Metafire

Then she continued, "But it was inadvertent. There was a crazy man in our midst. He's dead now."

Erisa's eyes widened. Randy became cold and hard, tightening the muscles in his arms. He stared at Angela. Then he turned his body to her in the microgravity of orbit and said, "You've opened a pretty big door here. Are you saying that you nuked the cities?"

"Yes."

"And you are saying it was an accident?"

"Yes."

Erisa couldn't stop herself. "But what were you trying to do when you nuked them? This doesn't make sense!"

"We are the children of Oppenheimer." She saw they were confused, so she explained, "He was the father of the bomb. Before he died, Oppenheimer became convinced that mankind would destroy itself. Some of us at Los Alamos continued to believe this was inevitable. Our goal was to stop fire with fire. We were out to make a firebreak. Burn a part to save the whole. We wanted to create the nuclear threat so real that self destruction could not happen. But Jack, believe this, the bombs were meant to be discovered. They were not meant to explode."