“I’m saying, why wait until Godzilla wakes up? Why not take proactive measures while we can?”
“Despite the destruction he may cause, some would say Godzilla is a hero.”
“Those people are idiots. We are talking about the most dangerous creature that ever lived.”
—Parker Lamar, political pundit, in an interview on America This Morning
Bernie settled himself and looked over his notes—suggestions, really, for the most part. Or a shopping list. Some of the trolls accused him of rambling. It wasn’t rambling. Unless Faulkner was “rambling” when he wrote The Sound and the Fury. No, it was stream-of-consciousness. Truth was often spontaneous. It emerged from connections you maybe hadn’t even made until you started talking.
Wait, he thought, I should write that down. That’s a good point.
He scrawled in his notes, then glanced around to see if everything was ready. Recording equipment, check. Sound levels adjusted. Kong action figure, dangling from the swinging desk lamp, check.
He glanced over at his wall of photographs, at the one of Sara and him. Happy. Before.
“For you,” he said, softly. “Always for you.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat, turned on the microphone, and leaned in a little.
“Where will you be when the next Titan attacks?” he wondered, in his most serious podcast voice, still looking at Sara’s smiling face. “How will you protect the things and people that mean the most to you?”
He paused, to let it sink in. To let his listeners think about it for a second.
Then he took it up a few beats. “Today’s podcast is brought to you by Gargantua Insurance, the only insurance company that offers Titan protection for your home and personal belongings. Because Godzilla may not care about your hopes and dreams, but Gargantua does!” He drummed on the desk with his hands for emphasis. “Okay, you Titan Truthers! All right folks, on today’s show—and I tell you, we have a lot to talk about—”
Someone knocked on his door. Probably a neighbor. Who should flippin’ well know better.
“Recording in progress!” he shouted. “Go away!” He paused an instant, then turned back to the microphone. “Uh, yes, I just wanna let everyone know that there is no—”
The knock came again, louder, more urgent.
He needed a sign, he thought, not for the first time. A recording-in-progress sign. He kept thinking that, but when he was done recording, he forgot. But of course, that would tip them off, wouldn’t it? They might make the connection, figure out who he was. And really, who just came up and knocked on your door like this? It wasn’t okay.
He bolted out of his chair. “Unbelievable!” he shouted. He bent over and pushed the mail slot open.
“What?”
He saw a woman stoop and look though the slot. Short hair. She looked kind of familiar.
“Hi, uh, Bernie,” she said, “Ilene Andrews. We met in Hong Kong.”
Holy… it was her.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.”
He straightened up and began sliding and unlatching the numerous inside locks on the door. “Hong Kong! That was so long ago, I… uh…” He swung the door open.
“My hair was longer,” Andrews said.
“Yeah, cut your hair,” he said. “Highlights too. It’s nice.” Inwardly he winced. Did he really just say that?
Down the hall, through a window, flame flared up from a wok in a neighbor’s kitchen. He smelled rapeseed oil, ginger and chili pepper.
It made Andrew flinch. Sure. She probably had Titan PTSD, given everything she had been through.
“I…” Andrews paused. “I was wondering if I could get your help with something.”
He blinked, not certain he’d heard her right. He’d figured he was in trouble for something.
“Me?”
She nodded. He recalibrated. If she wanted something from him, there might be an opportunity here. If he didn’t blow it.
“Ah… sure. Sure, of course, yeah. Come on in, Doctor… Doctor Andrews. Yeah.” He opened the door wide enough for her to enter. “Just go straight down that hall, there, to the left.”
Shut up, Bernie, he thought. You sound like a fanboy.
Bernie’s apartment-workspace in Pensacola had been small: a big closet really. His place here in Miami was much bigger. After all, he had sponsors now. A few. But it was every bit as cluttered as his old place. Books, papers, and magazines were stacked everywhere, up to the ceiling in places. He had several tables, all mostly covered. His studio sprawled into his living space, which itself was mostly a library and curio collection. Some distant part of him—the part raised by a house-proud mother—felt faintly embarrassed by the clutter, but it was just a reflex, nothing he felt very deeply. Everything in his place was a treasure to him, and he didn’t much care what other people thought about it. He almost never had anyone over.
