I can't seem to get the title to appear right. it should read:
The Cube2
If you haven't read The Cube, stop right here and go read it (Aug, 2011). If you have read The Cube, you may proceed to read.
Oh and if you are new to this blog, I write stories based on random things my friends throw at me. I don't really make up the plot in advance, I just let it pour out, and I really don't edit. So, if you find this un-professional, well that's because they aren't supposed to be. They are supposed to be fun.
This is a sequel to one of my more popular ones. Alex, my dear friend, talked me into writing a sequel over a very yummy lunch one day in OKC. It took me a year to finish. I never take that long to write these, but... I moved, got a demanding job, got injured, got divorced, got surgery, got hurt some more, took 12 credits summer semester... yeah, my creativity bucket has been on the fritz. So, sorry it took so long Alex... but then again, I'm glad I have something to give you right now of all times. Love you so much. (7/23/13)
The Cube2
Part 1- The Axis
We rounded the corner, our feet falling in a long practiced
unison on the concrete floor. I ran beside my husband, sweat beading my brow in
spite of the cool temperature. As much as I enjoyed our runs, I was glad we
were almost done with this one.
The once plain corridor stretched out before us and I
strained my eyes to make out my favorite spot in The Level One Never-ending Mural
of Dreams, Hope’s unicorn. It grew before us as we approached, the white blob
taking on its familiar shape, the golden horn becoming more distinct. She had
only been six when we painted this mural, and already her artistic skills had
surpassed my own. Now that she was ten she was taxing even her art teacher’s
ability to help her improve.
I was so proud of my daughter.
I was proud of my son too, but in a way as completely
different as they were from each other. John was just like his father, strong,
gentle, noble, handsome, and completely devoted to me, as all little boys
should be. Aunt Marsha had big plans for him already, and the poor little
soldier was only five.
Andrew’s pace slowed and I matched it, glad to finally be on
our cool-down lap. As my muscles cooled down my brain started up, going through
the list of things to do that day. Wake the kids and get them to school, head
for the office, then there was the meeting after lunch; which included all the
Department Heads, the Mayor, and the Council.
It was bound to be dry. Everything had gone fairly smoothly
over the last several years. I’d even gotten the blue paint out of Harris about
five years ago. Well… I say I did,
but really what it came down to was Lynn told him she was naming her daughter
Azure and not Emily if she had to hear about it over one more dinner.
Never argue with a pregnant woman, especially not that one.
The round innocent face, the blonde angel hair, the way she bursts into tears
at the slightest thing… isn’t she the best best-friend a girl can have? I love
her. We have plans for John and Emily, by the way, just don’t tell Reynolds. I
think he’d die that she was talking about his four year old’s wedding. When
Lynn had to requisition some training bras for their twelve year old, Brian
nearly had an aneurism.
It was crazy to think that twelve years had gone by already.
I didn’t feel twelve years older. I didn’t feel like a thirty year old mother
of two with stretch marks and a career. I felt like… Tilly, off-beat, up-beat,
and down-right sexy Tilly who had changed in only one way, the world was no
longer about me, and thank goodness for that!
We reached the inclinator and started into our stretches
while Moua rattled off Andrew’s morning update through the speaker. I
half-listened while my thoughts returned to my own day, but caught the end,
which was my favorite part. “And that’s about it, Sir,” Moua said.
Sir, it was the
loveliest word. Andrew didn’t brag about his promotions, but I was very proud
of him. Certain people, for obvious reasons, say Andrew got the promotions
because he married well, but I know differently. He got them because he was
talented, intelligent, trustworthy, humble, hardworking, patient, and the hottest
man in all of Nine.
Okay so that last bit didn’t matter much to anyone but me,
but that didn’t make it any less true. My man was absolutely edible… I mean…
incredible… yeah… ehem.
We got the kids up a little late, so we dressed, fed,
brushed and rushed down to the school, only remembering when we got off the
inclinator that Hope had a project due. Andrew looked at me, and I knew he was
going to offer to go and get it, so I beat him to it. If one of us was going to
be late to work it shouldn’t be the one in the department that actually cared
about clocks.
I was headed back down the inclinator, solar system in hand,
when it happened the first time. The familiar whirring B Flat tone I knew so
well lurched up to an F as the inclinator just about dropped out from under me.
I caught myself against the glass, failed to save Neptune from pulling a Pluto,
and then looked in shock at the camera; as if my husband was still directly on
the other side instead of several links up the chain.
I almost demanded an explanation out of the access
specialist, but then realized that if it was anything more than a minor glitch,
I would know about it before he would. There were certain advantages to being a
big wig, even one who had to hastily re-glue a planet in the school supply
closet and thus was even later for work than usual.
I was still peeling little translucent strips out of my
fingerprint when I walked through the door, so I didn’t even notice the
irritated look on Celia’s face until she spoke.
“You forgot your phone again,” she said, “and I’ll have to
get it for you because the meeting has been moved up, to NOW.”
“Which meeting?” I asked, but of course there was only one
meeting today over which I had no say-so on its timing. “Seriously? I haven’t
even finished typing my notes!”
Celia mirrored my exasperated expression without taking her
eyes off her screen, “I’ve got half of the morning rescheduled, but I can’t
seem to pin Harris’s office down to another time.”
“Well, it’s not like the stuff hasn’t been molding out in
that cave for decades,” I said going over to my desk and grabbing my tablet. “A
few more days won’t make a difference. Thanks for handling all this for me,” I
added heading back out the door.
“I’m holding your phone hostage!” she called after me.
“Have I ever failed to produce chocolate?” I called back
through the closing door. The poor thing, I’d give her a raise, but that
doesn’t exactly happen on the credit system.
~
Naturally I was the last to arrive at the meeting, but this time I
wasn’t the only one looking a bit frazzled. There was a strained pitch to the
whispered conversations going on around the room, a tightness across brows that
hadn’t been tight in years. Okay, I
thought to myself, apparently this
elevator thing IS something more than a glitch. I just couldn’t imagine
what.
My taking my seat was a signal of sorts, one that had developed
unintentionally over the years, and just as I booted up my screen the Mayor clicked
her gavel for the meeting to begin. Mayor Pope did it with her usual efficient
air, and I hoped that in the upcoming election she ran for a second term. Next
to my mother and aunt she was the most capable woman I knew.
Speaking of which, both my aunt and my mother were present today,
which was odd. Usually only one of them came. As they predicted their jobs had
gotten easier and easier over the years. It had gotten to the point where my
mother had become a regular fixture in the Library and had often been found
helping out in the school, which Hope and John loved. She was an excellent grandmother,
but today she was back to business with a vengeance, and to tell you the truth
that made me a little nervous.
The others settled back into their seats, assuming the order
demanded by the Mayor’s Gavel. I called up my notes on my screen and set my
hands to the keys, trying to be ready for anything, guessing I wasn’t. I was
right.
“The meeting will now come to order,” Mayor Pope began. She
glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room. “Recording now,” the voice
of an access specialist said from the room’s speaker. We recorded all of our
meetings with the council. Sometimes I found it annoying to have to weigh my
words so carefully, sometimes I saw a distinct advantage in everyone knowing
there was a clear record of exactly how cooperative or un-cooperative they had
been.
“The record will show all nine council members, Mayor, and all
nine Department Heads in attendance,” Mayor Pope continued, “with the addition
of… which Co-Head of IRC-IDC are we listing as extra today?” My mother raised her
hand briefly and the Mayor said, “Ambassador Moren.”
“The regularly scheduled monthly meeting has been moved up at the
request of Director Foreman of Power, and therefore his order of business shall
precede all others. Director?”
Foreman cleared his throat and leaned into his microphone, “Thank
you, Madame Mayor. I apologize for the disruption in everyone’s schedules, but
I felt this warranted immediate attention.”
He then started in on a lengthy and technical report that would
have put me to sleep if I hadn’t been curious about what the point was and WHEN
he was going to get to it. He had jazzed it up a little with graphs and charts,
but I really didn’t get why we needed the re-cap of the weather on the surface
over the last 12 years.
They were all over the place. First things had gotten hot and
muggy. The winters that usually covered
this area in deep piles of Olympic grade powder had instead brought monsoon
like rains and continued plant growth. It had been that lush, green world that
Andrew had shown me the day he proposed.
After that, things got a little nippy, alright, downright cold.
After the third winter had failed to melt away I figured we were in an ice age.
Everyone seemed to concur, as all the other Resorts reported similar
conditions. I tried not to worry about it, but that was when I started pushing
the fantasy bit with the community. I wanted them to start thinking of positive
outcomes to all of this, outcomes that were wildly different, but still a
future on the surface we would thrive in.
So wasn’t it a good thing that the temperature levels had been
climbing for months? Didn’t this mean that the frozen vegetation had a greater
chance? I didn’t get why Foreman’s expression was so grave.
“Due to the increased energy output from the generators on the
underground river we have had to divert the power along…” Foreman droned and I
knitted my brow trying to figure out the complex electrical schematic on the
big screen. Why couldn’t he just SAY the
batteries are full and we are wasting power and then get on with it.
Finally he did. He explained that after the surge that had jolted
my inclinator this morning they had shut down half the generators. And I’ve been listening for 30 mninutes, for
that? I thought.
“How long do you expect the water table to remain this saturated?”
My mother asked.
“That’s the problem,” Harris interjected just as Foreman opened
his mouth, “The water table. It’s getting too high.”
Foreman nodded, “All of the Resorts have reported similar issues,
but it is resorts eleven and four which are in the most immediate danger.”
“Danger?” a council woman asked out loud while the word
reverberated in my own head.
Several of the Department Heads exchanged glances, but it was my
Aunt that answered the question, “Of flooding, or to be more precise, of a
Great Flood, one that might grow to cover the whole earth.”
~
After about a decade of shocked silence Foreman shuffled his feet.
I had been looking back and forth between my Aunt and Mother, holding my breath
and begging inside for the twin tightness in their jaws to disappear. Oh no, oh no, oh no, I thought. This isn’t good. If they are that stressed
about it that means they don’t have a plan. If they don’t have a plan it means
Grandpa Moren didn’t plan for this. If Grandpa Moren didn’t plan for this… oh
no, oh no, no, no, no, there has to be a way out!
It took every ounce of maturity in my body to remain in my seat. I
wanted to run, I wanted to run to the school, grab my babies, and run. But
where would I run to? There was nowhere to go, there was no safe place in the
world. This was it, we were Noah without the ark in a concrete cave that was
about to get flooded.
“So,” the Mayor said slowly, like she didn’t trust her voice any
more than I trusted mine, “What’s the plan?”
“That’s exactly what we are here to come up with,” Aunt Marsha
said in that nearly forgotten militaristic tone.
“Come up with?” Councilman Adams asked in a tone that jarred the
nerves. “COME UP WITH?” he repeated nearly shouting. His face was well on its
way to purple. “YOU MEAN I MOVED MY FAMILY INTO THIS HOLE IN THE GROUND SO YOU
COULD LET US ALL DROWN?”
General Heinz looked thunderous but his tone was measured when he
said, “Mr. Adams, your family has survived a dozen year longer than the rest of
the human race thanks to this organization, and getting angry will not prolong
the time any farther.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Adams growled, “All high and mighty
in your 95+ apartment, while the rest of us are on 45 and 53.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I burst out. “Do you honestly think we’d
let anyone drown first down there? Think about it! The generators are what…
fifty stories down? The trees are all on 27! Who says we would even survive to
drown if we ALL lived on 100?!”
“The point is,” Reynolds said, “not to panic. We need to pool our
resources, work together, and come up with some options.”
“I’m sorry,” Councilwoman Moralez said. “I haven’t been reading
the reports on the surface because I don’t really understand them. Is it even
an option? Is the air still toxic?”
“To tell you the truth,” my mother said, “We don’t know. The instruments
on the surface have been giving faulty readings for months now. It’s the same
at all the Resorts.”
Adams crossed his arms and humph-ed. I thought my aunt was going
to deck him, I felt like decking him.
Did the man seriously think this was deliberate negligence?
“So, there’s no way to fix that either?” Councilman Lin asked,
pushing his glasses up on his tiny nose.
“There may be,” Aunt Marsha said looking over at Harris and then
Packer.
“Like I said before,” Harris said, “It’s risky, but with this kind
of melt off it may be possible.”
“Risky how?” Mayor Pope asked. “What have you talked about?”
“We send someone up to the surface,” Harris said.
“Or we send a robot,” Packer added.
“A robot could malfunction,” Harris said in a way that made me
think this conversation was on its fiftieth run around the idea table.
“A human would be stranded in de-tox for months,” Packer said. “We
should try the robot first.”
“Either way, we break the seal,” Dr. Reed said quietly. He had his
hands folded together in front of his face, his forefingers sticking up like a
steeple. He pressed them to his lips, forbidding the worst to be spoken. What
if it let something in?
Would it matter in the end?
