Ball Lightning(70)
“We have a common language,” the teacher said with a smile, as if talking to a close friend. “Women are intrinsically opposed to technology, not like nauseatingly robotic men.”
“I’m not opposed to technology. I am an engineer,” Lin Yun said evenly.
“I was too, once. But that doesn’t prevent us from seeking out a new life. Your major’s emblem is very pretty. It’s a remnant of ancient armor, that, like humanity, has been so eroded by technology that there’s only a smidgen left. We ought to treasure it.”
“Why did you kill that child?”
“Child? Was he a child?” The teacher looked with frightened eyes at the corpse on the ground. “Our first lesson was about life guidance. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and do you know what the little idiot said? He said he wanted to be a scientist. His little brain was already polluted by science. Yes, science pollutes everything!” Then she turned to the other children, and said, “Good children, let’s not be scientists. Let’s not be engineers or doctors either. Let’s never grow up. We’re all little herders riding on the back of a big water buffalo playing a bamboo flute as we traipse across the green grass. Have you ever ridden a water buffalo? Have you ever blown a bamboo flute? Do you know that there was once a purer and more beautiful age? In those days, the sky was so blue and the clouds were so white. The grass was so green you’d cry, and the air was sweet. Every brook was clear as crystal, life as leisurely as a nighttime serenade, love as intoxicating as the moon...?but science and technology stripped away all of that. Now ugly cities blanket the ground, the blue sky and white clouds are gone, the green grass has withered, the brooks have turned black, and the buffalo has been penned up on a farm and turned into a robot making milk and meat. The bamboo is gone, and there’s only maddening rock music played by robots....?What are we doing here? Children, we want to bring humanity back to the Garden of Eden! First, we need to let everyone know how vile science and technology are. And how can we do that? If you want to make people realize how disgusting a boil is, what do you do? You cut it open. Today we’re going to cut open this technological boil, this huge nuclear reactor, and spill out its radioactive pus. Then people will see the true face of technology—”
“Can you grant me one request?” Lin Yun cut in.
“Of course, my dear.”
“Let me be your hostage in place of those children.”
The teacher smiled but shook her head.
“Let me replace just one of them.”
Still smiling, the teacher shook her head again. “Major, do you think I don’t know what you are? Your blood is as cold as mine. After you come in, in point five seconds you’ll have taken my gun, and then you’ll put a bullet through each of my eyes, point two five seconds apiece.”
“From the way you talk, you really do seem like an engineer,” Lin Yun said with a chilly laugh.
“All engineers can go to hell,” the teacher said, still smiling. Then she turned and picked up the gun from the control station, trained it on the camera, and advanced until we could see the rifling inside the barrel. We heard half a gunshot, which the microphone picked up as a hiss, and then the camera cut out and the screen went white.
I left the room and let out a long breath, as if I’d just come up from a cellar. The colonel briefly explained the structure of the reactor and control room, and then we returned to the conference room, in time to hear a police officer say, “...If the terrorists had proposed conditions, we would have agreed to everything for the safety of the children, and then figured something out. But the problem is that they haven’t given any conditions. They came to blow up the reactor, and the only reason they haven’t done so yet is because they are attempting a live broadcast to the outside using a small satellite antenna they brought with them. The situation is already critical. They could blow it up at any time.”
Noticing us coming in, the operational commander said, “Now that you know the situation, I’ll ask my second question. Can your weapon distinguish between adults and children?”
Colonel Xu said that it couldn’t.
“Can’t they avoid the control room where the children are, and only attack the reactor area? That’s the section where the terrorists are working with the bombs,” a police officer said.
“No!” said a PAP senior colonel, before Colonel Xu had a chance to reply. “The teacher brought a remote control with her.” Apparently they had already adopted the nickname “teacher” for this terrible monster of a woman.
“It wouldn’t work, in any case,” Colonel Xu said. “The reactor and the control room are part of the same structure, and the weapon attacks the structure as a whole. Walls don’t stop it. Given its size, no matter where the weapon is aimed, the entire structure will be in lethal range. Unless the children are brought out and taken far away from the reactor structure, they’ll definitely be injured or killed.”
“What is that weapon, anyway? A neutron bomb?”
“I’m sorry. I can only provide further details after authorization from GAD leadership.”
“There’s no need,” the senior colonel said, turning to the operational commander. “It looks like it won’t work.”
“I think it will work,” Lin Yun said, speaking out of turn and making me and Colonel Xu nervous. She went over to the operational commander’s desk, placed her hands flat on the surface, and directed a scorching look at him. He met her stare with a calm face. “Sir,” she said, “I think the present situation is as clear as one plus one equals two.”