But Dr. Andrews was… important. They had met, sure. But if you had asked him yesterday if she remembered him, he wouldn’t have been sure that she did.
Obviously she did, though, and she had come to him. And the place was a mess. Probably not what she was used to. Probably wouldn’t set her at ease.
She followed his directions while he closed the door, set the chains and drew all of the bolts. He found her in his “war room,” studying the big board, the It’s All Connected Board, where he’d pinned maps, photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, and sundry items, and networked them with string. He thought she looked a little impressed, which she should. It represented the ongoing thrust of his life’s work.
Confidence, man. Be confident. He might have made a bad initial impression. Overeager. Nobody responded well to that.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re here, right?” he said. “I am the world’s foremost Titan expert, after all. Ah, but look, forgive me for how the apartment looks right now, I’m just not used to having visitors cause my address isn’t on file for just anybody, so you know…” He grabbed the back of a chair and pushed it up on its front two legs, dumping the books and papers on it onto the floor, simultaneously wondering exactly how she had found him. He wasn’t all that surprised, but he was very concerned.
But damned if he was going to ask.
“Have a seat,” he said, nodding at the now-empty chair. “What can I help you with? You know, mi casa es su home.” He plopped down in another chair and propped his elbows on the table.
Andrews didn’t sit. She had a briefcase with her; she pulled out some papers and laid them in front of him. One looked like a printout of some sort of waveforms. The other appeared kind of similar, but had clearly been done by hand, with a pencil.
“Okay,” she said. “So, the sequence on the right, this is a signal that’s been interfering with our equipment in Hollow Earth.”
“Okay.” He squinted. Was the pencil drawing over a middle school math test? It sort of looked like it.
“And, uh,” Andrews continued, “these are drawings by my daughter, Jia, and—you’re going to think that I’m completely insane—”
But he saw it. “No,” he said. “The patterns are the same in the middle section.”
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”
She was relieved, he could tell. She had shown these to someone else, and they thought she was seeing things. Making a connection that wasn’t there. Like she was crazy.
Welcome to my world, Doctor Andrews.
Andrews let out a long breath and finally sat down in the chair he had cleared for her.
“Look,” she said. “Our analysts don’t know what to make of this. They’re talking in circles. They’re saying ‘radio interference,’ coincidence—but I know that you think outside of the box. I didn’t know who else to turn to.”
“And they sent you because?”
“No one sent me. I came here—”
But it had been building. For years, really. On one level he knew he should just keep listening to her, but it was actually like she didn’t understand what they had done to him. Were still doing to him.
“Well, that’s what’s ironic, you know,” Bernie told her, trying to keep his tone reasonable but aware that he was failing. Screw it. He was angry. “Monarch wouldn’t confirm my crucial part in taking down Mechagodzilla. It’s cost me thousands—” Okay. Truth. “—hundreds of subscribers on my blog. And the trolls online? They question every single thing that I put up, especially this one troll—this one troll, GhidoraStan64, you ever heard of him?”
Andrews shook her head. “No, I don’t think I have.“
“Great,” Bernie said. “Because he’s a trashbag, okay? Point is, I’m more qualified than half the people you have working over there. I have a PhD in physics. I have a Masters in engineering—”
“Do you really?” she asked, looking really skeptical.
Back up. Stay in this.
“Maybe not,” he allowed, “um, from what you would consider a traditional university. But still I have them, you know. Never mind the fact that I knew, I knew, me, what Godzilla was going to do before anyone at Monarch said anything.”
“Which is why I am here, Bernie,” Andrews snapped, cutting him off. “I am here. Okay? Can you help me or not?”
He took a breath. This seemed like the moment. This was it.
“That depends,” he said. “Are you the new boss down at the MHES?”
“The what?”
“The Monarch Hollow Earth Station,” he said. “The MHES, the Mess.”
“Yeah, no one calls it that,” she said. “I run the Kong Research Division, but technically Director Hampton is in charge of general operations.”
“Huh,” mused Bernie. “But Director Hampton doesn’t have a kid who can talk to Kong.” He sat back and twirled in his chair a few times.
