Quicker than the Eye

“A-One! Next?”

At a fourth window.

“Paris intact. But over here. Dresden? Berlin? London? All destroyed.”

“Right. How do you like the three-dimension virtual reality? Superb! Enough of cities and war. Across the hall. Go down the line. All those doors with different kinds of devastation.”

“Mexico City? I was there once, in ’46.”

“Press.”

Hank Gibson pressed the button.

The city fell, shook, fell.

“The earthquake of ‘84?”

“Eight-five, to be exact.”

“Christ, those poor people. Bad enough they’re poor. But thousands killed, maimed, made poorer. And the government—”

“Not giving a damn. Move.”

They stopped at a door marked ARMENIA, 1988.

Gibson squinted in, pressed the button.

“Major country, Armenia. Major country—gone.”

“Biggest quake in that territory in half a century.”

They paused at two more windows: TOKYO, 1932, and SAN FRANCISCO, 1905. Both whole, entire, intact at first glance. Touch the button: all fall down!

Gibson turned away, shaken and pale.

“Well?” said his friend Charlie. “What’s the sum?”

Gibson stared along the hall to left and right.

“War and Peace? Or Peace destroying itself without War?”

“Touche!”

“Why are you showing me all this?”

“For your future and mine, untold riches, incredible revelations, amazing truths. Andale. Vamoose!”

Charlie Crowe flashed his laser pen at the largest door at the far end of the hall. The double locks hissed; the door sank away to one side, revealing a large boardroom with a huge table forty feet in length, surrounded by twenty leather chairs on each side and something like a throne, somewhat elevated, at the far end.

“Go sit up at the end,” said Charlie.

Hank Gibson moved slowly.

“Oh, for Christ sake, shake a leg. We’ve only seven more minutes before the end of the world.”

“End—?”

“Just joking. Ready?”

Hank Gibson sat. “Fire away.”

The table, the chairs, and the room shook.

Gibson leaped up.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Charlie Crowe checked his watch. “At least not yet. Sit back. What have you seen?”

Gibson settled in his chair uneasily, grasping the arms. “Damned if I know. History?”

“Yes, but what kind?”

“War and Peace. Peace and War. Bad Peace, of course. Earthquakes and fire.”

“Admirable. Now, who’s responsible for all that destruction, two kinds?”

“What, war? Politicians, I guess. Ethnic mobs. Greed. Jealousy. Munitions manufacturers. The Krupp works in Germany. Zaharoff, wasn’t that his name? The big munitions king, the grand mullah of all the warmongers, films of him on the newsreels in cinemas when I was a kid. Zaharoff?”

“Yes! What about the other side of the hall? The earthquakes.”

“God did it.”

“Only God? No helpers?”

“How can anyone help an earthquake?”

“Partially. Indirectly. Collaboratively.”

“An earthquake is an earthquake. A city just happens to be in its way. Underfoot.”

“Wrong, Hank.”

“Wrong!?”

“What if I told you that those cities were not accidentally built there? What if I told you we had planned to build them there, on purpose, to be destroyed?”

“Nuts!”