Departure

by Ken Barrett

  “I used to teach Primary School,” Rose said quietly. “Over a million-people died right here in a single day.”

  “I recall learnin’ about that when I was a kid.” Peggy’s voice faltered a moment, but then her bravado returned. “If you’re one for believin’ in ghosts, keep your windows rolled up.”

  Trinidad was a charred ruin, and contrary to predictions, the convoy experienced no problems passing through. To the south the road wandered up into the mountains and the trucks all slowed and strained under the weight of their loads. The steep slope had many tight turns, and Liam worked hard to keep pace with the more experienced drivers. “Keep it movin’,” Peggy instructed. “Go slow as you need to, but don’t stop ‘cos you’ll never get your rig goin’ again.”

  It took nearly an hour to reach the top of the pass, and Liam sighed with relief when they finally began their descent into what was once New Mexico.

  “We’re kinda safe up here on the hill so put some distance between your trucks,” Peggy instructed. “And stay off the brakes as much as you can; those suckers can heat up; a couple months back one of our rigs caught fire, so only use ‘em when you need to.”

  It was a long twisting way down. Fire had swept through the area sometime long ago; charred stumps still dotted the mountains while younger trees struggled at the edges of the road. The old highway wound through the hills, following the course of a river that flowed by many broken and forgotten towns. What had it been like to live in those places so long ago? Had they known and appreciated the paradise around them? Probably not. No treasure is ever valued until it’s lost.

  *****

  “We had some trouble in Santa Fe the last time we came through,” Peggy said. “The army kicked their ass, so we oughta be fine, but let’s tighten it up everybody ‘cos you never know.”

  All hell broke loose when they came around the final turn into the city. Liam saw flashes at each side of the road, and flame shot into the air at the front of their column. The lead trucks swerved to the sides of the road as smoke and dust from their tires filled the air and made it difficult to see. “Keep goin’, keep goin’,” Peggy shouted. “Stay right and follow me!”

  One of the lead military vehicles was broken and burning on the left side of the road. The heat of the fire was so intense that Liam felt his skin singe as they passed by. None of the trucks slowed down and the fighting was quickly behind them.

  Once south of Santa Fe, they drove out of the mountains down a long straight slope toward the abandoned city of Albuquerque. “All our rigs made it, and I think we’re in the clear now,” Peggy said. “But keep the hammer down ‘til we get to the city just to be on the safe side.”

  Impossibly hot wind rushed uphill toward them and buffeted their vehicles. The entire area was all hard edges; ancient jagged peaks surrounded crumbling skyscrapers that leaned oddly and seemed on the verge of collapse. Everything was colored in shades of tan, white, and gray. Nothing could live here, even cacti couldn’t survive the extreme heat.

  “Ok, we all made it. A couple of our tanks stayed behind to pound them assholes back into the stone age. Nothin’ is gonna be left of Santa Fe but burning rubble, so we ain’t gonna have problems on our way home.” Peggy sounded relieved. “It’s all clear from here on; the savages always keep to the mountains ‘cos it’s too fuckin’ hot for ‘em to live in the desert.”

  The convoy turned west when they reached Albuquerque, and Liam wondered how anyone could ever live in such a baked and awful place. Rose suddenly spoke up, as if sensing his question. “This area has always been a desert, but it was cooler before the sun started acting up.” He heard her sigh behind him. “It’s still a marvel though, isn’t it?”

  “It’s sad that we’ve lost so much of ourselves,” he replied.

  In his mirror he saw his sister staring out through the side window. “It’s all gone, and it’s never coming back,” she said.

  *****

  Rose fell asleep as night claimed the desert. Chatter among the drivers had ceased, and nothing much happened as the convoy thundered across the dark dreary landscape. Boredom is often a privilege though; the spacing between the trucks lengthened, and he managed to relax a bit. Bright stars twinkled in the clear uncluttered sky; at night, the bleak and barren wilderness became a silent and beautiful place.

