“Babel, what happened?” John asked again.
Babel turned and saw his father and it was as if he came out of a trance. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what am I doing here? Bill came to the site driving like a madman and said the whole place was burning down. I left the site and got here as fast as I could. So what happened?”
“One of the trucks in the parking lot caught fire and exploded.” Babel explained. “It spread to the other vehicles and then to the office.”
“Man,” John said, grabbing his forehead, “it’s a good thing we have insurance. But we’re cooked as far as the business. No pun intended.”
Babel nodded his head slowly. He knew exactly what his father meant. They had always intended on backing up their files but they had never gotten around to it. Every file they had was on the mainframe that had just been consumed by the fire. Blueprints, contracts, accounting, everything was gone with the fire.
“So what do we do now?” John asked his son.
“I guess we don’t have much choice. We’ll have to shut down until the insurance check comes in. Hopefully it will be enough to cover the loss. We can liquidate our equipment and inventory in the warehouse and I guess that will keep us afloat.”
“And all the employees…?”
“We won’t be able to afford to keep them.” Babel answered. “All the new projects were saved on the system. The customers won’t wait for us to recreate everything and with the delay, I don’t know that we can meet their deadlines. We’ve got two weeks left on our current contracts. After that, we’re done.”
John looked at his son. He knew that Babel was right. The only way that Babel could save his own income was to shut it down, lay off all the employees, and liquidate. Babel would be alright financially. But as John looked at Babel, he was more worried about Babel on a personal level. He had noticed something familiar about the way that Babel had stared blank-faced into the fire.
The next morning, John sat across from Babel at one of the downtown diners. They had finished their breakfast and were sipping their third cup of coffee. The coffee wasn’t the best but it was a bottomless cup. Plus it was always hot. John had drank worse during the war and so he never complained.
John studied his son. Babel was thirty-five years old. He was six foot, two hundred pounds. His athletic build had begun to show a belly a few years prior but for the most part he kept it in check. Babel had dark hair which he kept cut short and dark eyes. Babel was the spitting image of his father when he was the same age.
“You know son,” John started, and as he did, Babel looked up from his coffee, “when you were a boy, you were the most stubborn kid I ever met.” Babel smiled. “You would talk back to me no matter what I said. If I didn’t say something exactly the way you wanted it said, you’d start arguing. I always told your mother you’d make a great lawyer. I’d spank you, put you in time out, send you to your room. Nothing seemed to work. Then, one day I realized that you always spoke up because you had such strong convictions and needed to get whatever you felt off your chest.” John looked at his son. “Where’s that little boy now?”
Babel looked at his father and smiled. “That little boy is in here somewhere. I guess you think something is wrong and you wonder why I’m not telling you.” John didn’t answer. Babel paused for a moment. “Dad, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else before. Not even Mom.” He looked at his father seriously. “This is going to sound crazy. That fire that started in the truck?” He paused for a moment and then said, “I started the fire.”
“You started the fire? Why would you do that?”
“Let me finish.” Babel continued. “I started the fire…with my mind.” He didn’t look at his father in the eye as he finished the sentence.
He waited a moment and then finally did look up at his father. He expected to see disbelief in his father’s eyes but when he looked into his eyes, he saw understanding.
“I know you did, son.”
Babel was taken aback by his father’s comment. “What do you mean you know I did?”
John looked at his son seriously. “This wasn’t the first time was it?”
Babel shook his head. “It’s been happening since I was a kid.” John nodded his head in understanding. “Dad, did you know about this?”
“Son, I’ve always known about this.”
“What do you mean you’ve always known? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t time.”
“Dad…what…? Let me get this straight. You’ve known my entire life that I could start fires through thought but you didn’t do anything about it?”
Babel was getting excited, which John knew wasn’t good. “Listen, Babel, I know you’re upset but this isn’t the place to talk about this.”
“Upset? Why shouldn’t I be?”
John interrupted his son in the way he always had. Not by raising his voice but by looking directly into Babel’s eyes and speaking softly, forcing Babel to pay attention (an old Army trick to diffuse tense moments). “Babel, this isn’t the place or time to talk about this. Why don’t you come by my house tonight? I’ll throw a pizza in. You and I
