It’s Clyde who speaks. “Lightning strikes,” he says.
I have a moment of, “Et tu, Brute?” Not happy with just dismissing my theories and damning all of western civilization, now he has to back Coleman up?
It’s not a fair thought, of course. But God I preferred it when he wasn’t a mask.
Clyde reaches, with a certain temerity, for Tabitha’s laptop. She spins it around to face us, but doesn’t let him touch it. Clyde’s hand tremors and Google pops up.
“We thought,” he says, “that the Russians were using lightning primarily as an offensive tool.” On the screen fifty tiny images of forked lightning appear. “However, we’ve all noticed, at least I noticed, and Co-Directors Shaw and Coleman noticed, and Tabitha did too, and I’m assuming other people did, but, well, the appearance of lightning doesn’t always correlate with an actual attack. Plus the Russians are frequently hit as well. Not totally the way I’d attack people. I mean, it’s subjective, I’m sure, but the less crispy I am the better, I always think.”
Tabitha is sitting next to Clyde, not looking at him. She stares at the back of the laptop and chews her hair. Even Kayla looks more relaxed right now. Wasn’t there a day just last week when she would have been staring rapturously at Clyde?
And I’m not the only one it seems, who misses the man behind the mask.
Clyde’s hand shakes again. More images on Google: yellow signs with black lightning, a plug, a light bulb.
“Electricity,” he says, “is the universal lubricant between realities. Allows us to breach this reality, reach into another, pull through a force, have an effect. Why I drop about seven hundred pounds on batteries a month. But the Russians,” a few images of Moscow appear on screen for no clear reason, “have worked out something very tricky.”
My stomach lurches. And I know, of course I know, he’s not going to say intradimensional magic. But he should.
“They’re pulling ambient electricity from their surroundings,” Clyde says. “From wiring, from passing cars, laptops, anything that has a charge really. Which is, I think I should really point out, some frighteningly cool physics. I mean it’s a virgin science. We all thought it was practically impossible at this point.”
Another stomach flip. “Wait,” I say. “This we’re OK with believing? This impossibility we permit them, but mine is one too far?”
Felicity puts her head between her hands.
“Oh do be quiet,” Coleman says.
And, hell, normally I like to spread the abuse I receive evenly throughout the day. Front-loading like this is really going to throw me off. But I open my mouth to bite back.
“Wait…” Devon raises a hand slightly. “I mean, isn’t Arthur… Didn’t we just dismiss an impossible thing?”
And, God, I could kiss her.
“Oh,” Clyde says. “Well. Erm…” He works his hands, can’t quite bring himself to meet her eye.
“Practically impossible,” Tabitha cuts in smoothly. Her lip curls, superior, and cruel. Apparently a chance to one-up Devon is just the thing to cure the my-boyfriend’s-an-inhuman-mask blues. “Versus actually impossible. Practically impossible equals theoretically possible. Actually impossible equals bullshit. We tend to avoid bullshit. Professionals at work.”
I realize I’m only an incidental target of her bile, but it doesn’t stop it stinging.
“Watch your tone.” Kayla’s voice is barely above a whisper but everyone hears.
Devon’s cheeks are burning. “Quiet,” she hisses at Kayla, loud enough for people on the floor above to hear it.
Somehow, Tabitha meets Kayla’s death stare head-on. “Know what?” she says. “Way you handle a sword these days, I might be willing to pick that fight.”
And, I never thought I’d see the day, but Kayla actually averts her eyes.
God. We put the world back so very, very wrong.
And why didn’t Kurt Russell ever make a movie where he handily dealt with an awkward staff meeting? I could really use some life lessons here.
“OK, shut up everyone.” Coleman stands up, dismissing Clyde and any additional comments with the back of his hand. “So,” he says, “in summary we’ve got ourselves some militant Russkies with insane demands that an unidentified ‘West’ surrender to the USSR even though it’s about as alive and kicking as the dodo. And the stick for that charming little carrot is the threat of a Chernobyl-level explosion in London. And they’ve given us six whole days to comply. Because the Russkies are a generous people and all that PC hog crap.” He cracks his knuckles. “That said, while the demands are bullshit, the threat’s credible.”
