Earth Station (Station Series Book 1)

by Martin Schroth

  “Sounds like a plan. Maggie, how about you show me around?”

  “I’d be glad to. You ready?”

  “Whenever you are,” Charlie gestured to the door.

  November 2nd, 2111

  It took three months but we finally broke ground on Earth Station. Charlie has done a great job of getting a staff together for day to day operations of Earth Station.

  Approaching the entrance, I looked over at the processing plant demolition. Everything that comes out of the ground to build Earth Station is processed to extract and isolate all metals and other usable substances. Whatever is left over is used to construct the walls of Earth Station. Nothing goes to waste. At this point, we have moved our processing plant inside Earth Station. After the outside plant is demolished, we will landscape the outside to fit in with the surrounding landscape making Earth Station essentially invisible.

  Construction is moving at a pretty good pace – 100 meters per day. We already have nearly 3000 meters of tunnels complete. The entrance is mostly open but can be sealed with a 3-meter-thick titanium door that is 8 meters tall and 10 meters wide. After the entrance, there is a right angle turn every 20 meters for the first 100 meters with the ability to seal off ES at every turn. Seems like overkill but Mac insisted that it’s better to have than to not and need it. The tunnels are 10 meters wide and 10 meters tall with the bottom 3 meters containing all the piping, cables and other maintenance and environmental structures. Those are covered with a flat surface which supports a high-speed rail system.

  Our offices are at the 2000-meter mark and were completed with furniture, electronics and communications yesterday, so today will be the first meeting of the Leadership Council which consists of myself, Mac, Maggie and Charlie.

  As I pull into the entrance and park my car in a spacious parking garage, I see Mac getting out of his car.

  “Wait up Mac, I’ll ride with you.” Mac waited as I approached and then we walked together to the rail station. The doors to the rail car slid open and we sat in the comfortable seats facing the interior. The rail cars are fairly small and can carry four passengers with equipment. There were two seats across from us for when the car was moving out. Some of us don’t like riding backwards.

  “They should probably be finished with some of the living quarters in the next couple of days so we can move in and not have to trek here from the temporary housing we are living in now,” I said as the rail car accelerated. It took less than a minute to travel the 2000 meters to our offices.

  “It’s 7:30 now and our meeting is at 8. How about we try out the cafeteria for breakfast?” Mac said hungrily. “I hear that they make a mean breakfast burrito.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We made our way to the cafeteria which was just down the tunnel from the offices. As we entered, there was a group of construction guys getting their food. Charlie has done a super job of getting together and vetting construction, maintenance and housekeeping personnel.

  Mac and I both grabbed a breakfast burrito – I went with it based on Mac’s recommendation. I also picked up a banana and a glass of orange juice.

  I took a bite and looked over at Mac. “This is pretty good.”

  Mac nodded and said “I told you.”

  We finished eating and started for the door. “Hey guys, wait up.” I heard from behind us. Maggie came running up to us and we all headed toward the conference room.

  Each of the rooms which make up the office area were constructed off the main tunnel. There are two entrances from the main tunnel which open to a hallway. Each office has an entrance off the hallway. My office is at the far end, next to the conference room. We had to go out to the main tunnel from the cafeteria entrance and walked about 5 meters to the door for the office area. I bent over to let the retinal scanner verify my identity and the door opened. It would only let one person through so Mac and Maggie each had to look into the retinal scanner individually.

  We finally walked into the conference room and found that Charlie was already there messing with some of the monitors on the wall. There were security cameras everywhere. He was looking at the end of the tunnel where new construction was taking place.

  “About time you got here. I thought our meeting was at 8,” Charlie said with a smirk pointing to the clock on the wall which read 8:02.

  “So, what’s on the agenda for today?” Maggie asked.

  “Our construction manager will be here at 8:30 to give us an update,” I said. “Maggie, let’s start with you, anything on the scientific front?”

  “We found something interesting at our processing plant yesterday. A very heavy substance which has some weird properties. Our first set of labs will be finished next week and I will get our people working on it ASAP.”

  “Mac?”

  “Our engineers have come up with a micro surveillance device which is 1.5 mm in diameter, and can move through the air and on any surface. That’s nothing new but what is new is that these critters cannot be detected. They use an ultra-low frequency to transmit that blends in with the background noise.”

  “Our equipment here is able to extract the signal from the background noise. They started manufacturing the devices by the hundreds and we should have a million or so by the end of the month. Then we will drop a bunch over every major capital and have them infiltrate all the government offices. Charlie is going to have to get busy and get us a security crew to monitor all the devices. Most of the analysis will be done by computer which will look for key words that will trigger an analysis by one of the security team. It should all be up and running by the time the devices are done.”

  “Charlie?”