  After nearly 20 hours on the road, the caravan finally turned off the highway. Holbrook was a small fortified town in the middle of nowhere. Describing it as a ‘town’ was a bit of a stretch though, because fewer than ten people lived there. While waiting outside his truck for fresh batteries to be installed, he listened to the sand whisper across the rocky hills around them, it was a peaceful but lonely sound.

  Liam napped in the rear seat as Rose drove them further south through a low range of dusty mountains. When he awoke the next morning, they were passing through Phoenix. Huge manufacturing plants lined both sides of the wide road they followed; it appeared that colossal structural members and metal plating were being formed there. Beyond the factories there wasn’t much left of the city, it was a baked and desiccated place, like a rotted body that had been left out in the sun.

  The oppressive heat was starting to ease as they approached the port city of Yuma. The docks were busy, and he watched as some barges were being loaded and others were pulled away by tugboats heading toward waiting cargo ships. Metal work from Phoenix, along with powerplants and computers from Pike City were being shipped further south, and Liam had a good idea where everything was going. He nodded slowly; the pieces fit, and he began to see a way to bring down the Socialists.

  *****

  Two days later, Liam stood on the Yuma dock enjoying the cool breeze off the ocean while sipping at a bottle of water. “It’s gotta be hell down where you’re goin’,” he said casually to a Boatswain as he walked by.

  The dark-skinned man paused and frowned. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Isola Isabela… off the coast of Ecuador, right?”

  The Boatswain nodded. “Why you ask?”

  “No reason. It’s no big deal and I gotta get back to my rig.” Liam shrugged. “Try to stay dry eh?”

  The tough looking Hispanic man chuckled. “Sure thing.”

  He pulled Rose aside before they got back inside their truck. “Keith needs to know that the cargo’s being delivered to the Space Elevator in Ecuador.”

  “Space Elevator? Is there such a thing?”

  “Yeah, it was built a long time ago by the old USA. It’s really just a huge carbon-nanotube cable attached at the equator with a counter weight in high orbit. My guess is that they’re building something very big up there.” Liam glanced around to be sure no one was watching. “Remember Lucy?”

  “Sure, your spacefaring girlfriend.” Rose smiled.

  “While designing her, I thought it was strange that with the war going on, that Pike City wanted to send a probe into outer space; but now I understand. They’re bugging out and heading for Trappist-1. They know that sooner or later the Tribes will overrun their city, so they’re leaving before it happens.”

  “Should the rebels try to stop them?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know anything about fighting a war. This project is a big deal though; if we use this knowledge right, we might be able to bring down Pike City without too many people getting killed.”

  “How?”

  Liam frowned. “It’ll be complicated, but I’m sure it can be done. Give me some time to think it through and come up with a plan.”

  *****

  Liam drove first during their return home, and without worry of attack and with Rose asleep behind him, there was plenty of time to consider the possibilities. He didn’t know what to do with what he had learned. One thing was certain though, he needed to insert himself into the Pike City engineering group. That was the only place he could learn more, and possibly find a way to stop the Socialist’s departure and destroy their government.

  What would happen if he succeeded? The Tribes appe
ared to be just as violent as the Pike City Army. With nowhere else to go, could he and Rose get away and find a place to live alone in the mountains? That didn’t seem like a good idea. The paradise of Flatiron was burned and buried, so once Pike City was gone there were no other choices. But maybe whatever was being built in orbit could be seized, and they might escape with some of the survivors of their former home.

  There were too many options, too many possibilities, and too many ways that any plan might go wrong. It wasn’t time yet to set anything in motion. All he could do was get inside the city’s engineering group and hope that an opportunity would present itself.

  Chapter 12: Back Home

  It was odd to feel relief when they returned to Pike City; just how their prison had become a home was a little confounding. They pulled their flatbed trucks into the motor-pool and parked next to each other, then amid groans and complaints of stiff bodies, everyone grabbed their gear and got out.