There was so much to weigh, so many lives at risk, it was hard to
think through the panic that was swimming in my veins. I was sick to my
stomach, but there wasn’t time to give in to the panic. I had to be strong,
like Andrew.
Andrew.
Fear surged through me, and then I fought back tears at the next
thought. If the sent someone, Heinz would insist on a soldier. How would they
pick from all the members of the Security Department, and what family would be
left behind?
“Couldn’t you build a robot that would take accurate readings?” I
asked. “I mean they sent those robots to Mars, right? They got all kinds of
Data from there.”
“Yes, with limited success,”
Harris said. “We don’t really know what it will face up there, so it’s
hard to plan.”
“Yeah, remember when that one robot landed wrong and couldn’t even
get around?” Councilman Washington asked. “It was a wasted mission.”
“And we would have exposed ourselves to contaminants,” Councilman
Muskowvitz added.
“We could seal off the elevator on this end, right?” Mayor Pope
asked.
“It’s not the elevator shaft,” Harris said shaking his head. “That’s
just the last seal. The door to 27, the door at the top of the shaft, the hall,
the living room, the outer wall,” he said as he ticked them off on his fingers.
“Each was set up as a containment area. The question has always been how well
the containment would last through the unpredictable events of the cataclysm.”
“Well how do we even know if the elevator will work? I mean is the
cube even there?” Councilman Ivins asked.
“It is, unless an avalanche took it,” I said, then I blushed. Not
many people knew that Andrew and I had been up at the crystal many times over
the years. These days you couldn’t see anything through the snow built up
around the top of the mountain, but the cube had been there a few years ago.
“How do you know that?” Adams asked.
“It’s there, we would have known if it had been ripped off,” Harris
said dismissively. “I still don’t think any robot we send could be properly equipped
for all the problems it could encounter up there.”
“So send two robots,” Councilwoman Gutpa said, “Or three, or four.
Safety in numbers, load them in the elevator, send them all up and they can
help each out. Surely you can figure out how to control them independently of
one another.”
There was a little boy twinkle in Packer’s eye at the thought of
building four robots. Harris just looked like he wished he had thought of that
before a woman had. I didn’t care what it did to his pride, as long as we got
those readings.
~
Part 2 – The Algorithm
If only it was as simple as putting a remote control car or two in
the elevator and pushing the up button. No, it couldn’t be. It had to be
complicated, complicated by part fabrication, postulation of obstacles, and
above all keeping it quiet so the children wouldn’t be frightened.
Keeping it from the adults for more than a few days had been
completely impossible in such an intertwined community. Between the leaders,
their spouses, the need-to-knows and their spouses, everyone had an inkling
within the day and my mother was busy putting rumors to rest by morning.
Anyone with any tinkering experience was called in, and we were happy
to find that Andrew’s friend Henderson in Access had helped his father build battle
robots for years. The gangly blonde looked more like he belonged behind a comic
book shop counter than hunkered down in Nine trying to save the human race, but
he took on the task with an awkward kind of assurance.
Andrew spent a lot of time working with them, too. It wasn’t his
department, but he worked better with Henderson than anyone else. He also had a
rough knowledge of engines and mechanics from his time on his Grandfather’s
farm, and besides he wasn’t one to sit back when there was action to be taken.
It wasn’t in his nature.
I popped in late one night with a cooler full of drinks, hoping
they would call it a night once they noticed the hour. It wasn’t that I wanted
to slow them down, but I was sure they weren’t doing their best work during
hours 18 and 19 of the workday. Even heroes need sleep you know.
They were hunched over this huge frame on the counter with a chain
saw at one end, wheels at the other, and wires spiraling off in every
direction. There were gadgets and gismos lined up in rows along the table and I
couldn’t decide which scent was more powerful, that of metal, grease, or unwashed
man. I felt like I was trespassing in an alien world.
“Is that the chain-saw from the cave?” I asked.
Henderson jumped a bit, he had been so involved with his work, “Man,
you have a habit of appearing out of no-where, don’t you?” He glanced at Andrew
before returning to whatever he was doing with his soldering iron, “Does she
sneak up on you like that at home?”
“Nawh,” Andrew said reaching a grubby hand for the sports drink I
offered him. “I keep track of her, somebody has to keep her out of trouble.”
Henderson laughed, “More like she gets you into trouble. Remember
that time you lit those candles in Access? Larson was out for blood, man.”
“You got in trouble for that?” I asked him. He’d never mentioned
it. I hadn’t even known it was against the rules.
“Are you kidding?” Henderson asked again with a snort in his
laugh. “Man he was so smooth… where’d you get that charred video card anyway?”
Andrew smiled and shook his head, “Now who’s getting me in
trouble?” he asked passing his old buddy a drink. Henderson cast me a nervous
glance before chugging down half of his preferred energy drink.
“Kids in bed?” Andrew asked me wiping his hands on a rag that was
just as dirty.
I skirted his reach for my waist and grabbed him a clean cloth
from the far counter. I passed it to him as I answered, “They’ve been asleep
for hours, Peters. Don’t you have a clock in this hole?”
“Used to,” he replied with that sexy secretive smile.
“Used it for parts,” Henderson said bending back over his work.
“You’ve used everything for parts,” I said looking around at the
collection of gutted appliances, yard tools, and things well beyond my powers
of identification.
“Most of it was in the cave,” Andrew said, his hands now clean
enough to hold. “That place is like a genie for people with nefarious plans.”
“It’s always served us well,” said with an impish grin, thinking of
the number of times we had taken long amorous breaks while searching through
that no-man’s land of cast off treasures. I ran my thumb up and down the back
of his thumb and gave his hand a squeeze. “You two going to call it a night
anytime soon, or should I bring you breakfast?”
Andrew’s loyalties were split, he wanted to be with me of course,
but he wasn’t one to shirk a work so important. I could see the indecision in
his eyes. Henderson had no such conflict of priorities and went on working.
“Maybe after we get the arm outfitted on #3 here,” Andrew said apologetically.
“It shouldn’t be too long.”
I doubted that. The nights had gotten longer and longer over the
last two weeks. I kissed his cheek and left him, wondering what time he would
fall into bed tonight, wondering if he would get home before the kids woke up, wondering
deep down if this was a waste of the remaining nights of our lives.
I wasn’t sure I was going to get any more sleep than my husband.
~
The tray on the paint had been dipped into by so many brushes that
the patches of original color were just little rings amidst the secondary and
tertiary hues swirled and streaked all over the surface. My mind wasn’t on the
paint though, and it wasn’t on the mural we were painting on the south wall of
level two. My mind was 25 levels up where the robots were being loaded onto the
elevator, while the majority of Nine was here, distracting the children.
“Can we go now?” John asked his father. “I finished my sheep.”
“Hope isn’t finished yet,” Andrew said looking over to where Hope
was carefully depicting the way the light at the pinnacle looked through the branches
of her favorite tree.
John looked from the painting, to his father, back to the painting
and his sister’s deliberate and careful movements. He sighed deeply and sat down beside me with a thump. “Can’t
we just let her finish it alone? It’s not like she needs us here, she doesn’t
even know we’re here.”
He was right you know. When Hope was painting she lost track of
all else, time, people, hunger, I was lucky she breathed. Normally I would have
packed up when all the other kids were done with their simple paintings and
then let her find her way home. Not today though, today nobody left level 2
until all the evidence of what was happening on level 27 was gone.
Andrew challenged John to a race around the level. John was always
up for trying to beat his father in a footrace. Several of the more boisterous
children joined them as they made their way down the corridor, to the relief of
the crowd in general.
I waited by Hope, watching the way she filled in each vein with
the utmost care. She looked almost spellbound, and I would have thought her in
a trance if it were not for the furrow between her brows that belied her
concentration. I wished I had focus like that.
“She never ceases to amaze me,” my mother said, startling me. I
looked up and smiled then quirked an eyebrow at her. She nodded almost imperceptibly
and my belly twisted inside. The robots were off. It was time to report to my
station.
“Baby,” I said touching Hope lightly on the shoulder to get her
attention. “I’m going to go look at the rest of the mural with Grandma. Daddy’s
around somewhere, but there’s no hurry. We’ll come get you for dinner.”
She nodded mutely, not taking her eyes off her work, and I took
the helping hand my mother offered. We left her there and walked along the
corridor, praising young artists as we went, our simple presence a silent signal
that it was safe to disperse. I was proud of our citizens for putting on such a
good show of festivity and calm at such an unnerving moment in Resort history.
We finished our walk up and down the corridor then took the
inclinator in turn with the other ascending parties. It stopped again and again
and again to let other passengers off, but that was okay. There was no way they
were starting without us.
We had to wait when we got there; several of the Council Members
hadn’t arrived yet. We waited in tense silence some of us watching the door,
waiting for them to come through, the rest staring at the screen where the
camera on #2 was trained on the dark line where the elevator doors met.
Councilman Young opened the door and held it open so Councilwoman
Benitez could come through first. She looked a little out of breath, and I
wondered if I looked that flustered every time I showed up late for meetings.
The looked around, taking stock of the fact that they were the last to arrive,
and then we all turned our focus to the screen.
“Access, is everyone in place?” Aunt Marsha asked.
“Affirmative,” my husband’s voice answered. It looked like
dropping John off with his little friend had been a smooth transition after the
footrace. I was glad that, even if he couldn’t be in the room with me, we were
sharing this experience.
"Henderson?” Aunt Marsha asked the lank form at the controls
in front of us.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” he replied. I wished I could ignore the
layer of doubt in his response.
“Then please proceed,” Aunt Marsha directed.
“Opening elevator doors at Cube Level 2,” Andrew said, and again I
twisted up inside at the level of worry that I heard. I doubted the others even
noticed it, but I knew him too well. He was just as worried as I was.
The little dark line on the screen started spreading, growing
wider and wider until the whole screen was a massive black blank. “Now let’s
see if the lights still work,” Andrew said. There was a short pause and then a
flick, flick, flicker before the lights came on in full. I had to blink against
the sudden brightness. Someone sneezed.
The room before us was familiar, though I knew I hadn’t been in
this one. This was the second floor of The Cube, and I had only been on the
first. We needed to use #1 here, at the sample portal. It was the safest way to
test the conditions outside.
We watched through the camera on #2 as #1 rolled through the door
and into the box hallway. #2 moved behind it and they both approached the far
doorway. Henderson controlled them all with the skill of a long time video game
addict.
The robots halted.
“Closing elevator doors,” Andrew said. I heard the soft rolling sound,
which halted after two seconds and there was a slight sucking sound as the seal
engaged. I imagined the little light going from risky-red to good-to-go-green.
“Opening Upper-Lab door,” Andrew said. There was a soft click.
Henderson worked the controls for #1 and a long metal arm came into view. It
pulled on the door lever, then pushed the door open. The lights struggled less
in this room, and in moments #1 and #2 were though the door. I heard it click
closed behind them as the robots moved across the floor. “Door sealed,” Andrew
confirmed as the camera turned and approached the exterior wall of the room.
Set in the plain white concrete surface was a round metal plate.
It was about the size of the plate behind my shower knob, but looked more like
the things that R2-D2 kept plugging into in Star Wars. #1 extended its collection
arm and plugged in, in a similar way.
I held my breath as #1’s little electronic lungs sucked in the
atmosphere from outside The Cube.
A guttural sound of frustration came from Henderson’s lips, and
looking at his screen, I knew why. I had watched enough of the development that
I knew what the read-out meant as soon as I saw the water saturation and
temperature levels of the sample. The cube was still under a snow cap.
Henderson explained this to the others. I tried to ignore the
tense discussion going on around me and watched carefully for the other signs
Andrew had explained to me a few nights before. Sure it wasn’t anything
conclusive, but it was a start, and so far I was encouraged.
“What are you looking at?” Gupta asked over my shoulder, so close that
I could smell the argan oil in her long black hair.
“Well,” I said. “I don’t pretend to understand all of it, but I
haven’t seen anything flagged as radioactive come up yet.”
“Can we trust that?” she asked. “This sample doesn’t contain much
air, and who knows how many feet of snow there are.”
“It’s not conclusive,” I said. “But you know me, any opportunity
to look at the bright side.”
“Are we ready for the drill?” Andrew asked over the hubbub of
conversation.
“Affirmative,” Aunt Marsha replied. “Commence secondary procedure.”
Plan B, I
thought. I hope we don’t have to get
through the whole list.
#1 backed away from the wall, at the command of Henderson’s nimble
fingers. The camera swiveled around as #2 took position by the portal. As the
camera rose it tilted downward. We watched as the drill apparatus on #2 engaged
with the portal. Then with a loud grinding and lots of vibration of the camera the
4 foot long drill bit started churning through the snow.
First there was a puff of snow thrown backward, and then I watched
spots of water form all over the apparatus as they were thrown back from the
portal. In a few minutes the end of the bit had been reached, and Henderson
reversed its direction. It was time to switch robots again.