  “I’ll get on the search for more security personnel right after this meeting. We were able to get Vlad Skrimov, the physicist, to join our science team. He will be here tomorrow.” Looking over at Maggie he said. “You can get him set up in a lab space and I will see to his accommodations. We also got Marc Levi, a top-notch chemist. He will be here by the end of the week.”

  Just then there was a knock on the door. I pushed a virtual button on the console in front of me and the top of the door shimmered and showed the man standing outside the door. He couldn’t see me but I saw him.

  “That’s Barry Walker, the construction manager.” I pushed another button and the door slid open letting him in.

  “So, Barry, what’s new?” I asked.

  “We finished this level and are ready to drill down to work on the research level and up for the residence level. We’ve got five 3D printers working overtime. three of them are making all the furniture and fixtures for the offices and residences and the other two are reserved for making parts for our tunneling machinery and any other replacement parts we need. Everything is on or ahead of schedule.”

  Charlie looked up at the wall which displayed the architectural drawings of Earth Station. Pointing to the upper residential ring, he asked, “When is this area going to be finished? We only have room for about fifty people on this level, and we will need a lot more soon.”

  Barry replied, “The residential area is a lot less complicated than the research ring. I’ve split my crews in two – one working up and the other down. We should be done with the residential area in less than a month. The research area will be done inside of two months.”

  “That’s great. Is there anything that you need?”

  Barry looked up from his notes at me. “We could use a few more finishing workers, especially skilled ones – people who know the difference between a mass spec and MRI, if you get my drift. Setting up the research area is going to be a bitch, especially after the eggheads get here and put their two cents worth into the project.”

  “I’ve got to look for more security personnel and I’ll add your personnel needs to the search,” replied Charlie.

  “Thanks Barry, if you could give us an update via text every morning by 8, we can address any concerns or needs you have in our morning meeting.”

  Barry stood to leave, “We
ll, back to the grind. See ya later.”

  After Barry left we finished up on some other housekeeping matter and then adjourned.

  ….

  I quietly sat down in the back of the auditorium. Looked like about one hundred prospects were sitting in the seats facing the stage where Charlie was about to speak.

  “Welcome. The fact that you are sitting here means that you have passed our preliminary tests and background investigations. In the seat back in front of each of you is a tablet. Grab the tablet and put you thumb print in the upper right corner.” As they did so, a confidentiality statement appeared on the screen. Using the information from their thumb prints, names and other specific information were filled in to personalize each statement. “I’ll give you a few moments to read it over, but basically it says you need to keep your mouth shut about anything you see or hear from now on. I know you are all wondering where you are.” All the prospects were brought here in a roundabout way in vehicles that had no external views.

  After a few minutes, most of them looked back up at Charlie. “Basically, what you are signing says that if you reveal anything about Earth Station, you will be let go and required to pay damages. If your transgression is grievous your chances of ever seeing the light of day will be miniscule. Any questions?”

  No one raised their hand. “Put your thumb print on the signature line to sign the document and then scroll to the next page for your job description, benefits and pay scale.” After they all had signed and the AI which controlled personnel files confirmed signatures and identities it sent Charlie the green light, he started in on his spiel.

  “After this meeting, you will go down to sickbay and get a complete physical. After that, you will be assigned to a residence which I am sure you will be pleased with. We have spared no expense in making your life here pleasant. Each year, you will receive a two week all expenses paid vacation to anywhere in the world you wish as well as many other benefits. If you scroll to the next page, you will see specifics. In return, we expect the best out of each one of you. I know some of you will decide that you no longer wish to work here. If that happens, depending on your work and length of employment, you will be given several great opportunities on the outside. I hope, though, that you will find your work here fulfilling and remain with us as a member of our team. You are to keep the tablet you have with you at all times. You will receive updates and information and are to use it when communicating with anyone else. I’ll tell you now that we monitor each of the tablets for location and activity. Your privacy is very limited. You will just have to live with that. If there aren’t any questions, follow the blue arrow projected on the floor as you leave here to get to the infirmary.”

  All the newbies filed out of the auditorium and headed to the infirmary. Charlie walked over to me.

  “I really don’t like the idea of injecting them with a microchip that will monitor their location, and I understand that you can also listen in on them through the chip. Yeah, yeah, I get that we need to do this because of the insane security of this place, but I don’t have to like it. I assume I have one of those things in me too?”

  I surprised Charlie by saying, “You don’t have one in you and neither do Mac, Maggie or myself.” I lied, everyone has a chip except me.

  “That’s bull, I don’t believe you. But it is what it is, so I’ll live with it.”

  “Believe what you want. On another note, how does this batch of newbies look?”

  “Most of them are security personnel. I was lucky enough to find a few tech people that we can easily train to set up and maintain the equipment in our labs. They all look like keepers at this point. We’ll see.”

  “I know that you don’t like the chipping, but is there anything else, you seem a little perturbed.”

