An Armageddon Duology (47 page)

“
H
ow many guards
?”

Houston stared from behind the wheel at the old man beside her. Lopez and Lightfoote were fully suited up with body armor, checking their weapons in the backseat. They’d been on back roads in New Jersey running northwest of Princeton for forty-five minutes. The ride had been mostly quiet, the directions given by Nash’s former student punctuating the stillness as they drove across the rural landscape. As they approached, Kaplan had begun to describe the location.

“Not sure. More in the beginning after his death was announced. But less of late. John’s weak. He actually needs a lot of the care of a nursing facility. There are many patients in case someone stumbled across the location. To keep up appearances.” Kaplan pointed through the window. “Here. Left here.”

“Why did they let you visit? Why let you know?” asked Lopez. “You could have blown the entire thing wide open.”

“Their threats were all too clear. John’s their prisoner. I’d be killing him if I spoke publicly.”

“That he’s in a special nursing facility is one thing,” said Houston. “But why on earth is it under armed guards?”

“For reasons that only the US government knows. Likely the same reason they faked his death.”

“It is starting to sound like the man’s paranoia wasn’t so delusional,” muttered Lopez.

Kaplan sighed heavily. “It’s been a world of shadows and mazes. I’ve only wanted to make sure John’s cared for. I had to make certain compromises.” He gazed out the window. “The age of the paper you brought to me tonight, it’s part of this. That’s when John began to lose touch with reality. It was the same time the government took such a fascination with his work. Everyone speculated as to why. That film even assumed it was part of his delusions. But no.”

“No?” asked Lightfoote. She leaned forward over the seat.

“It was real. They came. John left with them on many occasions. He was never the same after that. I never knew why. But this? Maybe there’s an answer now. Maybe it has something to do with this paper. Something he was trying to tell us through it. I brought you here to seek my own answers as much as for what you hope to accomplish. Answers to a lifetime of struggle with pain and uncertainty.” Again he motioned toward the window. “Okay, slow down now. It’s around that bend in the road.”

Houston pulled the car to the side of the two-lane country road, trees of a forested patch surrounding them.

“If you don’t want them to know you’re coming, I recommend approaching through the forest, on foot.”

Houston nodded. “We can’t bring you with us, Dr. Kaplan.”

“I suffer no delusions. I’m long past my clandestine spy years.” He smiled.

“We’ll let you know what he said.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to visit him tomorrow if they allow it on such short notice. I want to talk to him in person.”

They exited the car quickly, leaving the economist in the front seat. Lopez opened the trunk and removed a duffel. He unzipped it and retrieved a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight, along with several handguns. Popping open an aluminum case, he handed a large dart with a clear middle section to Houston. Liquid sloshed inside.

“Do you think the tranqs are still good?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Not a biochemist. So, a test.” Lopez walked to the passenger side and opened the door, brandishing a dart before Kaplan. “I’m sorry, professor, but we need to test these tranquilizers. And while your trust in us is refreshing, I’m too jaded.”

“You’re going to knock me out?”

Lopez nodded. “That way you don’t cause us any unexpected trouble, and we find out if these things still work.”

“You’re going to drug the guards?” asked Lightfoote.

“Not going to kill them unless we have to,” Lopez answered. “And there are a lot of variables in hand to hand. We’ll see how many we spot outside, try to take them down quietly, and make our way inside.”

Lightfoote shook her head. “Best laid plans.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The tranq worked.

Lopez lay the seat back as the old man dozed. He closed the trunk as quietly as he could. Then the three of them made their way through the forest in the direction of the nursing home, keeping the curve of the road in sight. They crested a hill that opened to a compound. A driveway off the main road ended in a circular path before a one-story building. It was surrounded by barbed-wire, several security cameras visible around the fencing even from that distance.

Houston gazed through a pair of binoculars. “Guards inside are going to spot us. Likely there’s some kind of motion detection system as well. No prep on this one, Francisco. Going to be messy.” She continued her reconnaissance. “Two guards at the gate, none along the perimeter. It’s not much on the outside.”

“Why don’t you take those two down and blow the power lines?” said Lightfoote. “It will blind anyone inside.”

“And signal reinforcements when the alarm system fails. Also, some of those inside might be on machines they need. Maybe Nash.”

She nodded. “You’re right. Not worth the risk.”

“You two make a run around this hill,” said Houston, “come along the right side wall by the main entrance. Try to stay clear of sensors if you can spot them. Send me an alert and I’ll drop the two at the gate. You keep an eye on the main door while I get down to the gate and check them for access cards. Drop anyone who comes out. If we’re lucky, one of them has a keyed access to the place and we’re in without triggering any alarms.”

“Good a plan as any,” said Lopez.

“Okay, go!”

Lightfoote and Lopez left her side and sprinted through the trees. Houston dropped to the ground and rested the rifle on a bipod, angling herself to the scope. She rotated the butt plate and loaded the first dart, closing the housing. She peered down the barrel and adjusted the focus. An alert buzzed her cell phone and she raised the binoculars, training them on the building. Lopez and Lightfoote were positioned along the wall by the entrance.