As the camera tilted up and away I saw that a puddle had formed on
the floor below the wall, was it toxic water? Toxic or not #2 tracked it all
over the floor and Henderson rolled #1 into it. The second set of electronic
lungs sniffed deeply of the air from the hole.
The analysis started scrolling by, and so many of us were reading
over Henderson’s shoulder that he hit a couple of buttons to split the main
screen and bring the readout up for all to see. The gobbley-gook of science
terms scrolled upward, and not able to understand most of it I looked at the
little bars beside the words, normal, normal, normal, high, low, but only
moderately so, if only I knew what the variances all meant. I needed someone to
translate it for me.
I looked over at Dr. Reed and watched his face as he read all of
the information carefully. He looked cautious, like he wasn’t going to make a
decision without a lot more information. Still, I would take cautious over crestfallen
any day of the week.
“Are we sure this isn’t a pocket full of old air? It still looks
pretty cold,” Dr. Reed said.
“Well,” Henderson said tilting his head to the side. “Maybe we can
take a peek.” He moved #1 away from the hole again and then messed with the camera
angle again and again, trying to get it to line up exactly with the hole.
“There!” Shouted Adams as we all caught our breath at the flash of
light.
Henderson carefully backed up the control until the distant speck
of like beamed at us from the screen. Four
feet, I thought. Less than four feet
of snow between us and the sky.
“Peters, Henderson,” Aunt Marsha said. “While the diagnostics of
the air sample continue, please proceed with Phase Two.”
The screen split again, and the camera on #3 showed the dark line
of the elevator doors to us again. The elevator was whirring, and soon my
husband announced that he was opening the doors. Darkness, light, the boxy hall
with a door on each wall, the robots rolled forward. Peter closed the elevator
doors, and we waited for the suction to complete before he opened the door on
the far side of the hall.
As #3 opened the far door I remembered pulling it closed behind
Smith twelve years before, the night my mother had come. Had I been the last
one to touch that door? How things had changed since I had closed that door on
the world.
#3 rolled through the door, followed closely by the satellite dish
topped #4. The plan was to plow or cut our way out, get readings, and hook into
the few satellites not taken out during the war. The dish on top of the cube
had been buried in snow for years, but once again, the stuff in my cave had come
in handy.
“Lights, Andrews?” My aunt prompted.
“Not responding, I’m afraid,” Peter said.
Well, we
can’t expect everything to work right, I thought.
“Harris, we’ve got a light bulb out,” Packer said wryly.
“Packer, we’ve got a communication glitch in the line between
Access and the socket,” Harris threw right back.
The laughter was as weak as the joke, but it did make me feel a
tiny bit better to be reminded that this was all in the hands of capable men.
We refocused on the screen, trying to make out anything by the light coming out
of the hall.
“Attempting to activate kitchen and dining area lights,” my
husband said. Then added, “Not working either, sorry.”
“Let’s just hope the door works,” Aunt Marsha said, and I could
tell she was a little worried it wouldn’t.
“Trying the patio door lock,” Andrew said. A tiny red light
appeared in the distance.
“Watch out for the couch,” my mother said to Henderson as he
rolled #3 forward. He skirted the couch and headed for the glass door that
separated the open floor plan living area from the patio. As #3 approached the
red light moved around on the screen, then moved steadily upward. He slowed #3
to a crawl and squinted at the screen, looking for the handle of the door along
the wall of glass.
“Gotcha,” he said, and reached forward with the arm to grab the
handle.
~
~
I squinted in the dark and watched as the grippers closed around
the handle and pulled. Suddenly there was a deafening crashing and the screen erupted
in a trillion little specks of light. I wasn’t the only one who jumped away
from the screen in fright.
“What in the blazes was that?” Adams roared even as Henderson
called out his apologies.
“Sorry! Sorry!” he said. “I guess the glass wasn’t rated for these
temperatures.”
“Well, you could have warned us,” Adams grumbled as the rest of us
took calming breaths to steady our nerves.
“Sorry,” Henderson repeated but when he turned away I could tell
by the look on his face that he was thinking something more along the lines of “Like
I knew the door was going to shatter!” followed by a few choice words. He
directed his energy into lowering the shovel on #3 and clearing a path through
the gleaming pile of safety glass.
Once the robots were past the mound of glass it was only moments
until they reached the roll up door which opened out onto the mountainside. “Opening
blast door,” Andrew said, “this may be noisy, if it works.” I held my breath
hoping the electronics would not fail us
again.
There was a massive screeching, which only quick thinking on
Henderson’s part silenced. His nimble fingers had muted the feed even while he
watched with us as the dim light showed an ever expanding strip of white
appearing along the floor. The snow pack reflected the dim light from the hall,
but we could not see any light coming in from the other side. I wondered how
much thicker the wall of snow was down here on the first floor of the cube, as
opposed to the 4 feet at waist height on the second floor.
There was no way to know until we
started digging, so the stopped the door at about 4 feet up and Henderson
got to work with the chain saw and shovel on #3 while the rest of us supervised
uselessly. Andrew offered to bring down #2 and use the arm on that, but
Henderson said they’d just be bumping into each other if he did. I went and
found a seat. This could take all night, thank goodness I’d asked Celia to check
on Hope, someone had to make sure she ate, and I couldn’t very well leave.
Henderson had turned the sound back on, probably to irritate
Adams, and the sounds emitted from the speakers were almost alien. There was the
chugging whirr of the chain saw, which squeaked and screamed when it hit the
hard packed snow, there was the chunk, thunk, crunch of the shovel as he
alternately pushed and pulled at the loosened chunks. It was definitely hard on
the nerves, and so I tried to tune it out and think of other things, until a
cuss word cut into the awkward rhythm and the work halted.
“Frozen?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah... we’re gonna need #2 until it gets thawed out,” Henderson
said grumpily.
“Right on it,” Andrew said and Henderson started moving #2 to the
elevator.
“Sure didn’t take long,” Henderson grumbled. “Probably wearing out
the blades anyway.”
It wasn’t long before #3 was warming by the hairdryer mounted on
the back of #4 and #2 was picking away at the upper edge of the tunnel, but
unfortunately that didn’t last long either. They kept switching machines, but
the longer they kept at it the less effected their inventions were against the
snow.
If Councilman Adams looked frustrated it was nothing compared to
the look on Henderson’s face about the fifteen time the chainsaw froze up. The
vein in his temple was so large I thought it was going to burst. I sent a text
message to Andrew stating exactly that and asking him what to do about it.
“Excuse me, Doctor Reed?” my husband’s voice came over the
speakers. “It looks like #1 has finished its full evaluation of the sample. Do
you need us to take a break to give you a minute to look it over?”
“That would be very helpful,” Dr. Reed said from his station. “If
I could have half an hour or so, do you mind?” he asked, looking at Henderson
with the kind of humble respect that could diffuse anyone.
“Yeah, sure,” Henderson, said in confusion. “I’m just gonna go for
a walk.”
“Hey bring me a drink while you are up,” Andrew said.
I followed Henderson out into the hall. “Oh, were you going to see
Peters?” Henderson asked uncomfortably.
“Nawh,” I said. “I’m going to go vent to my assistant about what
an idiot Adams is,” I whispered. “Plus, I’ve totally got to go pee.” The smile
on his face as he walked away made me feel a lot better about how the rest of
the project was going to go, the poor man.
Half an hour later we were all back in the room and Dr. Reed was
still pouring over the samples. We waited quietly, although not very patiently,
for him to make his decision. He was a careful and thoughtful man, which had
been GREAT when I was pregnant, but right now I wished he would hurry up a bit.
Finally he looked up and sighed. “I am cautiously optimistic about
the air quality on the surface,” the room started buzzing and he raised his
hand to silence it. “We only have just these two samples though, and we don’t
know if it is consistent with the rest of the air in this area, or if this area
is consistent with the air around the world. We must proceed as if any air from
the outside is polluted and dangerous until we have more data.”
“What about the radiation levels?” my mother asked.
“Both samples show radiation at acceptable levels, but again, that’s
not enough information to say it is safe.”
“So, if we suited a man up,” General Heinz said, “We could send
him up to evaluate, or to address any problems that might arise with the equipment.”
Dr. Reed took a long deep breath and let it out
slowly, “Only as a last resort, and only if he goes through decontamination on
the way back.”
~
Suited a
man up, I didn’t like the sound of that. I understood it would be necessary
at some point, but it made me worry. If Andrew wasn’t such an up-and-coming,
reliable, level-headed trooper I might have felt a little better about it.
Plus, he was family, and while in most families that meant skipping out on
things that others had to do, it meant the opposite in our family.
Maybe his metal leg will exempt him, maybe it won’t work with the suit,
I thought. It was a slim hope. It was really a paper thin hope, considering how
resourceful Resort people tended to be, but I clung to it.
While I worried I watched the screen as Henderson resumed his
work. The break had done him some good, and while I had not really abused Adams
to Celia, I was sure that Andrew had let Henderson vent. I just hoped this didn’t
go much longer or we would need another excuse.
After another hour or so I noticed that I could see better than I
could before. The rough square of the snow tunnel was lighter at the end. I was
about to point this out when the words were swept out of my mouth by a sudden
spark of brilliant light.
That spark, though short, energized the whole room. Henderson sat
up in his chair and rubbed his hands together. He backed out #3 and sent #2
into the tunnel, arm raised for the strike. Pick, pick, pick, pick and it was
through! Light poured in, stinging my eyes and filling my heart. I joined the
cheers and then laughed to myself as Adams pounded Henderson so heartily on the
back I was afraid the lank hero might snap in two.
It still took some time after that to open the tunnel completely,
but it passed in the blink of an eye as we all sat back and enjoyed the ever
expanding, bright blue portal. I watched the screen eagerly, waiting for
something to appear below the blue. I wasn’t sure what I hoped for, green would
have been nice to see, but it would have worried me about the melt off. What is good news at this point? I
wondered, but I didn’t ask. There were so many variables. It was better to see
what we had and then go from there.
As it turned out, I didn’t even notice the distant snowcapped mountain
until Councilman young asked if anyone knew anything about the peak. I had thought
it another chunk of snow. I squinted and sure enough there was a section that
didn’t jostle about while #3’s shovel tore at the pile.
My mom reached over to the panel and expertly navigated through
the computer until she found the things she was looking for. She split the
screen again and displayed a picture of the view from the patio of The Cube,
and also the geological information on the distant peak. We all read it, but
some of us got more out of it than others.
“So at that elevation, it would normally have had snow until early
summer, right?” Young asked.
My mother and aunt exchanged glances, and Aunt Marsha nodded, “I’ve
seen it still there as late as mid-June.” My mother started typing on the
computer again and soon she had found a database with national park weather
information for the area. I looked at this month. In early March the whole
mountain would still be white. I looked at the temperature charts on the screen.
Would they match, or would it be too hot?
“Can we get #1 down to run another analysis?” I asked. “The air
has been exchanging in that room for a while now.”
Andrew and Mom worked together to get #1 down the elevator while
Henderson continued cutting a path through the snow with #3. Each trip down the
tunnel the camera on #3 showed a little more of the outside world, until at
last #3 was able to plow forward, shovel down,
and meet little opposition.
We were on the lawn.
Henderson reached over and operated the controls to move the
camera around. The snow sloped down in front of us sharply. We had dug clear to
the end of the lawn area and our precious robot stood right on the edge of the
mountain slope. The camera tilted down to look in the valley belowe, and my
breath caught at the sight.
Green. There was lots and lots of green.
I didn’t know how it was possible after the ice age, but somehow
the evergreens had survived. There were stately pines and shrubbery, moss and
even some small plants that were hard to distinguish at this distance, but
looked leafy to me. I shook my head in awe. How could all this life have
survived?
My Aunt walked over to another computer and started typing away.
It wasn’t long before the eleven black boxes on her screen came to life,
showing grainy images from the other Resorts. I watched as she relayed the
information we had, issued cautions, and then allowed them to view the feed
coming in from #3.
“Have you been able to establish contact with any satellites yet?”
one of the faces asked in a thick Scottish accent. No doubt he was anxious to
get that information. His Resort was one of the ones with the lowest altitude.
“We are about to clear an area for the dish, if we can get a signal
I will relay the feed immediately,” Aunt Marsha said.
Henderson took that cue and trained the camera on the task at
hand. He expanded an area to the side of the tunnel, then backed #3 out so #4
could take its place on the hillside. With expert hands he guided them out simultaneously,
using the camera on #3 to make sure #4 was taking a safe route.
“Searching for satellites,” Andrew said. The dish on #4 moved
slowly, panning the sky. “YES!” he exclaimed. “We found one, a functioning
weather satellite. I’m attempting to hack it now.”
“Watch out,” I said, “They take hacking seriously here.”
