ranging from suicidal to dancing in the streets. Anything the controllers wanted.”
“I suppose.”
“All right. Then it works. You could use the technology to herd people. Like livestock. Entire populations, all at the same time.”