“No alarms. No movement inside,” she said, scanning the building. “Nice footwork.”

Houston texted back and pocketed the phone, lowering herself again along the rifle. She checked the gas cartridge a final time and switched on the laser.

The guards were in heavy coats, pacing along the front fence on opposite sides of the driveway. Houston didn’t envy them that duty in winter without a gatehouse, but the clothing complicated her mission. The dart might not penetrate the coat, depending on its composition and thickness. She would have to hit below the coat, in the leg or buttocks.

She angled the rifle slowly, bringing up the green circle of light along the leg of the nearest guard. She estimated the distance to be about 50 yards. He paused a moment, lighting a cigarette, providing her with the perfect shot. She exhaled, paused a second with the light on his thigh, and pulled the trigger.

The projectile launched with only a swift expulsion of air into the night. She switched off the laser and blinked, peering into the scope. The figure jerked backward and grabbed his leg. The dart dangled from his upper thigh.

Reload
. She ignored the form of the other guard moving toward her first target and flipped the end of the rifle butt ninety degrees. Grabbing a second dart from the case, she inserted it in the mechanism and closed the butt. When she peered in the scope again, the second guard stood over the kneeling form of the guard she’d hit, trying to help him to his feet. She fired again.

This dart struck the second guard in the ass. He dropped the first guard, who tumbled limply to the ground. Houston watched him stagger as he grabbed his right butt cheek. He fell beside the first guard. She left the dart gun on the hill and sprinted down toward the prone men.

Five minutes, a guard’s keycard, and several hallways later, they stood in front of room 117. No other guards were present in the building. A handful of elderly patients slept in rooms scattered haphazardly throughout the building. A frightened nurse had been locked in a closet. A front desk search revealed a chart of patients and locations. John Nash was near the back of the building.

“All right, here goes,” said Lopez, pushing the door open.

A small desk lamp beside a window spilled frail light into the room. An empty bed rested against a wall on their left, a table and sofa on the right. The lamp cast a ghostly hue on a wizened form in a bathrobe, an angular face with sunken cheeks staring with empty eyes at the wall.

The three approached the figure, geometric doodles covering the surface of the desk beside him like some mad child’s scribblings. Lightfoote passed her hand in front of his eyes. No reaction. She crouched down to match her eye-line to his.

“John Nash?” she said.

The face didn’t move.

“Dr. Nash? We need your help. We need to ask you some questions about one of your papers. The one you never published.
External Equilibration in Non-cooperative Games
. Please! Dr. Nash?”

The old man blinked and focused on her face. He studied the two beside her, nodding solemnly.

“Yes. Yes, I’ve been expecting you for a long time.”

L
opez and Houston
pulled up chairs as Lightfoote held her crouch in front of the Nobel Laureate.

“You’ve been expecting us?” she asked.

His lips moved in a silent mutter, his voice rising as from some dark depth.

“They said you would come. Well, of course they didn’t. I know they don’t exist. These creatures. So much knowledge they have! But it is suspect. Always suspect! It must always be examined, filtered.
Tested.
But they said you would come. I had to analyze. I had to distinguish the real and the misfirings of the mind. It wastes so much time, this madness. So much time. I could have done so much more.”

Lightfoote looked desperately at Houston and Lopez. She continued to prod him.

“Dr. Nash, the paper?”

“Where’s Alicia?”

Lopez mouthed toward Lightfoote. “Alicia?”

Nash continued without an answer. “They said she died in a car crash. I don’t have enough data. Not enough to classify these voices. Lies? Truth? Is this place real? It is new. New walls. New voices. Too soon to know. Where is Alicia?”

Lightfoote continued. “Dr. Nash. The paper.
External Equilibration in Non-cooperative Games
. Do you remember it?”

A sharp bark burst from the old man’s lips. “Remember it? It’s the only damned thing I did of any importance in my life.” He reached out a trembling arm to Lightfoote and grasped her hand. “Murdered. Killed in the womb. They would never let it see the light of day. Did they kill her, too? Can you tell me?”

Lopez leaned forward. “Who’s they?”

Nash leaned back in his chair, still holding Lightfoote’s hand.

“They they they they. It is the delusional pronoun. Always a
they
somewhere to do something and whisper nonsense and be the conspiratorial cause of this and that and the prime mover.” He closed his eyes. “They keep me alive only for the hope of more material. I refused at first. Such a mistake.” He leaned forward and stared wild-eyed. “Pain rules all things. Pain erases personality. Pain they brought and branded and cut and I could not hold. They needed predictions. I developed the theory. Never enough. They kept coming. It broke me. Into pieces. Each piece a voice. A thousand voices. From the stars and the pits of hell.”

Lightfoote placed her other hand on his and looked into his eyes.

“Predictions?”

Tears dripped down his face as he stared into her eyes.

“Yes, yes. I see it in your eyes. I see it in your soul. Burnt soul. You have been to hell, too. Yes, poor child. The demons have branded you. And now I know it.” He closed his eyes. “She is dead.”