  Liam looked up into the hard-white sky and let the pounding rain wash over his tired body. He smelled bad and his clothes were so stiff with grime and sweat that they may have been able to walk back to his dorm room by themselves. “You know what I miss?” he asked rhetorically as he stood alongside his sister. “Soap and toothpaste.”

  Rose laughed. “I’d add deodorant to your list.” She sighed. “I also miss going out and dancing with my friends.”

  “Yeah, I miss our old life too,” he whispered.

  “All right!” the foreman shouted as he emerged from his office. “Good job everyone! Four went out, and all four came back. I won’t say that’s a first, but it’s been a while.” He clapped his hands loudly. “Now go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you all back here in three days!”

  Rose paused to wait for him, but he shook his head. “You go ahead, and remember what I said to tell Keith. Also, be sure he checks our secret database; if I get held up, I’ll stay in touch that way.” His sister returned a worried look, then nodded and walked away.

  A group of soldiers were waiting outside the motor-pool gate. With a sigh of apprehension, he slung the bag of dirty clothes over his shoulder and casually walked toward them. The game was on, and all the pieces were finally in play.

  “Liam Collins,” a tough looking soldier wearing Sergeant’s bars said; it wasn’t a question.

  He smiled. “That’s me.”

  “I bet you thought you’d get away with foolin’ us eh?”

  “I think I did, at least for a while.” He chuckled. “So, where’re we going?”

  The Sergeant clenched his fists and quickly strode forward. The man’s size was intimidating, and Liam tensed in anticipation of an attack. “You motherfucker, for what you did to Mick…” the soldier muttered through gritted teeth. “It’s a good thing for you that Mother wants you intact; you’d best hope that she don’t change her mind.”

  “Well, either she will or she won’t; there’s nothing much I can do about it either way.”

  “Enough of this fuckin’ raw-jawing. You’re comin’ with us.”

  “Of course I am.” At the edge of his eye he saw Rose standing on the sidewalk; she watched as he was led away.

  *****

  Four soldiers hurriedly marched him along Tejon Street. Two of the men gripped his upper arms in an assertion of authority, but it was all for show; he had no chance of escape because any one of them could easily run him down and beat him into a puddle of bloody meat. They led him past the People’s City Council Building, then Acacia Park, and finally brought him to the People’s Technology Center, which was about a half-kilometer south of the city’s northern gate. The tech center was a narrow four-story stucco building with balconies on the longer sides and a flat roof.

  The guards shoved him through tall glass doors into a comfortable carpeted lobby with colorful paintings decorating the walls. A smiling receptionist made a call as Liam anxiously stood by her desk still surrounded by large angry men. After an uncomfortable wait, a short woman with chocolate colored skin and dark hair streaked with gray arrived. “Ok gentlemen, I’ll take it from here.”

  “He might try to get away,” the Sergeant protested.

  “I promise I won’t.” Liam grinned and turned toward the soldiers. “You can go now boys.”

  The men tensed and two of them moved slightly forward. “Gentlemen, he’s with me now,” the short woman said. “You can go.” The men turned away in unison and marched toward the door.

  “You don’t seem to be very good at making friends.” She held out her hand in friendship. “I’m Julee Garcia, the Director of the Technology Departments here.”

  “It’s nice to meet you Julee.” He shook her hand. “As far as making friends go, it seems to me that people will either like me or hate me, and I won’t lie to manipulate their reaction.”

  “Ok, that’s good to know,” Julee bobbed her head. “False amenities are only necessary in politics anyway. What we do here is innovate within our chosen fields; as long as you’re productive you’ll do fine.”

  “That sounds good to me,” he replied.

  “You hid from us though… why?”

  “Your army killed my parents and destroyed my home. Why should I willingly help you?”

  Julee smiled, and he was surprised to see sadness in her expression. “You’re very honest, and I like that. Let’s go up to my office and talk.”