I’m disappointed to find myself forced to agree with everything the bastard just said.
“The original Chernobyl,” he insists on continuing, “took a nuclear reactor to power it, so normally I’d start looking at major power sources. But they’ve got this whole wireless access to electricity, so that plan is viciously buggered.”
He looks around the room, locking eyes with everyone except me. He gives Devon double time to make up for it. And despite his attempts to mentally fling Devon’s clothes all over me, I’m again confronted by the unavoidable accuracy of his summation of the information.
If only he wasn’t drawing completely wrong conclusions from it.
“Not that any of that’s much of a problem, of course,” Coleman says with a shrug.
And that conclusion seems the furthest from reality that we’ve achieved today.
“Always been a short-sighted people, the Russkies,” Coleman informs us. “Their plan is still dependent on power. Just on a broader scale. But we can still deny it to them.” He claps his hands together as if that’s the case closed.
My quizzical expression remains. And what the hell, I’m playing the role of village idiot anyway.
“We can what?” I say.
Coleman grunts as if my thick-headedness causes him physical pain. “Power, Arthur.” He speaks slowly and loudly. “To London. We cut it. They can’t have it. No bomb.”
“All of London’s electricity?” I want to be sure I’ve got that quite right because something niggles there. And not just the obvious implausibility. Something I was saying earlier if only I could put my finger on it.
“Why are you still talking?” Coleman’s expression has evolved from distaste to full-blown disgust.
“Actually,” Devon raises her hand if not her head again, “I was sort of, well exactly really, but I was wondering about the same thing.”
Why on earth would Clyde ever leave someone as wonderful as Devon?
“Well, sweetheart—” Coleman’s tone is suddenly sugary smooth “—basically we put out some announcement about sun activity and a danger to all electrical items for the next week. Whip the media into a frenzy. Government issues panicked warnings, etc. Then we EMP London. Take out anything the Russkies are packing. Simple enough.”
“EMP London?” It’s Tabitha’s turn to ask questions now.
“Yes, yes,” Coleman snaps. “EMP. I thought you were meant to be the smart one.”
“Know what it is.” It does my heart good to see Tabitha’s painted nail (white with a black skull) rise at Coleman. “Electromagnetic pulse. Wipe out anything electrical.”
“Problem solved then.” Coleman turns away.
“No.” Tabitha’s voice is a stiletto blade between the ribs. Coleman is forcibly stopped in his dismissal. He looks rather nonplussed. But Tabitha stared down Kayla today. Coleman doesn’t stand a chance.
“Clyde,” Tabitha says. She reaches out and taps his mask twice with her knuckle. She suppresses a grimace. “Electronic. EMP London. You EMP him. And you kill him again. And I kill you.” She’s not joking. We can all feel it. And it’s not malice, and strangely enough it doesn’t even feel like love. It sounds like a woman stating the terms of her existence as she’s negotiated them.
Coleman purses his lips, momentarily knocked from his stride.
“Actually…” Every eye in the room snaps to Clyde. “Well, I mean, what I was thinking,” Clyde hedges towards his noncommittal comfort zone, “there’s a chance, well something I’ve been reading up on… and, obviously some existential thinking has occurred recently. Clear why, I suspect. But I’ve dived into a lot of philosophy, and more computer theory than I originally anticipated. Artificial intelligence, that sort of thing. Quite a lot of anime, truth be told, but I’m wandering off-topic.
“What I’m trying to say, in a roundabout sort of way, is that I am not in a carbon-based meat body these days. Probably noticed. Hello, elephant in the room. But obviously that means some of the more comfortable assumptions about corporeality and mortality no longer apply.”
He shrugs several times, seemingly trying to gear himself up for something. “Which, admittedly,” he says, standing, “is all rather just a sort of preamble to explaining that I’m pretty sure I can do this.”
Abruptly Clyde’s head goes sideways. His arm snaps out. His legs kick. For a moment I get to wonder if Clyde has spent the evening reading texts about avant-garde art movements and is now treating us to a postmodern deconstruction of the traditional dance show aesthetic.
Then he keels over and his head cracks sharply against the floor.