The others were puzzled by my comment, but Andrew chuckled as he
worked. I could hear the clicking of his keys over the microphone.
“Need some help?” Henderson asked, after a minute.
“I think I’ve just about, GOT IT!” he said triumphantly. The
screen in front of us split again and my Aunt’s fingers flicked to relay the
data to the rest of the resorts. It took me a while to figure out what was
what. I watched as Andrew browsed through the layer functions until he found
one that showed a direct camera feed.
I didn’t recognize what I saw. The familiar shapes of land masses were
gone. The white areas were rimmed with green, but the disconcerting thing was
the blue, blue everywhere. The Gulf of Mexico extended until an ice sheet that
spread down from Canada, there was a long island to the east that had to be the
Appalachian Mountains, but they looked more like Japan now, sticking at an
angle out of the ice cap.
Aunt Marsha started clicking again, splitting off a section of the
main screen again and bringing up a topographical map of the way the United
States used to be. The east coast was gone. Texas was gone. Gone, gone, gone,
the world was gone.
“It is as I suspected,” the Scott said, “Everything below 400
meters is under water.”
400
meters, that was what? 1200 feet? I thought. There goes the bread basket of America. There goes most of the farmable
land in the world.
~
I looked over my shoulder to see how everyone was taking this.
Gupta had a pinched look on her face. Benitez had red-rimmed eyes. Mayor Pope
looked crestfallen. Lin and Moralez looked like bobble-heads as they tried to
take it all in. Washington and Muskowvitz looked like they were carved out of
stone, except that Muskowvitz’s hand kept clenching and releasing. Red-faced
Adams was white as a ghost and Young had his face buried in his hands.
It was hard to see, hard to grasp, exactly what we had done to our
world, and it could get worse still. Those mountains that were islands could
also disappear, and us with them. I felt like my heart was pouring sorrow by
the bucketful all over my insides.
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to burst into tears and wail. I had
thought my sorrow for the loss of the world had dissipated over the years, but
now I knew that it had only been hiding, and hardening in some far corner of my
heart. I felt like the grief was going to kill me.
I looked to my mother and aunt, both standing there resolute,
un-deterred in their lifelong ambition, with that old familiar hardness in
their jaws. Morens didn’t die of grief. Morens didn’t let fear paralyze them,
they chopped it up, threw it in their furnace of ambition and powered the
world.
I was a Moren. I stood straighter, locked my jaw against the sobs
in my heart and glared at the screen, daring that water to TRY and take my
babies. We would find a way, and that was all there was to it.
“Peters,” I said in my most business-like tone. “Does that thing
have a thermal function?”
He didn’t reply, just brought up the requested mapping layer in
two clicks of a mouse. I studied the image, consulting the legend at the side
to figure out what the globby-bands of color meant.
The southern end of the map was somewhat warmer than what
pre-apocalyptical temperatures would
have been. It was still very cold here, still completely frigid to the north. I
wondered how much of that was because of the snow pack, and how much of it
would be some kind of permanent imbalance.
I wondered how much pollution was still up there in the
atmosphere. I presumed that pollution is what caused the ice age, from what I
had gleaned from science lessons and the readings we had from before the
sensors went on the fritz. The air looked pretty clear though, now. White
fluffy clouds, blinding white light bouncing off the snowcaps, it looked like a
fresh clean world. It just all depended on how much of the ice caps melted.
I prayed they wouldn’t melt all the way, even if they were
smaller, just… not all the way.
My mother requested a look at the ozone layer, which was far too
technical for me to understand. I just watched the tightness in her jaw for any
sign of good news. A little at a time it relaxed, and my galloping heart
followed suit. There was hope, somewhere in all that techno-babble she saw
hope.
Around dinner time my mother politely encouraged those of us who
weren’t scientists to take a break. No decisions were being made at this point,
and the analysis of the data we had gained was going to take a good deal of
time to analyze. Several of the Council members looked to me, and I realized
quickly that if I didn’t leave, neither would they, so I stood and got on my
phone to figure out where my kids were at.
I knew Andrew would stay at his post, and these days that was kind
of normal for the kids, so thankfully they didn’t ask where he was at dinner.
We read a few chapters of Huck Finn, wrote in our journals, and Andrew popped
in just before it was time to tuck them in. It was just a regular night at nine
for them, but I was dying to ask Andrew for an update the whole time.
When they finally fell asleep Andrew sprung into action, “Put a
note on the com in case they wake up,” he said heading for our room. “Tell them
there was a meeting and to call Celia if they need anything.”
“Celia?” I asked, obeying and bringing up the com. “Well, what do
I tell Celia?”
“Tell her we’ve gone spelunking,” he said.
~
“Umm, you’re kidding me, right?” I asked as Andrew handed me a
flashlight with a crank on the side.
“Nope,” he said.
“Why aren’t we using the corded lights like we usually do?” I
asked.
“Because they won’t reach where we are going,” he said. “Tonight
we venture beyond your little treasure trove.”
“BEYOND?” I asked. “You aren’t seriously thinking about breaking
the seal, are you?”
“Tilly, there’s no seal down here. They back filled the tunnel. It’s
completely blocked off.
“Well if it’s blocked off, what are we doing this for?” I asked
him as we walked past the familiar piles of cast off belongings and towards the
massive dark hole in the back that I had always pretended didn’t scare me.
“I’ve got a hunch,” Andrew said.
“What kind of hunch?” I asked raising my flashlight higher to try
and dispel the darkness that was folding all around us.
“Well, it’s more of a wild hope, but when they built the resorts
they had to run tunnels a great distance underground, to hide what they were
doing from the rest of the world. I’m hoping that they left us something,
something we can use.”
“What, like wooden beams?” I asked shining my light over towards
the wall. There weren’t wooden beams here, just concrete columns and arches. “Wouldn’t
wood have rotted away by now?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Andrew said. “That’s why I’m here with you, in
case this is a wild goose chase.”
It kind of bothered me that he was grasping at straws. What kind
of conclusions had he reached looking at the data from the satellite? What kind
of future was he trying to protect us from?
“Do you really think it’s going to get that bad?” I asked him.
His usually plump and delicious lips were pressed into a line. His
brows were knit together. He didn’t have to say it.
I fought the tingle in my nose, and brought my flashlight down to
crank it. The grinding, rhythmic motion worked off some of my anxiety. That was
why we were down here, because Andrew and I felt the same, we couldn’t face our
fears in stillness, we had to act.
I brought it back up as we rounded a corner in the tunnel. The
blackness stretched suddenly out on either side of us, and we slowed our steps
as all but the floor in front of us disappeared. We were in some kind of cavern
it seemed. We moved our lights about and the beams of light played off stalagmites
and stalactites, reaching for each other in a slow motion embrace. I barely had
time to register the beauty of the cave before my light played over something
unnatural in shape and I brought the beam to bear on it.
“YES!” Andrew said, with perhaps too much enthusiasm for the
inside of a cave. His exuberance echoed all around us as we hurried forward to
look at the dust covered blocky stack. As Andrew wiped furiously to determine
its composition I looked beyond it and my beam fell on another, and another,
and another. They weren’t all the same, some were beams, some were like this, and
some were crates stacked neatly in piles.
“It’s sheet metal, Tilly.” Andrew said. “I knew he would have had
a plan.”
I didn’t have to ask who “he” was. I just wondered how my mother
and aunt hadn’t known about Grandpa’s back up plan.
“Andrew, look,” I said as my light fell on a panel bolted to the
wall nearby. “What do you suppose that is?”
He was running to it in an instant, and I was right behind him.
Again we encountered decades of dust, but sleeves solved that. As I rubbed I could
feel depressions in the panel, like it was engraved. I stopped rubbing and trained
my flashlight on it. It was engraved all right. Engraved with blue prints,
detailed plans on exactly how we were going to survive the flood.
Andrew was standing back now, looking with me at the diagram. “Well,”
he said with a broad smile. “It’s not gopher wood, but it will do.”
“Gopher wood?” I asked.
“Yeah, ‘build it out of gopher barky-barky’” he sang, but it didn’t
help. Did gophers chew wood like beavers?
“It’s a boat, not a dam,” I said gesturing to the steel inscribed
design.
“Not a boat Tilly, it’s an ARK. You have heard of Noah right?” he
said with an incredulous chuckle as he went back to dusting the plans off.
“Well, yeah… okay did the gophers help him or something?” I asked
helping him wipe. He wasn’t making any sense.
This time he really laughed and looked at me hard. “Okay, Tilly,
when we get out of this mess, you are reading the Bible.”
I rolled my eyes. If God got us out of this mess I would read the
Bible, the Koran, that blue book the Mormons were always leaving all over the
place, and every Buddha quote I could find. There had to be some Universal
power if we were going to get this boat, this ark, built in time.
~
Part 3- The Arc
Aunt Marsha and Mom started in disbelief at the plans before them.
“Marsha, did you…?” My mother asked her sister.
“No, he didn’t say a word,” Aunt Marsha replied. “How on earth
were we not notified about this?”
“Well…” Andrew said. “You were kids. Maybe they didn’t tell you
about it because they wanted you to trust in the Resorts.”
Just like
we just did, I added in my head.
“Yeah, well, still,” Mom said. “It wasn’t like they didn’t have a
million opportunities once we were grown.”
“You’d think that Harris
would have known about this, at the least. Wouldn’t this have been listed in
the inventory?” Aunt Marsha said shaking her head.
“I wonder if they put them at all the resorts…” Mom said turning
to shine her light on the piles behind us. “It would make sense.”
“We’ll have to go and ask,” Aunt Marsha said already starting to
walk back toward the passageway.
“Don’t you think we should confirm that it’s all here before we
get their hopes up?” my Mother called after her sister.
“Like Dad ever did anything half way,” Aunt Marsha said. Then she
added, “We’ll let Harris do the inventory, we’ve got Inter-Resort-Communication
and Inter-Department-Coordination to do.”
Peters and I followed them up to the communications room. We found
Dr. Reed asleep at a desk, lit by the flickering light of the screen saver. I
went over and gently shook him awake as my Mother opened the lines of
communication to the other Resorts.
Some of the other screens popped right up, and others took a while
before the lackeys could summon someone in charge. We waited several minutes
for the last of them to appear. By the look of the faces on the screen it was
trying the last of several people’s patience to wait.
When the last Resort was on-line my mother started right in,
“Thank you for your patience. I’ve called you all to discuss a discovery that
may, or may not present a feasible solution to the problem at hand.”
The faces on the screen leaned forward, almost in unison. “Do you
have a final analysis on the air?” one face asked.
“Actually,” my mother said turning to the Doctor who had resumed
his work without a word when I woke him.
He shook his head. “We are still working on that. That’s why I said I’m
not sure if this solution is feasible.
“We’ve made a discovery,” she continued. “In the natural caves adjacent
to our resort we found supplies and plans for an… Ark… of sorts. We haven’t
started an inventory, so we aren’t sure it’s all there, but I wanted to let you
know, so you can check your back tunnels to see if you were similarly
supplied.”
“What do you mean, you just found this?” One of the faces asked in
shock. “You mean to tell us there was a Plan B and you didn’t know about it?”
My mother wasn’t used to being in position, and I don’t think I’ve
ever seen her so apologetic. “Mr. Rastogi, please be assured that if either I
or my sister had been informed of this we would have made the information
available to you.”
“Why wouldn’t we have been informed?” another face asked in
incredulity. “I’ve read all the manuals cover to cover and a boat was never mentioned.
“I don’t know,” my mother replied. “Perhaps they wanted to protect
the supplies from use on other projects, perhaps they wanted to prevent
premature use or unwarranted use. All I know is that I’m glad that Peters here
was thinking outside the box.”
Andrew was blushing a bit, I couldn’t as much tell by his face as
the way his mouth was set. He looked so relieved to have a solution. I just
hoped that it was one we could use, that the air quality results continued to
come back good and that it would be safe to go up to the surface.
The leaders of the other resorts were dispatching missions into
the un-explored regions of their service tunnels with some excitement. They
were all trying to be professional, but the thought of an escape was certainly
an excellent spur. Then, the teams sent, they turned back to us, faces
expectant, like this was the first of a list good news notices we had to hand
out that night.
We in turn turned to Dr. Reed who was still glued to his screen.
He didn’t notice the silence, so I broke it. “Dr. Reed,” I asked, “Do you have
any preliminary findings to report?”
He looked up from the screen and at the faces all looking down at
him. He took a deep breath, “Well I can tell you what the results are saying so
far, but this is by no means conclusive.” My mother reached over and switched
the camera at his station on. His face came up on the screen, and he continued,
“I’m hesitant to share these results, because I have no way of knowing if they
are going to apply to your regions at all. You have to understand, the air in
any given area may be toxic, you could be killing everyone in your Resort by
breaking your seals.