  “I guess the solid work 24/7 over the last four months is getting to me. I need to take a few weeks off. I think that I’ll head over to Baja for a little sun and fun.”

  “After this batch of recruits, there will be some down time so you might as well take off asap. Have fun and come back rejuvenated,” I said smiling at him.

  “Thanks, I’ll see you when I get back.”

  ….

  Mac walked into my office with a smile on his face. “We got a bunch of our surveillance bugs sent out and we are getting our first information from them. This is great. We do have a problem, though. We need someone to take charge of intelligence gathering. I’ve already got more to do with internal security than I expected and dealing with this is going to stretch my department to the breaking point. I’ll bring this up in our morning meeting tomorrow so we can all address the situation.”

  “So where are our little buggers?” I asked

  “We have them in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, London, New Delhi, and Tehran now with more expected to be distributed in the next few days. Surveillance started this morning. We haven’t had the AI spit out anything significant yet. I plan to make a summary of our intelligence available every morning.”

  Just then, Maggie, burst into my office. “We just found something amazing. Remember that heavy stuff they couldn’t identify in the processing plant. Well it turns out that it is a new element. The atomic number is almost double what previously was the heaviest element – 235 and its atomic mass is a whopping 654. And get this, it radiates a huge graviton field producing a gravity field around itself similar to the magnetic field around a magnetic substance. One end has a positive gravitational field and the other end produces an anti-gravity field. All the atoms line up with positive end towards the center of earth’s gravitational field. We are just getting started, but this looks like we may have a way to control gravity. This has slew of possibilities least of which is to produce vehicles which can be propelled by gravity/antigravity interaction and thus require no fuel.”

  “That is awesome,” Mac said. “When do I get my anti-grav car?” he said with a smile.

  “Wow, I want you to drop everything else and concentrate on this research. It could put us at a tremendous advantage over the rest of the world in transportation, space exploration, and weaponry just to mention the things that pop into my mind. I’m sure it will be applicable in lots of other areas. Can you have a comprehensive update for us tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure thing. There is something else. Our element puts out a very specific low frequency. Once we build a detector to focus in on that frequency, we can locate deposits anywhere in the world from the air or even space for that matter.”

  “I’ll make sure none of this gets out. We need to find those deposits and get a corner on this asap,” Mac added.

  “Maggie, you need to bring the people that are working on this to the meeting tomorrow. Mac, I think we need 24-hour monitoring of this. Keep as few people in the loop as you can and still have comprehensive coverage. This is great work and I’m looking forward to lots more.”

  Maggie and Mac filed out of my office and hurried back to their domains to get to work. I had a big smile on my face. Things were starting to happen. I can’t wait for the next surprise from our crew.

  November 9th, 2111

  There was a knock at the door. Mike mostly keeps his door open but insisted that people knock anyway. Richard was standing at the door and he waved him in. “What’s up?”

  “You know that project you had me working on? Well, it’s taken a while but I have some information. It seems like all those stock market anomalies are linked. The profits are all being funneled the same way. I don’t know the players yet but I have the how. It will just be a matter of time until I unravel where the money is going. Whatever it is, it’s not illegal and is not interfering with the stock market, it’s just making someone very, very rich. It could be significant in that it gives whoever controls this lots of power – ‘money talks bullshit walks’. At this point, it’s just a blip, a rather large one, but it could get a lot bigger. We need to find out the details.”

  “Good work Richard, we still need to keep WALLET under the radar. No o
ne except you and me.”

  “No sweat boss, that’s why it took me so long to get the information that I have, I worked on this myself and spent time covering my tracks. It takes longer that way but the information is secure.”

  “By the way, tell Linda that Sarah and I had a great time last weekend. Those steaks were perfect. Too bad the Broncos lost, but hey, it’s early in the season. My son thought your new ultra def 3D projection system was great for watch the game. He is bugging me to upgrade our system now. Thanks a lot,” Mike said with some sarcasm.

  “We aim to please,” Richard said with a smile.

  “Have a good one and keep me updated,” Mike said as Richard got up and started for the door.

  ….

  Several thousand miles away, under a mountain in Mexico, an AI detected a significant conversation with key words that were flagged to bring the matter to the attention of Mac, Maggie, Charlie and Jake to the exclusion of everyone else. It was tagged ‘Code Red’ and immediately popped up on the secure tablets of the four.

  ….

  Two weeks later, Director Williams was walking to his car in the underground garage at the CIA headquarters. As he got into his car, a black SUV pulled up behind him and a dark haired, buff looking guy got out and approached the driver’s side door.

  Where the hell is security, thought Mike. They should have seen this and been here already. There was a tap on his window. He lowered the window. “Can I help you?”

  “You need to come with us. Someone wishes to speak with you,” the stranger said.