The Guardian Angel

by George Lazăr

  For the moment, in the huge artificial cave on Level Three, fifty meters underground, Bolden was alone.

  They hadn’t been thrifty in outfitting his new home. LED screens imitated windows, offering the illusion of cherry branches and beautiful weather, during the daytime, fading to night on a regulated schedule, marking the turning of the seasons on an imaginary landscape.

  There was even a park, with grass and real trees, placed in the middle of the underground construction and warmed by sunlight routed in from above. It sheltered a secret: a helicopter, with controls that could blow a hole in the roof of the shelter should they ever need to make a quick escape.

  Bolden had no contact with anyone beyond approved staff. Doctors examined him, but only when it was absolutely necessary. Folder came and went. The people who provided for his needs stayed as far out of sight as possible.

  Meanwhile, his businesses thrived. The Space Elevator was lifting hundreds of tons of waste every day. The Electromagnetic Catapult nearing completion, and would soon begin launching waste at a reduced capacity.

  Ian would take long walks through his underground dwelling. He wandered its corridors, marveling at the wasteful ingenuity of the people who designed and built such a place.

  He had somehow reached the conclusion that their fears and obsessions were similar to his own. The people in the past had also prepared, in case a nuclear war started, to cheat death. He smiled, imagining their cynicism: “So long, neighbor. I am taking my family to the fallout shelter. You take care of yourself. It was nice having some beers with you and watching the Super Bowl together, but I gotta run. By the way, you may notice a few nuclear bombs falling around here, so things may get a little hot around here soon.”

  And since nobody could have brought all their loved-ones, that meant many would have left behind people very close to them.

  ***

  In the end, what he did with Norton was exactly the same. Or even worse. Eventually, Bolden realized that thinking about his son’s fate no longer deeply affected him. He thought about Norton fondly at times, regretting they didn’t get to know each other better or imagining how their lives would have been if he had married Veronica. But the marriage wouldn’t have lasted long: Veronica was many years older and had been a calculated schemer. Her affair with him had been a ploy to extort money out of old Bolden and nothing else.

  Bolden gave up those speculations, and began to explore the bunker. What the rooms would have contained was a mystery. Equipment had never been installed, furniture never trucked in.

  But it was not completely empty. After he broke the rusty locks of a couple of cabinets, he found an archive the Army had forgotten. He leafed through the files of those who were supposed to occupy the bunker. He was fascinated. He tried many times to figure out on what criteria had been used to select potential occupants.

  Unsurprisingly the first on the list for the shelter were the politicians. Even if they were corrupt and represented a constant and noisy source of conflict, they had made the shelter possible, and they made sure they would get priority. For them, there were no rules, no age limits and no restrictions on the family members they could bring with them.

  Next on the priority list were the specialists: The doctors, engineers, biologists, scientists who were supposed to ensure the survival of the politicians and, especially, to create a world the leaders could go back to running after the war. The age restriction didn’t apply to the specialists either, although it seemed that the young ones and the unmarried ones were preferred.

  Bolden guessed they had been selected primarily for their professional competence. They were limited in number of family members they were allowed to bring to the bunker: one per person. What would they have done if they had more children? Who would they have left on the outside for the radiation to fry?

  There were also files of the workers, those whose labor would build the post-nuclear world. Half of the bunker’s slots had been reserved for them: farmers, metallurgists, electricians, bakers, various technicians. The only criteria apparently taken into consideration, apart from their professional competence, was health and age, which, at the time of the selection, couldn’t have exceeded twenty-five years. If they turned thirty-five and the catastrophe had not happened, they were replaced by other candidates. For them, there was no room for family members. They would come alone.

  There was plenty in the files for Bolden to read. Although the Phoenix project had been abandoned at the end of the Cold War, the lists had been updated for years with the utmost meticulousness by a commission no one had told to stop. Bolden was intrigued, spending hours leafing through the files of those who had been chosen to populate the bunker and rebuild the world.

  The stories were his only company. Sometimes, in the usually deserted hallways, he would hear or see the hurried figure of someone from the maintenance staff. But if they saw him, they tried to disappear as quickly as possible. He had no idea what they had been told.

  Very rarely, and only when Folder was around, Bolden could go outside and walk on pre-established routes from which he wasn’t allowed to stray, within a perimeter surrounded by barbed wire. His outdoor forays were preceded by a careful scanning of the area in order to detect possible intruders, and the procedures were much stricter than those carried out in the previous Calming Zone.

  After a few weeks of their walks, the colonel became less guarded in his conversations.

  “When did this whole story begin?” Bolden asked him one day when they were out. “I mean the Guardian Angel Organization and all the rest. I still don’t understand how it is that you can anticipate events that haven’t happened, such as my death.”

  “Does the Philadelphia Experiment mean anything to you?”

  “I think so,” Bolden said, recalling what he knew about the government project. “The military played with high-intensity magnetic fields in the hope of camouflaging warships during the Second World War. It’s that, isn’t it? There was a movie about it.” There were wild rumors that a Navy ship had been sent into the future. Time travel.