“With that said,” he added clearing his throat. “The air samples
we have been able to obtain here at Nine are all within acceptable ranges. The
soil samples show some elevated levels of radio-activity, but thus far it is
still within acceptable ranges. We have gone as far as we can with our robots,
and pending the return of acceptable results on the tests currently running, we
will be implementing the next phase of our analysis.”
“What is the next phase?” someone asked.
“The next phase is to send a team to the surface to conduct
additional testing,” Dr. Reed answered.
“More tests?” someone else asked. “How many tests is it going to
take? We are running out of time!”
“I’ll be lucky to have generators in a month,” the guy from
Scotland butted in. “If I have an Ark down there, I’ll be lucky to get it done
in that time.”
“Then run your own tests,” Dr. Reed burst out angrily. “I can’t guarantee
anything from the other side of the world.”
He looked abashed at his outburst and looked around at our faces
before turning and leaving the Communications room. The faces on the screen
were a mix of contrition and anger. I started to go after him, but Andrew put
his hand on my arm, so I stopped.
My mother switched the camera back to her own station, “You’ll
have to excuse Dr. Reed,” she said more pointedly than apologetically. “He
takes his job very seriously.”
~
I woke. In the dark I reached across the bed to find nothing but
the flat expanse of the sheet. I rolled over and groped around, finding first
the ledge of the table, then the switch for the lamp. The light was brutal to
my exhausted eyes, so I turned away from it and looked at the empty place
beside me, then onward to our bedroom door. There was a thin band of light at
the bottom.
He was up again.
I went out to the living room and watched him stare at the com
screen, unblinking, thinking, lost in the troubles of his mind. I waited for him
to notice my presence, but after a while I couldn’t stand staring at this
statue form of my husband. I longed to smooth the worry from his brow, to take
the burden off those big shoulders of his. I crossed the room and sat next to
him on the couch.
He blinked then, taking his eyes off the screen long enough to
clasp the hand I offered in both of his own. Then he continued looking at the
screen ahead. It was a map of New Mexico. I wondered how much of it was left,
how much was above the water line. I wondered if it was all green now, with the
never ending rain that was happening in all the thawed areas of the world.
Andrew however didn’t seem to be thinking of blooming deserts and
brimming rivers. He seemed angry at the map. He kept scanning up and down, and
with a little time I found what he was tracing. It was as if some great secret
lay in the course of the Rio Grande, and he was determined to unravel it.
“First spelunking and now white water rafting, aren’t we
adventurous these days,” I said, trying to be as light hearted as possible. It
had been a trying few days, in spite of all the good news.
The inventory was completed, and it was all there. The test
results from our robot were back, and they were all “satisfactory” or
“acceptable.” Several of the other resorts, the ones at lower elevations, had
sent teams up to the surface, accepting the possibility that those teams may
never return. So far the test results at those locations had also been
“satisfactory” or “acceptable.”
Things were looking up from a few weeks ago, but no one trusted
the flow of news not to take a down turn at any moment. So we watched, and
waited, and debated. Oh how we debated. What if, what if, what if. It was all I
heard these days.
“What if the whole earth floods?” was the most common question,
and the fear in our eyes added, “and it stays that way?”
“What if there are people out there still?” I also heard, but the
more rational among us shook our heads in doubt. If they had survived the war,
they had died of the fall-out. If they had survived the war, and the fall-out,
they had died in the ice-age. If they had survived the war, the fall-out, and
the ice-age, then the torrential flooding and mudslides of the last few months
had probably killed them. I’m sure all of us had woken from a nightmare about
mutant surface-dwellers at one point or another, but we had little to fear from
that.
“What if the flooding speeds up even more and they don’t get out
in time?” was the most pressing question. The Resort in Scotland had already
abandoned testing and moved on to building its ark. They were only at an
altitude of about 1000 meters. At the rate the water was rising, their
generators were greatly at risk of flooding.
Andrew exited out of the map he was looking at and brought up
another one. It was a map of the world showing the elevations in colored bands.
My heart sunk once again looking at the areas color coded as the lush green
farmlands that used to be. Gone, 500 meters and down, gone, the last 100 meters
in the few weeks since the first meeting we had about this.
“There,” Andrew said pointing to the right side of the screen. “Do
you see that?”
He was pointing at a large white and purple area on the Eastern
Hemisphere. It was roughly shaped like a whale and spanned the area above the
Himalayas. The narrow “tail” end reached over towards the middle east. I looked
down at the legend, the white and purple color-coded boxes were at the very
top, the highest elevations in the world were white and purple.
“That’s a lot of land,” I said. “Isn’t one of our resorts over on
that tail end, the one in India?”
“Yes, yes, it is,” he said, but he didn’t say it happily or
excitedly, he said it with a hard kind of voice I had rarely heard from him.
That was his soldier voice.
“But, they have the highest elevation of all the Resorts,” I said
in confusion. “So why are you worried for them?”
“Because all of this,” he said taking the cursor and circling the
largest part of the “whale,” “is in China.”
“But… well… I mean you don’t think they survived too do you?” I
asked him.
“Think about it Tilly,” he said. “If your Grandfather and a
handful of others could keep a secret like this in democratic countries, what
kind of secrets could a communist government keep from their people in a region
this large and almost completely
uninhabited?”
The thought was gut-wrenching. My hands got all sweaty and my
lungs got tight. I thought I was going to throw up. “You think they are armed,
don’t you?”
“If they have Resorts, you can count on it,” Andrew said.
~
~
“It’s not that the possibility didn’t occur to us,” General Heinz
told us later that day in his office. “It’s just not something we talk about
with the rank and file.” My uncle by-marriage was tapping the templed tips of
his fingers together in rapid succession, and by the gaze he had fixed on my
husband it made me feel he was adding things up in his head.
“Yes, sir. I see, sir,” Andrew said in a tone that was all
business. Andrew respected General Heinz’s authority, but more than that he
respected him as a leader. If General Heinz said that there was a plan, Andrew
Peters, Access Manager, would trust that.
I however had never been part of the “file” and I was pretty sure
I had enough “rank” to take the old man on. “Does that mean that they have a
way of defending themselves? Does that mean there is a plan in place to keep
the others from finding out about US through the other resort? Does that mean
that there is some kind of escape plan in place for them in case they are
invaded?”
“Of course,” General Heinz said, with a bit of irritation in his
voice.
“Of course to… which? All of the above?” I queried.
General Heinz just kept tapping his fingers, adding, adding, or
more like weighing, weighing, and it was wearing on me. If he thought he was
going to keep this from me he had another think coming. I locked my jaw and
gave him my fiercest impression of my mother’s “tell me” look.
He didn’t outright laugh, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he
gave in at last, “Okay, you win. But if you tell your aunt it was this easy to
break me I’ll be back in the barracks by 1700 hours.” He looked at both of us,
obviously waiting for some sign of agreement before proceeding.
Andrew and I exchanged glances and then nodded together. General
Heinz nodded in return and then stood up. He stepped around his desk, crossed
to the filing cabinet on his wall. Opened the bottom drawer all the way, then
gave it a jiggle and opened it even more. When the back of the drawer rolled
out we saw a box attached to it, a box with an electronic keypad.
“Peters would have seen this at one point or another anyway, with
the way he’s been climbing the ladder,” General Heinz said as he typed in a
number sequence so long I was starting to think he was playing a song. The box
beeped, and then there was a grinding sound as a flap opened in the back. There
was a book inside, hardbound, black, and a good two inches thick.
He pulled it out and stepped over the drawer to bring it back to
his desk, “This,” he said with an almost reverent tone, “Is the doomsday
bible.”
That wasn’t what it said on the cover of course. The cover read:
Security
Operations and
Defensive Tactics
Volume V
Top Secret
Defensive Tactics
Volume V
Top Secret
Andrew and I leaned forward. “I thought there were only four
volumes,” Andrew said in a hushed tone.
“There ARE only four volumes,” General Heinz said, “as far as you
two are concerned. Marsha didn’t even know about this baby until she got back
from her little trip down to the bottom with you two.”
“You kept a secret from Aunt Marsha?” I asked in shock.
“Wait a second,” Andrew said, way ahead of me, and a little angry,
“You knew about the arks?”
“Yes, yes I did,” General Heinz said with a sigh. “I had been
trying to talk the other security department heads into revealing that intel to
the other department heads when you so kindly took the problem out of my hands.
Of course, Marsha figured out pretty quickly that I had already known and…
well… it wasn’t pretty.”
He clenched his teeth against whatever impression Aunt Marsha had
made on his memory, and opened the book. He thumbed through the pages. Finally
finding the one he wanted, he turned the book around for us to read.
I hadn’t really had any expectations, not having a clue what to
expect, so I couldn’t decide how I felt about the things I was seeing on the
pages before me. We were armed alright, armed to the teeth. It comforted me and
chilled me at the same time, and I wondered what my grandfather had felt as he
laid these provisions in place. I wondered how many nights he had lain awake
debating, surely feeling as I did, that we had scarred the world with enough
war.
Yet at the thought of danger, at the thought of enslavement under
a cruel regime I had immediately wanted a way to fight. I had immediately
wanted a way to defend my children from the evils of the world. There was too
much to protect to stand with empty hands.
What if we never got the chance?
What if the waters kept rising? What if the purple disappeared and
all that was left was the white on the map, the tip of Everest? How would our little
Navy of nine arks fare? They were not battleships. They were not nuclear subs
with sonar and torpedo bays. They were just great big boats to fill with sheep
and chickens and bales of hay while we floated and prayed.
I reached up and rubbed the triangle between my eyebrows that was
constantly knotted these days, and only skimmed as Andrew read. By the look of
concentration on his face he seemed to be memorizing the plans. My soldier
would protect us single handedly if it came down to it. My soldier would defend
us with his…
“No!” I said slamming my hands down on the table and pushing the
very thought away. In my distressed state I turned towards the door, but the
thought of facing the people on the other side of it turned me around again at
the knob. Then there was the book, and the hard set faces of the two men I
trusted most in the world. I couldn’t face them either, so I turned again and
again, pacing back and forth insanely as I fought the tears brimming at my
eyes, spilling past the bulwark of my lashes, streaking across the plains of my
face to fall, fall, fall and soak into the sea of tears that had already
drowned the rest of humanity.
Andrew’s arms were around me then, and at first I fought them, but
then I sank into them, I surrendered to the overcoming sense of futility. “There
is no end,” I sobbed. “There will never be an end. All we have done to save what
is beautiful about humanity and we’ve brought it with us, we’ve brought war
with us.”
“Tilly, honey,” Andrew whispered softly in my ear, “We had to…”
“I know,” I cut him off. “I’m not completely illogical you know.”
I said, trying to wipe and sniff my lapse in decorum away.
“Believe it or not,” General Heinz said quietly, “I feel the same
way. I never wanted to use these weapons; I never even wanted to admit that
they existed. I wanted to believe that humanity could make a fresh start.”
~
“A lottery?” I asked, sure I had heard Councilman Adams wrong.
“That’s right,” he answered looking a bit smug. “That way it’s
completely fair who gets the honor of being the first to ascend to the surface.”
He didn’t have to add the part where he was preventing my family from getting
“preferential treatment,” it was written all over him.
“You do recall that Resorts Three, Five and Two have been on the
surface for over a week building their arks, don’t you?” Councilwoman Gupta
asked, not managing to hide all of her irritation.
“Yes, but those aren’t here are they?” he asked. “They aren’t here
on this new continent . They are on the Appalachian Islands, the UK Islands,
and The Australian Islands. We have our own history to write, our own new
civilization to form, and every member of it deserves an equal opportunity to
be in the history books. Wouldn’t you
agree Mrs. Peters-Moren?” he finished fixing his eyes on me with a glare that
dared me to disagree.
I was so tired of the man I wanted to offer to send him up there
right now. The insufferable, pig-headed, inconsiderate, oh he was such an oaf! New
continent? It was exactly his brand of separatist thinking that was going to
tear our world in pieces even as we tried to re-build. We could STILL lose
every inch of land we had on this “new continent” and spend the rest of our
lives adrift and he was worried about his place in the history books?
“I agree,” I said finally, but followed it quickly with, “on one
condition, I don’t want to be in the lottery at all, I withdraw my name.”
“And mine,” Mayor Pope put in. She was followed immediately by
several others, and I watched carefully as the momentary triumph in Adams’ eyes
fell further with each withdrawal. “So I do I hear a motion to remove the names
of all Department Heads and Council Members from the Lottery?” Mayor Pope prompted.
“You don’t think that will make people think we are afraid to go
up, do you?” Councilwoman Benitez asked.
“That’s why we should be
sending a science team up first,” Dr. Reed said disapprovingly.
Adams actually rolled his eyes at this point, “You haven’t had one bad test result!”
The room erupted in unrestrained conversation. I buried my head in
my hands and sighed deeply. When I looked up at my mother she was watching me
from across the room with laughter in her eyes. I stuck my tongue out at her. No
one noticed, because all around us people were talking over each other. Mayor
Pope was rapping her gavel like she was pounding in a nail. Finally Aunt Marsha
put her fingers to her lips and gave a deafening whistle, which effectively
called us to order.
