Mikaela waited for the guard to leave, for him to point to the end of a hall and tell her, “Just beyond there,” and then go the other direction, so she could double back. But he stayed with her as they wended through the labyrinthine halls of the third floor. Half of the labs looked more like vaults, or like they opened into a submarine, complete with heavy, reinforced doors. “Feels like a prison,” the guard said around his gum. “A lot of these rooms are pressurized. One even creates a vacuum inside the lab.”
At the end of one of those halls, Mikaela spotted her duplicate, still winding her way towards the lab herself. “What’s this one?” Mikaela asked, stepping in front of the guard and drawing his attention to a strange looking door.
“Accoustics. Listen.” He tilted his ear towards the wall. Most of the labs they had passed were fairly quiet, but here it went a step beyond that, to a lack of any kind of noise whatsoever. “The entire lab is covered in foam triangles to soak up ambient sound. You’ll never really know earie silence until you stand in the middle of that lab at midnight.”
Mikaela glanced back down the hall, which was thankfully empty. The guard escorted her past another four labs before turning to a door and opening it. He held it for her, then stepped inside behind her. “Got one of your little lost sheep,” he said.
A man with sparse hair buzzed short to mask its thinning and thick glasses didn’t look up from his work, but said, “Ah, I’d heard from a little bird I’d finally be getting some assistance.”
“This is Ed,” the guard said. “See ya, Ed.”
“Edward,” he said, as the guard shut the door. “And he neglected to mention your name.”
“Mikaela.”
“And how do you feel about the militarized application of science?” he asked, again without looking up from his work.
“That kind of covers an overbroad swath. I don’t have a problem with medical science making war less deadly or debilitating. I do have an ethical concern where science makes it easier to kill people.”
He smiled, and pivoted towards her. “Science is apolitical. Aphilosophical. Amoral. All of those with an A. It isn’t ours to grapple with the ethics of how or why or if this technology can be used. We’re here to understand the laws undergirding it, probe the mysteries and answers it leads to.”
“But should it be? Should we ask whether we should, before we grapple with if we can? Because once we do- whatever we make, will be used- Pandora’s box is already irrevocably opened. Not asking the question first is how we become Death, destroyer of worlds.”
“I suppose Oppenheimer would agree with you, albeit in hindsight. Of course, essentially none of us will ever be personally responsible for as much devastation as he was- and that’s ignoring the forever lingering possibility of a nuclear exchange. But I would argue that ignorance is simply another box we open. Pandora’s box opens a slew of potentialities- but they are known– or at least knowable. The other box is filled with Lovecraftian horror, always hidden, always unknown, but nonetheless destructive.”
“That feels like a false equivalence.”
“There’s the rub, isn’t it?” he said with a smile. “We can’t know whether they’re equivalent, unless we measure. We can’t measure without opening the box. But, as a scientist, I take comfort in the idea that what is known can be dealt with, can be worked upon, can be solved. The unknown, by contrast, is always a surprise, always impossible to adequately prepare for. Perhaps I would be better at offering an example of this work.”
He turned toward the chrome object at the center of the room. “This egg is, for lack of a simpler way to explain it, a bridge between worlds. Not one we can traverse, not at present, but one which connects to other parallel worlds. It is, perhaps least messily understood as opening an artificial wormhole. It connects with other possibilities. A side effect, however, is that it has been shown to impact Breed abilities… which has led some of my colleagues to theorize that said abilities are tied to the multiverse. The specifics as to how aren’t understood, but there are some theories- that Breed tap into other realities through micro-wormholes, either drawing on exotic energy from parallel dimensions, or simply incorporating some genetic material from humanoid species with abilities on different but similar Earths. And of course, it could be an entirely mixed bag, too, with different methods accounting for different abilities.”
“You can shut down Breed with this.”
“Just their abilities. Leveling the playing field, as it were. But that’s honestly an accidental side impact. More importantly, understanding the nature of Breed abilities is essential. Because there will be a Breed with something approaching nuclear capabilities. Maybe they’d use that ability for good. Maybe they’d use it for ill. Most terrifyingly, maybe they would not be able to control themselves at all. That box, I’m afraid, is open, whether we care to look inside it; understanding might be the only thing that could save us all.”
“And who qualifies as ‘us’?” Mikaela asked bitterly.
“I mean Breed like you, and the rest of humanity.” He paused, refusing to let any indication of how he felt about the observation leak, waiting to see if she’d react. When she didn’t, he continued. “We’ve already seen Breed abilities that beggar the imagination. It is a mathematic probability that a Breed will be born with the power to tear the planet in half- the timing of it is the only real question. And if one who can is a mathematic certainty, and the Breed population is growing at an accelerated if not yet exponential rate, then it is only a matter of time before we reach someone who might– as in, someone with the power and the will to consider it; in that case, there is still the possibility their better angels save us, in the way that we have not had a nuclear war- yet. But again, as the Breed population does reach exponential growth- which the models suggest it will, and within my lifetime- it is only a matter of time before we have not just an individual who might destroy the world, but one who must– whether by conviction or an inability to control themselves.”
“And what would you do about it?”
“Do?” he asked, pondering. “I’m not interested in making that decision. I also don’t understand the problem well enough to know what possible solutions might look like.”
“And what if the answer was genocide? What if the only way to save humanity was murder on a mass scale.”
“I’ll point out, first, that the increasing growth of Breed populations suggests that, within a hundred years, your people are humanity. But to grapple with the question I think you’re truly asking, you cannot save humanity with inhumanity. If that appears to be the answer… then the answer is wrong, and you need to keep looking. Put another way, if you’re Truman, holding a nuclear warhead, Japanese intransigence at the end of the war might look like a nail to the hammer in your hand. But just because mass death is at hand, does not make it the only, leave alone the best, solution.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, skepticism peeking through her voice. “Because I’m positing the trolley problem, and it sounds like you’re shrugging.”
“No,” he said. “I’m stating that the hill the trolley’s on is of unknown length, and the trolley is traveling at an unknown speed. On a long enough timeline, we will barrel into someone, without question. But that situation doesn’t demand a way to murder only the few to save the many; that situation calls for inventing breaks.”
A smile crept over her lips. “Have you ever thought about teaching?”
“No. Students are, no offense, given your likely age- idiots. My talents would be wasted parroting a textbook to ingorami ninety percent of whom are incapable of understanding it.”
“I think you misunderstand. I’m suggesting something more in a research capacity. The foremost intelligences on the planet are Breed minds- they would be at your disposal. I’m saying you could continue your work- but without having to hand it immediately to jack-booted thugs who would definitely use it to stamp on the necks of people like me.”
“I’m… intrigued. What would you have me do?”
“You and I? We’ll go to lunch off site. Then we’ll go to the school, and you’ll meet some students. If you like what you see, you quit this job and work with them. All the research, none of the atomic bomb.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You come back to work tomorrow, and get back to destroying worlds. But first, where’s the nearest bathroom?”