  The colonel nodded. “They didn’t manage to camouflage those warships. Instead, something else came out of it. Anyway, that was the beginning. It unleashed a whole frenzy in the 195’s. Everyone wanted to travel in time. All sorts of theories appeared – some said it wasn’t possible, others said it was. Many agreed about the principle of non-interventionism.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” said Bolden, trying to be a diligent student. “The Butterfly Effect – a butterfly flaps its wings in China and that tiny input to an enormously chaotic system results in a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. There was a movie about that, too.”

  “Nowadays, there’s a film about everything,” the colonel sighed. “Anyway, one of the results of those experiments was the Device. You don’t travel in time with it, but you can foresee what will happen. At first, the military adopted it enthusiastically. What can be greater than foreseeing the outcome of a battle? If you learn that you’re about to be defeated, you reanalyze the strategy, you modify something and you win. At least that is what they thought. It wasn’t like that at all.

  “The Device could only foresee if some soldiers died or not during a certain time interval; not necessarily in battle; perhaps in a row in the mess hall; in a car accident. And since the military value of the Device turned out to be debatable, they abandoned the project and stopped financing it. Of course, that didn’t happen overnight. The generals tried to make it work for their personal purposes. But the technology was too primitive back then for the Device to give out data that could be accurately interpreted.”

  “And yet, you seem a very prosperous organization,” said Bolden.

  “Yes, because we are a nation that highly values free enterprise,” Folder laughed. “The inventor kept a Device for himself, one of the prototypes ordered by the military, which hid the rest of them who-knows-where. Roughly speaking, he proceeded the same way we approached you. He chose a rich man
and he explained to him what this was all about. Then he saved Atalai’s life, sacrificing his own in the process. Atalai had the Device, but having it doesn’t mean much if there is no one to save you. He had enough brains to believe him and to use his money to survive. He founded The Guardian Angel.”

  “Jonathan Atalai,” Bolden said pensively. “Did he live long?” he asked.

  Folder avoided a specific answer. “Enough to realize that it was worth it.”

  Chapter 18

  Bolden quickly lost track of the days he spent in the bunker. The colonel had arranged for a library and a digital movie archive to be sent to him. Sometimes, Ian watched three or four movies in a row, until his eyes closed from the fatigue and he fell asleep in the armchair.

  Other times, he tried to read a book, usually abandoning it before he was halfway through, his focus disappearing. They restricted his access to information coming from the outside, even when he was allowed to use a computer. One day, the face of Jonathan Atalai appeared on his laptop screen again. This time, the founder of Guardian Angel had been filmed on a beach, surrounded by exotic scenery.

  “Dear… Ian, I am happy you’ve survived until this stage,” he began. “You know that you are not dealing with an artificial intelligence, but with recordings that I’ve made during my last years - my last years of life. For those who have employed the services of The Guardian Angel, I have recorded several versions. You know, like in Asimov’s ‘Foundation.’ That’s where I got the idea to play Hari Seldon. Or something like that, because I’m not going to appear in a recording once every thousand years or so to foresee a crisis,” the face on the screen laughed. “It’s easier than that: The computer picks a pre-recorded version based on the situation The Guardian Angel’s protégée is in, after the template I have programmed. It even adds your name.”

  For weeks, Bolden watched Atalai’s computerized appearances with interest, more intently as he discovered that Atalai had also been puzzled by the same worries and questions. Many of Atalai’s recorded monologues were simple – sometimes boring – personal considerations. Other times he philosophized, trying to offer some answers.

  “You know, death is the one thing we all run from. From the first instance we enter this world. And yet, it’s also the most sought-out show. Yes, it is. Think about it! Funerals are celebrations for the survivors. They say they are showing compassion for the departed. But what if, actually, funerals are nothing more than manifestations of joy for the living? Our entire culture is filled with death. Brave warriors slew monsters, emperors conquered and enslaved peoples at the price of massacres. All through our literature, movies, plays, music. Everyone kills everyone. But the collective unconscious has always desired immortality for man. There are innumerable ballads, legends, ancient or modern myths with this theme. It’s strange don’t you think? To desire immortality and consider it the greatest glory possible and, at the same time and on various pretexts, to kill others? All of this is deeply buried inside the human being, in its genetic inheritance.”

  Obviously, Bolden couldn’t answer back. But he kept watching.

  “There are many who fall under the spell of death,” Atalai began in another recording. “They try to cause their own deaths before their biological term. I am talking about suicides, or about fanatics, who give their lives in the name of a cause. You can add soldiers here, who risk their lives for pay. And you know what the extraordinary thing is? They can all be monitored by the Device. Which means that their lives, the ones they sacrifice, immolate or I don’t know what other pompous term is in use, is determinable. The Device can also determine when someone commits suicide – if the attempt is successful, so to speak.”

  But after two months, Atalai’s chatter totally bored him. He suspected at least some of the recordings he had left had been falsified by The Guardian Angel. They had used Atalai’s voice and face, his verbal templates and small gestures, to generate more recordings. Some of them were even advertising the organization he had created.