Until she got it.
“You want to go to Hollow Earth,” Andrews said.
“I’m so glad I didn’t have to say that,” he said. “I thought you were never gonna ask me.”
“No, I am not asking,” she replied, putting her hand up. But he pushed on over her.
“I’ve been needing proof. It would help me with my bona fides for my blog, and I knew that you would be the person to help me do that.”
“Okay, well if this happens, and that is a big if, then Monarch would need, you know, whatever you guys call it, final cut on…”
Of course, she was going there. But she needed him, right?
“No, no, no, no. Final cut? You know that would destroy my journalistic integrity. No really good true documentarian would…”
She had her phone out, staring at it. Then she jumped up and started walking off. What was happening? She was leaving. He had pushed too far.
“I could make you a producer,” he said. “Final cut. Wait, wait, wait!”
She spun around to face him. “Something is happening to my daughter, and I have no idea how to fix it. You work out what’s going on and I’ll give you anything you want, okay? This is a promise.”
“Well, anything is a lot, but that’s very generous, very generous of you—”
“But we have to go right now.”
“What?”
“Godzilla is on the move again,” she said. “Your call. In or out.”
Then she was going.
Is this happening?
Yes. In, not out, okay? It had to be in.
He grabbed his go bag. He always had essential stuff in there in case he had to run. From a Titan, or the CIA, or… whatever.
“Wait, Doctor Andrews. Wait!”
He ran after her.
“Yes, Ambassador Paoletti,” Hampton said, staring at the screen. “I’m aware Godzilla is waking up. We make every effort to keep informed here at Monarch. It is sort of our job.”
The ambassador’s image was inset onto a larger view of the Roman Colosseum, where Godzilla was visibly stirring. A nearby screen showed the Titan’s vitals spiking. His nap was done, there could be no doubt of that.
“Are you—are you being sarcastic?” the ambassador asked. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows arched almost comically.
“No,” Hampton said. “I am not. I’m sorry if you thought so. I just meant to say that we’re on top of the situation.”
As she spoke, Godzilla rose to his feet and took a step to clear the walls of the ancient building. She winced as he nicked the top of it, shattering the top of the ancient wall.
The ambassador’s face paled. “If you’re on top of it, I assume you just saw that.”
“Er… Yes,” she said. “It… um… doesn’t look so bad.”
“Well, it looks very bad from where I stand,” the ambassador sputtered.
“Uh-huh,” she said. Godzilla’s clawed foot shattered part of the street, and then he stepped in the River Tiber. He took a step or two, cutting right through a bridge.
“That was the Ponte Cestio,” Paoletti wailed. “That, too, is just a scratch, I suppose?”
“What exactly are you asking me to do, Ambassador Paoletti?” Hampton wanted to know.
He straightened his tie, sighed. “My government wants to call in an airstrike,” he said.
“An airstrike,” she repeated. “On Rome.”
“Yes, I know it’s a stupid idea,” he snapped. “I’m asking you for something better. Something I can tell them. I know you have people here.”
“Sure, an observation team. We’ve been trying to predict which way he would leave when he did, but that’s like trying to predict where a hurricane will go before it forms. No, worse, because hurricanes follow rules of physics. What we know is, he’s done there. He came there to kill Scylla, he did it, he took a nap, and now he’s leaving. We don’t know where he’s going, but he’s usually pretty direct in his way.”
Paoletti didn’t say anything. Was he okay? Was he in shock?
“Hey, snap out of it,” she said. “You’re not helpless. Tell your boss Godzilla is leaving Rome. He’s just walking, he’s not on any sort of rampage. He’s not going to turn circles and hunt up the monuments. But he’s big. He’s going to break a few things. He doesn’t mean to. But if you shoot at him, that will be a whole different story. He’ll trash the city. And you won’t hurt him anyway! We know this from experience. Just tell your guys to clear a path. A wide path. We’ll send an escort—he usually tolerates those—and we can help minimize collateral damage. It will all be over soon. Okay?”
Paoletti nodded weakly. “Okay,” he said.
His image vanished.
“Now,” she muttered, watching Godzilla continue to wade through Rome. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”