  She took him to an elevator that brought them up to the fourth floor. From there they walked down a long central hallway, and finally she led him into an office on the east side of the building. “Sit down Liam. I have some questions about your work in Flatiron, and we need to talk about how you’ll fit in here.”

  “Ok.” He sat in a chair facing Julee’s desk. “I designed the computer architecture and wrote the program to plot a course from Earth to the Trappist-1 system through N-Space.”

  She eased down behind her desk and stared at him thoughtfully. “What happened to your work?”

  “Your army blew it up along with our university.”

  “So it’s lost, but can you recreate it?”

  “Yes I can. It’s not a small job though and I’ll need custom hardware; traditional computers can’t handle anything more than three dimensions, but plotting a course through N-Space requires simultaneous computations in twelve.”

  Julee nodded slowly. “You designed the operating system for the space probe as well, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “She’s a self-aware intelligence.”

  “Artificial intelligence; isn’t that what you mean to say?”

  “No. Artificial stupidity might apply to those goons that brought me here… but even that might be a stretch.” He saw Julee quickly smile before her stony expression returned. “Intelligence just is. There’s no natural or artificial distinction.”

  “The probe’s intelligence is artificial because you created it.”

  “Are we artificially intelligent because we went through school? Things can be learned, but only applied through thoughtful consciousness. What you’re doing is confusing knowledge with intelligence. A computer can know how to do something, but it has to be told to do it. With consciousness comes intelligence, and the ability to make decisions on our own.”

  Julee leaned back in her chair. “I didn’t expect a philosophical discussion, but ok, you win. I still need to know where your loyalties lie though. Do you support the mountain savages, or the rightful government of our country?”

  “We could argue whether we even have a country anymore, but I don’t see much point in that.” Liam looked down at his hands and thought a moment. “I was a citizen of Flatiron, and although naive, I believed in our neutrality. We worked for both sides and fulfilled contracts without bias; it was just work we did to keep the peace. Then your army came and killed my family and friends, but maybe the Tribes would have done the same thing eventually. Both sides are bad, and I don’t want any part of your war, that’s why I kept my identity a secret.”

  Ju
lee sighed, then leaned forward to turn on her computer monitor. She gazed at the screen for a moment, then blinked and shook her head. “You arrived here with two friends, Keith Johnson and Sarah Smith, didn’t you?” she asked quietly. “I hate doing this, I really do, but for the sake of their safety you must work for us.”

  Liam leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had expected her threat, but it was down toward the ‘worst case scenario’ end of the list. At least they didn’t suspect that Sarah was actually his sister. Still though, he didn’t want to agree too quickly. “What will you do to them?”

  “Nothing, as long as you work for us.”

  “What will I be working on?”

  Julee carefully gazed at him for a long moment, and he wondered if she suspected that he knew about their escape plans. “We’re sending more probes to Trappist-1, and we need your navigation system again,” she finally said. “These are larger vessels, and from what Ron has told us, the old course you plotted won’t work, so we need a new one.”

  “Huh,” he grunted thoughtfully. “Our universe is in constant motion, and N-Space is actually a parallel universe that’s also in motion. Actions in one affect the other. Time is also a factor because it’s non-linear… there are literally quadrillions of calculations to make, and their output, which is the navigation course, is only good for a specific span of time. If used early or late, there’s no telling where you would end up. You could materialize inside a blackhole, or the other side of the universe, or show up last Thursday on the moon.”

  Julee rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. “Your work is crucial for our project. You’ll be working for Ron and he’ll get you every resource you need.”

  “And my friends will be safe… that has to be a guarantee.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll keep my current quarters then,” he said. “If anything happens to them, my work stops. Do you understand?”

  “Yes I do. But do you understand that if there is even a hint of sabotage, your friends will be given to Mother’s Nurse for Treatment and will die very painfully.”