It was the strain, all of us were feeling it, some of us more than
others. I barely ever saw my husband anymore, because he and General Heinz and
an elite group of others from Security were going around checking all the weaponry
in secret, making sure that everything was good to go, just in case. Of those
of us in the room only General Heinz and us Moren women knew that we had
already breached the surface here at Nine multiple times. It just wasn’t up at
the Cube where everyone was thinking, it was at the end of each launch tunnel.
Thankfully no-one had noticed, or at least hadn’t started any
rumors about the council that met in General Heinz’s office all day every day.
It was sheer luck that no one had discovered that they were slipping through a
secret trap door and navigating the extensive labyrinth of secret tunnels in
the defense network. I worried every day that someone would figure it out.
From what Andrew told me, all of the resorts were doing the same,
except for Eleven. India had not been
provisioned with weapons, and instead of a secret defense manual had detailed
escape plans and multiple smaller arks. They also had a self-destruct button,
so that there would be no way of tracing the locations of the other resorts
through Eleven’s communications network.
Grandpa Moren had planned for it all, but I wished the dire
predictions of our predecessors would stop coming true. The more predictions that
turned out to be true, the less hope I had for a better future. Adams could
talk about history all he wanted, I just wanted there to be a world left.
I left the meeting completely drained but with a to-do list that I
had to get to. Adams’ idea of a lottery had passed, and now it was my job to
officiate it. Just where exactly did he expect me to fit every last person in
Nine at once? Where?
I was just walking into my office when the phone at my hip went
off. I waved to Celia as I answered it, but stopped dead when I heard the tone
in the Security Specialist’s voice, “Your presence is required in the Communications
Center immediately.”
I did an about face and walked right back out the door, my heart
thumping. They never called me in like this, never. I tried for my sanity’s
sake to come up with something, anything other than the thing I feared, but my
efforts were in vain.
The phone went off in my hand, and as I raised it to answer it I
realized that my knuckles were white from gripping it. I tried to sound normal
as I answered, “You know I’m thinking we should put your desk in the back and
mine out front so I can actually make it to my desk once in a while.”
Celia wasn’t biting. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“I don’t know, and with the way things are going I don’t know if I
want to know,” I told her as my definitely-not-for-speed-walking high-heels
wobbled beneath my near jog.
“What can I do?” she asked, being for the millionth time a better
woman than I. I’d have been throwing a tantrum in her shoes.
“Pray,” I said. “Oh and find out how many people there are in Nine
over the age of ten. I’m here already, I’ll call you asap,” I said hanging up.
I rushed right past the secretary outside the Communications
Center, and into the big screened room. I almost thought I was in the wrong
room, but getting my bearings I realized that was because the room was not lit
by the screen this time. Everyone was standing around in a circle instead of
facing the one wall, so I joined the circle and waited for the others to arrive.
When Muskowvitz closed the door behind him Aunt Marsha broke the
silence that had been strangling us all. “Thank you for coming, I’m sorry to
call you all back here so soon after a meeting, but some top secret information
has come to our attention that you needed to be informed of right away.”
I tried to catch my mother’s eye, but she wasn’t looking my way,
so I kept my face impassive and looked back at my aunt. Were they really going
to tell the others about the defenses? Shouldn’t that wait until we were
attacked, or at least until we could get Adams off the council?
“About ten minutes ago there was an aggressive attack on the
security of the satellite system we have been using. Our team was able to keep
it at bay long enough to wipe our usage history and activate the spy virus they
designed in case of such an event, but we have lost major control over that
resource,” Aunt Marsha said.
“Lost it to whom?” Councilman Lin asked.
~
My aunt walked over to the computer and activated the big screen.
The image that came up was that of what was left of the Asian Continent.
Someone was very interested in the new coastline south of the ice shelf. It
kept zooming in and out, searching the locations of what used to be cities.
I looked to the side of the screen where the legend box sat. As I
suspected, the language had been changed from English to Chinese.
Again I sought my mother’s eyes, and this time she met mine,
giving me an almost imperceptible shake of the head. I was to keep quiet about
what I knew. I blinked a confirmation back at her and then turned back to the
screen.
I held my breath as the image scrolled past the area where Resort
Eleven was hidden in the mountains of northern India. Thankfully the sparkle of
the crystal at its peak was mistaken for ice, and the Chinese took no interest
in the mountain but moved on to study other areas that had previously been
inhabited. I wasn’t the only one who let out a big sigh.
“Looks like they don’t know we are here,” Councilman Washington
said clapping the distressed looking Lin on the shoulder.
The initial relief faded fast. Soon the Council Members were
asking the same hard questions that Andrew and I had faced just days before. I
left the answering to those more skilled with evasion and half-truths and tried
to gauge how the others were taking it.
I had expected Adams to explode. Instead he took a seat and looked
at the screen with the most piteously crestfallen expression. An hour ago he
was ready to lead the charge into a new world, but it seemed he was not equal
to this kind of threat.
A few of them were overwhelmed by the possibility of another war.
We had counted on peace, trusted the silence outside the resort walls meant an
end to conflict, only to find out we were in a 12 year cease fire. I didn’t
fault them any of the tears I saw hastily wiped away.
Most of the council was in fix-it mode. They wanted to take
action. They wanted to save us from the impending disaster. I didn’t blame
them, but right now being still was the safest course of action.
“That snow pack isn’t going to last forever in this melt off,”
Councilman Muskowvitz said with a sour expression. “How long until the Chinese
get curious about the peak on top of Eleven?”
“There’s no way to know,” my mother said, “But at least with our
spy virus we will know when they take an interest.”
“We have to get them out before then,” Benitez said in the most
firm voice I’ve ever heard. “Do they know at Eleven? Are they watching this
too?”
“They are, and they will be looking for solutions. Right now we
must urge you to keep this information absolutely top secret. It could cause
widespread panic and create lapses in security that would tip-off our enemies
to our whereabouts,” my mother said, fixing a firm gaze on each of them in
turn. “There is a reason we have not got Access on the line with this, there is
a reason we do not have interpreters in the room right now. This is classified because it is vital to our survival.” She ended by locking Adams in a look hard enough to
break marble, and the wilted man was nodding and gibbering his agreement in
seconds.
I stood there, staring at the screen, until the only ones left in
the room were Heinz and us Moren women. The satellite was studying the
mountains of the middle-east now, flipping through the input layers to see
through the torrential storm that seemed set on washing the mountains of Iran
into the ever expanding Persian Gulf. “Do you think there are Resorts there?” I
asked the room in general.
“No, that region has been watched far too closely for far too
long, both physically and fiscally,” General Heinz said.
“Are we really expecting to keep this from everyone for long?” I
asked.
“As long as we can,” my mother said, “though we do need to get our
Chinese interpreter up here.”
“Councilman Lin will be relieved to have his wife back in the
loop,” I said. I turned to leave but stopped at the door, “Oh and, is my
husband in the loop on this?” I asked.
“Of course he is, who do you think we had write the virus?” Aunt
Marsha said flashing me a grin.
Andrew and I were up most of the night. First we were fighting
about exactly what information we were allowed to keep from one another. Once
we had that settled we then spent hours and hours poring over the world map. We
both knew it was irrational, hoping that something would come to us that would
somehow bring our friends safely around the curve of the earth and leave our
enemies on the other side. No matter how the world had changed, the arc was
just the same, and peace was just as fragile in the hands of grasping men.
~
~
Part
4- The Least Common Denominator
I
watched Father at the screen, standing there, owning the room as he always had.
His shoulders were thrown back, his head was high, his feet were spread to hold
the weight of all his titles. He was the Commander, he was the Emperor; my father
the ruler, my father the conqueror, my father the murderer of the world.
I
stood at his side, I watched with him as he studied the new coastlines of the
world. The rains still fell, the waters still rose, and yet instead of fear, in
his eyes I saw only the greed, the lust, the thirst. The world would be filled
to the brim with water and still he would thirst.
I
hated him.
I
hated him in silence, for that is the only way to hate the most powerful man in
the world, especially when you cannot escape him. Twelve years I had been stuck
inside this mountain with him. Twelve years I had pushed my hatred down harder
and harder so now it sat, like a lump of lead in the pit of my stomach.
Yet
he never suspected, and it was no wonder why. I was a dutiful son, always at
his side, always quick to study, quick to obey. I knew the price that was
exacted of those who did not obey my father. I had watched the world pay that
price, as he rained atomic bombs down on them. I had watched my mother pay that
price, as she wept and reached her hands skyward, as if her pleading could be
heard over the berating beat of the helicopter blades, as if there was any
mercy in my father’s heart.
I
had loved him once.
I
had loved him when China was great. I had loved him when China was proud. I had
loved him when China was1.3 billion strong. I had loved him when my mother
lived.
Now
China was shamed, weak, a few thousand tucked into holes in the ground.
Now
my mother was dead.
Now
I was dead inside and yet hanging onto life out of pure instinct, an instinct
as old and deeply rooted as China. I lived while dead, for in me China lived
while dead. As I lived, China lived; as China died, I died.
I
and China, China and I, we were one. My father ruled us both. My father had
decreed our deaths.
We
were going to drown in the sea of his sins.
My
father clapped the young computer tech on the shoulder to congratulate him for
breaking into the satellite system. The tech bowed his thanks to my father his
head nearly touching the keyboard, but it was to me he looked. I praised him
with a blink and a twitch of my nose.
“There,”
my father said. “You see my son? Do you see how far China extends? They thought
they could stop us, but I, I out smarted them all. They thought they could
conquer China, and now, now China will be the word for Earth. No more Greek, no
more Latin, Mandarin!”
He
laughed, and I pretended to laugh with him. He would not know it from my real
laugh. I didn’t even know my real laugh anymore.
“You
have indeed changed the whole world with your own two hands, history will never
forget you, Father,” I said, and I meant every word. If I succeeded in my plan,
if I and the secret band of youth that followed me managed to save any of this
world, we would never let his sins be forgotten by time.
He
bored of his newest conquest in moments, as I had known he would. He issued
orders for studies and reports and then went back to his pleasures. I remained
behind, not having to feign my interest in the information the satellite
relayed.
Patience,
patience was key to winning this game. Patience was needed to see if the
flooding continued, patience was needed to move only when it was most
effective, patience was needed to kill only when the blood was needed. Fifteen
plans lay sorted in my brain, fifteen carefully crafted plots which all lead to
one end, China and I lived, and my father died.
~
I
was at my father’s side when he received the reports, and while the scientists
tried to dumb-down the information without making it sound like they thought
themselves more intelligent or educated than the ruler of the world, I easily
read the charts and graphs. I quickly came to my own conclusions. I had not
wasted the last twelve years as he had.
Naturally
there was no guarantee that the gradual evening out of atmospheric conditions
meant that we weren’t facing a complete flooding of the earth, but I doubted it
would come to that. What concerned me was how high it would get before it
stopped and how long it would take to abate. We had reserves, but they would
only last so long. I worried that he wouldn’t put the replenishment plans in
place soon enough. The land on the extreme altitudes was only arable to a
certain degree. We needed to act and act soon if we were to survive.
I
watched them try to impress this upon his tiny, twisted mind, but if they
didn’t use more forceful language he was never going to understand the peril,
so I cut in. “I beg forgiveness, but I am young and unable to see as you do,” I
began with an extra gesture of respect to my father, as if I thought he
understood anything at all. “You speak of planting and farming, but how long
will we have to wait before we see any real benefit from this?”
The
strain in the scientist’s eyes eased a little as, with a nod of permission from
my father, he turned to explain things to me. I continued to feign ignorance,
asking questions about the expected growing seasons, the atmospheric
conditions, pollutions, land arability, and last but not least, elevation.
“Your charts only show this area,” I said. “Won’t it take much more work to
farm such slopes? Why don’t we plant lower, closer to the elevation we are now?
There is much land on the map showing that color.”
The
scientist paled, “Honored Heir, didn’t you hear? Perhaps we did not mention…
all the land at this elevation will be flooded within a matter of weeks.”
At
last the information penetrated the layer of ego protecting The Emperor’s mind.
I saw his eyes widen for a moment, before he regained his composure. Then he
turned to me and cast me a look of scorn, “You should listen better, my son,
and not make them repeat themselves. We are wasting valuable time when we could
be preparing to… to… re-establish ourselves on the ancient soil of China. For
in the beginning all life sprung from the soil of China…”
He
went on like that for some time, somehow under the delusion that his propaganda
was more important than actually issuing the orders that would assemble the
ships, relocate our precious resources, and ensure the survival of our people.
While he continued his impromptu speech I did a little communicating of my own.
By the time he issued his first order I had received confirmation that my
blinked and twitched orders had already been obeyed.
