We Kidnapped an Oil Company Executive, by Ryan Boudinot
A room. A motel room. A motel room with flies and cigarette butts stomped into the carpet. A man tied to a chair with nylon cord. He can't breathe out of his nose because it's clogged with blood. He can't see out of one eye because it's swollen shut. His lips move as if pretending to whisper. He's hallucinating, probably. He's going on three days.
The door opens, a sudden shocking rectangle of desert light. And a silhouette of a man in a mask of black netting. He is carrying a silver tray with bottles and pills on it, one of those doctor's medical kits from the 1940s. A fat black revolver in his belt at the small of his back under a lab coat that could be white or pale green. He's wearing thick dark glasses even though there isn't any light inside this room except what comes through the door behind him
He sets down the tray by a chair opposite Clive Peterson, where another man sits reading The Wall Street Journal. This second man, shorter than the first and wearing a pig mask, says, "Looks like your company is taking a huge hit on the NASDAQ now that word is out you're missing. If I did the math right, you personally lost half a billion dollars today."
"You people..." said Clive, "No idea..."
"Take your medicine," says the man in the black mask. He holds out a plastic cup of water, lets Clive drink from it. He shoves a pill into Clive's mouth and makes sure it gets swallowed.
"How long?" says Pig Mask.
"Usually kicks in about three minutes," says Black Mask.
Pig Mask looks at his watch. It's a black Rolex with a fat white face and green luminous hands. The eyes behind his mask belong inside someone else's head--maybe dead people who were buried alive somewhere for centuries until some guy dug them up and put their heads into jars filled with formaldehyde.
"Okay, here's the truth," Clive says as molecular freight trains barrel through his arteries, "We've known exactly what we're doing for decades. We know we've triggered a sixth mass extinction. We know human civilization is going to dip down somewhere around 500 million. That’s exactly the plan."
"How do you sleep at night?" says Pig Mask.
Clive can't answer because he's laughing too hard. He starts to say something but his voice is gone, turned into a series of dry cackles that soon turn wet and gurgly as he spits up blood all over himself.
"What do you mean? What plan?" Black Mask says.
"That's the wrong question," says Clive. "You should be asking, what else can we do? How else can we live?"
Pig Mask snorts and gestures at Black Mask to cut him loose. They uncuff his hands and ankles but leave a short length of nylon cord around his neck like a dog collar. They walk him out into the desert sunlight toward an idling Humvee waiting for them on Nevada State Route 160 just outside Las Vegas, its engine burbling under some kind of stealth technology so it doesn't show up on any scanners or surveillance cameras mounted along this stretch of highway.
Blindfolded as they speed to a new location, Clive continues narrating what amounts to the hydrocarbon industry's death bed confession.
"Sixty-five thousand years ago an asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Penninsula," Clive said, "Instantly, 99% of all life on earth vanished. Previous to that, it had lost its species to ice ages. The earth needed to figure out how to do two things, fast. One, look beyond our star for incoming threats. Two, artificially regulate the temperature of the atmosphere. So it turned to us furry little mammals to figure it out."
"How do you know all this?" Pig Mask says.
Clive doesn't answer because he's laughing too hard. The Humvee pulls off the highway onto a dirt road that leads to an abandoned trailer park, the kind of place that's rife with assault and methamphetamine. The men inside the Humvee don't say anything as they pull up to a mobile home with white aluminum siding. They haul Clive out of the car and walk him past a busted toilet, up the step, and thrust him into the heart of pure evil.
"Thank you," Clive says, "I know this is the test. I embrace the rapture. I open myself completely to the piercing rays of the One Soul."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" says Pig Mask. "You've been saying that shit for three days."
Clive starts to answer but is cut off by a man in an orange jumpsuit who rushes up and punches him hard in the stomach, doubling him over. Someone rips away the blindfold. A few seconds later Clive catches his breath and looks around at the room full of men staring back at him with masks on their faces like they're all sickening versions of himself except instead of using oil company money to buy themselves yachts or mansions, these guys have gone down into abandoned industrial wastelands along river banks where dead factories turn out the chemicals necessary for human survival, like plastics used in water pipes and Styrofoam containers filled with frozen dinners. In this moment it's impossible not to see himself as one more figure inside some vast painting painted long ago depicting a landscape utterly alien and frightening.
"I'm saying if my sacrifice is necessary to trigger the rapture, then take me now," Clive says.
"We're not going to kill you," says the man in the orange jumpsuit. "At least, not yet." He pulls a small vial out of his pocket and pours it into Clive's mouth until he chokes on it. Then they walk him back outside where Pig Mask is waiting for them with a set of car keys dangling from one finger. The Humvee has been replaced by an old Volvo station wagon that someone spray painted black.
Pig Mask drives Clive down Nevada State Route 160 toward Las Vegas while Black Mask sits next to Clive in the back seat talking about how global warming pushed Earth past its tipping point years ago and now we were living through our last days unless we turn human civilization completely upside down.
"And you're going to help us," Black Mask says, "You're the human tipping point upon which the survival of civilization hinges."
They come to an old radio station, the kind of place that once broadcast country music into the night. Out in front, a stolen news van with a satellite dish. Black Mask and Pig Mask practically have to drag Clive into the cinderblock building, where they set him in a wooden chair in front of a camera. Pig Mask powers on the camera while Black Mask holds Clive's head upright.
"And action," Pig Mask says.
Clive addresses the camera, and beyond it, the world, "My name is Clive Peterson. I'm the CEO of North America Petroleum Industries, or NAPI for short."
Pig Mask cuts in with a question, "How do you feel about what's happening to your company?"
"I don't care," says Clive. "What happens to my stock price doesn't matter anymore because I've been chosen by the One Soul to usher in its new golden age on earth."
Black Mask yanks his hair. "Bullshit. You're killing the earth. Tell the truth."
"I am telling the truth," Clive says. "The end of life on earth is part of a greater plan."
"Fuck you," says Black Mask. "You're a lying sack of shit."
Pig Mask cuts in, "I want to know why this plan is necessary."
Clive takes a deep breath and says, "Because it's the only way human beings can go on living at all." He speaks of climate change as if he were reciting lines from an ancient poem that his body has memorized, his words pouring out like dark water into desert sand. He tells them that industrial civilization must collapse entirely if humanity is going to survive the next thousand years. The dark ages to come will be mitigated by the Singularity, when artificial general intelligence attains the complexity of the human brain by 2040. The James Webb space telescope will soon prove without a doubt that intelligent life thrives throughout our galaxy. The One Soul will rise up from the ruins of human civilization to take its place among the stars.
"Who are you talking about?" says Pig Mask, "Aliens? Is that what this is all about?"
Clive shakes his head and says, "No." He's having trouble breathing now. The footage cuts out for a few seconds before coming back on again. Clive sees himself reflected in the lens as if he were watching dry wind blowing across vast landscapes inhabited by no one but ghosts haunting ruined cities, crumbling buildings filled with decaying furniture covered in dust, windswept curtains hanging like dirty hair draped around old skulls stripped bare, the sockets ragged holes where eyes once stared into the endless darkness beyond all time.
"Humanity is not alone in the universe," Clive says, "We're surrounded by beings far more advanced than we are. They've been here for thousands of years and they'll be here long after human civilization has collapsed." Clive coughs up blood. He sees the lights flickering, his face reflected in the lens of a camera and the mirror of all sins.