  “Ninety-nine percent of the Earth’s population dies when they are supposed to,” said Atalai, with broad gestures on the screen. “Not of old age,” he continued, and Bolden gave a start, realizing he had thought the exact same thing. “No, not at all! First there are illnesses, accidents, attacks. Old age is the last in line when it comes to causes of death, although, according to some, old age is also an illness. And then there is that 1 percent that survives. These are those who reach Level Two; from here, things are easier. Only one in a thousand goes further and reaches Level Three. And from this level onwards, there are no survivors. The exceptions are, of course, those who are under the protection of The Guardian Angel.”

  So Ian left the fake or perhaps the real Atalai ramble on, but without really hearing him – his voice became a background murmur that, after a while, faded away completely. He was as believable as an impotent who brags about his sexual conquests.

  Bolden started lapsing into states of mental inertia in which he didn’t think of anyone or anything. It was as if he had unplugged from reality and drifted into a parallel world that was neither black nor white, neither warm nor cold.

  He felt a prisoner, just like the first time, when he had been isolated in Texas.

  “You’ve seen what could happen to you,” the colonel told him when Bolden told him that. “We’re keeping you here for your own protection. You’ve reached an extremely advanced level, and your survival is increasingly complicated. We’ve used all our experience to keep you alive, something the other two people who reached this level didn’t benefit from. We’re flying blind here, but it seems to be working. You’ve survived longer than any of our clients.”

  It didn’t help. Bolden was seized by the sense that he was only waiting. He realized he was awaiting death with the impatience of condemned prisoners who gave up their legal fight because they couldn’t bear the waiting. He had read about people who had tried to end their days themselves so they could have the dignity of choosing their last moment.

  He wasn’t all that surprised when, one night, the colonel burst into his room and shook him awake.

  “Come right now,” he yelled. “Something is happening.”

  The colonel showed him the Device. The dial, the one synchronized to his personal indicator, had reached the end of the scale. The other dial, which showed the risk to those around him, was pointing towards the second half of the scale.

  He quickly put on a t-shirt and a pair of pants, grabbing a pair of light canvas shoes. He put them on, on the run. He dashed after the colonel, who was running towards the elevator’s shaft. At the last minute, he turned down the corridor that led towards the park. Right before the armored door of the corridor slammed shut, the colonel glanced at the Device. His eyes were glued for a moment to the two dials; then it seemed they were going to pop out of his sockets.

  “Run!” the colonel screamed frantically. “Now!”

  Bolden sprinted after Folder as the ground started shaking. They reached the park and jumped into the helicopter. An irrational fear seized both of them, but Folder managed to control himself. He flipped switches, setting the propellers in motion. He pulled back on the stick powerfully and, just like a dragonfly, the aircraft rose, swaying.

  The colonel pressed the buttons of a remote control and the roof that separated them from the outside simply exploded at numerous points at a hundred meters in front and above them, cutting an imperfect circle. An avalanche of concrete and large rocks, gravel, soil and vegetation rained down, but the hole was big enough for the chopper to go through, even while small fragments were still falling on the trees of the artificial park, burying them.

  The helicopter passed through the huge cloud of dust caused by the explosion and the debris, towards the light of the full moon. Under them, the earth was undulating, as if a huge hand were kneading it. The bunker held on for a few minutes and then collapsed; the concrete floors crashing into each other like a house of cards. Then the heavy, reinforced concr
ete walls crumbled, sealing all the remaining personnel inside.

  A long crack gaped where the underground shelter had been. It disappeared into the chasm along with a good stretch of the state park. From what they could both make out in the dark, the dark line extended in both directions.

  Folder quickly climbed the small helicopter to an altitude of three hundred meters. From their aerial perspective, the extent of the quake became apparent. There were no electric lights. The sprawling megalopolis of Los Angeles had disappeared into blackness.

  The scale of the devastation was hard to grasp. Quakes were part of life in Southern California, and its buildings had been specifically designed to withstand tremors. Almost half a century had passed since the big earthquake in 1989, and its lessons hadn’t been forgotten. But they hadn’t been enough, either. This time something more horrific had happened.

  The crawling crack was continually widening, transforming from a black leer into a voracious mouth that kept opening. The movement was slow, considering the scale on which it unfolded, and it showed no signs of stopping. Eventually the coast line broke like a piece of rotten board and collapsed, the water rushed to swallow it, covering millions of people, drowning with their homes, their city and their dreams.

  Los Angeles disappeared into the Pacific Ocean.

  Bolden and Folder, terrified witnesses in their tiny helicopter, watched silvery spumes of elemental debris in the moonlight. A monstrous wave like nothing the planet had seen in millennia prowled in off the ocean, nearly plucking them out of the sky as it roused inland, sweeping away everything in its path. The scope of the disaster – all caused to eliminate one individual – had blown past human comprehension.

  That is how dawn found them two hours later, numb with shock, flying above the flooded surface that the ocean had covered like a liquid shroud. The smoky light of the new day uncovered the unprecedented proportions of the disaster that had annihilated one of the biggest cities in the world in a matter of minutes. Countless bodies and unidentifiable fragments, floated in the water, scattered as far as the eye could see. It was all that was left of Los Angeles: wrecks and remembrances.