~
Again
I was at his side, and again I wanted to smear that smug smile with his own
blood through the liberal use of my pounding fist. It was uprooting day, the
day we disassembled the carefully planned and cultivated horticultural hall and
loaded the trees, fields, and gardens segment by segment onto our ships. He
acted like the system of carefully designed containers had been his idea, like
he had personally overseen the whole project.
Everything
was going according to plan, or at least that was the way he presented it to
the masses that stood cheering below us. They didn’t know that in less than 48
hours their homes would go dark. They had no idea that the lower levels would
be flooded in less than a week. He didn’t tell them what was in store, he only
issued orders.
I
scanned the crowds below us, carefully noting among the uniformity the
differences only we would know. The youth under my command, while never
betraying their loyalty with any outward show, were easy for me to spot. We
marked ourselves, not with colors or clothes, but with honor, determination,
and vigilance. I could tell them by the way they walked, by the way they
watched as they cheered, by the way they moved through the crowds. My years of
training them had paid off.
Now
I just needed to get away to join them.
I
waited for him to tire of overseeing the operation, and when he did I was
released. I wove my way around the underground city, finally coming to one of
the secret service entrances that we had made safe through a careful hacking of
the internal surveillance system. I slipped through the door and carefully closing
it behind me made my way down the ladder. I had taken it so many times I didn’t
even have to count the rungs anymore, I just knew when to reach out my hand to
feel the ledge of the airshaft in the wall behind me. In the complete darkness
I placed my hand on the cool surface. It was slicker these days, the humidity
from the rising groundwater coated the cement, the rungs of the ladder, it
clung to my clothes.
Several
meetings ago one of our members showed up with soaking wet shoes, she had
decided to find out for herself how high the waters had risen. No one had liked
how few rungs she had gone down before her feet splashed. The number decreased
every day, and she reported it to the others as she loaded their breakfast
trays at her station in the food service court. Of course I knew how high the
water was, those of us in the control room knew it all too well, but for those
in the lower levels, she was the most direct connection they had with our
timetable.
I
pushed my thoughts of her out of my head as I crawled down the shaft. There
would be time to think of her when this was all over. Right now I needed to get
us through this alive. Then I could think about marrying her.
The
grill on the end of the shaft was open, and I could hear the idle tapping of the
all clear signal. It was almost imperceptible over the sounds of the power
plant on the other side of the wall. I tapped the entrance sequence before
dropping silently to the floor.
A
hand reached out to greet me, tapping across my shoulder and feeling up to my collar.
The insignia there was instantly recognized by the searching hand, and I
recognized the hand that lingered at my collar. Funny that it was her when I
had just been thinking about her, but then… Mi was always lingering in my
thoughts.
She
tapped my shoulder twice then seven times, to tell me I was the twenty-seventh
to arrive, then her hand fell away in the darkness and I stepped away from her,
reaching out to find the wall I would follow to the door. I slid my hand along
its familiar rough surface. How many times had I touched this wall? How many
times had I reached for this door handle? How many times had I jerked it just
the right way to make it give-way though it always remained locked to the
untrained hand?
I
entered the small storage room where we met. We waited in silence. Not out of
necessity, but out of practice. Every member was valuable, so we set a time,
and only if someone was more than ten minutes late did we start without them.
We usually didn’t have to wait, especially not these days when matters were so
urgent.
It
was only two minutes later when there was a tap at the door and our last
arrival slipped in with Mi at his heels. They took their places among the
storage shelves and someone flipped on the dim and yellowed light. All eyes
were on me.
I
looked around, taking stock of the expressions on their faces. Some looked
worried, some looked excited, all of them looked determined. My eyes lingered
for a moment longer on her face, taking in the resolute line of her jaw, the
protective look in her eyes, that strange mix of strength and adoration Mi wore
when she looked at me.
“Whose
turn is it to be the bird?” I asked. When Pu, who worked the kitchens and
struggled with his weight, moved toward the shelves Mi stepped up and climbed
to the perch for him. She opened the ventilation grate ever so slightly and the
light from the main generator room striped her face. I would have blinked my
thanks at her, but I knew she wouldn’t look away for even a second, not Mi.
We
had a lot of business to cover today, and I got to it. Ship assignments had
finally been posted and it was time to organize the teams that would work
together after launch. We hadn’t been able to weight the assignments like I had
wanted to, there was too much participation from mid-level supervisors in the
selection and distribution of labor. Our changes would have been noticed. One
of the ships had a single China Fighter. Another had seven. My ship had three,
plus me, and our mission was the most difficult, because we had to deal with my
father.
I
announced the team captains, and we divided to discuss the implementation of
our plans on each ship. Only three of my fifteen plans were appropriate for use
on a ship, and all of our plans had to be altered after we landed. Everything
was changing, the world we had been raised in, the halls and ventilation shafts
we had wandered for most of our lives would be gone. I knew that the time to
act may not come at all on the ships, but I knew that preparing them not only would
keep them ready to act, it would keep them united during in-action.
After
the meeting we left in our usual fashion, two or three at a time, and in
complete silence. Mi kept watch, until in the end it was just her and me. She
closed the grate and quietly climbed down to the floor. “Do I need to tell you
about your part?” I asked her.
“I
listened,” she said. “I can use my eyes and ears at the same time you know.”
“Oh,
good,” I said. “Then there is no reason to linger.” I flipped the light off,
and then we slipped out the door. Mi followed me to the shelves that had served
as our ladder to the ventilation grate all these years. I reached for her hand
in the dark and pulled her toward the wall, but she resisted, freed her hand
and shoved me slightly. I gave in and went first, leaving her to secure the
grate behind us. She didn’t like anyone taking care of her, especially not me.
~
I
stepped out of the service door and let it click shut behind me before I moved
out to the crowded street. I had gone about five steps before I was seized from
behind and shoved up against the wall. Startled women screamed and the area
around me emptied immediately, all except the two security guards at my back.
“What
is the meaning of this?” I demanded in my most authoritative voice as I
struggled against my captors.
One
of the guards recognized me, and turned in surprise toward his companion.
“Officer, this is Jiang Bang! Are we supposed to arrest the son of Jiang De?”
“He’s
not going to be happy when he hears about this,” I said haughtily.
The
other officer’s face flickered with confusion only for an instant before he
said, “Sorry, Sir. Our orders are to arrest all personnel using the service
passages without clearance. That includes you.”
“Without
clearance?” I sneered. I raised my voice, “I have clearance levels you haven’t
even heard of.”
“Then
why didn’t you know not to use the service passages today?” the officer replied
as several other officers appeared out of the crowd. He turned and called to
them as he snapped the cuffs around my wrists, “Check through this door, I’m
taking this one in.”
I
hoped she had heard me. I had certainly made enough noise, and Mi knew the
service shafts well. Maybe she would get away, maybe some of the others had
too.
Walking
down the jail-block my heart sunk lower and lower. Though none of us betrayed
our acquaintance, and some of them were putting on a good show, demanding
explanations through the bars as we passed, we had nearly all been caught.
I
began evaluating which of my men was the weakest link, which of them I needed
to bolster even while I figured out how I was going to get us out of here. We
had plans for this, excuses tailor made for discovery in difference situations.
I reminded them of their excuses by dropping code words while I yelled at the
guards to let me talk to my father. They slipped into their roles well,
tailoring their behavior to match their excuse. Some wept, some cowered, some
rocked nervously, and some stood and yelled through the bars with me.
It
was nearly an hour before General Zhou came marching down the block, heels
clicking, aides fanned out behind him. He ignored everyone else and walked
right up to me. He fixed his piercing gaze upon me and asked, “How is it that I
find you here, boy?”
“He
sent you?” I asked feigning pain. “First I am thrown in jail like a thief and
then he cannot even come to hear me?”
“I
asked you a question,” the General said with iron in his voice. “Do not make me
repeat it.”
I
slumped against the bars, “I was meeting a girl,” I said. “I wasn’t doing
anything wrong.”
“Really?”
The General asked, unconvinced. “What girl? Where is she? What’s her name?”
“I
don’t know, she’s just a girl,” I said. “I don’t usually get their names,” I
added with a wink.
“You
make a habit of this?” The General said with distaste, as if he never did the
same thing with the beauties my father kept around for just that purpose. That
particular perk was nothing either of us would mention in public though, so I
just looked at him and shrugged.
“Fine,
I will inform your father of your bad habit,” he said turning on the ball of
one foot.
“Oh
come one, you’re not going to leave me here…” I called after him.
“It’ll
be good for you,” he called over his shoulder.
Leave
me there they did. There was no response to my repeated demands, there was no
response to my refusal of meals, the guards didn’t even speak to us after that
point, and eventually we all went quiet. I watched the clock on the wall spin
around and around as the hours went by, as the waters rose beneath our feet, as
the launch loomed closer. Just as I was beginning to think we were going to be
left here to drown the silence broke, with the sound of chains.
They
marched us out of our cells, a serpent line that clinked and jingled. The
marched us past the waiting masses. They marched us into the first of the
ships. My father glared down at us from the railing as the crows screamed and
hissed at us. My men looked scared.
The
brig inside the ship was a single cell, better suited for a single
insubordinate worker than for eighteen China Fighters. There was hardly room to
sit, much less lay down. No one was looking at me. They rubbed their wrists,
they hung their heads, and they waited in silence.
I
woke in the middle of the night to feel the room lurching. We fell all over
each other and the confusion broke our silence. The guard woke too, and,
wanting information as badly as we did, he rushed out the door of the room.
The
door to the room swung to close but was butted open again and again. The
hallway was packed with people, panicked expressions on their faces. They
screamed and yelled and climbed over each other, some heading left, others
heading right. In the melee a few people were knocked into the room. An old man
tripped and fell, his head hitting the bars at my feet. I knelt down out of
instinct, trying to help him through the bars, but his wife beat me off, as if
I had been trying to harm him.
Then
another form was thrown into the room and landed against the bars. She cried
out in pain, and I was so concerned for Mi’s injury I almost didn’t notice that
in her thrashing she slipped a ring of keys through the bars. I reached to help
her up, but she also batted my arms away, even while feverishly blinking and
twitching directions to me. She then rushed from the room, rejoined the
feverish mass in the hallway, and slammed the door behind her.
I
hadn’t been the only one reading her face, and the requested riot commenced
immediately. I was slammed against the bars by the bodies behind me. They
screamed, they climbed the bars, they threw their shoes.
Then
one of the shoes hit the target, and the sole security camera was knocked
askew. Immediately the press abated behind me and I started trying the keys. As
soon as I got the door unlocked someone vaulted past me to rip the camera right
off the wall. Others started ransacking the room, looking for anything they
could use in the fight.
There
wasn’t much. We busted a chair, grabbed a few pens, they would do in a pinch
but more than I feared our lack of weapons I feared the crowd. They knew our
faces now, there would be no getting past them unreported.
The
others looked to me for orders, and I tried to think of a plan, any plan, but
this was something I had never planned for.
The
door burst open again and a bundle laden form fell through the door. My men had
the door closed and the intruder pinned before they even recognized it was one
of our female China Fighters. It was Fang, the one that worked in laundry, and
she had brought us a present.
As
we quickly dressed in the Security uniforms Fang explained that she and Mi had
sabotaged the support beams that kept the ship upright on land, and that the
storm tossed rising seas, were battering the ship against the rest of the
pylons. “Everyone is rushing onto the deck, it’s mass hysteria,” she said with
her eyes gleaming.
“Where
is Mi?” I asked, “Who else have we got?”
She
shook her head, “Just us,” she said motioning at the hastily dressing men.”Mi’s
plan was to gas the bridge, but I don’t know if she’s gotten there yet…” she
stopped short of expressing her concern that Mi could carry out her plan.
Gassing:
plot number eleven, risky, especially on ship as the ventilation would
eventually carry it throughout the ship.
“Do
we have masks?” I asked.
She
again shook her head, “We went with a non-lethal, we have to get there after it
clears and before they wake up.”
“Let’s
go!” I called, and was nearly crushed in the stampede for the only door.
The
hallway was clearer now, and the stragglers quickly got to the side at the sign
of our uniforms. Halfway to the bridge I remembered where the security supply
room was and we made a detour to tey our keys in another door. I didn’t know if
Mi had acted yet, but I preferred to be over prepared than under.
The
guard in the security room had remained at his post, but between the surprise
entry of nearly twenty combatants soon convinced him to cooperate with his own
binding. The floor was still lurching under our feet as we raided the Security
room, I didn’t know if the massive cracking sounds we heard on occasion were
pylons or thunder, but either provided much needed cover.
“You,”
I said to the guard, “Does this computer tap into surveillance?”
He
glanced from me, to the computer, to the gun Pu held on him, and rattled off
the access code as fast as he could. Cong was on it, and he brought the feed
from the bridge up to show a room shrouded in gas, bodies lying slack all over
their stations, one dainty body prone on the middle of the floor. Had I not
known that profile so well I would never have recognized her in that whore’s dress.