He sat shaking for several moments weeping silently. Coughing, he pushed Lightfoote away and wiped his eyes. “Social. Economic. Population. The numbers were available to us finally. Data had been collected for decades by that point, for the first time in human history. They saw my work. Saw the embryonic theories. They knew what I could give them and the devils made me do it.”

“Dr. Nash, what did you do?”

“I gave them the key to total control! Centuries and centuries, they had lumbered clumsily. But now, in an age of god-like computation, they too would become gods. Thanks to John Nash.” He growled like some frightened dog. “But I had a last ace up my sleeve. My
paper
. I knew I couldn’t publish it openly. They would stop me. One way or the other. But it turned hard. The thousand voices were tearing at my soul. I was going quite mad from it. But I persevered. I put it down in a way they could not see. And the voices told me, ‘One day, they will come. They will understand. They will come and end it.’ And here they are.” His mouth opened into a macabre grin.

“We don’t understand it, Dr. Nash. What does the paper say?”

He startled upright, his expression incredulous. “But it’s so obvious! Any mathematical analysis of the markets with anything remotely like my models would reveal it. How can it be no one has seen it? Perhaps, yes, perhaps they were taken. They could not allow it. Yes.”

“Just tell us what it means,” said Lopez.

“The models are predictive. Even I was amazed how well it all worked. Socio-economic movements of populations. Market cycles. Political movements. Predictive, except that they are not!” He laughed maniacally. “How could they predict accurately when unseen hands steered all from the darkness? Maxwell’s demon moonlighting in socio-dynamics!” He bent forward, his index finger extending rigidly toward them. “But put in variables to model external modulation of the models—bang! There it was! The demon hand behind history. Controlling everything. Steering humanity to their purposes. Like a closed thermodynamic system, entropy, distribution of resources. To ensure control, predictability, they needed to preserve
low
entropy. Funnel resources upwards. Vast income inequality, power imbalances.”

Lightfoote furrowed her brow. “So, you are saying that—”

“Sorry! Yes. I must select the vocabulary carefully. I have to speak with the subsets of ideas that are rational.
Silence
the voices.” His gaze turned distant. “I proved
mathematically
that the markets were being manipulated by a powerful influence. One outside of any of the known economic variables. Is
that
simple enough for you? But more than this. Yes, so much more. More than they understood fully. There are cycles between nations and groups, statistical mechanics, the billions making it predictable. There is a turning point that recurs with temporal predictability, a phase transition of instability. An hour of revolution when a maximum in instability is reached.”

Lightfoote gasped. “The Nash Criterion.”

Nash laughed. “Yes. They should name it after me. That is as good a name as any. But no one will ever know.”

“We know,” she said. “And your paper, it shows how to calculate it? How to determine when these instability points will come?”

“Yes. That’s the whole point.”

She nodded, her words spilling out rapidly. “And they want this desperately. It will allow them to know when the revolutions will come and ride them out.”

He shook his head. “Too naive. Much more than ride them out. To destroy them. Kill, and kill millions to maintain their course, their control. They only guessed I had this answer. They only had metrics for when the criterion neared. But not a predictive model. They never got it from me.”

Lopez shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why would you give in to their demands on all but this?”

“Because it is the key to their long-term survival, Francisco,” said Lightfoote.

“A great weakness,” finished Nash. “Social cycles they cannot avoid, but can control if they are predictable.” He pointed with his finger. “But which their enemies could use against them if they held the predictive power.”

“Are we in a cycle now?” asked Lightfoote. “The world is falling apart. They act threatened.”

“No,” said Nash, shaking his head. “What has happened—an anomaly. It’s Asimov’s Mule.
Unpredictable.
”

“What?”

“The predictions rely on statistical patterns, patterns that only exist, that are only predictable when there are very large numbers of people to smooth out the random noise. Like the thermodynamics of gasses. A few molecules and quantum chaos rules. But Avogadro's number? The gas laws are obeyed! Of course, there is always noise—individuals, small groups, doing unpredictable, random things. Random for the models. But if five billion do the predictable things, the world is predictable, the noise averaged out. Unless you have a Mule.”

Lopez grumbled. “What the hell is a Mule?”

“No one reads anymore,” Nash sighed. “An individual that introduces a systemic randomness. It rarely happens. So few have the ability, and they hunt them down ruthlessly now. But this Anonymous—it had to be a Mule. No other explanation. Now the system is off model. The curves of prediction diverge from events. They have to steer it back. But until they do, they are vulnerable. Discovery. Intervention. Assassination. This Mule has deliberately exposed and weakened them. Now is the time to act.”

Houston shook her head. “But Fawkes didn’t reveal where they are.”

Nash exhaled, his posture slouched. “It’s in the numbers. You can’t hide the source of the external stimulus. Follow the numbers back to them. It can be computed. You will find them.”

Lopez threw his hands up. “Dammit, who are
they
?”

Nash turned to him and grasped the priestly robes.

“Bilderberg.”

With that word the room was plunged into darkness, the central air silenced, the power cut. Everything fell still.

Nash sighed.

“Too late. Too late. They’re here.”