The Institute

thooithides
.
Mass suicides or mass murder? Tim wondered, but that wasn’t a topic he intended to raise.
The sooner he was rid of this man, the better.
“The Ellis boy—with your help, very much with your help—has ruined us. That
undoubtedly sounds melodramatic, but it’s the truth.”
“Do you think I care?” Tim asked. “You were killing children. If there’s a hell, you’ll go
there.”
“While you, Mr. Jamieson, undoubtedly believe you’ll go to heaven, assuming there is such a
place. And who knows, you might be right. What God could turn away a man who rides to the
rescue of defenseless youngsters? If I may crib from Christ on the cross, you will be forgiven
because you know not what you did.” He cast his cigarette aside. “But I am going to tell you.
It’s what I came for, with the consent of my associates. Thanks to you and Ellis, the world is
now on suicide watch.” This time the word came out clean.
Tim said nothing, just waited.
“The first Institute, although not by that name, was in Nazi Germany.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Tim said.
“And why be so judgmental? The Nazis were onto nuclear fission before America. They
created antibiotics that are still used today. They more or less invented modern rocketry. And
certain German scientists were running ESP experiments, with Hitler’s enthusiastic support.
They discovered, almost by accident, that groups of gifted children could cause certain
troublesome people—roadblocks to progress, you might say—to cease being troublesome.
These children were used up by 1944, because there was no sure method, no scientific method,
of finding replacements after they became, in Institute argot, gorks. The most useful test for
latent psychic ability came later. Do you know what that test was?”
“BDNF. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Luke said that was the marker.”
“Yes, he’s a smart boy, all right. Very smart. Everyone involved now wishes they’d left him
alone. His BDNF wasn’t even that high.”
“I imagine Luke also wishes you’d left him alone. And his parents. Now why don’t you go
ahead and say your piece.”
“All right. There were conferences both before and after the Second World War ended. If
you remember any of your twentieth-century history, you’ll know about some of them.”

---

“I know about Yalta,” Tim said. “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin got together to basically
carve up the world.”
“Yes, that’s the famous one, but the most important meeting took place in Rio de Janeiro,
and no government was involved . . . unless you want to call the group that met—and their
successors down through the years—a kind of shadow government. They—
we
—knew about
the German children, and set about finding more. By 1950 we understood the usefulness of
BDNF. Institutes were set up, one by one, in isolated locations. Techniques were refined. They
have been in place for over seventy years, and by our count, they have saved the world from
nuclear holocaust over five hundred times.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Tim said harshly. “A joke.”
“It’s not. Let me give you one example. At the time that the children revolted at the Institute
in Maine—a revolt that spread like a virus to all the other Institutes—they had begun working
to cause the suicide of an evangelist named Paul Westin. Thanks to Luke Ellis, that man still
lives. Ten years from now, he will become a close associate of a Christian gentleman who will
become America’s Secretary of Defense. Westin will convince the Secretary that war is
imminent, the Secretary will convince the President, and that will eventually result in a
preemptive nuclear strike. Only a single missile, but it could start all the dominoes falling. That