It had been the perfect disguise.
My
men sprang into action without command, rushing the bridge. Between the masks
and the uniforms we met no opposition. As I entered the bridge though my heart
sank, nowhere among the limp and useless command crew was my father to be
found.
I
growled in my frustration, “Where is he?” I shouted. I gestured wildly for my
best techs to man the computers while the others took on the task of binding the
bodies and locking them up in the board room.
I
knelt beside Fang who was administering to Mi, trying to rouse her, “Please
tell me we just took the Flagship,” I said.
“Oh
he’s onboard alright,” she said, “Unless the coward jumped in a lifeboat.”
“I
bet he would,” I said. I wanted to ask if Mi was going to be okay, I wanted to
reach and feel for her pulse, but I didn’t, because right now I had to finish
the fight she had carried out almost alone up until now.
In
moments I was on the deck, fighting against the press of people, two of my best
men at my back. I made little headway. I looked wildly about the crowded deck,
people screamed, wept, and clung to anything bolted down to avoid getting
knocked overboard.
“He
wouldn’t be up here!” I shouted to my comrades over the din of the storm. We
turned and made our way back to the bridge in frustration.
The
others looked up in surprise at my quick return. “Roll back the videos, find
out where he went!” I shouted. “And someone check his stateroom and make sure
he’s not still in bed!” I said throwing my hands in the air.
I
felt completely useless. All these years of waiting and plotting and hating,
for what? To have him slip away right when things got interesting. I turned to
leave, desperate to do something, anything, but the sight of Mi’s prone form
turned me back around. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t think of that, so I
started pacing, back and forth, back and forth, like a mad-man on a trip. Maybe
I was a mad-mad.
I
had just spun around at one side of the room when a hand to my chest stopped
me. Angua, my right hand stood there blocking my way. “Stop,” he said, “and
think.”
“I’m
trying to think,” I growled, “but you are in my way!”
“Fifteen
plans,” he said. “Fifteen plans and you’re PACING?” He grabbed me by the
shoulders and pushed me against the wall. “You wanted to lead, you wanted to
take the world from the despot, now TAKE IT!” He gave me one last shove for
good measure and then spun away in frustration. I thought about turning him
back around and punching him, but as I came away from the wall it came away
with me. I turned to stop what I thought was a falling wall panel, only to find
instead a door swinging into the room.
Beyond
it was a set of stairs, and caught on the railing, a sequined scarf.
~
Any
noise I had made coming down the stairs would have been covered by the raging
of the storm, but still I proceeded with caution, leading five men into what
could quickly become our deaths. How many would my father have brought with
him? Besides the girl that was… how many men would he want to save with his
private escape route?
Would
he even still be here?
Reaching
the bottom of the stairs I halted, and peered around the wall to where a small
yacht hung, ready to be delivered to the sea via a sophisticated lift
system, were it not for a broken pylon
which blocked the opening. My father stood to the side, giving useless
instructions to the four sailors who were trying to dislodge the massive post,
to no avail. There was no sign of the woman, and no time to account for her. We
could be discovered at any moment.
I
signaled my men to follow me, and silently we crept forward. I raised my gun,
smoothly bringing it to rest on my Father’s temple as I placed him in a grip I
was sure he wouldn’t be able to break, even if he hadn’t stiffened with fear at
the gun.
“I
would have thought you would have at least come to visit me,” I whispered.
He
yelped. Yelped. I felt him shiver even as the sailors turned to discover the
laser dots resting on their torsos.
There
was a scream and a breaking of glass, after which one of the Sailors tried to
be a hero, only to find the boys with the guns didn’t really need the guns. As
he grunted in pain under Angua’s grip the others got to their knees slowly.
“Wise
decision,” I told them. “He’s not worth dying for, he’s not worth the lives
that have already been taken in this war.”
“Who
did you kill?” my father whimpered.
“I’m
not the killer here,” I replied. “Yet,” I amended pressing my gun tighter
against his head.
I
wasn’t stupid enough to think I had won. I knew it was an act, but the sailors
didn’t know that, and I needed to handle this well if I was going to keep him
subdued long enough to lock him up. Killing him now made me an assassin. Trying
him and sentencing him for war crimes, that made me the leader of the new
regime.
~
We stood at the railing, looking out over the endless sea. It had
been called endless before, but now it pretty much was. The only things left in
my world that were solid and firm were the arms around me.
Peters and I did this every morning after our run around the deck.
Others were still running, we had quite the running club going these days. It
had grown slowly as the past eight months had drifted past. We were all a
little stir-crazy, or sea-mad, or victims of cabin fever, whatever you chose to
call it. It was all the same, after hiding in the earth for a dozen years we
were being driven mad by the sea and the sky.
Andrew pulled away from behind me, the military time clock in his
head telling him it was time to go. It was almost time for our daily radio
communication with the other arks. It was time to talk to my mother about the
nothingness going on in our lives.
Showered, dressed, and sitting in the conference room we waited
for the radio to come to life. We didn’t wait long, Aunt Marsha and Mom were as
punctual as Peters. After all, they were the “Inter-net.”
The long list of check-ins began, as if we wouldn’t have noticed
if one of our floating neighbors had gone missing overnight. All the resort
arks had been gathered here for months now. We sat here, floating somewhere
above Colorado, waiting for the waters to wander away, waiting for the peaks to
poke out of the waves.
It hadn’t been a firm plan, for everyone to meet up here. After we
had lost the satellite to the Chinese though, they just came. I was a little
more relieved each time, and then we were complete. I don’t think any of us
could stand the isolation anymore. Just standing on deck seeing all the arks
around us, main decks lush with trees, sheep running the lower decks, children
somewhere in-between, it was hope, it was community, it was humanity.
I was about to respond for our ship when an unknown voice crackled
onto the frequency. At first I couldn’t understand it, had one of the kids
gotten a hold of a radio? Then the voice came again and my lungs froze inside
me.
I was still trying to find my voice while Andrew was calling
battle stations over the ship’s comm. The room had been griped in a fist of
fear, but thankfully some found their feet while the rest of us tried to find
our heads.
“New China Fleet call American Fleet, do you copy?” the heavily
accented voice repeated.
New China?
“What do we do?” I asked Andrew, the radio in my hand.
“Not our call,” he replied. “Lilly Lin is on her way up. Maybe we
should have assigned her to a different ship.”
I nodded, she would have been more useful to be in the room with
the people who were really in charge.
The hail came again. “New China Fleet call American Fleet, do you
copy? We come in peace.”
The ship’s comm crackled came on, “Confirmed sighting of three
ships, they are sailing in out of the sun. Sorry…”
I felt bad for whoever was in the crow’s nest this morning. Not
that it mattered. We were equipped for survival, not evasive maneuvers. We were loaded to the teeth, but we were also
loaded down, with precious cargo.
If they could hear our radios they were close, too. We used short
range radios for just that reason, so distant enemies would not detect us. I
wondered how they had found us, they hadn’t shown any interest in our location
on the satellite at all. We knew, we watched it every minute of every day. They
pretty much kept it trained on the tip of the Himalayas, waiting for Everest
Island to become a mountain again. It had almost disappeared six months ago,
all but the very tip. The waters were receding now. The Chinese were farming,
and we estimated another two to three months before we could land on peaks of
our own.
“New China Fleet call American Fleet, do you copy? We come in
peace. Please answer.”
Lilly Lin ran into the room and leaned on the table to catch her
breath. She was still in her pajamas, her braid still frayed from sleep. She
looked embarrassed.
“New China Fleet call American Fleet, do you copy? We come in
peace. Please answer. We hold our position.”
She looked at me, “Am I to answer for us?”
I looked at Andrew, Captain Peters as he was called these days. He
shrugged. I started at the radio, then jumped when it came to life with Aunt
Marsha’s voice, “New China Fleet, this is General Marsha Moren of the Western
International Fleet, please hold for Ambassador Mathilda Peters-Moren and our
Mandarin Interpreter.”
“Did she just say?” I asked the room at large.
“Yes, yes, she did,” Andrew said.
“Talk about the fast track,” Gupta said with a wink, like this was
any time to be funny.
“Oh honestly,” I said running my fingers through my hair. “Lilly
isn’t the only Chinese Interpreter in the Fleet.”
“It’s not me they are entrusting with this,” Lilly said coming to
sit by me.
“Yeah, but why me?!” I asked.
“Ummm,” Mayor Pope said, as quietly as I had ever heard her speak.
“Remember that Mayor’s meeting I went to a couple months ago?”
I buried my head in my hands.
“We kind of voted you in charge… in emergencies,” she finished.
I wanted to point out exactly how unfair it was to vote someone
into an office they never had run for, but before I could the radio came on
again. “Ambassador Peters-Moren, please proceed when ready,” Aunt Marsha’s
voice said.
When ready.
Oh okay,
give me a week, I thought.
I closed my eyes, sighed, handed Lilly the radio handset. “New
China Fleet,” I said, and she translated, “This is Ambassador Peter-Moren, we
are listening.” When she turned off the microphone I turned to Andrew. “I think
it’s time to use that virus of yours to take the satellite back. We need to
know if it’s just the three of them.”
“I’m on it boss,” he said, leaving the conference room and heading
for the bridge.
The Chinese answered back and Lilly took notes and translated, “Ambassador
Peters-Moren, we are a diplomatic envoy from the New Republic of China, sent by
President Jiang Bang. We wish to express the peaceful intentions of our new
government and our hope for peace for the future.”
“Here,” Andrew said bringing in another radio, “Madeline’s on channel
11 and wants a relay of what’s being said.” He handed it to Mayor Pope, who
consulted Lilly’s notes and relayed the translation.
“Does he have a name?” I asked Lilly.
She shrugged and asked, then replied, “His name is Han DaZhong, he’s
translating for Jiang Mi, the First Lady.”
Eyebrows went up all around the room, and Mayor Pope relayed the
news. I began to have hope. If she was the wife of some new President, then
this could end in peace.
“It’s just the three ships,” Andrew said, poking his head in the
room. He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I gave him a half grin. He could stop
checking on me now. He had guns to man in case this went bad.
“First Lady, we extend our greetings and express our happiness
that the waters of mankind’s mistake are receding from the mountains of your
homeland,” I said.
“Ambassador, we thank you for your happiness and express our concern
about your welfare. We are encouraged to see so many plants on your ships.
Perhaps this horrible end will be a new beginning for all of us,” was the
reply.
“We are curious about the mission of your envoy,” I said. “Did you
come to negotiate a cease fire?”
“We came to inform you of our new government, to express our
peaceful intent, and to open correspondence. Our President and our people
believe that communication is the path to peace. We hope this overture of peace
is acceptable to you,” replied the First Lady. “Our President wishes to assure
your President that he is not like his late father in character or politics.”
“Late Father?” I asked.
“Yes, Emperor Jiang De was tried by the people and executed by
drowning for his crimes against the People of China,” she said. After some
surprised silence she added, “We apologize if we acted preemptively. My husband
instructed me to convey his willingness to be tried in his father’s stead, if
it would prevent further war.”
The stunned faces around the table mirrored my own. I didn’t know
what to say.
~
First Lady Jiang De was pregnant, very pregnant. Part of me wanted
to call her husband and chew him out for sending her on a mission at such a
time. Then looking at the determined set of her eyes I wondered if he had been
given a choice. I introduced her to my husband, and to Hope and John. She eyed
my husband’s uniform, but when she saw his metal leg respect filled her eyes.
We walked the fruit level of our ark, she particularly liked the
birds that hung heavy on the branches. She worried that the flocks wouldn’t be
supported by the ecosystem, and I knew just what she meant. At the back of the
ark I showed her the farm, the floating gardens we hoped to keep safe from the
elements until they could be planted in real soil. Hurricanes were a concern
for her people too.
We walked past one of the big guns, and she talked about how she
fell in love with her husband while they planned the liberation of their people.
She said she still had breathing problems from the gas. She said it was a small
price to pay if it was the last battle, especially as they hadn’t had to kill
anyone that day.
The children loved her, and I could tell she liked them. She kept looking at Hope and putting her hand
on her bulging belly. I asked if she was having a girl. She said she hoped she
was having a President, either way, but they wanted it to be a surprise.
She visited us each day for a week, and I visited her smaller
ships, each swift and lightly armed. She invited me to come to her home and
meet her child someday, and I told her I really hoped I could. They were simple
conversations, one woman to another. Perhaps someday they will be historic,
perhaps they won’t, but I know they changed me, they gave me a friend on the
other side of the world.
So long mankind has divided the earth, so long it has broken the
world in pieces and compared their size to one another. Now, now instead of
looking at what can divide us, we look at what we have in common. We find what
good things we have in common that can multiply us, not so we can compare our
size, but so that we can add to each other.
And in this, mankind has not died, but grown, exponentially.